The power mac book!

411 Pages·1995·29.323 MB·English

by  Pronk, Ron

The Power Mac Book! is the successor to Ron Prank and Jeff Duntemann's
bestselling Inside the PowerPC Revolution, the intriguing story of the development
of the PowerPC technology used in Power Macintosh cotnputers. Here's what the
industry has been saying about Inside the PowerPC Revolution:
"This is one of the ten best computer books ever."
-Michael Swaine, contributing editor MacUser, editor-at-large Dr. Dobb's Journal
"This book gives a real insider perspective on Apple's push to PowerPC and
what it means for the Macintosh user. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to
make a smart transition to this exciting new technology."
-Andrew Lewis, President and CEO of DayStar Digital
"If, like me, you believe the PowerPC represents a watershed in personal
computer development, then this is an important book to read. It presents in a
breezy style more than you could possibly ever need to know about how the
PowerP C is special and why."
-Robert X. Cringely, best-selling author of Accidental Empires
"The PowerPC is likely to cause a major upheaval in the world of desktop PCs. If
you want to be prepared for these changes, you must read Inside the PowerPC
Revolution. The authors' insight and provocative style produce a timely and
hard-hitting book."
-Peter Aitken, best-selling computer book author
"Inside the PowerPC Revolution gave me a lot of insight into the battle between
IBM, Apple, and Microsoft, and a lot of background on why the PowerPC came
about."
-Nick Baran, Contributing Editor, Byte Magazine
"Inside the PowerPC Revolution reads like Soul ofa New Machine meets Inside
Windows NF."
-Vince Emery, former Marketing Director, Computer Literacy Bookshops
"Very informative and easy to read . . . goes a long way toward putting the
PowerPC in an historical context . . . I felt like I was having a fireside chat with
the authors ...."
-Nels Johnson, San Francisco Canyon Co., developers of Quicklime for Windows
RonPronk
CORIOLIS GROUP BOOKS
Publisher Keith Weiskamp
Cover Design Parkwest Graphics and Bradley Grannis
Interior Design Bradley Grannis
Layout Production Bradley Grannis, Michelle Stroup
Proofreader /Indexer Jenni Aloi
Publicist Shannon Bounds
Trademarks: Microsoft is a trademark and \Vindows is a registered trademark of
Microsoft Corporation. All other brand names and product names included in this book
are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders.
Distributed to the book trade by IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.
Copyright© 1995 by The Coriolis Group, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by section 107
or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the written permission of the
copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for petmission or further infotmation should be
addressed to The Corio lis Group, 7339 E. Acoma Drive, Suite 7, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260.
Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pronk, Ron
The Power Mac Book! I Ron Pronk
p. em.
Includes Index
ISBN 1-883577-09-8: $34.95
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Contents v
Introduction
XV
How To Use This Book xvi
Acknowledgements xviii
Chapter 1 The Evolution of the Power Mac
How Did They Get from There to Here? .................................................. 1
Sowing the Seeds of Change 2
What a Bunch of Boneheads 3
Advantage: Intel 4
Taking the Plunge 6
The IBM Incentive 8
So, What About Motorola? 10
RISC versus CISC 11
Reduced? Reduced What? 11
Register Starvation 12
IBM and the 801 Team 14
The Somerset Design Center 15
The PowerPC and the Future of the Power Mac 17
Chapter 2 Moving to the Power Macintosh
When, Why, and How? ......................................................................... 19
Introducing the New Power Macintosh Systems 20
Basic Configurations and Expansion Options 20
Apple's Reach for the High and Low Ends of the Market 27
The Performa Goes Power Mac 28
Next Stop: The Workstation Level 33
Extending the Line 34
General Power Mac Features 34
Basic Expansion and Upgrade Capabilities 37
The Power Mac 61 00/60 Model 39
The Power Mac 71 00/66 Series 42
The Power Mac 81 00/80 Series 43
~ Take a Look at the Apple Bonus CD 45
Upgrade Options: Today and Tomorrow 46
v
vi .& The Power Mac Book!
