MacEffects Performer PDS 68030 - My Review

[PB145B]

I have been patiently waiting for many years for an affordable reproduction accelerator for the Mac SE, and the time has finally come!

I wasn’t even aware these were out until I saw Ron’s video on it, and I immediately went and bought one!

Here it is installed onto my SE’s logic board (please ignore my crude battery hack job, I’ll clean that up soon).



Love that red PCB!

I had a few issues on initial boot up. Apparently, this accelerator supports System 7.0.1 with the tuneup, which is exactly what I had on my SE, but I kept getting a bomb on startup. I fiddled with it for a bit but nothing worked, so I updated to system 7.1, which solved all of my issues! So I recommend using System 7.1 with this accelerator over 7.0.1.

Next issue I had is with formatting 800k and 400k floppies. It would immediately spit out the disk with an “Initialization failed” error. The workaround I have found for this is to go into the Performer control panel prior to formatting a disk and turn off “Instruction Cache”, which seems to effectively disable the controller. Then afterwards you can turn this setting back on. You don’t even have to restart. I’m satisfied with that workaround, but if there’s another solution out there I’d love to know!

Otherwise, everything has been absolutely flawless and my SE is now VERY fast!

Here’s my Speedometer 3.23 benchmark results (stock SE is on the left and the Performer SE on the right).


Absolutely INSANE!

I highly recommend this accelerator if you want to get a huge performance increase on your original Macintosh SE without breaking the bank!

And I want to say thank you to @maceffects for offering this amazing product for sale at such a reasonable price. Now I don’t have to go chasing down $300+ dollar accelerators that may not even work!

Stuff like this really shows how far the vintage computing hobby has come since 2010 when I joined, and it really warms my heart I must say!

 

[nathall]

I’d be curious to know how it stacks up against an SE/30 and Classic II.

 

[PB145B]

I’d be curious to know how it stacks up against an SE/30 and Classic II.

I would too! I assume it probably isn’t quite as fast as an SE/30, but it’s probably pretty close to the Classic II if I had to guess.

 

[larsove]

Looking forward to getting my hands in one of these . The SE/30 is pretty rare to see over here. I own 4 SE all in great condition, and would love to have a faster one for using with music/midi . Cubase with more than 4mb of ram would be great. So if anyone have the skills to make en SE accelerator with 68030/6882 + more RAM, I’ll be standing in line with money in my hand!

 

[PB145B]

Looking forward to getting my hands in one of these . The SE/30 is pretty rare to see over here. I own 4 SE all in great condition, and would love to have a faster one for using with music/midi . Cubase with more than 4mb of ram would be great. So if anyone have the skills to make en SE accelerator with 68030/6882 + more RAM, I’ll be standing in line with money in my hand!

Yes, one with extra RAM would be insanely cool! The 4MB is reasonable for my relatively modest needs, but 8MB or 16MB would be a very welcome upgrade though!

 

[theirongiant]

I found out about this accelerator from the Captain's Quarters II BBS.

Installation was a cinch on my SE FDHD Superdrive 40MB. You can boot the Mac without the MicroMac Performer extension, and it runs just fine as a regular SE with the 68000 CPU. after the first boot with the extension installed, I could immediately tell the computer was running much faster.

I ran two sets of benchmarks: MacBench 1.0, and Speedometer 3.23. The former includes a robust set of hard disk benchmarks with sequential and random read + write.

Across the board, there was a 20 - 25% increase in disk performance this upgrade.

The synthetic benchmarks in MacBench 1.0 reveal an increase of 50 - 100% for the CPU benchmarks, and obviously the floating point scores are significantly higher thanks to the FPU.

Speedometer's synthetic benchmarks, with whetstones and dhrystones and various sorts and calculations, also showed a dramatic improvement with the add-on.

 

[theirongiant]

I forgot to mention that my Macintosh SE has System 7.1 installed. Since the SE has 4MB of RAM, I could technically run System 7.5, but I won't.

In photo #3 (the underside of the card), you can probably see some damage on the PDS connector: rough-looking corners on both ends, and a hairline crack on one side.

