SE/30 accelerators

[Themk]

Hmm interesting. This reminds me of our IIfx vs Quadra 700 discussion in my other thread.

I am a little surprised that it would be as fast as the Quadra 605. I think the consensus was that 40MHz 030 (IIfx) was slower than 25MHz 040 (700), but I guess the extra 10MHz makes up the difference?

 

[Blougram]

Maybe that was a slight exaggeration on my part. In some CPU tests, it scores higher than the Quadra 605 benchmark, but on average, it's 91% as fast.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Hmm interesting. This reminds me of our IIfx vs Quadra 700 discussion in my other thread.

Or the 50MHzPowerCache infused SE/30 vs. IIfx discussion.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics". – Samuel Clemens

I am a little surprised that it would be as fast as the Quadra 605. I think the consensus was that 40MHz 030 (IIfx) was slower than 25MHz 040 (700), but I guess the extra 10MHz makes up the difference?

40MHz/25MHz = 60% clock bump. ISTR reading that the 68LC040 Quadra 605 almost kept up with the FPU equipped IIfx in math ops.

 

[Blougram]

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Hey Blougram 

Congrats on your new DiiMO! Welcome to the 50MHz Club!

 

[Blougram]

Thank you! I now have a computer ready for "the Net Age," as MicroMac put in on their web site. Seriously, though, it makes a huge difference when browsing the web. BadGoldEagle, how's the Diimo-Pivot Display combo working out for you? I have an ethernet card as my second card, but I wouldn't mind installing a color graphics card instead and use a SCSI-ethernet adapter for my vintage information superhighway needs.

Installing the accelerator and adapter was a breeze (and I'm normally not very good with hardware); transferring the screenshot to a modern computer was the real challenge. I blithely assumed that most modern image viewers would support MacDraw as a legacy format. Turns out I was wrong. ;D

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Well, the Powercache works great. 

The Pivot card works too, but it's B&W only (or should I say blue?). The only color card I have is the IIsi color pivot, which I know works but it doesn't fit. I need to make a passive adapter if I want to close the lid and put the logic board back in place. So that's where I'm at. 

I'm also looking for a SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter... A lot of people are.

 

[Blougram]

I borrowed a SCSI-Ethernet adapter from a friend in Sweden a few years ago, which reminds me that I should return it to its rightful owner when I visit this Summer.

Daynaport, I think. I would guess that it was intended for the early PowerBooks, based on the design language alone. In any case, It worked really well with decent download speeds -- not as fast as my Ethernet card (0.5 Mbps), but then again, unless you're downloading disk images, you don't really need a fast connection.

 

[Themk]

Well, the Powercache works great.

The Pivot card works too, but it's B&W only (or should I say blue?).

It's easy to fix the blue problem. I've mentioned a few times (go searching) how to fix it. https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/29864-radius-pivot-on-se30/page-4

 

[ArmorAlley]

What becomes realistic for you is the use of Mac OS 8.1 and access to HFS+ volumes. I have it in my Mac IIfx and it doesn't run too badly at all. You will need a 32-bit clean ROM though. If you have a SCSI2SD board and a 64GB SD card, then you can fit all of the software that you would ever want on to it.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

@Themk Yes, I knew about it (and btw, thanks again for figuring it out!), but I really wanted a colour card. And it won't be possible to display 256 colours with this card unfortunately... 

@Blougram I thought the Asante Mini EN/SC was the only SCSI to ethernet device out there. Good to know there are other alternatives!

Man, if only I could get my hands on a Twinspark adapter, I could probably have a colour card AND an ethernet card. But for the moment, this is just a pipe dream.

 

[Themk]

Thanks,

Nah, the Asante Mini EN/SC might have been a good and popular SCSI-Ethernet bridge, but it was far from the only one. They are out there if you look!

 

[Themk]

<snipped image>

Nice benchmarks. Interesting. It seems that the difference between clockspeed and performance is pretty linear. What is strange is the disk benchmark hike. I'm really surprised that the SE/30 was able to get 1.5 disk. Was it perhaps testing a disk cache, or a RAM disk?

 

[Blougram]

Nah, the Asante Mini EN/SC might have been a good and popular SCSI-Ethernet bridge, but it was far from the only one. They are out there if you look!

Yes. I found a picture of my old setup back in Sweden. It's a big mess of wires. ;D

 

[Blougram]

I'm really surprised that the SE/30 was able to get 1.5 disk. Was it perhaps testing a disk cache, or a RAM disk?

That surprised me too. No, it's a 1 GB Seagate.

 

[Themk]

What was your disk cache set to? (Check in memory control panel)

 

[Blougram]

It's 32k, which I believe is the default value? The only thing I normally change on the Memory control panel is 32-Bit Addressing.

 

[omidimo]

Man, if only I could get my hands on a Twinspark adapter, I could probably have a colour card AND an ethernet card. But for the moment, this is just a pipe dream.

The TwinSpark does a cache card and pds, but not 2 pds cards, furthermore, a cache card must be present for the thing to work. It's pretty much ethernet or video card and some combos do not work. I had a lot of problems with an asanate maccon and turbo 040, ended up getting a farallon card that played nice.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

That's what's always bothered me about that Artmix adapter. I want two PDS passthru sides with my 50MHz 030 PowerCache main course. I've never heard it had compatibility problems before this, what's up with that? Do any of the other adapters have similar problems?

 

[omidimo]

The only official incompatibility in the manual is:

Xceed Color 30, Macro Color 30, and Color30HR is not compatible with Turbo040. Please apply PowerCache 030 CPU upgrade card. 

With the Asante card I think it was something to do with the Asante firmware, since they made multiple versions of the card with various firmwares. I tried changing the pins on the Asante card for card ID and it did nothing, This could also all be the fault of the Turbo 040 which does its own firmware voodoo at startup which the most likely reason why the Xceed cards are not listed as compatible. 

I was planning on trying different firmware boards, but got called away for work, so all that stuff is on hold until later in June.