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From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: More on Dove MacSnap upgrade
Message-ID: <22694@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 12:53:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.22694
Posted: Mon Jul  6 12:53:50 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Jul-87 06:06:11 EDT
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I've gotten a couple of pieces of mail on my comments on the Dove upgrade
that asked questions that I think are of general interest. 

>I recall that about 5-6 months ago you did a survey of 512k to 2M
>upgrades, and concluded that you'd probably go with one of the most
>reputable, reliable options -- Apple, or Levco.  What happened?  Dove
>does have the best price I've seen advertised, but I have heard a few
>complaints that these upgrades don't always work reliably.

I changed my mind for a couple of reasons:

o the majority of problems I heard about with Dove boards were from early
	buyers -- Dove has made some engineering changes and the later
	boards seemed to be pretty reliable and the folks were happy with 
	them. I was able to go all the way to 2 megabytes for little more
	than the cost of a Mac+ upgrade.

o I decided against going with an Apple upgrade because there is no upgrade
	path beyond the Plus (for good reason). I didn't see any real reason
	to upgrade via Apple when I could get the equivalent functionality
	cheaper by using a non-intrusive third party upgrade [non-intrusive
	meaning I can unplug it and nobody will be the wiser]

>Other questions:  can the 512K to 2M upgrade and the SCSI port be
>purchased separately?  We don't have any immediate plans to buy a hard
>disk, and might want to delay this expense.  A hard disk would be
>lovely, but doesn't really seem essential.

The way it is packaged, it looks like the SCSI is set up as a separate
purchase -- I think the cost differential between the memory and the
memory+SCSI was $79 at MacConnection, so it made sense for me to buy both so
I didn't have to open the Mac twice (I won't have a SCSI hard disk until
sometime this fall, myself).

Folks who say that hard disks aren't essential tend to be those that haven't
used them -- you won't know until you stop having to do the floppy shuffle
exactly how much hassle it is -- even my Paradise, which is a serial port
and relatively slow, is heaven compared to a floppy only Mac.

>geesh, think twice before taking on a book).

Where were you when I needed you? (grin)

>Some (most?, all?) of the 3rd party memory upgrades I've noticed run
>out of the new memory at 8MhZ, which gives some performance improvement
>(like the SE, I suppose).  Does the Dove MacSnap you installed do this
>too?

I believe so.

>Curiosity: what it is about some Macs that requires mods to the Dove
>memory board?

There are two chips on the Mac motherboard that the MacSnap connects to. On
some motherboards, Apple used a ceramic package that was slightly wider than
some other components, which means that the board won't snap down on them
without some minor modification. Apple evidently used two sources for this
part, and the sizes of them vary slightly.

>Oh, and have you had any
>resonse to your post about treating the comp.sys.mac community as a
>users' group?  My fear is that software developers and publishers (1)
>don't have much trouble finding beta testers, and (2) they prefer to
>deal directly with individuals, who happen to have useful affiliations
>with influential users' groups.

Response has been slow, but I expected that -- one company is interested,
and one I'm in active discussion with one other. Details as soon as I have
anything interesting to say -- I don't want to take a chance of blowing
something out of the water prematurely.

>        I just read your message re the dove upgrade. What I was wondering
>was how good does the SCSI port act like a real Mac+ port? Also is it a 25
>or 50 pin port?

I don't have a SCSI disk yet, so I can't do performance comparisons.  It is
a 25 pin D connector.

chuq
Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

Touch Not the Cat Bot a Glove -- MacIntosh Clan Motto