That's what I'd expect
The smoothing caps on the power for the main chip are shown as 0.1uF for the little ceramics, and 10uF for the polarised caps.
-
Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.
Getting G3 Whisper Perch USB working
- Thread starter croissantking
- Start date
The smoothing caps on the power for the main chip are shown as 0.1uF for the little ceramics, and 10uF for the polarised caps.
Images of Wings AV Card 820-0971-A below. Looks like this one could support the USB controller and a single USB port.
This is really interesting, some of the circuits look simplified as compared to the Whisper USB footprint - e.g. no space for a big chip at U9, no filter caps around the USB chip.
Can you post a photo of the other side of the card?
Thinking about this. Could we produce a G3 ‘Rominator’ that has built-in USB support and other improvements, like holding down option at startup to choose a boot device?
Depends on how much space is free in the ROM compared to how much code is required for USB support and Startup Manager (boot picker). First thing to do is extract the code from New World Open Firmware and get it to work in Old World Open Firmware. Then we can see if it will fit. If it can't fit, then the Rominator idea can still work to store a small amount of code that can load more code from an Open Firmware accessible disk.
The Open Firmware part is probably the easiest and would probably be sufficient for OS X. I don't know anything about the non-Open Firmware parts or if some non-Open Firmware code is required to select a OS 9 boot device. Can Old Word Open Firmware be used to change the OS 9 boot device? As far as I know, the only thing it will boot is
/AAPL,ROM. Maybe there's a PRAM value that can be modified. @elliotnunn's GitHub projects deal with New World ROM files (tbxi) but I don't think they're applicable to Old World ROMs?The Startup Manager is mostly handled by the
multiboot package in Open Firmware and there's a multi-boot word. Open Firmware of the B&W G3 looks for the option key but then it ignores the result and skips booting from multiboot. Maybe Apple skipped that code because it wasn't working well enough in that version of Open Firmware (3.1.1) or maybe I'm misinterpreting the code? Maybe the Yikes G4 has newer Open Firmware? I don't have a ROM dump from Yikes so I can't check that. The earliest post B&W G3 Open Firmware dump I have is for 4.1.9f1 from an iMac. That version appears to correctly call multi-boot when the Option key is held down.
Thank you, @just.in.time . As I suspected part of the footprint to be populated is on the backside of the card. It should be easy enough to use the schematic I made for the Whisper card and apply it to this one.
Awesome! Thank you @croissantking! I should have some time later in April to give it a try.
I'd buy a programmable ROM DIMM for the gossamer board
So would I! This would be awesome.
Hats off, incredible work.
Apple Never Gave Them USB. Now, They’re Getting It For Themselves
These days we use USB as a default for everything from low-speed serial ports to high-capacity storage, and the ubiquitous connector has evolved into a truly multi-purpose interface. It’s dif…
Article has gone up on Hackaday! (I didn’t know about it, someone here mentioned it to me). As it’s April 1st, maybe people are going to think it’s a joke
This mod certainly has gathered some interest!
And now throngs of deep-pocketed collectors and hackers are going to buy up the world's supply of Whisper cards!
All of my G3s (not sure about the AIO, though; I'll have to check) have at least a Wings card. Is internal USB possible on those? From what I've read in this thread so far, there are two revisions of the Wings card, and only one of them can do internal USB.
Also, would this be possible on the apparently quite uncommon Bordeaux card? Does anyone even have a Bordeaux card??
c
The prototype with USB port might come down in price though, since it’s been demystified a bit
Two revisions of the Whisper card exist too. The later one is needed in both cases.
Looking at photos of it, it does appear to have the footprint.
Yeah, good point, since it won't be quite as "R@RE!!!" anymore with all these "copies" floating around.
OK, sort of implies that Apple was considering releasing an enhanced Beige G3 (or maybe something else altogether?), perhaps as a stopgap while production of the B&W ramped up, but then decided not to, yes?
Neat! Is it as hard to find as I think it is?
c
Let’s see how many people decide to do the mod, probably just a handful. At the end of the day, it’s a curiosity/bit of fun more than anything because you can just use a PCI card to get USB - although it would afford you an extra slot for something else e.g. the late 90s microscope controller card that was mentioned earlier
Although we don’t really know for sure, this explanation makes sense in my mind.
Seems like the revised personality cards may have started to ship with beige G3s around the same time as the iMac was released.
Alternatively, the revised layout could have been included just for prototyping purposes.
I do believe it is pretty rare - I haven’t seen many beiges with a stock DVD-ROM drive, which I guess is how you’d identify that a machine had one of these.
Yeah, and especially nowadays, where these machines aren't really used in production settings anymore, so there's not much of an incentive to cram the PCI slots full of as many different interfaces as possible (and there's also the fact that even a basic USB card has a minimum of two ports, and usually more, which is 100% more useful than having a single port because not everyone wants a hub).Let’s see how many people decide to do the mod, probably just a handful. At the end of the day, it’s a curiosity/bit of fun more than anything because you can just use a PCI card to get USB - although it would afford you an extra slot for something else e.g. the late 90s microscope controller card that was mentioned earlier
I think the main thing that makes this project intriguing are the possibilities for a tighter integration than is possible or practical with a regular PCI card (the ability to power the machine on using the power key on the early Apple USB keyboards and being able to boot from a USB disk being two things that come to mind).
We shall see how it goes.
I kind of want one, if only for the supposedly improved sound chip they use (Burgundy instead of Screamer). I seem to recall that the Burgundy sound chip was subsequently used in a later model of something, an early iPod, maybe? Or maybe it was something else known as Burgundy? Perhaps this notion is a fabrication of my tired mind?
c
