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

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

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?

@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:

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?

>> bakkus said:

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? Click to expand...

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

>> retr01 said:

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

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

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

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

Ah, the Speedometer. This one, @pocketscience?

>> Kai Robinson said:

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

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

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?

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.

>> bakkus said:

I do - just need to get it out of storage Click to expand...

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?

@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.

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.

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. :sneaky:

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.

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

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.