Mac Hardware Hacking Ideas

[bigmessowires]

I'm thinking about starting on a new Mac hardware hacking project, and searching for ideas. Any suggestions? I'm hoping for something that other people would actually find useful, or at least find fun/interesting. Here are some random ideas… some of them are extensions of things other people have already done, and some are new. If any of them appeal to you, pick your top three.

1. Floppy Emu - Lisa support

2. Floppy Emu - IIgs support

3. Adapter for using ADB and pre-ADB (128/512K/Plus) keyboards and mice on a modern USB-base computer

4. Adapter for using modern USB keyboards/mice on a vintage Mac (bbraun mostly has this already, but it could be made more plug-and-play)

5. A Mac power supply voltage meter, similar to Uniserver's power tool but all on a single PCB

6. A magic turn-on peripheral for Mac II series and later that simulates pressing the keyboard power switch. Turns on the Mac remotely, or with some giant red ON button, or with three claps, or wirelessly from your phone, or (insert interesting "on button" behavior)

7. A ROM-inator type kit for other Macintosh models - maybe the LC or Classic

8. A 20 MHz 68000 accelerator for compact Macs

9. VGA or video-out for compact Macs (bbraun already has this partly working)

10. Something like a Floppy Emu, but that works over LocalTalk, and appears as a LocalTalk file server

11. Sharks with laser beams attached to their heads

 

[raoulduke]

3. I had seen this before; will this not work for ADB keyboards/mice? http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-2001-ADB-iMate-Universal-adapter/dp/B000067V8L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424145916&sr=8-1&keywords=USB+ADB

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I like 11, that'd work for Sharknado 3.

I'd like something like ADTPro, but for the Mac, but that's less hardware and more software. Or a NuBus USB card.

That being said, on your list, I think FloppyEmu support for the IIgs would be nice. Also a plug-and-play keyboard adapter for the older RJ-11 style Macs (preferably ADB)

 

[Scott Baret]

Awesome list!!!

However, I thought of one even better...

12. A port of Tetris Max for OS X

 

[raoulduke]

Kaypro 2x uses a very similar keyboard connector, I was astonished to find.

 

[Cory5412]

I second the suggestion of FloppyEmu support for the Apple IIgs.

Also, in the late 1990s directly before the introduction of the Power Macintosh G3 Blue-and-White (or maybe right after) MacWorld had an issue about servers, and one of the feature articles was a series of review about ADB dongles that would look for a heartbeat in the system and reboot it if the system or a particular app hung.

There were also ADB power strips that had more advanced functionality, such as scheduling. http://www.sophisticated.com/products/powercontrol.html

A modern reimplementation of something like that could be pretty neat, for scheduled reboots on a Mac that's doing server tasks, for example. (Although, presuming your server app doesn't manage to bring down the system, you could almost just do that one purely in software, so that may not really be that exciting.)

 

[NJRoadfan]

FloppyEmu support for the IIgs is mostly simulating that Sony chip in the daisy chain board that routes the control signals from the IIgs floppy port as previously discussed here. I think the Also the firmware should be updated to support mounting 2MG format disk images that is commonly used by Apple II emulators.

http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/Docs/DiskImage_2MG_Info.txt

http://nulib.com/library/2img-type-note.md

The disk image manipulation program CiderPress is a good place to see reading/writing 2MG files in action (it also supports Disk Copy images too): https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/

 

[bigmessowires]

ADB: Yes, the Griffin iMate works - I used to have one. Adding support for serial mice and RJ11 keyboards would be interesting, but maybe has limited enough extra appeal to not be worth the effort.

ADTPro: I'd seen that once before, but I think I don't understand the appeal of it. How would you envision using that on the Mac, to do something you couldn't already do with a floppy emu or scsi2sd?

An ADB watchdog sounds doable, but doesn't strike me as very exciting. I agree a scheduled reboot thing would probably be better handled in software.

Regarding the IIgs, supporting more systems with the same hardware would definitely be cool. But from a practical standpoint, isn't there already a floppy emulator for the IIgs? The CFFA3000?