Their product page has the following note:

Please Note: Due to a minor production orientation error, the plastic shielding on the PDS connector will come intentionally trimmed. Reworking would have added cost without additional value provided to the end user.

I wonder if the PDS connector will be fine with this crack, or if I should send it back for replacement. @PB145B , did your PDS connector look as bad as mine?

 

[PB145B]

I found out about this accelerator from the Captain's Quarters II BBS.

Installation was a cinch on my SE FDHD Superdrive 40MB. You can boot the Mac without the MicroMac Performer extension, and it runs just fine as a regular SE with the 68000 CPU. after the first boot with the extension installed, I could immediately tell the computer was running much faster.

I ran two sets of benchmarks: MacBench 1.0, and Speedometer 3.23. The former includes a robust set of hard disk benchmarks with sequential and random read + write.

Across the board, there was a 20 - 25% increase in disk performance this upgrade.

The synthetic benchmarks in MacBench 1.0 reveal an increase of 50 - 100% for the CPU benchmarks, and obviously the floating point scores are significantly higher thanks to the FPU.

Speedometer's synthetic benchmarks, with whetstones and dhrystones and various sorts and calculations, also showed a dramatic improvement with the add-on.

Very nice! Love hearing other people’s experience with this accelerator.

Curiously, I was not able to boot my SE (an original 1987 model with 800k ROMs) with or WITHOUT the extension installed on System 7.0.1 (with the System 7 tuneup). So I had to pull the accelerator back out, update to 7.1, reinstall the accelerator, and then all was well after that. Boots fine with or without the extension now!

Yes, the overall responsiveness in System 7 is much improved. Things like switching around between open windows and stuff is so much faster and smoother than it was previously!

I forgot to mention that my Macintosh SE has System 7.1 installed. Since the SE has 4MB of RAM, I could technically run System 7.5, but I won't.

In photo #3 (the underside of the card), you can probably see some damage on the PDS connector: rough-looking corners on both ends, and a hairline crack on one side.

Their product page has the following note:



I wonder if the PDS connector will be fine with this crack, or if I should send it back for replacement. @PB145B , did your PDS connector look as bad as mine?

Yeah, I would avoid running system 7.5 on any machine with less than 8MB. It wouldn’t offer any real gain over 7.1 anyway on a machine like the SE.

My PDS connector is trimmed like the product page says, but it was not cracked. That crack does look a bit ugly on your connector, but I really can’t see it being an issue honestly. I don’t think that I would bother going through the hassle of an exchange for that myself.

I mean, if you’re really concerned you could put a very small drop of superglue in the crack (being careful not to get it on the pins!).

 

[mousehouse]

The PCB layout, partslist and GAL data are on Github - I was lucky enough that I got a friend to build them for me. It does provide a nice boost but in my experience not fully to SE/30 level. That will probably be the slow memory on the SE versus the SE/30. Also, there is no ROM or anything patching the system on the board - it seems to rely on the system extension to make the card work properly.

Pro's: small, fun and easy card, not that expensive, nice speed boost making the SE much more responsive.
Con's: needs the driver or the SE is dog slow, boot time increased significantly as everything is super slow until the extension is loaded.

Mine are purple

 

[LaPorta]

For one, I have found this to be different than others have mentioned. I haven't seen the SE be insanely slow when the driver is not installed...but then again that might be because I run 6.0.8. I stopped bothering trying to use 7.1 on the SE, because even WITH the accelerator, it is still too slow for my liking. I also don't see any benefit of having 7.1 over 6.0.8 on the SE. The accelerator does indeed make the SE even more responsive than it already is with 6.0.8...so it is helpful.

One big plus is that disk-based games work perfectly, and I am assuming that they just ignore the accelerator entirely. This is just what I wanted: one reason I don't like SE/30s is that the 030 does weird things (for instance, the fire in the fireplace in Beyond Dark Castle doesn't move with animation on the SE/30), so I use the SE for these things. So, basically, it works just as it should in both cases!

Only issue I have had so far is that Missile Command locks up the machine with a bomb message when I try to run it. Just restarting without the driver solves this.

