Another IIci ROM hack

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Congrats on getting your very own GttMFH2E, dougg3!

I'm getting a book in from the UK . . .

Author: Apple
Title: Mac Family Hardware Ref
Description: Softcover,ex-library, with usual stamps and markings, in good all round condition. Ships within 24 hours. pp., 1200grams, ISBN:0201192551
. . . it's slated to arrive on or before November 9th!
I get crap shipped in from freakin' CHINA within a couple of weeks!

p.s. I love the small caliber VIA in the trace skull too!

p.p.s. how about making the teeth look more like edge card connectors?

[bigmessowires]

You can get GttMFH2E from amazon.ca for CDN $29.49: http://www.amazon.ca/Guide-Macintosh-Fa ... 0201524058

[dougg3]

Nice price! You should totally snag up a copy. What's interesting about that link is that Amazon.ca has it and Amazon.com does not have it, yet it ships from the United States. Some things just make no sense at all!

Haha jt, that's awesome! They must be sending it over on a rowboat or something? Another one of those things that makes no sense!

[bigmessowires]

Ack! Amazon.ca won't ship computer-related items to a non-Canadian address.

The seller is actually in the USA, but I can't find their direct web site or any other info outside of amazon.ca.

[dougg3]

Hmm That sucks.

Yeah I noticed it said it would ship from Washington, that's why I'm confused as to why Amazon.com doesn't have it listed on their site.

It looks like this seller might be the same one?
http://www.abebooks.com/great-buy-books ... 7759874/sf

Maybe it's possible to contact them through AbeBooks.com about it?

Also, the earlier edition is readily available from used sellers on Amazon, and it may have everything you're looking for....

[PowerPup]

Does anyone know the difference between GttMFH2E and this? http://www.amazon.com/Mac-Family-Hdware-Ref-Apple/dp/0201192551
They're both 518 pages, both 2nd edition, but one was published in 1988 and the other 1990. (So is it really the 1st edition?) If this "Apple Macintosh Family Hardware Reference" book would be useful to anyone, I'll gladly buy a copy and add it to my "bookscanning" project.

Edit: oh wait, dougg3 mentioned it at the bottom of his post. And silly me didn't notice it.

btw dougg3, awesome hacking you're doing here. I absolutely loved it when you had it play the first few notes of Mario.

[dougg3]

I noticed the same thing about how Amazon says the Macintosh Family Hardware Reference is a 2nd edition. I'm guessing it's a mistake. This ACM citation page says its ISBN number is a first edition:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=53491 ... ayout=flat

I edited in the reference to that first book later, so it's possible you saw my post before I added it And thanks! It is a fun hack

I personally think it would be useful to have complete electronic versions of both editions and I'd be happy to help in any way I can with my copy of the 2nd edition. I'm a little terrified of copyright law though...does any publisher even care with such an old out-of-print book?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

With an author that goes by the name: Apple Computer, I'm fairly certain they'd be the most ridiculous of copyright owners!

Meanwhile, back on the scanner farm, I've examined a few sections of a few chapters and have some pages setup to print back to back for a three-ring hacking binder.

GttMFH2E = Mac Plus - MacIIsi
AMFHR?E = 128k - 512ke +/- Beige Pluses

I'm not sure where the breaks are yet because AMFHR?E is on a slow boat from England.

It makes sense to think of:
AMFHR?E as the pre-ADB Compact Mac era DevNote (Paper)
GttMFH2E as the pre-Quadra, ADB Mac era, Devnote (Paper)
. . . with the IIci & IIsi as the transitional Paper/Electronic DevNote machines.

. . . or not!

[bigmessowires]

If AMFHR contains the exact same info as GttMFH for the 128K through Plus, then it should have everything I need. I wish there were a way to know for sure though. Maybe the 128K-Plus content in GttMFH is also revised or expanded from what was printed in AMFHR.

Sorry to hijack your thread.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

When it comes to documenting the info needed for hacks, there's no such thing as off topic in this forum!

This was my turf back in the day when we had individual moderators for forums, Peripherals was my first assignment from the "kids" when they invited me to join the mod squad and, for some unknown reason, my name popped up for the Hacks forum as well.

