The original Mac's architecture locked out the CPU's access to memory during screen refreshes, so maybe that changed in the Classic (which also used a 68000) As far as sound, according to Wikipedia: Two TTL chips provide an 8-bit P <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation>WM sound driver (74LS161 type). So it could do 8-bit samples. Two analog chips providing sound amplification (MC14016 switch, LF353 op-amp) You would clock the sound using the 6522 VIA bridge chip that is connected to the RTC and a 32.768 oscillator On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 4:35 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
John, If they used a 60040 rather than a 60000 chip that would be a lot faster Bill
On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 4:25 PM John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hey folks --
Two items I'm curious about on the classic (and very original) Apple Macs..
1. Mac (128kb ,512kb, etc) audio -- was there a custom or off the shelf sound chip for the audio on the original Mac? and was it 1 channel / and was it a custom chip by Apple? (how did it achieve speech synthesis in 1984)
2. The Macintosh Classic released in 1990 "was about 25% faster than the original Macs". This is in line with the Atari ST often being quoted as faster than a Mac when emulating a Mac via Magic Sac or similar. What changed in the architecture to make the Mac Classic (or an ST in emulation) faster than the original Mac? Was it faster memory that gave more availability for CPU usage? were only certain instructions sped up or was everything faster?
Thanks!