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Formac Accelerator Driver (finally?)

Mirokai

Member
Hello guys. I recently found a 33 MHz formac accelerator card in an old Macintosh LC.

Fortunately the hard drive (Quantum) was still working and I got everything off it before it failed :( .

Among other things I found a Control Panel file called "ProCPU_V1.06". I searched the 68kmla to get a hint on what to look for and noticed that nobody was able to find this "driver". It lets you enable the accelerator card and FPU + cache. It may work for other formac cards (SE, SE/30?) too.

Just unpack it into the Control Panel folder on System 7 or up. I tried it on System 6 but it didn't work all the way.

Please help me test it for other accelerator cards.

View attachment ProCPU_V1.06.sit

IMG_20200426_165704.jpg

IMG_20200512_132955.jpg

 
Last edited by a moderator:

lobust

Well-known member
Nice job! Six months or so ago I passed on a Quadra 700 that came with an accelerator that needed that driver, I spent a great deal of time effort to try and obtain a copy of it, to no avail. Pretty confident that your post is the only copy of it on the internet!

 

Bolle

Well-known member
I think I have that driver already somewhere in my archive and I think it is available on the internet archive as well.

Also that driver probably won’t do it for their Quadra accelerator, it’s only meant for the LC accelerators.

 

Mirokai

Member
I think I have that driver already somewhere in my archive and I think it is available on the internet archive as well.

Also that driver probably won’t do it for their Quadra accelerator, it’s only meant for the LC accelerators.
I have to disagree. I have been searching the internet for hours when I got the LC and didn't find this driver. There are formac drivers (even cds) in the internet but not for cpu cards.

You can access the ftp server from formac.com with wayback machine and find this https://web.archive.org/web/19991109095635/http://ftp.formac.com/public/updates/ProCPU/ProCPU-1.0.9.bin

but the driver .bin file is broken. Look at the version number ... it is only 3 minor versions newer.

 

ArmorAlley

Well-known member
That card looks super easy to clone.  Hmmm.
If you were ever to attempt it, would you take a leaf from Bolle's book and put in ethernet functionality as well please?

For me, the most important use of the LC-PDS slot is for an ethernet card.

 

Renegade

Well-known member
Hi, I just uploaded v 1.0.6, 1.0.7 & 1.0.8 to the Garden.
 
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