When dougg3 needed the ASC info in GttMFH2E for his IIci ROM hack . . .
. . . it appeared on his virtual doorstop and he purchases GttMFH2E!

Nailing down what info is in which edition of these books is important. I'll assume that the first edition of AFHR covered the 128, possibly the 512k.

I'll guess that the 2nd edition covered the Pre-ADB SCSI Macs, likely assuming that repeating the earlier info was redundant.

The first edition of GttMFH was likely limited to the additional info for the ADB Platinum Plus along with the unprecedented expansion capabilities of the SE's PDS and '020, NuBus Mac II.

GttMf2E was likely added to cover the 68030 Machines and the Portable up thru the IIsi.

Same for "Designing Cards & Drivers for the MFH" editions 1 thru 3, which blatantly refers to "an understanding of the info in GttMFH2E.

I doubt Apple wasted much paper or effort on repetitive information.

BTW, I also have the 1998 LaserWriter - LaserWriter IINTX, LaserWriter Reference . . .
. . . if anyone is interested in hacking these beasts.

One day the 68kMLA will have them ALL!!!!!!

[dougg3]

When it comes to documenting the info needed for hacks, there's no such thing as off topic in this forum!

Amen to that This stuff is relevant to any Mac hacking thread!

When dougg3 needed the ASC info in GttMFH2E for his IIci ROM hack . . .
. . . it appeared on his virtual doorstop and he purchases GttMFH2E!

Haha, yes. Thanks again for scanning those pages. I would have bought the book immediately, but I couldn't find anything under $200! I know what you mean about Apple being a crazy name when it comes to copyright. I just wish there was something we could do, because the book is really, really useful, and it also seems to be fairly hard to find

One day the 68kMLA will have them ALL!!!!!!

As far as the ROM SIMM goes: All of the parts for the ROM SIMMs have arrived except for the boards themselves. I will be using the SST39SF040, which is a 4 megabit chip. With four of them, this should allow 2 megabytes of ROM space if all goes as planned! I have verified that I am able to program the chip with my Willem programmer board, so we should be in good shape! Assuming an original ROM size of 512 kb for the IIci, this leaves 1.5 MB of space for a custom startup chime, which with 8-bit 22.255 KHz sound, should allow for, oh, about 70 seconds of sound Since that's way too much, I'm sure someone can come up with even more creative uses of the extra ROM space!

As far as the capacitors, I went for 0.1 uF, 10 V multilayer ceramic capacitors. Is that a good enough rating? I could tell by the markings that the old ones were 0.1 uF, but I had no idea about the voltage rating. I'm figuring it's supposed to be 5V, and I doubled that to be safe?

[dougg3]

I was able to manually convert olePigeon's awesome traced pirate EPS to the footprint format for FreePCB by opening it up and grabbing the coordinates (it's just a plain text file, neato!). It's in the silkscreen layer now. It's only less than half an inch tall right now, so I'll have to write a program to multiply all the coordinates by a scale factor to change the size of it.

I'm going to make the via in the skull an actual through hole on the board! Then I'll see what I can do for the LEDs.

[olePigeon]

[dougg3]

Here's what I have I was able to make a Perl script to scale the coordinates to make it bigger. I also flipped the image horizontally to show what it would look like on the bottom of the board while looking at it.

The LED eyes might be a problem. I can probably make the skull and "cross-guns" a little bigger and I could pick a slightly smaller LED size, but take a look at the capacitors. Those are 1206 size, and they do make LEDs much smaller than that, but I don't want to go too small either or it'll be tough (impossible?) to do by hand. I'd have to pick a really really tiny LED size, definitely smaller than 1206. If I make them too big, then they will interfere with the silkscreen by the eyes and nose...

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Switch to just one LED to save room and add an eyepatch for the other?
Tie the LED to one of the RAS lines so that it'll flicker on when the ROM is accessed?

VERY VERY Guys!

[olePigeon]

That's cooler than I expected. I wouldn't worry about having super tiny LEDs. They don't have to fit right inside, they can be approximately the same size as the eye socket. Even small through-hole LEDs would be fine if they're roughly the same size.

[olePigeon]

Tie the LED to one of the RAS lines so that it'll flicker on when the ROM is accessed?

