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Macintosh SE Radius 68020 Accelerator Woes

jake18125

Well-known member
So I recently picked up a very nice example of a dual floppy Macintosh SE which came with a Radius Accelerator 16 installed in it.
Alas, the hard drive was dead, so I've installed System 6 and System 7.0.1 on an external scsi2sd to see if I can get it working.
Despite installing the radiusware 16 extensions and even tracking down a copy of the 68020 SE patch for this accelerator, I cannot get any software that requires a 68020 to even try and use the processor.
The accelerator has been detected and is running, and the accelerator ROMs have been upgraded to the 2.1, so the accelerator can boot system 7. The 68020 is also detected in Tattletech and Mac Envy.

My litmus test for the moment has been jpegview, which does run quite nicely on my macintosh ii and LC, but it will always bomb out with an unimplemented trap - like it's only running as a 68000.

So my question is... do the radius accelerators only work as an accelerator, and they actually don't allow software that requires a 68020 to run?
Or is something still iffy with my configuration?
 

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Phipli

Well-known member
So I recently picked up a very nice example of a dual floppy Macintosh SE which came with a Radius Accelerator 16 installed in it.
Alas, the hard drive was dead, so I've installed System 6 and System 7.0.1 on an external scsi2sd to see if I can get it working.
Despite installing the radiusware 16 extensions and even tracking down a copy of the 68020 SE patch for this accelerator, I cannot get any software that requires a 68020 to even try and use the processor.
The accelerator has been detected and is running, and the accelerator ROMs have been upgraded to the 2.1, so the accelerator can boot system 7. The 68020 is also detected in Tattletech and Mac Envy.

My litmus test for the moment has been jpegview, which does run quite nicely on my macintosh ii and LC, but it will always bomb out with an unimplemented trap - like it's only running as a 68000.

So my question is... do the radius accelerators only work as an accelerator, and they actually don't allow software that requires a 68020 to run?
Or is something still iffy with my configuration?
Are you sure the issue isn't that it is calling unimplemented ROM functions, for example colour quickdraw routines? Sounds likely with a jpeg viewer.
 

jake18125

Well-known member
Are you sure the issue isn't that it is calling unimplemented ROM functions, for example colour quickdraw routines? Sounds likely with a jpeg viewer.
That's a good point, now I should probably try and see if there's another way of testing if software is actually using the 68020
 

Phipli

Well-known member
That's a good point, now I should probably try and see if there's another way of testing if software is actually using the 68020
If it benchmarks much faster and Tattletech says it is a 68020 I'd say it is a given :)

I've had software not work on an accelerated SE because it needed missing ROM calls. Weirdly the SE/30 has a ROM that supports colour, so it is more than just the CPU that makes them different. I mean, the bus is only 16bit on the SE for a start :)
 

Phipli

Well-known member
IMG_20220718_223623_008.jpg
This is when I tried to run F/A-18 Hornet 2.0 on an 030 accelerated SE. It was fine until I actually started a game.
IMG_20220718_222945_002.jpg
 

Crutch

Well-known member
I am pretty sure the SE has the exact same 256k ROM as the Macintosh II which does include Color QuickDraw.

The Radius accelerator should look like a normal full ‘020 to all applications. I think something else is going on.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
I didn't think it did, either: I was under the impression (though this is perhaps anecdotal) that the only B&W Macs that had colour quickdraw in ROM were the SE/30 and CII. A quick peer at my ROM dumps directory with 'diff' marks the SE ROMs as different from the II ROMs, but that doesn't necessarily prove much...
 

Phipli

Well-known member
I am pretty sure the SE has the exact same 256k ROM as the Macintosh II which does include Color QuickDraw.
This is an extract from the attached PDF. It says that machines that shipped with a 68000 do not have colour quickdraw. Hope this clarifies! I'm thinking you have the SE/30 in mind, because its weird that the 30 does, but then it is a mini IIcx I guess.
Screenshot_20220810_132134_com.google.android.apps.pdfviewer.jpg
 

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Crutch

Well-known member
Amazing! Thanks guys. I have been wrong about this since 1987 but never had an SE back then.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Amazing! Thanks guys. I have been wrong about this since 1987 but never had an SE back then.
The awesome thing is that the older machines actually support eight colours even though they don't have colour quickdraw. Useful because it let me use my plotter in colour from MacDraw.
 

JC8080

Well-known member
I have an SE with the Radius '020 25mhz accelerator, I can confirm that both Symantec System Info and Speedometer 3.06 see the accelerator, and it benchmarks much faster than a stock SE. The accelerator is recognized with and without the Radius utility installed, it's just quite a bit faster with the utility. I haven't tried to run many programs other than the benchmarks so I can't comment much on compatibility, I think the only other program I have run is Tetris to see if there are any audio issues (there aren't).
 

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