CompuServe Messages

What many people don't realize about the Amiga's parallel port hardware is that it runs at *one* megahertz. Even in the accellerated machines, unless I seriously miss my guess. The original 68000 had a special clock output which was divided by about ten over the master clock frequency; this was so that it would work with old (read, now obsolete, big time) 6800-family peripherals. The 6800 is an old-tech 8-bit micro which generally ran at 1 mhz, which brings us to the 1 mhz peripheral speed. Good idea (the slow clock output) at the time, but CBM used it to drive the CIA's which was not exactly a high-performance decision. We got a fair bit of functionality for it; the CIA's have two timers each, two parallel ports and some bizzare semi-serial stuff too. But gaaaaaaaaadddddzzzz are they slow. :^) That's not even the end of it; I forget the exact specifics, but I *beleive* that it takes more than one 1-mhz clock for the parallel port to do anything; read, or write. if it's two, then the max rate is 500 khz; if 3, 333 kzh, if 4, 250 khz. I used to know all this when I designed the AVT system, which uses the parallel port hardware quite thoroughly, but my mind loses stuff like that in self-defense, I think. :^)) But I agree – if the choice is slow or no, slow is better.