Wouldn't that only happen once when the computer is first turned on?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Dunno, I'd think it would happen whenever that RAS line went active on any RAM Bank . . .
. . . even when the ROM's Bank wasn't selecteed . . . unless the ROM's buffered.

Who's gonna do the first clear case hack to show off this lil' gem?

[tt]

dougg3, you are a 68k hacking r*o*c*k*s*t*a*r! Thanks for inspiring all of us in this forum.

[dougg3]

Lots more cool discussion going on!

Tie the LED to one of the RAS lines so that it'll flicker on when the ROM is accessed?

Ooooooh that sounds really cool! I'm not sure what line it would be though -- /OE maybe? There is /OE and /CE (output enable and chip enable). The rest of the pins are either address, data, VCC, ground, or programming pins.

Tie the LED to one of the RAS lines so that it'll flicker on when the ROM is accessed?

Wouldn't that only happen once when the computer is first turned on?

Hmm, good point. I actually am not certain of how much the ROM is used once the machine is booted.

That's cooler than I expected. I wouldn't worry about having super tiny LEDs. They don't have to fit right inside, they can be approximately the same size as the eye socket. Even small through-hole LEDs would be fine if they're roughly the same size.

I'll see what I can do with 0805 LEDs. I don't know if they are feasible to hand solder or not...we'll find out! Anyway, if they are the same size as the eye sockets I will have to remove the eye sockets from the silkscreen completely, is that OK with you?

dougg3, you are a 68k hacking r*o*c*k*s*t*a*r! Thanks for inspiring all of us in this forum.

Thanks!!! And thank you and everyone else for helping me get the info I needed to get this stuff done! I'm anxious to see if your SE/30 will do a custom startup chime

I can't wait for the first batch of boards to arrive to see if they work! Still no shipment notice yet.

[olePigeon]

So will this SIMM work in any Mac with a ROM SIMM slot? (II, IIfx, IIsi, IIci, SE/30, etc?) Just swap out the ROMs?

[dougg3]

Well, according to GTTMFH2E, the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIfx, and SE/30 have a ROM SIMM slot with identical pinouts*. And we know the IIsi has one too--the hardware notes on Apple's site for the IIsi show an almost identical pinout, except for pin 46, which is A23 on the IIsi pinout and +5V on the others. I hooked pin 46 to VCC on my SIMM, so I may want to leave it NC (not connected) on the next revision of the SIMM. Probably not a good idea to hook an address line to VCC when it's in the IIsi. So I'd imagine it would work with any of those models. If it's a problem in the IIsi I'm pretty sure we can just cut the connection near the SIMM pads on my first batch of boards. Probably a good thing I just discovered that...

So physically, the SIMM should work in any of those machines, but whether the software will work is another story. Apparently IIfx and IIsi SIMMs work in an SE/30, and trag and Gamba put a IIci ROM dump into a SIMM and used it in an SE/30. I'd assume newer ROMs work with older machines. I would also assume, then, that my hacked IIci ROM would work in any of the machines with the exception of the IIsi. I don't know if it'll work in the IIsi or not--might be an interesting experiment. I know the IIsi has some newer stuff like a newer version of the sound chip with sound input capabilities. It wouldn't take much to hack the IIsi's ROM to have a custom startup chime now that I know how to do it in the IIci. So either way any of those models SHOULD be usable with this SIMM as long as we can get the right software on it.

* It also says A0 and A1 are only used on the IIcx/IIci (so they're probably also used in the IIsi, too), but I have no idea for what -- I left them unconnected.

[dougg3]

Good news, the first batch of boards has shipped! Woohoo

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Excellent news!
_______________________________________________

My copy of MFHR arrived yesterday. It appears to be a Hardcover First Edition from the IMPERIAL COLLEGE, LONDON.
From the "must be returned by" date stamps, it looks like only 18 people borrowed it from '89 - '97!

It starts off with a listing of, and a family tree format figure illustrating the Roadmap to the Macintosh technical documentation "wish list" that I'll scan and post.

Part I covers the "Classic Macintosh"
Part II covers the SE
Part III covers the Macintosh II

No mention of the later (?) "Platinum" Plus w/ADB which, IIRC, is the first machine covered in GttMFH2E.

[olePigeon]

How does the Macintosh Family Hardware Reference differ from the earlier Inside Macintosh volumes?