Bolles finds

[Bolle]

Figured it might be time for one like these for me as well.

The start is going to be made by a SE I just picked up from the post office:



It was advertised as an SE/30 by the seller and the pictures in the auction showed it indeed had a SE/30 sticker on the back. Also notice the network card - the reason for me to get this one in the first place:



This one either had to be a homemade SE->SE/30 upgrade or someone just swapped around parts between machines back when it was still in use. With the price being low I did not even bother to ask the seller to investigate this further and take more pictures and just had him send it to me right away.

Turns out it is a regular SE with 800K drive, IWM and old ROMs and a 20MB Miniscribe drive. Logicboard is dated 1986 and has a soldered battery, so one of the earlier boards. The internal chassis also is the old original SE chassis without the cutout for vertical PDS cards like found on later SEs and SE/30. Did not have one of those yet.

To my surprise the Miniscribe works just fine after rocking the interrupter to overcome stiction. The SE booted right up and the drive checks out without any bad blocks. Never seen a working Miniscribe in person yet - awesome noises it makes.

As the pictures of the back of the machine indicated it had indeed a network card inside:



This is an Asante MacCon + SEE. You do not seem to see these (or any other SE NICs) very often.

The SE seems to have been used as a Router. There was Apple Internet Router installed together with Apple Share and MacTCP. Even though After Dark is installed as well the screen has some pretty bad burn in. This SE has done some work back in it the as it seems. Even more it is surprising to me that the Miniscribe is still working today - just imagine the hours and hours it must have been running.

Now if there would be a way to use the network card together with one of my 030 Accelerators for the SE. Passthrough hack time anyone? }

 

[IlikeTech]

Actually, I think running without having to spin down very often may actually make the drive last longer, because there is less of a chance for the heads to stick to the platters.

 

[james_w]

Always nice to meet a proper workhorse Mac!

 

[Bolle]

No new machine in a long time... have been getting a few small goodies in between so it as time to get a new complete machine.

As there is no such thing as having too many SE/30s I just got this nice thing from the delivery guy:



Really nice case... No yellowing at all, no scratches or scuffs and (actually my first) intact programmer switch.

The caps on the logicboard just started to leak and there is literally no corrosion anywhere. This makes it the nicest SE/30 I have so far.

It came with 8MB of RAM and an 80MB harddrive.

As usual I did get the machine for the extras that I suspected inside. Pictures from the listing showed a video port on the back.

Peeking inside revealed one something quite unusual - I didn't even know Formac made any graphics cards for the SE/30 at all.



It's labeled ProNitron 80.SE/4. Pretty sure it was supposed to drive one of the Formac fixed frequency CRTs from back then. We will see if I can get any of my screens to sync to this thing.

If I start up the SE/30 with the card in place it defaults the main display to the non-existent external screen and I can't do much from there. Gotta get all my monitors out of the basement to see if one will sync. I suppose the card has sync on green as there are no separate connections for H- or VSync to the connector breakout.

 

[omidimo]

As there is no such thing as having too many SE/30s

 TRUTH! 

That is an interesting card indeed, I wonder if it is an original design or a derivative based on an other card. 

 

[Bolle]

And it works... It is putting out 1024*768*8bit@79Hz which my old Compaq 8030 has no issues syncing to.

The monitors control panel also offers 1024*928. The card will still output 1024*768 but you can pan the display up and down whenever the mouse arrow hits the top or bottom of the screen.

I know this mode from Formac PCI video cards already but quite surprising it already existed back then.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Neat card, always like seeing another one in the maximum spec form factor. I wonder if drivers are available? Have you tried SwitchRez(?) or the like?

Just one SE/30 is too many, just say no. Addiction vampire Mac strong it is. Once bitten, thirst for most outrageously expensive cards in the Mac pantheon is unendurable  .  .  .  doing the craziest things. :blink:

 

[EvieSigma]

I'm still hoping to someday blunder into a SE/30 PDS accelerator...

 

[trag]

 TRUTH! 

That is an interesting card indeed, I wonder if it is an original design or a derivative based on an other card. 

It looks very similar to some of the Lapis designs, although which direction the derivation might have gone is not certain.

But all of their appearances follow a certain functional logic.    In this case, I'm thinking of Lapis cards I've seen that are based off a large (at the time) FPGA chip.   All the Lapis boards I've seen used Xilinx and this one has a TI chip of some flavor on board, which might not be an FPGA.

 

[omidimo]

Just checked my Lapis and it is a XILINX/TI Combo as you stated. 

 

[Bolle]

The TI chip on the Formac card is a video system controller.

http://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf/download.php?id=264c504fc8606c3fbde0e44123b15a45d8d06c&type=M&query=TMS34061FN

The TI chip on the Lapis board is a RAMDAC, so the video controller must be implemented in that Xilinx FPGA. A lot of graphics cards used FPGAs as the video system controller

I am pretty certain that this card is their original design.

