Aliexpress Motorola 68010?

[68kPlus]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I was watching Action Retro's video about the "turbo mac" where he puts a Motorola 68010 in a Macintosh 128K, making it the "turbo mac".

I decided to look up if anyone sold the 68010 (just out of curiosity), and I found an Aliexpress listing for a Motorola 68010, which looks very similar to a stock 68000.

2.37US $ 5% OFF|1Pcs MC68010P12 MC68010P10 68010 68010P12 32 Bit Processor . 68010 Cpu . Electronic Component IC New Original|Integrated Circuits| - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

Would this actually work? Is it possible to swap out a Mac Plus (for example) 68000 CPU for a 68010?
Would make for an interesting experiment.

 

[LaPorta]

Maybe in an SE, too?

 

[68kPlus]

Seems as though this one is a 12MHz model - Perhaps it would work with the Plus still?

 

[Nixontheknight]

Seems as though this one is a 12MHz model - Perhaps it would work with the Plus still?

It should still work at 8MHz, the number on the chip is just the max frequency it can operate at

 

[68kPlus]

Interesting. Thanks for the info!

 

[Fred1212]

Bought one pretty cheap. I'll try it and see

 

[cheesestraws]

Note that the 68010 is not 100% compatible with the 68000. It will mostly work in replacement, but some stuff will be less stable. I seem to remember for me the calculator desk accessory refused to work at all for some reason I never cared enough to work out . (I just didn't use the calculator DA...)

 

[cheesestraws]

Yesterday I was watching Action Retro's video about the "turbo mac" where he puts a Motorola 68010 in a Macintosh 128K, making it the "turbo mac".

Also, calling it a 'turbo mac' is a bit disingenuous IMO: the main advantage of the 010 over the 000 is that it can do virtual memory (not under MacOS, but in theory—there were some UNIX workstations that used it for that reason) and that its instruction set is a bit cleaner (move from SR is a privileged instruction). The speedup in practice is well under 10%, which seems a bit minimal for the moniker 'turbo'.

 

[68kPlus]

Note that the 68010 is not 100% compatible with the 68000. It will mostly work in replacement, but some stuff will be less stable. I seem to remember for me the calculator desk accessory refused to work at all for some reason I never cared enough to work out . (I just didn't use the calculator DA...)

Strangely, Action Retro had his 128K with 2MB RAM upgrade work fine with the Calculator. I'm probably not going to do this, but if I ever get another Plus, maybe I'll add the SCSI terminator diode, recap it, add a 68010 and maybe some other mods...

 

[cheesestraws]

Weird. It isn't 100% compatible anyway, but most of the ways don't matter very much.

maybe I'll add the SCSI terminator diode, recap it, add a 68010 and maybe some other mods

Plus mods: the termination diode is definitely worth doing, it really should have been there in the first place. Recapping mostly isn't necessary for Plus LBs, though some ABs need it because they cook themselves. The LB capacitors are good big chunky through-hole ones though and they've got a good few more years in them left at this point. People replace them because they confuse them with the tiny sad cheap little surface mount ones, but they're much much sturdier.

A fun mod that I did is internal SCSI: you can either do this with a bit of soldering or, if you're like me and you prefer not modifying boards, you can actually do it non-intrusively using a Cloney Clip and a pin header. It's a little bit fiddly, but with that and, say, a scuznet, you could have a Plus with internal Ethernet, which would be very silly. That's something I want to do - at the moment my internal-scsi Plus just has an HD replacement in it, but you could put in a scuznet and route the ethernet connector up to the battery door or something...

 

[68kPlus]

Weird. It isn't 100% compatible anyway, but most of the ways don't matter very much.



Plus mods: the termination diode is definitely worth doing, it really should have been there in the first place. Recapping mostly isn't necessary for Plus LBs, though some ABs need it because they cook themselves. The LB capacitors are good big chunky through-hole ones though and they've got a good few more years in them left at this point. People replace them because they confuse them with the tiny sad cheap little surface mount ones, but they're much much sturdier.

