Anyone ever upgrad the ROMs on a Radius Two Page Display used with the Radius SE Accelerator?

[jasonfortheworld]

I’m working with a Mac SE that has a Radius SE Accelerator 16 installed. Connected to it via the MagicBus expansion slot is a Radius Two Page Display card—this is the version with the single BNC connector for monochrome video out.

The ROMs on my TPD card are version 3.0, and as far as I can tell, the drivers that work with early firmware versions 3.0–3.3 appear to be completely lost. All currently archived RadiusWare installers require ROM version 4.4 and will crash or fail to load otherwise.

I’ve seen ROM images floating around labeled as being for the Full Page Display—specifically version 4.4—but I’m unclear whether these are actually compatible with the TPD card. Some Radius documentation seems to suggest the same driver/ROM branch covers both cards, while others imply the TPD and FPD use separate ROMs and timing logic. Radius even stated in some Q&A docs that the FPD interface can't be used with a TPD monitor, which makes me cautious about flashing FPD ROMs blindly.

Has anyone successfully upgraded a TPD interface card to ROM 4.4 and gotten it working with the SE Accelerator 16 under System 7?

Were you able to use the commonly available "FPD 4.4" ROM images to do this, or did you need a different dump specifically from a TPD board?

 

[Arbee]

From what I can tell, there were multiple versions of these cards. The ROM version for the card I emulate in MAME is marked "TPD FPD-ASIC v4.1" and the ROMs are at locations U6 and U7.

I would expect a card that works with both monitors to have two crystals: one 51 MHz (FPD) and one 99 MHz (TPD) based on photos of single-purpose FPD and TPD cards.

Could you image and share your 3.0 ROMs? ROM images for SE PDS cards are super hard to find so any dumps are always welcome.

 

[jasonfortheworld]

From what I can tell, there were multiple versions of these cards. The ROM version for the card I emulate in MAME is marked "TPD FPD-ASIC v4.1" and the ROMs are at locations U6 and U7.

I would expect a card that works with both monitors to have two crystals: one 51 MHz (FPD) and one 99 MHz (TPD) based on photos of single-purpose FPD and TPD cards.

Could you image and share your 3.0 ROMs? ROM images for SE PDS cards are super hard to find so any dumps are always welcome.

Very interesting! I'm away from my apartment right now, but I wonder if this suggests that TPD and FPD cards are in fact compatible with ROMs from eachother.

I don't have the tools to dump my ROMs, but if you could recommend some to me I'll gladly get those copied onto Macintosh Garden.

 

[joevt]

I don't have the tools to dump my ROMs, but if you could recommend some to me I'll gladly get those copied onto Macintosh Garden.

Try SlotsGrab at https://github.com/joevt/SlotsDump

 

[jasonfortheworld]

Try SlotsGrab at https://github.com/joevt/SlotsDump

Thanks! What kind of hardware would you recommend I use with SlotsDump?

 

[joevt]

Thanks! What kind of hardware would you recommend I use with SlotsDump?

You run it on a Mac that contains the NuBus or PDS card to extract the ROM of the NuBus or PDS card.

The Radius SE Accelerator 16 is a PDS card so I think it should have a slot ROM that SlotsGrab should be able to get. SlotsDump gets the ROM too and also displays the contents and icons. SlotsParse is for modern macOS to parse a dump retrieved by SlotsGrab or SlotsDump or other means.

The thread title and much of the contents of your first post implies that the display has a separate ROM from the card that it is connected to? Can you elaborate?

People of requested the ROM of the Radius SE Accelerator 16 at
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/radius-se-accelerator-16-rom-dumps.33725/

 

[joevt]

Thanks! What kind of hardware would you recommend I use with SlotsDump?

Use SlotsDump.zip from release v1.2. v1.1 didn't have resource forks.

 

[jasonfortheworld]

Use SlotsDump.zip from release v1.2. v1.1 didn't have resource forks.

Gotcha! I wasn't sure if I needed any special hardware to read the chip, but it's nice to know I don't.

As for the separate ROM thing thats just my bad writing. The Two Page Display is the name given to both the video card and the display itself that was used. I don't own the display, so I'm only ever referring to the magicbus video card.