I wonder why was the Mac II ROM chosen to be emulated
Presumably to avoid the 030.
The LC was an '020 as well. Presumably the Mac II is an easier step up from the SE than the LC to get his bearings on the hardware with a ROM size of 256K compared to the LC's 512K. It also supports System 4.0, whereas the LC requires 6.0.7. Read Paul's
development notes FAQ to get a better understanding of his thought process. The LC would be the next likely step as a gateway to the '030 with the addition of the LC PDS slot.
Given that the Portable would have been close to completion when Apple and Outbound were agreeing terms, it is unlikely that any Outbound technology was incorporated in the Portable. I consider it unlikely that the Portable ROM was modified at such a late stage -- it would have required far too much regression testing....I guess that Apple's statement that the ROM in the Portable and PB100 is "identical" was not intended to be taken literally.
I would agree. However, consider that the Backlit Portable required a further revision to the ROM, as did the backlight upgrade kit, suggesting SCSI disk mode could have been added at that time as well. Paul Pratt did a disassembly with software freely available on the Mini vMac site and determined that there were two specific differences which did not appear to have anything to do with SCSI, suggesting that the two ROMs may be identical in that respect, though he has not done a thorough investigation into it yet. I have a 1st gen Portable ROM to send him for comparison as well, though he has been unresponsive as of late.
