QuickSANE

[pocketscience]

I came across this original software in a box of gear I obtained for other reasons. It purports to speed up numeric operations on machines with a 68882 floating point coprocessor by redirecting SANE (Standard Apple Numeric Environment) operations to the coprocessor. I installed it on my SE/30 and it gave a pretty decent bump to my Speedometer rating.

Stock:

QuickSANE enabled:

I couldn't find this on the Garden or elsewhere, so disk has been imaged and uploaded to the Garden: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/quicksane

 

[Crutch]

Huh. I kind of assumed that happened by default. (Why wouldn’t it?)

 

[retr01]

Nice discovery @pocketscience! Thank you for uploading the QuickSANE. I will add this to my list of programs for my SE/30.

I have a question, @pocketscience. What benchmark program did you use, as shown in your posted screenshots?

 

[retr01]

@Crutch, QuickSANE was a CDEV panel software developed by Total Systems around 1990. According to the back page of the brochure from Total Systems, it is:

A control panel device (CDEV) that acts as a "traffic manager" routing SANE (Standard Apple Numeric Environment) calls directly to the MC68881/2 coprocessor. The result is that math-intensive operations are executed up to 300% faster once QuickSANE is installed. For Macintosh II, IIx, Ilex, Ilci, and SE/30.​

68020/68030/68040 accelerator family, Macintosh Classic, IIsi and LC - Total Systems: : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

68020/68030/68040 accelerator family, Macintosh Classic, IIsi and LC - Total Systems

archive.org

 

[bakkus]

I see that performance comparison leaflet take Plus, the SE, II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30 with various accelerators and compare them all to the IIfx - but is there a particular reason you couldn't also install QuickSANE on the IIfx?

 

[retr01]

I see that performance comparison leaflet take Plus, the SE, II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30 with various accelerators and compare them all to the IIfx - but is there a particular reason you couldn't also install QuickSANE on the IIfx?

That is a good question. I wonder who has a Mac IIfx to try that out?

 

[bakkus]

That is a good question. I wonder who has a Mac IIfx to try that out?

I do - just need to get it out of storage
Any information to if this is for System 6 or 7 or both?

 

[pocketscience]

@retr01 its literally called Speedometer
@bakkus 6 or 7. Not both at the same time..

 

[Kai Robinson]

@JDW this would be good to run on that SpeedCard - force the usage of the FPU!

 

[retr01]

Ah, the Speedometer. This one, @pocketscience?

Speedometer 3.x - Macintosh Garden

Speedometer is a benchmarking suite for 68K Macs. Speedometer allows to run benchmarking tests on hardware, such as hard disk, CPU, RAM, etc... and it lets you compare results, show graphs and various hardware information about your old Mac. See also: Speedometer 2.5, Speedometer 4.x

macintoshgarden.org

 

[retr01]

@JDW this would be good to run on that SpeedCard - force the usage of the FPU!

Yep. I thought of a similar thing. I thought @JDW needs to try this on his fastest spicy SE/30 and Color Classic.

 

[retr01]

So, @pocketscience and @Kai Robinson, numerous programs were not written to take advantage of the FPU. Does this QuickSANE make ANY program take advantage of the FPU?

 

[Kai Robinson]

Yes, by it's nature - SANE is what all apple apps use to 'math'. This will redirect all calls to that library and direct them to use the FPU to do the math.

 

[retr01]

I do - just need to get it out of storage

Oooo! Dragging the huge IIfx out of storage would be a chore? Compared to picking up a SE/30 and carrying it with one hand, the IIfx requires a cart?

 

[JDW]

@pocketscience
I will give that app a try on the Levco SuperMac SpeedCard, which has the optional 68881 FPU, and let everyone know the result soon.

 

[pocketscience]

Very keen to know if that works @JDW. Would likely require the cdev knowing about the 68881 on the card vs the native 68882 on the SE/30 etc.

Patching the trap dispatcher was always fun. It made for a very extensible system. Of course huge potential for breaking lots of stuff if apps assumed they knew what was happening behind a system trap.

 

[retr01]

So, I looked through the magazines back in the day. In the May 1992 issue of MacUser, I found a review of the NewLife accelerator for the Mac Classic on page 71. NewLife provided a CDEV with user selectable SANE. Hmmm. Now I am hunting for more information.

 

[retr01]

I found more information about the NewLife Accelerator Control Panel, version 1.05. This person did an excellent review a few years ago in 2019 about the NewLife accelerator and the CDEV. And it is available for download there.

Eric Bylenga :: Welcome

bylenga.ddns.net

 

[retr01]

Interesting. Some accelerators have SANE built-in. Others provide a disk with the CDEV, as in the case of Total Systems and NewLife.

 

[pocketscience]

You need software to patch the dispatcher - ie cdev, init etc. QuckSANE was for stock systems utilising the inbuilt coprocessor. Makes sense that NewLife had their own.