Adding 8 slots to my Compact Mac

[CompactManiac]

I've always loved collecting brochures on some of the more esoteric products available for Macintosh computers back in the day.
In the early 90's I saw an ad about adding 8 slots to a Compact Macintosh and I wanted to find out more immediately and sent away for the brochure.

The company was called Second Wave, Inc. and they produced several different external chasis boxes that had their own power supply and could provide either SE style PDS or Nubus slots depending on the computer you wanted to connect to. They also offered 4 or 8 slot options and could house SCSI devices.

This is an extract from the brochure:



I suspect there were others like me that would have loved to have added more slots to their Macintosh, especially the compact models.
I've also read with interest on the forum that some newer PDS cards have appeared in recent years that cater for a second card but I always thought this original external box idea was the way to go. It gets round all of the space, power and heat issues you have to contend with and seems to offer a very neat solution since you can easily unplug the unit from the Mac if not required without having to constantly open the machine and unplug cards.

At one point there was even a version available for the Macintosh Plus and Macintosh Portable.

Did anyone ever own one of these Expansion Chasis boxes?

I kept in touch with the company during the 90's and they would send me periodic updates on other boxes available and pricing etc.
At one point I was offered an ex demo SE 4 slot PDS chasis for £295 and I'm kicking myself I didn't buy it but this was 1994 and the SE was a literal dinosaur by this stage with so many new machines and models appearing. I was worried no one would even remember what an SE slot was never mind that I would be able to source any cards for it! Also with Apple starting to produce machines with fewer Nubus slots it didn't feel like Nubus would be around for much long either.

Still I'd love to see a truly MAXed out Macintosh YouTube video with an SE/30 connected to an 8 slot Nubus Second Wave Chasis and all 8 slots occupied with working Nubus cards and 3 half height SCSCI devices also added to the box! Now that's what I call an upgrade!

 

[Realitystorm]

Interesting, I wonder if we could make a modern version?

More info https://archive.org/details/upgradeyourmacin0000bran/page/243/mode/1up?q="second+wave"

MacWEEK Vol 03 Num 08 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

MacWEEK magazine Vol 03, Num 08. Publication date 1989-02-21.

archive.org

MacWEEK Vol 07 Num 09 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Support game and tech magazine digital archiving: https://www.patreon.com/marktrade Bitcoin: 1DCQp3uZ7dhojjCjf8rLhVBqpwiEG8A9A8

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The Apple Macintosh book : Lu, Cary, 1945- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiv, 513 pages : 24 cm

archive.org

Looks like one of the owners is was the president of Toastmasters, will try contacting her through LinkedIn. https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/magazine-issues/2018/sep2018/16-interview

 

[Phipli]

The SE and Plus version would be an interesting challenge. No slot manager and no rules for multiple cards. How on earth did they prevent conflicts, and did they have to relocate things in memory? Or did they look at which driver was active and map in a different card?

Weird.

 

[rplacd]

Also, NuBus on an SE/30?

 

[CompactManiac]

Here's some more technical info on the various boxes.

 

[CompactManiac]

The SE and Plus version would be an interesting challenge. No slot manager and no rules for multiple cards. How on earth did they prevent conflicts, and did they have to relocate things in memory? Or did they look at which driver was active and map in a different card?

Weird.

Regarding support for the Macintosh Plus the brochure mentions:


The clip onto the processor approach was used in early accelerators for Macs that had no slots so I guess Apple Service Center was just there to make a nice hole in the back for the cable out to the chasis box!

I think this opens up near endless upgrade potential for all vintage Mac's if something along these lines was built today.
The problem is not the box, its the shortage of cards to put in it!

 

[Phipli]

Regarding support for the Macintosh Plus the brochure mentions:
View attachment 72448

The clip onto the processor approach was used in early accelerators for Macs that had no slots so I guess Apple Service Center was just there to make a nice hole in the back for the cable out to the chasis box!

I think this opens up near endless upgrade potential for all vintage Mac's if something along these lines was built today.
The problem is not the box, its the shortage of cards to put in it!

Yeah, I guessed it clipped on the CPU, it's the best place to get the needed signals.

What is confusing me is that on a Plus and SE, hardware is sort of hard coded to a location in the memory map... Cards designed for an SE assume they are the only card - so how do you reliably make random cards work together without literally getting in each other's way in the address space.

 

[Phipli]

Also, NuBus on an SE/30?

