🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Glue (daveacg@interlog.com) wrote:
: jonh@icat.com (Jon Hirota) wrote:

: >those 3D accelerators at least as well as PCs. I know that at least Matrox
: >already has 3D cards for Macs.

: The Nvidia?  Yamaha?  They've been announced for PC's.  Not for the
: Mac.  You have to have the drivers, you have to have the market to
: make it feasible.  Not to say they won't come out on the Macs- they
: might.  Then again, they might not.  Just because it's PCI doesn't
: mean you can plug it in and away you go- you still need Mac drivers.

If I'm not mistaken there are other MAc specific accelerators out there, 
Considering the fact that the PPC runs circles around the Pentium in FPU 
performance... I'd say the mac already has an edge in graphics renders 
and raytracing...

: >It's about time PCs get multi-channel sound which Macs enjoyed for quite a
: >while with Sound Manager 3.x.

: You have got to be kidding me.  PC's had had multi-channel sound in
: games for years under DOS.  And 32-channel, 16-bit wavetable without
: sucking CPU time.  Don't even compare the average PC wavetable card to
: the Macs sound quality.

yea.. If you went out and bought the card and after you figuered out how 
to get the thing to work on the rest of your system... DMA's, IRQ's, and 
drivers.... not a single standard among them all. The Macs From the 
MAc Plus on had Digital sound on the MB. Out of the box they could handle 
stereo sound in four modes:

Monaural single voice with two 1KB buffers
Stereo singler voice with one 1KB buffer each
Monaural four voice with four 512 KB buffers each
Stereo Four voice mode with four 512 KB buffers...

The buffers are integral to the ASC

This was accomplished with the Apple Custom Sound chip (really the ASC 
Apple Sound Chip), two analog sound processing chips (one for each 
channel made for Apple by Sony), an internal speaker, and an external 
stereo mini jack... 

I bet you couldn't find that stock in many PC clones...

: > As for digital joysticks, Mac had the
: >interface for it for a long time in the form of ADB.

: No, they haven't.  The DirectInput API allows digitial joysticks which
: the system doesn't recognize to be supported in any game that uses the
: API- have a joystick with 20 buttons and program each game function
: into it.  It is NOT the same as keyboard emulation, which the Gravis
: Gamepad on the Mac does.  It doesn't have the "buffer overload"
: problems of keybaord emualtion, for one.

It's not Keyboard emulation... The ADB system is a Multi-slave serial 
bus... that can handle up to 16 low speed input devices... 

If you get collisons or processor overloads the system, individual devices 
(Keyboard, mouse, etc ) or the ADB controller can buffer the incoming 
signals... ITs probably because the game is too much for the processor or 
you are having system problems... ie some init is taking to many cycles.....

: > For 3D, QuikDraw 3D
: >should do the job, and it will be available for Windows, too. I don't see
: >why some game developers will not take advantage of this and develop 3D
: >games for both.

They are too different.. Its nearly double the time to properly develop 
games for both platforms... Unless some new compiler has brideged the OS 
machine language for each platform...

: Quickdraw 3D is over bloated and too slow for real-time games.  It's
: overkill.

Something in Windows less bloated than the Macs current OS... Right... 
When I can install a System folder for every Mac that CocaCola Fountain 
uses (from II's to PowerMac 9500's) that takes less than 4 megabytes of 
system RAM, and I need 4 times that for Win95 to run, thats like 
L. Povarotti calling Michal Jordan "porky".
-- 
- Ryan Montieth Gill      Freelance Macintosh Systems Consultant -
- Unix: labrg@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu        -DoD# 0780/AMA# 337288 -
- Ne Oblie (never forget)   '85 Honda CB 700 NightHawk S 'Mehev' - 
- '91 Cignal Montauk | '76 Chevy Monte Carlo Landau 'Bumblecrow' -