🚀 go-pugleaf

I now have about 24 solid hours on a Prodigy Prime upgrade to a Mac+. For
what it is worth the upgrade consists of a 68020 and 68881 running at 16MHz
with 2 Meg of RAM (in my case). All of this clips onto the Mac's 68000. The
unit has its own ps as well as a small fan (medium loud).

The board looked very professional - what one expects of Levco. I suspect I
have a very early sample, so I was somewhat surprised. Installation was
straightforward and was done by the local Levco dealer (although you could
do it yourself without much difficulty). The only reported problem here was
the programmer's switch -- it seems the Levco board slightly moves the Mac
motherboard with respect to the slots. A swiss army knife saved the day.

The result is pretty breath-taking. Windows fly open and programs "happen"
at much swifter rates than one is used to seeing. I ran the Mandelbrot
"benchmark" kindly posted by Steven Eubank recently. For 24 iterations
I was getting about 7100 flops with the 68881 bypassed (the SANE version).
With the 68881 I got up to something over 63kflops. I can't compare that
with a standard Mac+ as we can't get the machine to return to the Mac+ only
mode at this point (the box came w/o instructions and only with a small
amount of s/w).

The upgrade is highly compatible with existing software. Things like Word
3.0, Statview 512, Versaterm 2.something, MPW, Lightspeed C, and even -
get this -- MS flight simulator (it only changes the update rate -- the
simulation is much better on the Prime) work well. The only things I've
had problems with are MacLightning 2.0 (a spelling program) and ExperLisp
2.1. 

A RAM disk is supposed to come with the package - it didn't, so I can't
report on it yet. So far I am VERY impressed. Total cost was around $2k
(a slight discount) and I have what seems like a very hot Mac. I have
some simulation programs that currently run on a 780 - my guess is that
I will do about as well on the Prime.

-- I forgot to mention -- no problems with my DataFrame 20 (the old flavor).
I have heard comments about Prodigy 4s being incompatible with some HDs.

So if you are getting a new machine from scratch get the Mac II. If you
already have a Mac and don't need the big screen or color the Prime may
be a very good alternative.

Steve Crandall