Search results

The BMOW Mac Sync-inator is finally ready for public consumption, and I'm looking for 3-4 beta testers. The hardware is free for testers, in exchange for you taking the time to put it through the wringer with your vintage Mac or Apple IIgs systems and video cards and monitors, and send me...

The 9 inch compact Macs have mostly proven to be amazingly reliable, even as we approach the Mac's 40th birthday. But I'm hearing about more CRT problems than I used to, particularly with the flyback transformer, and I gather there's no new source for a compatible flyback replacement. Is it just...

Could anybody help provide some timing data for Apple IIgs PAL video, from the composite sync signal on pin 3 of the DB-15 monitor connector? This is probably the same as the timing from the composite video jack, but just in case it differs, I'm looking at the DB-15 monitor connector. I'm trying...

In another thread, I was lamenting the lack of good cross-platform tools for working with HFS Macintosh disk images. Thanks to @NJRoadfan for pointing me to CiderPress 2, which is currently in 'alpha' development but is already very capable. The original CiderPress only handled Apple II disk...

If you have a Mac and a BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator, here's a new firmware https://www.bigmessowires.com/emu/femu-231209M.zip that adds some features I've been discussing in 68kMLA threads. Please give it a try and let me know how it works for you. Even a basic report of "it works fine, I have...

I'm looking for sample code to directly create an HFS filesystem / disk image on a modern computer, where the HFS disk contains a single file that's supplied as input to the code. Ideally this should be platform-agnostic code without relying on third-party libraries or OS dependencies. The file...

Continuing the discussion from https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/mac-to-vga-monitor-adapter-struggles.45423/ - I'm building a Mac-to-VGA monitor adapter that works similarly to other video adapters, but with an added feature: it can also decompose a composite sync signal into separate...

Of the first 20 results in today's New Posts list, six of them are about Classic variants with hardware problems or seeking replacement hardware. 6/20 seems like an unusually high fraction for a single Mac category. I've also seen a few people mention that they tend to avoid Classics for...

My new G4 Quicksilver running 10.4.11 seems to have strangely slow network speeds, but I don't understand why. The Quicksilver has a gigabit Ethernet port, where I've plugged in the very same Ethernet cable that's normally attached to my desktop computer. The desktop reports speeds around 450...

I'm trying to get Basilisk II running under OSX 10.4. I've downloaded several different PPC versions from the Garden, including the 2009 version and "Nigel's Port". I've left the preferences at the default (IIci with 8MB), and gave it a IIci ROM file. When I launch Basilisk II, I simply get a...

I recently discovered that Classic Mode under OSX 10.4 Tiger is pretty lousy for original MacOS games. Reading more about it, I'm not the only one with this complaint, and apparently Classic worked much better under 10.2 Jaguar. I also read about an intriguing alternative called "Mac on Mac"...

Here are the final results of my recent disk benchmarking efforts on a Power Macintosh G4 933 MHz Quicksilver. All tests were performed using QuickBench 4.0 under OSX 10.4.11. Transfer speeds are in megabytes per second. Results are separated by interface: IDE, SCSI, USB 2.0, and SATA...

Is there a disk image file format for HFS+ that works for both ZuluSCSI/BlueSCSI (attached to a G4 Quicksilver with SCSI card) and for a modern Mac (Ventura 13.4 in my case)? Or a simple way to convert between supported formats? ZuluSCSI supports .hda and .img images, although I'm not sure...

I'm assembling an LCII system from spare parts, after I repaired a lone LCII motherboard a few weeks ago. I've realized I'm not sure what parts I'm supposed to have for the hard drive and floppy drive sleds. I tried to look for photos of LCII internals, but the ones I found don't really answer...

I have a couple of Zulu SCSI devices with the 50-pin IDC connector for internal use. It would be handy if I could temporarily convert one for external use. This adapter designed for SCSI2SD would seem to be exactly what I need... https://store.rabbitholecomputing.com/product-p/idc50f-db25f.htm...

Just for grins I ran FWB Hard Disk Toolkit on my Performa 6214 (75 MHz PPC 603), and used it to bench test the internal hard disk. It's a 1.2 GB Conner IDE. Aren't those numbers much lower than you'd expect? 1789 KB/sec sustained read? That's the slowest sustained read speed of any hard disk...

After grousing about the high prices of old Macs recently, I was reminded that G4 systems are often still pretty cheap, and now I'm the new owner of a G4 tower Quicksilver 933 MHz system. I'm basically a 68K Mac guy and I've never used any of the G3, G4, or G5 tower systems from this era, so I'm...

In Wikipedia's article about the PowerPC family, I noticed this about the 603: This makes it sound like the plain 603 (non-e version) basically can't run the 680x0 emulation layer, but if that's the case, how did Apple use the 603 in computers like the Performa 5200 and 6200 series? Is that...

I have a G3 iBook with WiFi, but it only supports WEP and my home network is WPA2. After doing a little reading it seems that there's no way to add WPA2 in OS9, so what's the next best alternative? Use a wired Ethernet connection. That would work, but it's not wireless. Use a wireless Ethernet...

I've finished replacing all the capacitors in my Mac IIci power supply, now I'm wondering whether I should glue the new capacitors in place. Many of the old capacitors were glued in, which I understand can help prevent high-frequency whining noises, but the glue also made it a pain to remove the...