Dove Marathon Racer (68020) drivers

[wwitchtiggly]

Well, I finally opened the new SE with an unknown accelerator card. It's a Dove Marathon Racer 68020, which is very nice, with a 68881 FPU.

Problem is that I cannot find the drivers. I only found the Dove drivers for the 60830 which don't seem to work (won't recognize the 68020). I will take it apart tomorrow and see if the card is properly set, but would appreciate if anyone could point me towards the drivers, or insight if someone has a similar card. 

Thanks,

Pierre

 

[Byrd]

Welcome Pierre

Have you tried the driver for the '030 Dove card here?

https://vintageapple.org/macdrivers/accel.shtml

If you get a change could you please post a pic of the accelerator - I think I've the same-ish card but having trouble identifying it

JB

 

[wwitchtiggly]

Thanks for the welcome. My first post. I've tried the Dove 030 accelerator CDEV, to no luck. I saw a post in 2003 about drivers for the 68020 in a yahoo group, but it no longer exists (see post at https://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs@mail.maclaunch.com/msg08453.html).

This board is strange. It has four 1MB simms on the accelerator, and the SE board has 4 MB simms, but oddly R35 is still present and the Mac finder shows 2MB only. I would have thought that someone who upgrades the RAM would have removed the resistor to allow 4MB. :huh:

Still, board was well seated, without the CDEV, it boots into a 68000 at 8MHZ. Here are some high resolution pics.

 

[mraroid]

Many of the Yahoo groups have moved to Group IO.  You could try searching Group IO:

https://groups.io/

mraroid

 

[Bolle]

Wow, that's interesting, never seen one like that.

Not sure what the chip in the lower right corner with the "PROG" stamp is but if this isn't a PROM that's holding the FPGA configuration you will _need_ a driver to ever get this thing going.

Never seen an accelerator in a Mac yet that would get it's FPGA configured by a piece of software. I know some videocards for the 68000 based compacts do it that way so it's possible.

 

[techknight]

and those XC2064s/XC2018s are picky what chips it uses for auto-loading into the bitstream memory. its serial. 

 

[Bolle]

its serial.

They do support parallel mode too for loading the bitstream.

On one of my Radius videocards the XC2018 loads it's configuration from a part of the EPROM that also holds the declaration/driver.

But you're right, most of the time you see serial configuration ROMs.

 

[wwitchtiggly]

Thanks, I tried both Dove accelerators for the 68030, and they do not load (question mark on the CDEV). I'm using system 6.0.7 and 6.0.8, so it should not be a system issue. Without the 68020 application, you're right, it won't work.

I also realize how dusty the boards were in the pictures, I will try to get cleaner pictures later today.

 

[wwitchtiggly]

Clearer pictures.

 

[techknight]

Ahhh yea, its just a PAL there. 

You will need the exact driver for this card. 

 

[Bolle]

Just a PAL, so you will need a driver that belongs to exactly that card to get it to run.

 

[wwitchtiggly]

Yep, that's what I understood. Seems that I found only one reference for a driver, see enclosed. I tried to access the older groups, to no help. The drivers in the vintage macdrivers website are both Dove 030, which don't load.

 

[CharlieFrown]

Oops I thought I got 020 version.

View attachment dove.racer.hqx

 

[wwitchtiggly]

Thanks CharlieFrown, that's the Dove Racer 030. I even looked at it with ResEdit, and it doesn't seem to support the 68020 processor, see enclosed.

 

[jwse30]

I can't help with locating the driver, but it was neat seing the old LEM list message and Gamba's website here. Spent a lot of time with both back around Y2K; good times. I hope Gamba is looking down from a work station in the sky and having fun tinkering with an old Mac to make it do something it really never should be able to.

I'll keep an eye out for it; I just checked UMich's archive to no avail.

J White

 

[ExplorerZ]

Hello, i also have this card. I dont know if i have the drivers, but i have the original hard drive. How would i go about looking for them?

 

[Phipli]

Hello, i also have this card. I dont know if i have the drivers, but i have the original hard drive. How would i go about looking for them?

The file/s you want will most likely be in "System Folder/Control Panels" if it is System 7, or just lose in "System Folder" if it is an older OS. It will probably be called something like "Racer 020" or something with Dove in the name.

Do you have a FloppyEMU, SCS2SD or similar?

 

[ExplorerZ]

The file/s you want will most likely be in "System Folder/Control Panels" if it is System 7, or just lose in "System Folder" if it is an older OS. It will probably be called something like "Racer 020" or something with Dove in the name.

Do you have a FloppyEMU, SCS2SD or similar?

I found the drivers! I have a bluescsi. Thanks for your help.

 

[Phipli]

I found the drivers! I have a bluescsi. Thanks for your help.

Excellent - could you share it here? There doesn't seem to be a copy easy to find online

Remember you need to create a .bin or .hqx file (or something that does similar) to protect the resources, which are stripped if you upload an old mac file to the internet or a PC, breaking it.

Another option might be add a small (1MB) disk image to your bluscsi and copy the driver onto that, then share the disk image.

 

[ExplorerZ]

Excellent - could you share it here? There doesn't seem to be a copy easy to find online

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/dove-marathon-020-accelerator-drivers Here it is!