Radius Rocket Upgrade

Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 17:41:44 PST From: bear@tony.ucsb.edu (Cedric Bhihe) Subject: post this please [ Moderator : please post this message in the hardware forum folder under heading Radius-Rocket-in-Mac-II.txtS. Thank you ] For those of you who expressed interest in the Radius Rocket upgrade path for the Mac II line, I use a Radius Rocket Nubus accelerator with a pre-release of the software v1.3 they call the RadiusWare. Here is what I can share on that subject/product. -o- If you are thinking about upgrading your Mac II, IIx or IIcx, you have several options, not just the Rocket, depending on your priorities: a) you can go quadra 700 only if you possess a IIcx, that will give you speeds greater than those offered by the Rocket, but not so much greater that it should be your only concern (in fact those concerned with speed should either go the Next route, or for those spending somebody elseUs money, the Silicon route. The quadra offers the advantage of full hardware compatibilty which the Rocket does not. It is also more expensive that a Rocket which goes for $1,550 before tax these days. But I donUt know much about the QuadraUs so .. b) you can now buy the Tokamak or the ImpulseTechnology (404/889-8294 in GA) 68040 products. I donUt know anything about the latter. The Tokamak, according to the manufacturer, is better designed for similar speed improvement. Both are designed for maximum acceleration in CAD and heavy math computation type situations. The Tokamak is about $500 more expensive than the 68040 Rocket. Its advantage is that it stays within Apple's requirements concerning power consumption. I use my Rocket for Mathematica symbolic calculations with an abundance of parameters. So far, using Mathematica 2.0.3, I did see a roughly 4 to 6 fold improvement with 7.6 Mb of DRAM on the Rocket compared with 8 Mb on my mother board before the upgrade. Now that I have 20 Mb on the Rocket card, I will port my Fortran computing >From the main frame I use to my Mac II+Rocket. Only then will I know whether it is the 'Titan' that Radius claims it is. I expect to be disappointed naturally. But the point is it will perform the computing in a *reasonable*i amount of time. I will discuss the specifics of the Rocket below, be patient. c) Last, you can buy the IIfx upgrade, but I would recommend against it for at least two reasons : First, the reason Apple did not make the IIfx an integral part of its line of Quadra is that IIfx machines use costly techno- logy. Apple obviously decided to abandon that commercial avenue. If you happen to have a friend who use a IIfx and who has bought SIMMS for it, you know what I mean. Therefore the IIfx is a dead-end in terms of product-line. Second, buying the upgrade, now priced at about $1700 + the above mentionned SIMMS is A LOT MORE expensive than buying a Rocket. Third, the rocket is faster according to ads and various independent reports in t…