Evaluating the Upgrade Options 48
Apple's Upgrade Card 48
Apple's Logic Board Upgrades 50
DayStar PowerCards 52
What About Those Notebooks? 54
Buy Now or Buy Later? 56
Where Are All the Natives? 56
Microsoft and the Great Floating-Point Debacle 58
The Future of Native Applications 62
68000 Emulation Performance 64
~ Trick Your Power Mac into Running a 68040 Floating-Point Application 66
The PCIIssue 66
The Power Mac Does Windows (Sorta) 67
This Unified Platform Thing 70
A Few Final Purchasing Caveats 71
Chapter 3 The Power Mac versus the Competition
Some Business Incentives ................................................................... 75
The PowerPC World Viewed through Big Blue Glasses 76
~ IBM's Reference Platform (Prep) 76
Defining the Term "Native Application" 77
The Windows That Mac Users Love to Hate 78
Growing the Seeds of Discontent 80
The Power Mac versus Wintel: And the Winner Is... 81
Need Relief? Just Go to Chicago 83
nming Is Everything 85
~ Use Apple Personal Diagnostics to Compare Performance of Power Macs 86
Mac Applications Running on Intel Boxes: Why It Won't Happen Any Time Soon 87
Toward a Unified Platform 88
Features of the Unified Platform 93
Is the Unified Platform Truly Unified? 96
Intel Never Stands Still 97
When, When, When? 99
Let's Get Power Personal 99
~ IBM Is Not Waiting for Native PowerPC Applications 101
IBM's Desktop System 102
IBM's Bookshelf System 103
IBM's Mobile Computer 106
Contents .A vii
IBM and the Future of Power Personal Systems 106
OS/2 for PowerPC and Its Personalities 109
OS/2 for PowerPC and Windows: An Oxymoron? 109
Putting It All Together 111
Chapter 4 PowerPC Technology
Inside the CPU Architecture .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. . .. . . . . .. . . .. .. .. . .. . . . . 113
Trace Width Technology: Advantage PowerPC 114
Smaller Is Better, but More Chips Mean More Profits 115
PowerPC Is an Architecture, Not a Chip 116
PowerPC: A Bi-Endian Architecture 116
The PowerPC 601 119
The 601 Instruction Set 119
~ The 601 Chip Was Designed with Workstations in Mind 120
The 601 Chip Design 120
How Valuable Is the Floating-Point Unit? 122
~ What ''Accelerated for Power Macintosh" Really Means 123
The Instruction Unit and BPU 124
Feed-Forwarding 126
The Integer Unit 126
The Floating-Point Unit 127
~ Politics and Floating Points 127
The Cache Unit 128
s
Evaluating the 601 Performance 128
~ The SPEC Benchmark Standard 129
Unveiling the 604 Chip 130
Features of the 604 131
Managing Instruction Flow in the 604 132
Rename Buffers 132
s
Inside the 604 Execution Units 133
A One-Minute 604 Synopsis 133
The 603 Chip 134
Chapter 5 Inside the 1994 Power Macs
Some Technical Meat ........................................................................ 139
Is an Upgraded Macintosh a 11True" Power Mac? 139
The Power Macintosh Logic Board 140
1. Understanding ROM (4 MB) 142
~ The Evolution of Enablers 142
viii • The Power Mac Book!