 

[PB145B]

The PCB layout, partslist and GAL data are on Github - I was lucky enough that I got a friend to build them for me. It does provide a nice boost but in my experience not fully to SE/30 level. That will probably be the slow memory on the SE versus the SE/30. Also, there is no ROM or anything patching the system on the board - it seems to rely on the system extension to make the card work properly.

Pro's: small, fun and easy card, not that expensive, nice speed boost making the SE much more responsive.
Con's: needs the driver or the SE is dog slow, boot time increased significantly as everything is super slow until the extension is loaded.

Mine are purple

View attachment 80029

Nice! Love the purple PCB as well!

Yes, I agree it’s not quite SE/30 level performance, but I did not expect it to be. It does take the extension a bit to load on System 7.1 for whatever reason, but I’m not too bothered by that honestly.

For one, I have found this to be different than others have mentioned. I haven't seen the SE be insanely slow when the driver is not installed...but then again that might be because I run 6.0.8. I stopped bothering trying to use 7.1 on the SE, because even WITH the accelerator, it is still too slow for my liking. I also don't see any benefit of having 7.1 over 6.0.8 on the SE. The accelerator does indeed make the SE even more responsive than it already is with 6.0.8...so it is helpful.

One big plus is that disk-based games work perfectly, and I am assuming that they just ignore the accelerator entirely. This is just what I wanted: one reason I don't like SE/30s is that the 030 does weird things (for instance, the fire in the fireplace in Beyond Dark Castle doesn't move with animation on the SE/30), so I use the SE for these things. So, basically, it works just as it should in both cases!

Only issue I have had so far is that Missile Command locks up the machine with a bomb message when I try to run it. Just restarting without the driver solves this.

I haven’t tried to use it much without the extension loaded, but that would be an interesting experiment for sure.

I did copy the extension to a System 6.0.8 boot floppy and tired it briefly and WOW, it’s insanely fast. I may end up dual booting my SE with 6.0.8 and 7.1 eventually. Most of my software would probably run on 6.0.8, but 7.1 has some nifty little features I really enjoy also. Being able to boot either would be ideal for me.

Interesting about the disk based games. I have tried a handful of games so far and they have worked fine. I wasn’t super concerned about this as I can use one of my other many compact Macs for early games if I really need full, unaccelerated compatibility. But so far everything has ran fine for me with the MacEffects accelerator!

 

[theirongiant]

I have booted the SE without the extension on System 7.1, and it runs like a regular SE. No obvious issues.

 

[LaPorta]

Interesting about the disk based games. I have tried a handful of games so far and they have worked fine. I wasn’t super concerned about this as I can use one of my other many compact Macs for early games if I really need full, unaccelerated compatibility. But so far everything has ran fine for me with the MacEffects accelerator!

Indeed, I have a Plus I could do that on, but it is currently shelved. The SE is the only compact that I have set up (amongst my PT Pro, Quicksilver, and custom Quadra 630 my kids use), so I kind of needed it to act like a normal SE for the floppy games.

Glad it has worked out so well for you!

 

[PB145B]

I have booted the SE without the extension on System 7.1, and it runs like a regular SE. No obvious issues.

Nice!

Indeed, I have a Plus I could do that on, but it is currently shelved. The SE is the only compact that I have set up (amongst my PT Pro, Quicksilver, and custom Quadra 630 my kids use), so I kind of needed it to act like a normal SE for the floppy games.

Glad it has worked out so well for you!

Yeah, I currently have a little table set up with my SE, a Plus and a 512k on it, so I’m pretty well covered I think! I love my little compacts.

Yes, finally having an affordable accelerator option for my SE really has been a dream come true!

 

[mikejones325i]

I have a Radius Accelerator 25 in mine so I wanted to get one of these (I got the 40MHz FPU version) and I tried it but I had nothing but issues with mine. I can’t even run a benchmark. From seeing others benchmark results using speedometer, it seems my radius card is faster then the 16mhz MM clone anyway. Just disappointing as I really wanted to give it a try. I guess I will try it in my Mac Plus and see if it works there after I solder on a pin header and socket to the MM accelerator.