A fun mod that I did is internal SCSI: you can either do this with a bit of soldering or, if you're like me and you prefer not modifying boards, you can actually do it non-intrusively using a Cloney Clip and a pin header. It's a little bit fiddly, but with that and, say, a scuznet, you could have a Plus with internal Ethernet, which would be very silly. That's something I want to do - at the moment my internal-scsi Plus just has an HD replacement in it, but you could put in a scuznet and route the ethernet connector up to the battery door or something...

That sounds like an interesting mod. I think I'll stick to my HD 20SC with a soon-to-be-bought BlueSCSI. The RIFAs are the only caps I'm going to replace, due to their cracked surface suggesting a soon-to-come death.

 

[joshc]

I'd also be wary of buying stuff like a 68010 from AliExpress. Fake CPUs are a thing. Maybe not for those particular ones, but it is a known thing unfortunately. But as said, I think the benefit there would be minimal.

Also, probably worth a recap of the whole analog board while you have it out rather than just the RIFAs, if you are planning on getting a bit of use from your Plus rather than it just being a show piece on a shelf. The most common fault with them is weak/dry solder joints, so touching those up while you've got the analog board out is also a good idea.

 

[cheesestraws]

Yeah, it's not pleasant when RIFAs go bang. Best avoided.

Here's my writeup of how I did the noninvasive SCSI mod, anyway, if it's useful. https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/mac-plus-internal-scsi-noninvasive-edition.39231/

 

[68kPlus]

Yeah, it's not pleasant when RIFAs go bang. Best avoided.

Here's my writeup of how I did the noninvasive SCSI mod, anyway, if it's useful. https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/mac-plus-internal-scsi-noninvasive-edition.39231/

I was actually reading that earlier! Fascinating. What image did you use for the BlueSCSI? I'm getting one soon and would like to have a nice image for it. System 7.1 is my usual OS, but I can work with other versions too.
Thanks!

 

[68kPlus]

I'd also be wary of buying stuff like a 68010 from AliExpress. Fake CPUs are a thing. Maybe not for those particular ones, but it is a known thing unfortunately. But as said, I think the benefit there would be minimal.

Also, probably worth a recap of the whole analog board while you have it out rather than just the RIFAs, if you are planning on getting a bit of use from your Plus rather than it just being a show piece on a shelf. The most common fault with them is weak/dry solder joints, so touching those up while you've got the analog board out is also a good idea.

I can only afford to replace the RIFAs. My Plus is from 1990, and all the caps seem in perfect nick, so I'm just going to do that for now.
I'm going to practice my soldering skills soon, so maybe in the future I will do the whole lot.

 

[cheesestraws]

I was actually reading that earlier! Fascinating. What image did you use for the BlueSCSI? I'm getting one soon and would like to have a nice image for it. System 7.1 is my usual OS, but I can work with other versions too.

I don't use other people's images, generally. By the time you've found a working one it's easier just to install the OS.

 

[cheesestraws]

also:

I can only afford to replace the RIFAs. My Plus is from 1990, and all the caps seem in perfect nick, so I'm just going to do that for now.

If it ain't broken, no need to go mucking with it, if it's a Plus, tbh.

It will make its displeasure felt if it needs maintenance

 

[Gorgonops]

the speedup in practice is well under 10%, which seems a bit minimal for the moniker 'turbo'.

Scrubbing through the video in question the observed speedup with the benchmark the guy used actually seemed to be on the order of minus 0.9%, so... what's the point of doing this mod again?

The main improvement the 68010 provides relative to the 68000 is it fixes the problem that the older CPU can't recover gracefully from certain page-fault conditions, which blows up running true virtual memory OSes with standard memory paging hardware. Given the Mac Plus has no paging hardware, well, unless you add it there pretty much is literally no reason to bother with this. Yes, there are a few edge cases where the 68010 shaves a couple cycles off instruction counts but these were completely incidental changes and the improvement is nothing like what you get with, say, swapping an NEC V20 for an 8088 in a PC.(*)

(* Which itself results in pretty negligible improvements unless you take advantage of the other thing you get with a V20, IE, the ability to run certain 80186 instructions that speed up I/O port transfers.)

 

[68kPlus]

also:



If it ain't broken, no need to go mucking with it, if it's a Plus, tbh.

It will make its displeasure felt if it needs maintenance

I meant that the caps are good, but the RIFAs look bad. Forgot to mention that!
Attached pic of the RIFA in C33