[Nicholas Savage]

I have two Mac II Bus Master Cards sitting here.

What the heck do they do?

I assume that this would make an old mac II a little bit faster? . .what exactly do these do?

[Walter J. Ferstl]

Hello Nicholas,

Bus Mastering is a concept where cards in a bus get "shortcut" paths to a system's RAM or maybe to a video card in the same bus.

A bus master card needs another card also capable of bus mastering to work. These two cards would be connected directly by a special ribbon cable.

As far as I remember there were just a few highly specialized cards (like video digitizer cards and such) available in the days of the Mac II that did take advantage of bus mastering.

Regards,

Walter.