Also it does not seem to need any drivers as it is not accelerated anyways. You can switch resolutions on some old Formac cards by swapping in different ROMs (at least this is how it worked on some of their Nubus cards for their line of fixed frequency CRTs)

SwitchRes is not going to help me here I think. Apart from that 1024*768 is pretty impressive as a secondary display next to an SE/30 anyways.

While we are at it I just got another delivery with some cards I snatched:



We have another Formac card right there together with its manual. Then there is some E-Machines graphics card - it must be a Futura II I believe.

The Asante MacCon is going straight to their 20 brothers and sisters piling up in the random Nubus cards box.

What is particularly interesting is the other NIC in the lot. It only says "EMacIIc". Google throws out that it was made by CELAN Technology Inc. Never heard of them before.

Finding drivers for this thing is going to be interesting...

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Run SlotInfo. Does the E-Machines card have the passthru and backplane cutout for NIC/DSP daughtercards? Those little NIC addons to FuturaIISX/EX(?) boards are the cat's meow in slot starved Macs!

 

[trag]

It's a Futura II, probably an SX.   I can tell by the short length (Futura (not II)  were long cards), lack of a rotary selector switch, and the presence of connectors for  the ethernet daughter card and DSP coprocessor board.

While the ethernet daughter board is nice, the fact that it causes the machine to hang when it loads Open Transport limits its utility.   Works fine with classic networking though.

It looks like it has a IIsi mounting bracket attached.

Here's an image of the 10baseT daughter card.

I have drivers for the Futura II SX here:

https://www.prismnet.com/~trag/Mac_Drivers/

Not obvious that the EMFII_Accessories is one of the disk images for that.   Hmmm, and I don't remember what the Installation.img.bin file is anymore.  Might want to grab that and decompress it just in case.

Also a little update that a nice fellow wrote back in the 90s that fixes some compatibility issue with later OSs. 

https://www.prismnet.com/~trag/Mac_Drivers/ E_Machines3.5.6patch.sea.Bin

  I can't remember the details any more.  With any luck there's a readme in the archive.  It was something like allows the QD acceleration extension to work with OS later than 7.5 or 7.1 or something, but you still lose one of the functions of the control panel, but it was a seldom used function, like the extended desktop, maybe.    I think.  Really old memories.  I'm sure I have the email from the author archived somewhere that I cannot conveniently get to it...

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Excellent news and many thanks, trag! I've got a pair of cards with one each of the 10bT/ThinNet daughtercard NICs. Don't remember in what thread where, but bbraun explained something about how these multi-function cards use but a single Slot ID.

As a side note: DuoDocks of every sort are the most amazing multiple function PDS cards. It might be nice to take a swak at grafting some Dock board or other into the likes of one of those LC lid elevator shoe boxen expansion doohickies. It's a $E card right up the alley of the LC PDS/MicroQuadra PDS! h34r:

 

[omidimo]

Interesting stuff about the Futura card, the one I got is a little different, has the dial and no lower DSP slot. I was told it was a Futura II SX. Hoping I can land a NIC board too someday. 

 

[trag]

@omidimo   Well that one is odd -- or at least,  utterly unfamiliar to me.   I thought I was pretty well versed in the E-Machines family.  Perhaps I'm misremembering and the Futura Color 8 was a long card and the Futura (no II) was a short card with a dial?  I don't know.   Does TattleTech have anything to say about it?

Or maybe there was an early variant of the Futura II before they developed soft resolution switching.

 

[omidimo]

@trag TattleTech is reporting Futura II SX - Board ID 1462 - Revision 1.0.1 - July.1993

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Which IC is the Declaration ROM? Rev. Number spec made me think of upgrades. Is there EEPROM on board.

NuBus Mafia's Futura II LX scan over on 'fritter.

http://lowendmac.com/video/futura2sx.html

http://lowendmac.com/video/futura2lx.html

Don't recall reading about this 7" Card w/DSP upgrade slot:

http://lowendmac.com/video/emacultlx7.html

I'm too tired to pull the NIC off the one of mine I can lay my hands upon for comparison ATM, but I'll rummage through the Plastic Drawer of Radius Goodness tomorrow. If I can gather Cards and NICs together on an open work surface and make the time, I'll do a photo shoot. Both are hard to come by in thes reorg/downsizing/storage compacting frenzy.

 

[trag]

Looks like my last guess may have been correct.  Early IISX before they added teh DSP connector and it still has a resolution selection switch on board.

U219 is the firmware chip in both of those photos.   I think my earlier referenced link has a PPC updater for the Futura IISX.  It might flash those cards to a more up to date rev.   Or hose them completely, but I think, back then, they wrote those updaters to they'd tell you if they weren't good for one of their own products.