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Carrera040 Info / Hacking Thread

joethezombie

Well-known member
Sadly, the old thread was lost.

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/21280-se40-grayscale-need-help-with-a-carrera-hack/

So, I've gathered some information here to start anew.  

I have attached v2 of the previously posted hacked control panel.  It is untested.

View attachment CarreraSE40_v2.sit

I have also toned out the adapter card, here are the results:

All signaling from the PDS30 to the PDS passthrough slot are 1:1

All signaling from the PDS30 to the CACHE slot are 1:1 as well, with these exceptions:

CACHE A32 [/ROMOE] is n.c.

CACHE B23 [n.c.] is connected to PDS30 B01 [C40M]

CACHE B36 [CPUDIS] is n.c.

CACHE B40 [CACHE] is n.c.

CACHE C05 [/CFLUSH] is n.c.

CACHE C07 [n.c.] is connected to PDS30 A01 [/RBV]

CACHE C13 [/CENABLE] is n.c.

CACHE C17 [n.c.] is connected to A02 [/FPU]

CACHE C20 [n.c.] is n.c.

Interesting that some signals are ran over the n.c. pins.

Finally, I have included some photos of my set for reference.

carrera040_front.jpg

carrera040_back.jpg

carrera040_iisi_adapter_front.jpg

carrera040_iisi_adapter_back.jpg

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Interesting that some signals are ran over the n.c. pins.
Are you talking about connections running on the Carrera itself or a pin on the 030 PDS? Is is documented as n.c. or reserved by Apple? Might it be one of the "Reserved" pins on the 030 PDS? I'm not nit picking about the terminology. It's important as the two can be confuzzled in the process of documenting pin buzzing.

If it's a "Reserved" pin, ISTR one of those puzzling me waaay back (DayStar Adapter Cloning thread?) in the what became ProtoCache1 phase of our project. IIRC the signal had to do with cache and having made some comment about that info being left out of DCaDftMF intentionally. You'll find info on the discrepancy in the IIsi Schematic.

I feel your pain about the lost thread. Might it be Waybacked? If you look for it, please try to find my lost SIMMspender thread while you're at it. [;)]

 

joethezombie

Well-known member
@Von, did you ever try the hacked control panel in your setup?

@jt, not the "reserved for apple" pins on the PDS30.  We are talking about the n.c. pins on the CACHE slot (p.522 DCaDftMF3ed).  The adapter takes some PDS30 signals and reroutes them up to the Carrera by means of the n.c. pins on the CACHE slot.  For instance, CACHE slot pin B23 is normally n.c., but this adapter takes the PDS30 signal C40M and routes it up to the Carrera on that pin.  Normally, that signal wouldn't exist on a CACHE slot. Other non-CACHE-present signals specified previously are also routed up to the Carrera in this manner.

@tt, the old thread errors when clicking on the link ever since the forum software update.

I've tried recovering the thread using wayback, google cache, and even yahoo cache, but failed. :(

Finally, not to put a damper on the efforts, but I feel this is going to be a long shot.  I mean, wouldn't MicroMac have made an SE/30 adapter to increase sales of this product?  They made them for the IIsi, IIx, and IIcx, so with the SE/30 mysteriously missing I can only surmise that there is some technical limitation we're going to bump into.  Unless of course, the omission is due to the sealed up nature of the compacts, and MicroMac didn't want to support end users in that endeavor.

 
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Bolle

Well-known member
They made them for the IIsi, IIx, and IIcx, so with the SE/30 mysteriously missing I can only surmise that there is some technical limitation we're going to bump into.  Unless of course, the omission is due to the sealed up nature of the compacts, and didn't want to support end users in that endeavor.


Micromac did make the DiiMo adapter though, so I would not count this as a valid excuse :p

 

joethezombie

Well-known member
I kind of wonder exactly what MicroMac actually made.  I mean, it looks like they acquired DiiMO Technologies and just resold that hardware.  Similarly, the Carrera040 is really a Mobius Technologies Speedster.  Did Mobius make an SE/30 adapter for the Speedster?  I kind of doubt it.

Code:
Now is the best time to accelerate your Macintosh with the Speedster 040. 
Starting at just $399, you can upgrade your Mac IIci, IIsi, IIcx, llx or LC to 
'040 power and immediately get blazing, 100% compatible performance.

