At 7:20 PM -0700 7/30/99, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Yeah, my point has always been why stop at a 300MHz 603e, why not a G3 using
>this manner. I for one would be happy to add a small dock permanently to my
>2300 to get G3 speeds and it would be far easier to create a custom dock than
>it would be to muck around with the Duo's logic board? The PDS pin outs are
>available at Apple's TIL.
There are several problems with this idea, compared to a CPU swap:
1. It's harder to work with the PDS docking connector, not easier. The
connector was a custom design. The company which made the connector (AMP,
I think) destroyed the custom tooling when it wore out and/or fell into
disuse. (Which is pretty much SOP, they don't want to have to warehouse
stuff that isn't ever going to make them real money again.)
This is why there aren't any companies making Duo docks any more.
It wouldn't do any good to convince AMP (or whoever) to retool. The
minimum order they'd require would be astronomical compared to the number
of G3 Duo upgrades which could be sold. So, even assuming that you can get
connectors made, the price of the upgrade would be sky-high.
2. This would require you to get an accelerator company (Newer Tech, XLR8,
Powerlogix, etc.) to create a whole new type of accelerator board. I doubt
their marketing analysis would give them much of a reason to be interested.
It would be an expensive board selling to a very limited market, and they
wouldn't even get to leverage engineering done for other types of
computers. Which leads into 3:
3. Whoever did the board would have to reinvent the PPC bus to 68K bus
translation chip. AFAIK, the Duo Dock connector is the same everywhere,
basically a 68030 bus. Interfacing a PPC to it would not be a plug&chug
kind of thing.
Tim Seufert
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