From: robg@wsinti03.info.win.tue.nl (Rob Gerth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: 030 Accelerators for the SE?
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:42:28 GMT
Reply-To: robg@info.win.tue.nl
Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands

In article <1992Sep25.090159.12037@nntp.hut.fi> sakaria@vipunen.hut.fi (Sakari Aaltonen) writes:
>Apple seems to have discontinued SE/30 upgrades. Looking for an alternative,
>I compiled the following list with the aid of MacWorld magazine 9/92:
>
> MacWorld 9/92   030 Accelerators for the SE
>                                               price USD
> s e l l e r         b o a r d        MHz   no FPU    w/FPU
>                     NewLife          25      680        ?
>
>Would anyone care to comment on these? The companies are as important as
>the boards, as I would surely not be able to start any legal action if
>anything goes wrong. 
>


Yep. I am using a NewLife accelerated SE (25MHz) which screams along at
almost 7 times the speed of a Classic, thanks to the processor, its speed
and the 32bits wide data paths, while graphics is more than 4 times as fast
(as measured with Speedometer 3.5).

The NewLife software comes with a crash resilient RAM disk for whatever
is left on the motherboard (at least 512k; which can't be used for anything
else) and you can optionally copy the ROM code to RAM. If you don't do this,
the screen handling will suffer, becoming about twice as fast as a Classic.

The only software problem that I've experienced was with the System7 TuneUps
which were incompatible with the NewLife CDEV/INIT. When I told NewLife about
it, they immediately rushed off updated software (well, snailed off
because overseas customers are served by surface mail but hey it was free
so I won't complain). The card itself seems to be well-made and I haven`t had
any hardware problems.

Before you rush off to buy one, there are two gotcha's:

1. If you want to *write* DOS floppies or DOS format a floppy, you *have*
	to use the original M68000 (generate an interrupt at the start of 
	the system boot; there is no software switch). If you don't, your
	floppies won't be readable on PCs. Reading DOS floppies is ok, though.
2. Disk throughput has *decreased*. An SE (or Classic) uses a 2:1 interleave
	on the hard disk. To get optimal performance out of my accelerated
	SE, I needed to reformat to a 4:1 interleave and my HD performs at
	about 60% now, which I don't really notice except with TeX typesetting
	jobs. If I really want performance, I just copy the
	application and stuff to my RAM disk (2.5MB).

NewLife claims that these are generic problems that you're likely to encounter
with any accelerator card but I can't say that I understood their reasoning.
Anyway, if your applications tend to be IO-bound then you might want to
reconsider.

There is a guy who is using the 16MHz NewLife card on his SE and he does
not experience HD throughput decrease. Sorry, I don't remember his name or
email address. So, the problem might depend on the acceleration and on the
brand of HD (his is a Quantum, mine is a Sony).

Hope this is of any help.
Oh yes: I've got no ties with NewLife, just a satisfied customer.
Rob

-- 
# internet:     robg@win.tue.nl         | Rob Gerth		              #
# EUT:		HG 8.85			| Department of Computing Science     #
# voice:	+31-(0)40-474389/4124	| Eindhoven University of Technology  #
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-- 
# internet:     robg@win.tue.nl         | Rob Gerth		              #
# EUT:		HG 8.85			| Department of Computing Science     #
# voice:	+31-(0)40-474389/4124	| Eindhoven University of Technology  #
# fax:		+31-(0)40-463992	| 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands  #