 
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Bolle

Well-known member
Oh, did you actually try your Carrera with that adapter in an SE/30? I suppose you did and I guess it reached the "Carrera not supported in this model" thingy just fine, right?

 

joethezombie

Well-known member
I haven't personally tried it.  I have had the Carrera for a long time, but just barely got the adapter a couple of months ago.  With the recent RL tornado, I haven't had time for much experimentation.  Von did try it and got the not supported screen.  But I notice his adapter is a bit different than mine, having a PLD on it.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
If Joe's works, then it'd probably be useful to have an Adapter + '040 + Computer compatibility matrix for the II-style '040 accelerators out there (Daystar, Sonnet, MicroMac, and Applied Engineering.)

 

Von

Well-known member
@Von, did you ever try the hacked control panel in your setup?
Yes I did. Here is what I shared with Bolle:

Von said:
Here is the update...

The SE/30 has a Mac IIsi ROM and 80MB RAM. Cards in the PDS slot from bottom to top are:

1 Asante Network card

2 MicroMac IIsi Card that has a slot for the Carrera accelerator and a PDS pass-through

3 Micron Exceed card

The SE/30 monitor has the Micron Exceed grayscale adaptor on it.

I am running a System 7.1 install on a SSD drive.

I started with your v1 in the Control Panel folder and the Carrera Startup INit not in the Extensions folder. The machine booted just and in the Monitors Control Panel I could set 256 grays. When I opened the v1 CP, the lever was at 040 Fast (other options are 030 Slow, 040 Med, 040 Fast, and Auto). At this point I thought Xmas had arrived early.  I started playing with some of the tools on the drive. Unfortunately I can't get screengrabs off the SE/30 yet, but here is what I ran into:

Slot Info reported the following at these IDs

O Macintosh II

9 Micron XCEED Color 30TM

A nothing listed

B MacCon 30si 

C nothing listed

D nothing listed

E nothing listed

MacEnvy reports 

NuBus Slots: 3 slots used

Slot 9 Card: Micron XCEED Color 30TM

Slot A Card: (no card present)

Slot B MacCon 30si 

Slot C Card: (no card present)

Slot D Card: (no card present)

Slot E Card: Unnamed slot resource

MacEnvy also reports a 68030 for the CPU as does another Hardware checker that I don't recall the name of.

At this point I am thinking that even though your v1 CP is running, the 040 is not.

Next I added the Startup Carrera INit to the Extensions folder and rebooted...I could see the Carrera icon in the strip of loading however the boot froze there.

Next I left the INit in place but replaced v1 with v2 in the CP and rebooted...now the system crashed with this error:

Sorry, a system error occurred.

"Startup Carrera"

bus error

To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key 

[Restart]

Next I left the INit in place and replaced v2 with the Stock Carrera CP and rebooted...the system crashed with a similar error:

Sorry, a system error occurred.

"Startup Carrera"

address error

To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key 

[Restart]

I think we need to have the INit running for the system to see the 040 accelerator.  I will put the Carrera in the IIsi and see what MacEnvy reports as the card in use with the IIsi can get the 040 working.

If there are other things you'd like me to try, please let me know.

THx!! 
GeekDot said:
Hey Von,

My gut feeling is that INIT v2 is getting farthest (i.e. beyond the initial detection) but crashes in some other place, were it assumes an IIsi specific address which I need to patch, too.

Boy, I do need that old thread back! It was sort of my scratchbook and I have problems to remember everything I did - that's a Axel-system-immanent issue as I use to run multiple projects in parallel. Call it 'project ADHD' :p

Added yet another admin to my request to revive it, but probably Xmas is slowing down things ;)

Cheers, Axel
Von said:
Hi Axel,

I got the Carrera card back into the IIsi and when running, several apps (TattleTech, Slot Info, & Mac Envy) all report that the MicroMac card does not take a physical address/slot.  Here is a photo of the screen as I have yet to be able to pull screen grabs from the old Macs to share...



 

joethezombie

Well-known member
I believe it was GeekDot who hacked certain memory addresses in the control panel to provide compatibility with the SE/30.  I'm not for sure, as the old thread was lost.  There were two versions.  I didn't pay enough attention back then, because I didn't have the adapter card to go with the accelerator, but I have since acquired the one pictured.   Two versions were released, but I only kept the 2nd version in my archive.  I hadn't tested it, because like I said, no adapter card until now.  That's why it is "untested".

