[Coco] Wordpak

[Chuck Youse]

On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 12:11 -0400, Bruce W. Calkins wrote:
> >> Since the data is input to the WordPak serially, it can get
> >> behind.  Under OS-9 Level 1 release 2 I went to a 64 by 24 software 
> >> driven
> >> display and shelved the WordPakII.
> >
> > So the Workpak II was just too slow?  That sucks.  Can you define 'get
> > behind'? :)  Was it terribly slow on scrolling, perhaps?
> >
> > C.
> 
> The WORD-PAK output will occasionally get behind a fast typist.  You will 
> watch the characters being placed on the screen too.  It was faster than a 
> 300 baud modem, but you do often watch them printing to the screen one 
> character at a time.  

Wow.  Sounds like a serious flaw in implementation (hardware or
software).  No way a 6845-based display needs to be that slow, doesn't
matter if you're latching addresses to write characters to the screen -
three memory stores instead of one, slower by a factor of three but
certainly shouldn't be noticed by a human..

And yeah, what I gathered is that the Wordpak has some address conflicts
with the GIME.  Big surprise..

C.