There is very little difference between an SE/30 and a IIcx... In a way you could consider the PDS on a SE/30 as the cut off bit where the NuBus goes on a IIcx. Sort of.

These boxes are like the PDS to NuBus riser in the IIsi, but with more slots.

 

[CompactManiac]

Cards designed for an SE assume they are the only card

The Orion card I have allowed acceleration on one card, with an optional socket on it to connect a further card for a video output. There were others like this as well so it seems the SE design did support multiple cards in a round about way. It was all a bit messy though because the socket on the Orion for video is a completely different connector size to the original PDS slot due to space limitations in the machine so the card would only have worked with that board unless you had an adapter to convert it back to a standard SE PDS type.

 

[CompactManiac]

These boxes are like the PDS to NuBus riser in the IIsi, but with more slots.

In an updated 1991 brochure from the distributor there was even an interface assembly for the IIsi to allow it to use 4 or 8 Nubus slots.

The homebase chasis for the Macintosh Portable supported just 2 SE slots. Still I'll take 2 over none!

 

[Phipli]

The Orion card I have allowed acceleration on one card, with an optional socket on it to connect a further card for a video output. There were others like this as well so it seems the SE design did support multiple cards in a round about way. It was all bit messy though because the socket on the Orion for video is a completely different connector size to the original PDS slot due to space limitations in the machine so the card would only have worked with that board unless you had an adapter to convert it back to a standard SE PDS type.

This is a special case of cards designed to specifically work together. Often they don't even have an SE PDS connection. They're more like extensions of the accelerator than a stand alone card. The Radius cards are a weird exception because you could buy a dummy card to use their video card without an accelerator.

 

[Melkhior]

Here's some more technical info on the various boxes.

Thank you, that explain a bit. Memory map limits 60000 PDS (SE slot) to one and NuBus slots to 6, while available interrupts on the connector limits the SE/30 and IIsi expansion to 3 slots. So 4 (or even more so 8) slots feels a bit weird. Not impossible in theory, but that would require a lot of software work and various incompatibilities.

But at least for NuBus, the "technical specifications" include the phrase "switch-selectable", so I'm guessing maybe you can only use a subset of the slots simultaneously? That would avoid those issues. A less interesting design, but still potentially useful.

 

[cheesestraws]

The weird 'expand your LC' thing from, I think, micromac, also had a switch to select which slot you wanted to use.

I suspect the marketing material is overselling how useful these things actually were - which probably explains why we haven't got any now.

Memory map limits 60000 PDS (SE slot) to one

Also no slot manager, so no sensible abstraction for making multiple cards work.

 

[beachycove]

It would be nice to see the brochure scanned and archived somewhere. It is one of the more obscure and wonderful product ranges from that time.

 

[68kPlus]

This is fascinating, and I was only just wondering if Nubus cards were ever adapted for SEs. Very interesting, and would be interested to see if it can be recreated!

 

[CompactManiac]

For those interested here is the pricing from January 1991 and also some revised prices for specific models I enquired about in August 1994:

 

[Phipli]

This is fascinating, and I was only just wondering if Nubus cards were ever adapted for SEs. Very interesting, and would be interested to see if it can be recreated!

The SE model isn't NuBus. I don't think anyone would have made such a product because it would need a load of software that isn't in the SE's ROM.

 

[68kPlus]

The SE model isn't NuBus. I don't think anyone would have made such a product because it would need a load of software that isn't in the SE's ROM.

Oh right. Sorta skimmed through the post

 

[CompactManiac]

It is one of the more obscure and wonderful product ranges from that time.

From memory I first heard about this product in a small advert placed in MacUser UK. I wrote to the UK distributor and asked if they could send me more information. There was no email address so this was a letter I typed on the SE, printed on the Imagewriter II and physically posted to them. I wouldn't be surprised if I still have the electronic version of that letter on one of my floppies or hard drives. I did this a lot back then and later began sending faxes via the Teleport for other products of interest to me. It was quite a bit of work to get hold of these brochures back then because they were not heavily advertised.

 

[CompactManiac]

Found further notes on this same chasis from 1996. By March the same UK distributor was offering the 4 slot Nubus version for the SE/30 + interface for just £395 + VAT which was a massive drop in price. They also indicated this old style Nubus chasis could be made up specifically to order and it could be done at any stage. This would certainly have been the time to buy.