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Macintosh SE/30 Schematics (modernization effort)

jhorvath911

Well-known member
If indeed uniserver is selling BOMARC's schematics without permission, and BOMARC is out of business, then we should put together an archive of BOMARC's schematics. This would at least prevent uniserver from making money on things he does not own.

I have the Classic II schematics from BOMARC to contribute, if so.
It would be prudent to verify whether he has the rights to sell the schematics before advocating that they be taken and posted for free. We do know that he worked with them to have the CC and Classic II schematics made.

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
We absolutely must verify that uniserver's no longer paying royalties under agreement with the document's creators before proceeding with such an effort.

I've bought the paper versions from Bomarc in the past in order to "legitimize" illegal electronic copies I've harvested from the web. Intellectual property rights are a serious issue and rights to it belong to the company's ownership even after the doors of a business have closed.

If anyone learns of a process to reimburse the creators for the illegal copies floating around, I'd appreciate the opportunity to divest myself of a bit more of teh filthy lucre.

Be that as it may: "fair use" of intellectual property includes artistic and educational purposes. Such is a sticky wicket legally. Consolidation of information from multiple sources even more so, but that's a time honored and legitimate tradition known as primary source research.

There are definitely gaps in Apple's "in-process" engineering schematic for the SE/30 and in its official documentation publications, specifically in the IIsi information in DCaDftMF. Error corrections and additional information almost certainly exist in later "unreleased" iterations of Apple's SE/30 schematic and errors in Bomarc's schematics should be expected.

For this particular project I'd say have at it, needs to be done and is arguably legitimate use.

All IMO, of course.

edit: note that my opinion here is based information garnered by personal experiences in the process of spending several thousand dollars on legal advice for very similar and in cases identical issues. 

 
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bigmessowires

Well-known member
I don't condone it or condemn it, but I don't really see how this is different from what Macintosh Garden is doing. It's redistributing digital content from original authors who no longer exist, or are no longer selling the content. Although not everyone agrees, most Mac collectors seem fine with what the Garden is doing.

 

bigmessowires

Well-known member
I asked uniserver, and he said he has an agreement with BOMARC for the schematics. I don't know any more details than that.

 

Scott Squires

Well-known member
I don't really see how this is different from what Macintosh Garden is doing. It's redistributing digital content from original authors who no longer exist, or are no longer selling the content. Although not everyone agrees, most Mac collectors seem fine with what the Garden is doing.
The part that rubs people wrong is charging money for them. Macintosh Garden doesn't sell other people's intellectual property for profit.

It would be prudent to verify whether he has the rights to sell the schematics before advocating that they be taken and posted for free. We do know that he worked with them to have the CC and Classic II schematics made.
I agree that before anyone crucifies the guy over this, that it has to be determined whether he has rights to sell them. From this post it seems pretty clear that the only schematics he commissioned were the Classic II and Color Classic. However, he may have made an arrangement with Blob for rights to sell the others.

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Out of curiosity, what rights to a commissioned schematic confer upon the purchaser and are retained by Blob for further distribution under the purchase agreement? He probably did contract work for DayStar and the like back when and purchase agreements are subject to all different kinds of limitations. But if he free lanced the efforts for general sales who the heck knows what applies at this point?

edit: general rule of thumb: the biggest PITA is probably the most ethical approach. :-/

 
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Scott Squires

Well-known member
Anyway I think we have derailed this thread enough. I look forward to seeing Alex's progress on modernizing the SE/30 schematics.

 

Alex

Well-known member
It would be prudent to verify whether he has the rights to sell the schematics before advocating that they be taken and posted for free. We do know that he worked with them to have the CC and Classic II schematics made.
Absolutely, without a doubt. I will not be posting anything BOMARC for this reason.

 

techknight

Well-known member
It would be amazing! But there's schematics, and then there's layout and routing. Even if we had a known-good SE/30 netlist in a package like KiCad, auto-created from BOMARC or Apple's schematics, it would still be quite a lot of effort to produce a working PCB. But I'd be the first to congratulate anyone who pulls it off!
Layout on a PCB for me is a fun challenge because its an art. But since the SE/30 layout is basically "done" its quick and simple. 

The hard part (for me) is a schematic/netlist that is accurate with NO errors. Last thing I want to do is layout a board that doesnt work from a schematical error. lol 

 

elemenoh

Well-known member
I took a crack at doing this in KiCAD for the video interface schematic. I've never used the tool before, but was careful to make sure everything connected okay. I'd love some help double-checking it. I'm willing to post the schematic files themselves but need to figure out how to strip personally identifiable info out of them first.

If this is helpful I'll work on the others over time.

View attachment Macintosh SE-30 Video Interface Schematic.pdf

 

elemenoh

Well-known member
This seems like a pretty cool and useful project! I'd love to see your PDF, but unfortunately, the link to this seems to be dead. Do you have another way to access it?
Hm it's working okay for me. It's just posted as an attachment to the forum. Do you maybe have an ad blocker or some other filter for this site? You might need to turn that off.

 

davidg5678

Well-known member
I just tried without Adblock to no avail. It says:

This attachment is not available. It may have been removed or the person who shared it may not have permission to share it to this location.

 

davidg5678

Well-known member
This is so cool! It is far easier to read than the originals! How hard was it to make this page? It would be really useful to have a complete set.

Theoretically, if all of the schematics were recreated, could a complete boardview be made to accompany them? That would definitely go a long way to make the troubleshooting process easier.

Here is an example of boardview:

https://openboardview.org/

 
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