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    SE/30 Battery Bomb Advice

    The analogue board and power supply are common to the SE, so if they do turn out to be bad, that's a cheaper option to use as a parts donor. Building a reloaded board isn't a task to be taken lightly (or cheaply), but if you can solder and have decent electronics troubleshooting skills (or at...
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    SEthernet and SEthernet/30: A new take on PDS Ethernet

    I actually recently discovered that the current hardware/gateware revision *doesn't* seem to work properly in my IIfx - it was only the early GAL-based version that I'd tested on there. I haven't had a chance to dive into it properly, but I've built up an interposer board that will let me look...
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    SEthernet and SEthernet/30: A new take on PDS Ethernet

    Thank you so much! I've spent a lot of time fussing over whether it's 'finished enough' to release, so hearing that definitely puts me at ease. I've been using a 25ns ATF1502ASL-25AU44 and a 70ns SST39SF010A-70-4C-WHE without issue - pretty sure those are the slowest currently-available grades...
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    Performa 475 : Disk initialization failed because the disk is defective

    Another thing to check out is the disk-loading mechanism - if it's dirty or even just gummed up with old grease, it can get into a state where it will appear to accept a disk just fine, but the disk is not locating fully 'home', meaning that the heads and sense switches are not making proper...
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    How do I force my Mac Plus to actually, correctly, identify the size of the hard drive in my external PLI drive.

    The "patched HD Setup" has been floating around for years, I'm not sure where it came from or the nature of the changes, but the effect is that it skips the check for Apple firmware on the drive, so it can partition non-Apple drives. The first two downloads at...
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    Doesn't matter so much if you don't ever put the lid on the case :p

    Doesn't matter so much if you don't ever put the lid on the case :p
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    IIRC, they do work, but it's difficult to insert disks, because the cases on machines that came...

    IIRC, they do work, but it's difficult to insert disks, because the cases on machines that came with auto-inject drives lack the cutout around the disk slot that allows you to push the disk in far enough to load into a manual-inject drive. https://www.siber-sonic.com/mac/superfloppy.html has...
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    Best option for 1024x768 video on IIci?

    I have an E-Machines Futura SX that'll do 1024x768 at 8 bit (plus 24 bit at lower resolutions, and 1152x870 at 8 bit as well). It's not perfect (actually getting 1024x768 out of it requires an annoying sense-code workaround and I can't get it to work properly in accelerated mode), but they're...
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    Performa 475 logic board seems ok after 30 years

    Case in point (different model, but of the same vintage) - my PowerBook 180c. It had sat unused in a drawer in a relative's office since around 1996, if the modification dates on files were to be believed - certainly not the temperature extremes or damp that old computers often find themselves...
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    Floppy drive obliterating track 0?

    Yeah, this is fascinating. Somewhat beside the point, but many many years ago, I had an old 486 PC that would do something similar when booting from a floppy disk. It would boot successfully, but corrupt the disk in the process, even if the write-protect tab was set. If it'd help, I can take a...
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    NTSC Monitor

    Just did an experiment with my 180c, and it does *not* seem to recognise a monitor attached with the NTSC Monitor sense code (100), nor PAL Encoder (extended sense 00-00-00) or PAL Monitor (extended sense 11-00-00). So that seems to put paid to that idea, sorry :(
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    NTSC Monitor

    The 15.6672 MHz dot clock for 512x384 would also be plausible for an underscanned 640x480i mode, so while it not being listed certainly doesn't bode well, it still wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility that it could exist as an unsupported mode. Stranger things have happened. If I can...
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    NTSC Monitor

    That’s a good question. Its video output supports a number of different resolutions so having support for an interlaced display wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of possibility. I’d very much doubt if it could do colour composite output, but interlaced 60Hz RGB sounds pretty likely. You’ve piqued...
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    How can I securely erase a Classic II hard drive without a functioning Macintosh?

    Unfortunate as it is, I think simply "remove the hard drive and sell it without" is probably the most straightforward option for you. There isn't really a good way to read or erase the SCSI hard drives in old Macs unless you either have an old Mac, or another machine with a SCSI interface and...
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    NTSC Monitor

    I don't believe any Macs were able to output colour composite video from the 15-pin connector, except maybe some specialised video cards (the AV Macs are a different story). The video output is still RGB in those modes, just with resolution and timings suitable for NTSC or PAL. You CAN however...
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    SE/30 with RasterOps video board

    I have the same card in my SE/30, here's the pinout, copied from some notes I've been accumulating on the card. Looking at the component side of the card with the PDS connector facing to the left, the pins are numbered as follows: --------------- | 2 4 6 8 10 | | 1 3 5 7 9 | ------...
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    Asante MacCon Ethernet Card Causing No Startup

    The complete failure to power on with the card installed points to a shorted power rail. The SE/30 MacCons that I’ve seen have a pair of tantalum capacitors in one corner - these sometimes fail short-circuited, either with spectacular fireworks (which at least makes the problem obvious), or just...
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    Please help with weird short simasimac problem

    Yes, that's right. If you switch your Mac off and back on quickly enough that the tube doesn't cool down, it'll show a Simasimac-like corrupted version of what it was last displaying for a moment before the CPU comes out of reset and initializes the video RAM. Glad it's working now! It's an...
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    Mac SE FTP/HTTP Downloading

    Yeah, that option selects MacIP and will either say “EtherTalk” or “LocalTalk” depending on what your AppleTalk connection is set to. “Ethernet” does normal IP. Definitely a confusing UI choice on Apple’s part. MacIP is neat (I run it to give IP connectivity to my LocalTalk-only Macs) but since...
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    Mac SE FTP/HTTP Downloading

    Actually, that brings up one thing that could be causing an AppleTalk error - the "EtherTalk" option under MacTCP is for an IP-over-AppleTalk protocol that you almost certainly don't want to use unless you've got a working AppleTalk network. Make sure you're selecting "Ethernet" in the MacTCP...
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