Bolle
Well-known member
I had a friend of mine pick up some goodies from a local sale 200km away from me a few weeks ago.
Today I finally had time to drive over to his place and pick everything up.
The lot contained the following:
Macintosh SE 1/20
Eurotech Caddy CD drive
Keyboard
Mouse in original packaging
Novy Quik30 Accelerator for Mac Classic
I asked the seller beforehand if he could ship the Quik30 to me and keep the rest, because that was what I was interested in.
Unfortunately he did only want to sell the whole lot at once and this is why I had a friend of mine who lives close to the seller pick everything up.
After moving the stuff to my desk I unpacked the Novy Quik30 card. It looks like this thing has never been used.
Contained in the box was the card itself, a hardware installation manual, manual for the SmartCache software, a driver floppy, case opener, removal tool for the weird SIMM slots on the accelerator and a registration card.
Closer look at the Quik30:
...and the back:
This thing has a socket that mounts right onto the QFP 68000 on the classic logicboard. The actual accelerator will then be mounted under the logicboard:
The card features a 25MHz 030 and 68882 and up to 16MB onboard RAM. The RAM can be configured for 1 or 2 wait-states and there is also a socket for a crystal, so you can swap out the 030 and 68882 for faster parts and run them at their intended speed. According to the manual it is also possible to run the 68882 at a different speed than the 030 itself.
Due to the limitations in the Classics ROMs there are still only 4MB of RAM usable for the OS but you can use the rest of the memory as a RAM disk. The driver of the accelerator will also load the ROM into onboard RAM to speed things up further.
Unfortunately the accelerator needs its own power supply, which must have been delivered in an extra box as it is missing from what I got.
The hardware installation manual states how to mount the PSU inside the Classic and where you can grab AC from the analog board to feed the extra PSU which will deliver +5V to the accelerator.
I used an external ATX PSU for the +5V to test the accelerator - everything seems to work fine, besides some heavy screen wobbling on the CRT. I guess it is time to recap the AB in the Classic. I did not remember it to be that bad from the last time I used the Classic.
After testing the Quik30 I went on to see what was wrong with the SE. I plugged it in earlier and turned it on but it did not start. The fan would run for a few seconds and then it would shut down completely.
I opened the SE up and started jumping around uncontrollable when I saw this:
That was another 030 accelerator right there :O :O
Did I mention I did not want to have the SE at all in the first place? Good thing the seller insisted on selling the whole lot at once. }
This one is a 20MHz Quesse/Total Systems Mercury 030 Plus/SE containing the memory expansion board that runs its own RAM on the bus of the accelerator like on the Quik30 as it seems.
View attachment 11075
I popped this card into my working SE and it booted right up. The "new" SE I got did also work after removing the accelerator - I guess the PSU in this one is getting weak.
I will look into the PSU issue and will most probably pass the machine on afterwards, keeping the accelerator of course }
The whole lot did cost me only 45€. Seems like the seller did not know what he had there.
Looking for a small PSU I can mount into the Classic now. Anyone has any idea what the power requirements for a 030 + 68882 + RAM + some glue logic could be? I want to keep the extra PSU as small as possible.
Today I finally had time to drive over to his place and pick everything up.
The lot contained the following:
Macintosh SE 1/20
Eurotech Caddy CD drive
Keyboard
Mouse in original packaging
Novy Quik30 Accelerator for Mac Classic
I asked the seller beforehand if he could ship the Quik30 to me and keep the rest, because that was what I was interested in.
Unfortunately he did only want to sell the whole lot at once and this is why I had a friend of mine who lives close to the seller pick everything up.
After moving the stuff to my desk I unpacked the Novy Quik30 card. It looks like this thing has never been used.
Contained in the box was the card itself, a hardware installation manual, manual for the SmartCache software, a driver floppy, case opener, removal tool for the weird SIMM slots on the accelerator and a registration card.
Closer look at the Quik30:
...and the back:
This thing has a socket that mounts right onto the QFP 68000 on the classic logicboard. The actual accelerator will then be mounted under the logicboard:
The card features a 25MHz 030 and 68882 and up to 16MB onboard RAM. The RAM can be configured for 1 or 2 wait-states and there is also a socket for a crystal, so you can swap out the 030 and 68882 for faster parts and run them at their intended speed. According to the manual it is also possible to run the 68882 at a different speed than the 030 itself.
Due to the limitations in the Classics ROMs there are still only 4MB of RAM usable for the OS but you can use the rest of the memory as a RAM disk. The driver of the accelerator will also load the ROM into onboard RAM to speed things up further.
Unfortunately the accelerator needs its own power supply, which must have been delivered in an extra box as it is missing from what I got.
The hardware installation manual states how to mount the PSU inside the Classic and where you can grab AC from the analog board to feed the extra PSU which will deliver +5V to the accelerator.
I used an external ATX PSU for the +5V to test the accelerator - everything seems to work fine, besides some heavy screen wobbling on the CRT. I guess it is time to recap the AB in the Classic. I did not remember it to be that bad from the last time I used the Classic.
After testing the Quik30 I went on to see what was wrong with the SE. I plugged it in earlier and turned it on but it did not start. The fan would run for a few seconds and then it would shut down completely.
I opened the SE up and started jumping around uncontrollable when I saw this:
That was another 030 accelerator right there :O :O
Did I mention I did not want to have the SE at all in the first place? Good thing the seller insisted on selling the whole lot at once. }
This one is a 20MHz Quesse/Total Systems Mercury 030 Plus/SE containing the memory expansion board that runs its own RAM on the bus of the accelerator like on the Quik30 as it seems.
View attachment 11075
I popped this card into my working SE and it booted right up. The "new" SE I got did also work after removing the accelerator - I guess the PSU in this one is getting weak.
I will look into the PSU issue and will most probably pass the machine on afterwards, keeping the accelerator of course }
The whole lot did cost me only 45€. Seems like the seller did not know what he had there.
Looking for a small PSU I can mount into the Classic now. Anyone has any idea what the power requirements for a 030 + 68882 + RAM + some glue logic could be? I want to keep the extra PSU as small as possible.
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