<strong>The Beige G3 series still have the 4MB ROM chip, and no HD ROM image and work officially with OS X. Thus the removal of the ROM is not a hack to make OS X work, but to move to the UMA artchitecture idea with OpenFirmware and all that stuff.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I didn't so much mean it as an enabler. more as something to make the machines better match up with OS X.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>The first Macs to use the Apple ZIF socket was teh Beige G3 as well, and not the B&W G3.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok. I just used the Blue and White G3 as an example so as to be sure. as I wasn't quite certain on whether or not any earlier Macs used it.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Do you think taking ROM instead of loading it into the RAM would be cheaper? You name it yourself: "with an extra channel, this would be faster"...and you sure think that channel would be free, wouldn't require extra mobo engineering, PCB, copper lines etc etc. Since 10 years everything is moving away from ROM's (hard wired data) to other designs that allow for dynamic access and read/write as much as possible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
They already had(Heck. still do. although it's just for boot sequences and Open Firmware now) a ROM channel. they just would have had to update it. and I doubt that would have costed too much. don't forget that the contents of the ROM would be the most critical and often used code and routines. and believe me. these routines don't change much. such a chip would add a respectable amount of speed. as well as keeping this data from clogging up the CPU's own cache. and the incredibly low cost of read only circuits would be a much better place to store it than expensive CPU cache or main RAM.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>It's no secret hwy Nintendo chose the ROM thing up to the N64...proprietary, 100% copy protected environment. See the gamecube for more on this idea translated into the DVD world. (Custom DVD of course).</strong><hr></blockquote>
That still doesn't explain why they wouldn't(Still don't sometimes. on the GBA) put rewritable memory in cheaper carts. in _addition to_ ROM chips. for game saves and stuff.
As for the GameCube's disc security. that's a myth.
[quote]Originally from an old Usenet post of mine:
<strong>Actually. the "Proprietary" Matsushita media to be used by the GameCube is not proprietary in the least bit.
Matsushita says that it is an 8cm DVD. it's not CD based.
Remember those <a href="http://www.script-adour.com/cd8/index.html"; target="_blank">little 8cm music CDs</a> that held 185mb each. and how you could put them in nearly any Mac CD drive through the little 8cm depression in the center of all CD drive trays?
To make matters worse. encryption does make it near impossible to _modify_ data(Such as a game). but. encrypted data. just like any other digital data. is not self conscious. and due to that. any digital data can be _copied_ if left unaltered. it won't notice the difference. and there's absolutely nothing that Nintendo, Matsushita, the DVD Consortium or anyone else can do about it,
Basically, Nintendo and Matsushita are lying, thusly a GameCube disc is probably about as secure as a PS2 disc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Last but not least, the move from hardwired ROM to an OpenFirmware and HD code ROM enabled for Firmware upgrades, which have procen to be important maintenance products for Apple machiens since the iMac. Before that you had only the choice of upgrading the ROM chip, which, officially was never possible.
Enabling Master/Slave IDE channels on a Beige G3 Rev A (and along with that, CPU upgrade compatibility for G4 and copper chips) is only possible by buying a Rev.B or Rev.C ROM chip that only OWC ever sold at halfway reasonable prices, and are now harder to find than the egg of columbus. And you're seriously telling me, moving away from the ROM was bad??????</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually. there's a better way to do this too. while more costly than straight ROM chips. flash ROMs are _still_ cheaper than full on RAM. Flash ROMs are commonly used in things like PCI/AGP cards, modems, external storage drives and Ethernet routers and USB hubs for firmware. and in some cartridge based games for saving and so on.
And you can even install a FireWire and/or USB card in a Powerbook 190 and have it work.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Ah yeah on the DDR-SDRAM L3 cache thing:
I think, and others agree, that this is a mistake Apple made on the speccing. It's most certainly DDR-SRAM and not SDRAM, at least the machines before the 2002 QS had that, and that's likely better suited for caching and also faster.
Someone should open his DP1000 and make pictures of the L3 memory chips.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The APPLE ROM did prevent CLONING New world macs still have them there just smaller and very basic. I think there were many early Apple rip-offs 2,2c,2c+ etc.(non mac).
<strong>The APPLE ROM did prevent CLONING New world macs still have them there just smaller and very basic. I think there were many early Apple rip-offs 2,2c,2c+ etc.(non mac).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah. Apple had this thing where a engineer would just enter a secret code into the programmer's window. and then <a href="http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/HW-Stolen.html"; target="_blank">some text and a graphic would come up saying "Stolen from Apple"</a>.
Putting ROM in a machine is not cheaper than RAM... ROM can only be used for whatever is burnt into it, whereas RAM can be used for what is needed from moment to moment. If you aren't constantly using whatever is in ROM then you are wasting the cost of the ROM. Contrary to popular opinion, at any given moment very little of the ROMs are needed. By keeping that code in RAM the system can manage its resources on a demand basis (using virtual memory) in a similar way that caches manage their storage capacity. And OS code does change -- it changed completely from MacOS 9 to MacOS X, and MacOS X continues to change as new features are added, optimizations are made, and bugs are fixed. ROM is no longer the place for operating system code.
