Interware Booster 30-SE50F...very cool form factor

[Von]

This auction completed today...here is its description:

Vintage Interware Booster 30-SE50F 68030/50MHz CPU upgrade card for Macintosh SE/30

[SIZE=12pt] [/SIZE]

Manufactured in 1993 tested and works great.  Includes a 68030 running at 50MHz and a 68882 FPU running at 50MHz.  Also includes a vertical facing PDS pass through connector so additional upgrade cards, such as an Ethernet card or video card, can be plugged in to it.  Upgrade card is driver free so it will function immediately once installed without having to install a separate enabler, extension, or Control Panel.

I had never seen this awesome form factor before which is very compact with a PDS pass through on top.  I'd guess that one could stack an Asante and video card on top of this and have it all fit within the SE/30 case.  I bid what I thought was a ridiculous amount but did not win.  The photos from the auction as deep links as I am not sure if photo upload is working on the site yet.

 

[Unknown_K]

Pretty cool, but at $350 way over my budget.

I had IIci machines way before I snagged a SE30 so back then I snagged a bunch of 040 Processor cards from multiple manufacturers (Daystar, Micromac, Applied Engineering) and skipped the 030 ones. Now 030 ones are hard to find and adapters for the SE30 to use them are expensive as hell. So I can see a native SE30 processor upgrade WITH pass through for Ethernet being worth some money.

 

[superjer2000]

I'm definitely not an expert on the subject, but that looks like a pretty easy card to clone although I'm sure the processor and fpu would be hard to come by. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, but it only looks that way because there's no Cache on board. Not in the same class as a PowerCache accelerator at all. That definitely takes some shine off the $350 Apple.

 

[Unknown_K]

Any loose 68030/50 processors were snagged for Amigas ages ago.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I see a few on eBay, more at 33MHz and 25MHz though. 68030 has been around a long time as an embedded processor. I wonder if any of those are backward compatible at the signal level if not in the same package?

 

[Von]

Yep, but it only looks that way because there's no Cache on board. Not in the same class as a PowerCache accelerator at all. That definitely takes some shine off the $350 Apple.

No cache does indeed take some of that shine off.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Now you can be a lot happier about not having spent that "ridiculous amount." []

Cache relieves some of the bottleneck imposed on a fast CPU by accessing system memory at 16MHz. It's a bit like a thoroughbred in harness dragging a carriage, if not a plow..