[Techtoolslist] Souping up the 9100A

[John Robertson]

Anyone thought about speeding up the 9100A? I recall folks speeding up 
Macs back in the 80s using 68030s like this story back in 1990:

---------(quote)----------------

http://matsp888.no-ip.org/~mats/Text/Computer/Atari/Atari%20ST/Magazines/Z-Net/znet0515.txt

  SMALL DEBUTS 68030 BOARD, NETWORKING
  Dave Small premiered his 68030 adapter board and an APPLETALK network
  adapter at the Disneyland WOA.  The 68030 is "still and experiment"
  which may or may not ever see commercial production.  The first version,
  just up and running before the show, offers a four-fold speed increase
  over a standard ST/MEGA.  The potential remains for tuning and
  redesigning the system to yield a theoretical tenfold available
  increase.  The board would go in any existing ST, and might result in a
  faster machine than the Atari TT itself, although TT specific programs
  would not likely be accessable by Small's system.  The TT is expected to
  run at about 5 times the ST speed on ST applications.  The other
  surprize for GADGETS is a network adaptor that is almost ready for
  marketing.  Although the perilous FCC approval process lies ahead, the
  APPLETALK compatible card will attach internally to the MEGA buss and
  will provide an extra pair of serial ports to any MEGA.  They may be
  addressed as standard serial ports (allowing multiple modem sessions at
  once, for instance), and in SPECTRE MACINTOSH mode, will allow instant
  access to MAC peripherals and networks.  A price was not announced.
  Later versions may include a unit compatible with ST and future STE/MEGA
  STE computers.

-----------(end quote)---------

I'm thinking it might be possible to push the 9100 up by 4X would be a 
nice improvement.

There was a company - Total Systems - making accelerators back in '91:

https://archive.org/stream/TNM_68020-68030-68040_accelerator_family_Macintos_20171214_0077#page/n0/mode/1up

It appears that the 68030 was the last CPU that had the same 
instructions as the 68000, if you go higher then software needs to be 
added to get around some missing instructions:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/43640-and-daystar-68060-accelerators/
-----------(quote)--------------
The 68040 didn't include all the functionality of a 68030+68882, either. 
(In particular, the 68040's FPU is missing hardware support for IEEE 
transcendental functions.) The differences are papered over by trapping 
the missing instructions and emulating them in software. The same thing 
can be done to make a 68060 compatible with the 68040, but doing so by a 
third-party accelerator vendor would of been "tricky" because Apple 
wouldn't have written the software for them, like they did for the 68040 
when the Quadra was introduced.
-----------(end quote)-----------

  What ever happened to Total Systems?

John :-#)#


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