Comments
<strong>The Beige G3 series still have the 4MB ROM chip, and no HD ROM image and work officially with OS X. Thus the removal of the ROM is not a hack to make OS X work, but to move to the UMA artchitecture idea with OpenFirmware and all that stuff.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I didn't so much mean it as an enabler. more as something to make the machines better match up with OS X.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>The first Macs to use the Apple ZIF socket was teh Beige G3 as well, and not the B&W G3.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok. I just used the Blue and White G3 as an example so as to be sure. as I wasn't quite certain on whether or not any earlier Macs used it.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Do you think taking ROM instead of loading it into the RAM would be cheaper? You name it yourself: "with an extra channel, this would be faster"...and you sure think that channel would be free, wouldn't require extra mobo engineering, PCB, copper lines etc etc. Since 10 years everything is moving away from ROM's (hard wired data) to other designs that allow for dynamic access and read/write as much as possible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
They already had(Heck. still do. although it's just for boot sequences and Open Firmware now) a ROM channel. they just would have had to update it. and I doubt that would have costed too much. don't forget that the contents of the ROM would be the most critical and often used code and routines. and believe me. these routines don't change much. such a chip would add a respectable amount of speed. as well as keeping this data from clogging up the CPU's own cache. and the incredibly low cost of read only circuits would be a much better place to store it than expensive CPU cache or main RAM.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>It's no secret hwy Nintendo chose the ROM thing up to the N64...proprietary, 100% copy protected environment. See the gamecube for more on this idea translated into the DVD world. (Custom DVD of course).</strong><hr></blockquote>
That still doesn't explain why they wouldn't(Still don't sometimes. on the GBA) put rewritable memory in cheaper carts. in _addition to_ ROM chips. for game saves and stuff.
As for the GameCube's disc security. that's a myth.
[quote]Originally from an old Usenet post of mine:
<strong>Actually. the "Proprietary" Matsushita media to be used by the GameCube is not proprietary in the least bit.
Matsushita says that it is an 8cm DVD. it's not CD based.
Remember those <a href="http://www.script-adour.com/cd8/index.html"; target="_blank">little 8cm music CDs</a> that held 185mb each. and how you could put them in nearly any Mac CD drive through the little 8cm depression in the center of all CD drive trays?
It appears as though the GameCube's "New" disc is in fact just an <a href="http://www.imacintouch.com/pc2000expo.html#dvd"; target="_blank">industry standard 8cm DVD</a>. readable by Macs, PCs, other set top boxs and even <a href="http://www.hitachi.com/dvdcam/"; target="_blank">some camcorders</a>,
To make matters worse. encryption does make it near impossible to _modify_ data(Such as a game). but. encrypted data. just like any other digital data. is not self conscious. and due to that. any digital data can be _copied_ if left unaltered. it won't notice the difference. and there's absolutely nothing that Nintendo, Matsushita, the DVD Consortium or anyone else can do about it,
Basically, Nintendo and Matsushita are lying, thusly a GameCube disc is probably about as secure as a PS2 disc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Last but not least, the move from hardwired ROM to an OpenFirmware and HD code ROM enabled for Firmware upgrades, which have procen to be important maintenance products for Apple machiens since the iMac. Before that you had only the choice of upgrading the ROM chip, which, officially was never possible.
Enabling Master/Slave IDE channels on a Beige G3 Rev A (and along with that, CPU upgrade compatibility for G4 and copper chips) is only possible by buying a Rev.B or Rev.C ROM chip that only OWC ever sold at halfway reasonable prices, and are now harder to find than the egg of columbus. And you're seriously telling me, moving away from the ROM was bad??????</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually. there's a better way to do this too. while more costly than straight ROM chips. flash ROMs are _still_ cheaper than full on RAM. Flash ROMs are commonly used in things like PCI/AGP cards, modems, external storage drives and Ethernet routers and USB hubs for firmware. and in some cartridge based games for saving and so on.
And you can even install a FireWire and/or USB card in a Powerbook 190 and have it work.
[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Ah yeah on the DDR-SDRAM L3 cache thing:
I think, and others agree, that this is a mistake Apple made on the speccing. It's most certainly DDR-SRAM and not SDRAM, at least the machines before the 2002 QS had that, and that's likely better suited for caching and also faster.
Someone should open his DP1000 and make pictures of the L3 memory chips.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I fervently wish you were right. but I sincerely doubt it. after <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf02/"; target="_blank">Steve Jobs</a>, Apple's <a href="http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html"; target="_blank">G4 page</a>. and even their own <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/pmg4.pdf"; target="_blank">developer notes</a> all say "DDR SDRAM". the chance of it being a mistake is rather slim.
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Eric,
I won't claim it's really DDR-SRAM instead of SDRAM, but SRAM would certainly be better.
G-News
<strong>The APPLE ROM did prevent CLONING New world macs still have them there just smaller and very basic. I think there were many early Apple rip-offs 2,2c,2c+ etc.(non mac).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah. Apple had this thing where a engineer would just enter a secret code into the programmer's window. and then <a href="http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/HW-Stolen.html"; target="_blank">some text and a graphic would come up saying "Stolen from Apple"</a>.
Eric,
Putting ROM in a machine is not cheaper than RAM... ROM can only be used for whatever is burnt into it, whereas RAM can be used for what is needed from moment to moment. If you aren't constantly using whatever is in ROM then you are wasting the cost of the ROM. Contrary to popular opinion, at any given moment very little of the ROMs are needed. By keeping that code in RAM the system can manage its resources on a demand basis (using virtual memory) in a similar way that caches manage their storage capacity. And OS code does change -- it changed completely from MacOS 9 to MacOS X, and MacOS X continues to change as new features are added, optimizations are made, and bugs are fixed. ROM is no longer the place for operating system code.
[ 03-10-2002: Message edited by: Programmer ]</p>