[Coco] GIME Chip

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/4/05 12:19:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
bowerod at winco.net writes:

>It  has been a while but if I am not mistaken, the '86 version had  issues
>with graphics and the '87 was the fixed version. All of my  machines have
>'87 chips in them so I never really worried about  it.




The '86 version's infamous sparklies were due to a timing problem in some  of 
that GIME's bus signals.  The general consensus is that the '87 chip was  an 
improvement in every sense.  There were rumors of some cartridges, MPIs,  and 
RAM upgrades that were flaky on the old GIME's timing, though I don't recall  
such problems myself.  Also, some '86 GIMEs were much more "sparkly" than  
mine -- I remember someone's Coco where you could barely read the screen text  
while something was running.
 
I don't recall any games or graphics that had to be reprogrammed to use the  
later chip -- but maybe some programs had extra code to get around the sloppy  
timing of the '86 model, and this code backfired on the newer version.
 
But as for me, the only disadvantage of the newer chip was that you no  
longer had the sparklies to tell you how much work was going on in another  screen 
under OS9's multitasking.  While editing source in one window, I  could tell 
when a compile or assembly was done because the snowflakes cleared  away :-)
 
I think I still have my '86 chip stashed away somewhere, if someone is  
really nostalgic for those sparklies.  --Mike K.