2. DRAM 143
~ Swapping RAM onto a Logic Board Upgrade 145
3. Level 2 (L2) Cache 146
~ Why It Won't Work: Type 11 Errors 146
4. The Processor Direct Slot (PDS) 147
The 7100 and 8100 VRAM Expansion Cards 148
PDS Expansion for the 6100 Systems 149
5. NuBus Expansion Capabilities in 71 00
and 81 00 Systems 150
6. Squidlet 152
7. High-Speed Memory Controller (HMC) 152
8. Apple Memory-Mapped 1/0 Controller (AMIC) 153
9.SWIMIII 154
10. Curio 154
Ethernet Support 154
~ An MUI Transceiver Doubles as a Network Terminator 156
Serial Communications 157
~ Why It Won't Work: That Flakey GeoPort Telecom Adapter 157
SCSI Support 158
~ Terminate Internal Drives Correctly 158
~ Why It Won't Work: Using SCSI to Connect Two Macs 160
11. Fast SCSI Support (81 00 Systems Only) 160
12. Cuda 160
~ Why It Won't Work: The Debug Bug 161
13. The AWAC Chip 162
~ Why It Won't Work: Sound-In Settings Are Not Saved 163
14. The Ariel II Chip 164
A Close-Up View of Power Mac Logic Boards 164
~ Technicallnformation 165
Chapter 6 The AV Power Macs 167
Multimedia, Movies, and More .. . . .. . .. . .. .. .. .. ..... ... .. .. . .. . .. ... .. .. .. .. . .. . .. .. .. . 167
~ The·AV Card Provides Less Expansion Capability than the HPV Card 169
Contents .&. ix
How Motion Video Works 170
NTSC Video and Interlacing 170
Capturing Video 172
Gapturing Color 172
Using 5-Video to Capture Video 173
~ Taking Advantage of S-Video 173
Analog-to-Digital and Back 173
Storing Video on Hard Disk: It's a Problem 174
Quicklime and Video Compression 175
Understanding Space-Based and Time-Based Compression 175
Frame Sizes and Frame Rates 178
~ Codec Doesn't Always Mean Codec 178
The AV Mac Package 179
~ Putting FusionRecorder to Use 180
An AV Glossary 181
Components of the Power Mac AV Card 183
DAV Expansion 184
AV Configuration Recommendations 186
AV Capabilities and Limitations 187
~ Why It Doesn't Work: Running the ~~Making of Myst" 188
~ Why It Doesn't Work: Quick Time Videos on Power Mac Systems 188
Updating Your Updates 189
~ Why It Won't Work: !YTC and the Update Game 189
Chapter 7 Bells and Whistles 191
Enhancing Your Power Macintosh ...................................................... 191
RAM Upgrades 192
~ When You Think RAM, Think in Pairs 192
Upgrade Now or Upgrade Later? 193
~ The Great RAM Shortage Hoax 194
RAM Purchasing Options 195
Apple versus Third-Party Vendors 196
~ User Installation Doesn't Automatically Void the Apple Warranty 198
Installing RAM 199
~ The SIMM installation Order Gan Make a Difference 199
x • The Power Mac Book!
~ Why It Doesn't Work: SIMM Failure 201
The Amazing RAM Doubler 201
Will Your System Benefit from RAM Doubler? 202
Adding an L2 Cache to 61 00 and 71 00 Systems 203
The Value of L2 Cache 203
Installing an L2 Cache Card 204
Expanding VRAM on 71 00 and 81 00 Systems 205
~ Why It Won't Work: Font Management with Adobe Type Manager 208
CPU Boosters 208
A Few Fixes for the Incredibly Incompetent 61 00 Case 209
Utilities 211
Mac Tools 3.0 212
Norton Utilities 212
Dantz Utilities 213
Adding Hard Drives 213
Monitoring Network Traffic 213
Other Upgrade Options 214
Chapter 8 The Internet and Your Power Mac
Connecting to Cyberspace, the Web, and Beyond .............................. 215
The Internet and the Web: What They Are and How You Can Use Them 216
The Roots of the Internet 216
The Problem with UNIX 217
The Origin of Browsers and the Web 218
Vive Ia France! 218
Understanding the Relationship between the Internet and the Web 219
Getting Your Own Web Browser 221
Everybody Wants to Get Into the Act 222
~ Using Internet and Web Addresses 222
An Internet and Web Glossary 224
Getting Connected 230
Choosing a Provider 230
Configuring MacTCP 232
Some Netscape Features and Tips 235
Netscape's "Load As You Go" Feature 236
Using Bookmarks 236
~ You Can Save Multiple Bookmark Files 237
Working with HTML -Encoded Rles 238
Using "What's Cool" 240
Using "Net Directory" 240
Using "Net Search" 241