IIFX 040 Accelerator - Tech Noir - Nexus?

[Kevinlenane]

Anyone have any details on this accelerator in this IIFX? I bought it in Japan and the snap on card looks like it says "Tech Noir" but the current HD appears to be missing a driver. The chip looks like an 040 - but I can't tell from the blurry photos.

Apparently this company ran the Nexus build but it's pretty slim pickings on details - anyone have any first hand experience here? I will share details photos once it arrives.

 

[Phipli]

Anyone have any details on this accelerator in this IIFX? I bought it in Japan and the snap on card looks like it says "Tech Noir" but the current HD appears to be missing a driver. The chip looks like an 040 - but I can't tell from the blurry photos.

Apparently this company ran the Nexus build but it's pretty slim pickings on details - anyone have any first hand experience here? I will share details photos once it arrives.

That is a very serious upgrade card, you've been very fortunate. Hang on to that.

Ther is a chance you don't need any drivers, just Apple's 040 cache control panel for switching the cache mode.

 

[Bolle]

That chip doesn't have enough pins to be a 040 - it's a 030.
Interesting nevertheless to have a fast 030 and yet some extra cache right on the CPU card.
I wonder what happens to the IIfx logicboard cache when operating that thing.

 

[Kevinlenane]

I've never seen one - but i will acknowledge that i overpaid for the card inside on Buyee. All the references I see on Iifx upgrades have to do w overclocking the 030 - so I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at. The screen pic on the sale page reflects the original processor - which may just reflect the lack of a toggled cache switch.

 

[Kevinlenane]

That chip doesn't have enough pins to be a 040 - it's a 030.
Interesting nevertheless to have a fast 030 and yet some extra cache right on the CPU card.
I wonder what happens to the IIfx logicboard cache when operating that thing.

Ah okay - makes sense. It just looks like an 040 to me given the coloring. The docs suggest it runs at 55mhz... I'll post detailed pics when it arrives.

 

[Kevinlenane]

Ah okay - makes sense. It just looks like an 040 to me given the coloring. The docs suggest it runs at 55mhz... I'll post detailed pics when it arrives.

Looking at it again - it's absolutely an 030 - somewhat less exciting - but interesting given the general lack of Iifx accelerator options. I'll post detailed pics when it arrives.

 

[olePigeon]

@Kevinlenane Any accelerator for the IIfx is going to be rare and interesting. The only 040 upgrade I'm aware of is the Tokamac 040, and it required you to send your motherboard in so they could replace 2 of the PALs on the motherboard to fix a bug that prevented the PDS slot from working correctly. So it was an extra costly upgrade.

There are maybe 1 or 2 people with a Tokamac & upgraded motherboard, but for reasons only they know, they refuse to let anyone copy the PALs. Something that is, unfortunately, very common in the collectable community. I guess they fear it'll devalue their upgrade card. :/

 

[Kevinlenane]

I'll happily let someone study, copy, clone this one - who is qualified? Cough (Bolle), cough, cough.

 

[Kevinlenane]

Here it is - I haven't turned it on yet - but what a mess underneath this thing. The crystal is rated at 80MHZ fwiw.

 

[Bolle]

I see what they did there… it’s basically just faster cache to keep up with the higher clock rate. No extra logic on the add-on board and they tapped into the memory controller and the cache tag on the logicboard.
They probably could have just replaced the SRAM and cache tag on the logicboard with faster rated parts to achieve the same thing.

 

[Mk.558]

It's unlikely that it's ran at 80MHz. The highest commonly available 68030 processor is 50MHz, and people have overclocked that to various rates but IIRC it starts to become unstable beyond 58MHz (floppy drive stops working, hangs, etc).

It's probably just a 80MHz clock crystal that is halved. Common practice. Still, neat thing. How much memory does it have?

 

[Phipli]

It's unlikely that it's ran at 80MHz. The highest commonly available 68030 processor is 50MHz, and people have overclocked that to various rates but IIRC it starts to become unstable beyond 58MHz (floppy drive stops working, hangs, etc).

It's probably just a 80MHz clock crystal that is halved. Common practice. Still, neat thing. How much memory does it have?

Yeah, IIfx clocks are double the chip clock speed, so stock is 80MHz and you need a 100MHz clock if you want to aim for 50MHz. Or some other way of sourcing a clock.