Those tetris company guys made me cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, promise not to do any more tetris stuff.

WhiteFalcon - was that RJ11 request a vote for idea #3 or #4? Or something else entirely?

 

[CelGen]

1 - That would be nice

2 - diitto.

3 - These already exist and were a product sold in the G3/G4 days. It's basically a microcontroller converting protocols

4 - That seems a bit ridiculous, given how ADB keyboards grow on trees. Again though, it's just a microcontroller acting as a protocol converter.

5 - These exist in NuBus format. It's just a PCB with a resistor and an LED attached to each of the voltage rails. Some people called them the "Snooper" cards.

6 - Those existed. Back then you called your modem and it was a device attached in between the modem and the mac. A modern version is just a network interface that toggles the PSW line on the ADB. You would need something like Apple Remote Access however to make much use of it given how macs didn't have a console until the OS X era.

7 - That would be nice. This custom ROM stuff lately has been going quite well. Lots of new chances to make diskless machines.

8 - Just the CPU? No ram?

9 - That would be really nice. Even a standard composite output would be great.

10 - That's basically an Appletalk server. There would be a lot you would need to reverse engineer. Just get an LC pizza box and use that.

11 - I prefer badgers

What about some sort of scan converter for the Lisas? We already have a composite video output on the Lisa 1 and Lisa 2/5 machines but the refresh rate/resolution is so oddball I can't get ANYTHING to sync to it properly.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

That'd make it easy to transfer stuff to Macs without a DB-19 port, like my Quadra. I have a SCSI CD-ROM but it doesn't play very nice. Very limited market though, I admit.

It's a vote for 4, but for it to allow, say, an ADB keyboard to be used on a 128k or Plus, as those keyboards are getting harder to find.

 

[Schmoburger]

11.... Always 11.

8 and 9 also appeal to me!

 

[unity]

#9 - Is this not what the Power R was for? Or were those not VGA? I actually have no clue. I just know I have a few of them I pulled out of systems. But the cables were cut off, so no clue what the connector looks like.

 

[MJ313]

Can I vote for the right-angled HD20-only, no-screen board? I know it doesn't make a *whole* lot of sense, but it's what I want. Maybe the idea is totally dead and buried.

 

[danda]

Hi,

Would it be possible to create a USB device that emulates the serial connections of a Mac Plus (or higher), so that it would work for serial devices and LocalTalk? See this thread for more information, basically I am trying to connect actual devices to an emulated mac using Mini vMac.

A SCSI to USB adapter would be great (the few on ebay seem to sell for $300+, ouch!)

But otherwise, would love option 3!

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Danda, you mean like the Keyspan adapters? Those do work under OS X.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Regarding the IIgs, supporting more systems with the same hardware would definitely be cool. But from a practical standpoint, isn't there already a floppy emulator for the IIgs? The CFFA3000?

The CFFA3000 emulates a ProDOS block device. It works fine in most cases, but for something that accesses the IWM directly (think self booting demos), the FloppyEmu comes in handy. Its such an edge case that it really isn't a priority though. I'd say less then 1% of IIgs software requires direct IWM access to work properly.

 

[360alaska]

Have you ever considered making a standalone HD20 product? Something cheaper than floppy emu that has no screen or buttons. Just A DB-19 connector,a series of diagnostic LEDS, an sd slot, and maybe a header to connect a floppy emu…

Could you add the ability to floppy emu to measure voltages?

A rom kit for Classic II would be nice since it seems that the Logic board will accept 4mb total for rom...

 

[MinerAl]

I think 8 & 9 sound like the most fun, but I'm a compact Mac fan.

Seems like if your going to accelerate the 68000 chip and get video to the CRT, you'll have to have a video subsystem with its own timing of some kind anyway.  I don't really know what I'm talking about, but if you're going to do that heavy lifting, adding a VGA out would be fairly trivial wouldn't it?  Maybe SE/30 grayscale too.

 

[mactjaap]

I would definitely get crazy about number 10. Would be great if you team up with dougg3 who has made a working prototype. And include TCP/IP