CompuServe Messages

Khalid, Yes….I understand that they have a bus cable going to the 32 bit RAM. That's because the motherboard only provides 16 bits worth of data lines. While the '020 can handle that…it requires 2 fetches to get 32bit data then (just as the 68K does) so would slow things down a bit. That's also the reason your 32 bit board is a bit faster than the normal stuff. When it has to fetch a 32bit value…it can do it all at once rather than having to get 2 16bit fetches. Single byte values (such as a character array) are stored consecuitive in memory…that is, 4 of them are returned with a 32 bit fetch. Since it takes exactly the same amount of time to fetch 8 bits as it does 32 bits, there is no penalty for this. What gets returned depends on what is being gotten…the rest is considered 'trash'. At least that's the way I understand it…I'm not a CPU expert, but reading the Motorola manual…that's what I understand it to say.