But, according to Von's post just prior to yours, it looks to be put through the paces. It should be noted that Von's adapter card may not be specifically for the Carrera.  For one, his is not marked "for 040" and has a PLD on it, typical of 030 adapter cards.  Mine is specifically marked 040, and has no PLD.  

Speedster does look to be identical to the Carrera.

 

Bolle

Well-known member
GeekDot did hack these but did never actually finish it. He is on it again right now though ;)

He is getting supplied with an adapter as we speak to actually be able to test the things he changes himself.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
I emailed the current owner of MicroMac to see if he has the original source code for the software and would be willing to share it.  Would other code be useful to ask about?  The ROM on the card itself?

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
.  .  .  wouldn't MicroMac have made an SE/30 adapter to increase sales of this product?  They made them for the IIsi, IIx, and IIcx, so with the SE/30 mysteriously missing I can only surmise that there is some technical limitation we're going to bump into.  Unless of course, the omission is due to the sealed up nature of the compacts, and MicroMac didn't want to support end users in that endeavor.
I'm putting my shiny nickel on power budget limitations as the reason support for the SE/30 was withheld. Power/Cooling budget's the most likely reason Radius (HDD Cubic requirement's another good reason) made the installer give the "not supported on this Macintosh" splash screen on detecting the IIsi Machine ID. Power budget limitations aren't nearly as severe in the IIs as they are in the SE/30. That's why my money's on the supported the IIsi adapter/lack of S#/30 adapter discrepancy.

Looks like the fairly easily worked around installer Machine ID limitation wasn't bothered with. From my understanding of what's been reported about errors, they probably put the Machine ID detection/rejection mechanism into the driver itself.  Since it's possible to install the driver at all on the SE/30 (it can be done from floppy, no?) I'd suggest to GeekDot the notion of looking at the driver for Machine ID detection/rejection of the SE/30 ID and disabling it if it should be found..

As for Slot ID/Interrupt concerns. Accelerators don't "occupy a slot" in the Slot Manager's mapping, they run  the Slot Manager in place of the somnolent native CPU.

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
I emailed the current owner of MicroMac to see if he has the original source code for the software and would be willing to share it.  Would other code be useful to ask about?  The ROM on the card itself?
Please ask him if he'd share the GAL formulas, driver source code and any other info he might have on the Performer Accelerator with the retro community. Gotta get that sucker running in the mobile 68000 models. :ph34r:

 

GeekDot

Well-known member
Hey all,

Yes, what I did was tricking the machine detection routine within the control panel. So no IWishIWere needed... which wouldn't make sense  anyhow, because if we ever manage to patch the Carrera INIT, too (which inits the C040 before anything else), IWIW would be too late to fake the Gestalt.

For now, you should use the CP only. In his experiments Von got at least as far as there was no nasty "This machine is not supported" alert... that's a good thing.

As soon I got my adapter from Bolle, turn-around cycles will be much faster than the current "transatlantic try-now sessions" ;-)

Currently, I try to trick the control panels IIci code into the SE/30's view of the world. Running in the IIci cache slot, the C040 seems to communicate through addresses from 0x5300 0000 to ~5300 0041 doing some bit-fiddling (it can even read Mobius' jumper-settings. Were there any?). Not sure (yet), if the C040it also asserts CPUDIS... will measure when I find the time.

Given my progress with my disassembly, it should be doable if either

  • The SE/30 does honour address 0x53000000, even "A guide to the Macintosh Hardware Family" says it's undecoded address space.
  • Or every occurrence of that address can be patched to another which is reachable for the SE/30 AND somehow manageable by the adapter.
We'll see. With the "real thing" at hand (did everything in Basilisk II up to now), I can do the testing in-vivo, set breakpoints'n'stuff.

Cheers, Axel

P.S:

If you want to try it: There are currently 2 versions of the CP... both available in this archive.
v1 - replaces the IIsi - IIci/IIsi both share the same I/O expansion address, which is different than the SE/30s one.
v2 - replaces the IIx - while these DO use the same address as the SE/30, they don't have PDS slots and therefore other detection algorithms might puke... [UPDATE: Now I understood that the IIx adapter went right into the CPU socket, so this patch should not work at all]

(Von posted his results somewhere above. I'd stick to V1 and leave out the INIT. Also try to keep your setup as simple as possible!)

 
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