[vcf-midatlantic] Original Macintosh Architecture Questions

[Andrew Diller]

A few things:


http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Sound/Sound-2.html <http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Sound/Sound-2.html>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technical_details#Sound <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technical_details#Sound>

Later Macs:
http://midibox.org/forums/topic/11239-macintosh-apple-sound-chip/ <http://midibox.org/forums/topic/11239-macintosh-apple-sound-chip/>


As for speed, read the Speed & Video Section:
https://lowendmac.com/2014/inside-the-original-macintosh/ <https://lowendmac.com/2014/inside-the-original-macintosh/>

for a possible explanation.

-andy

> On Jun 23, 2021, at 4:24 PM, John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at 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!