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MacSE Mobius-30 33Mhz

uridium

Well-known member
Hi.

Does anyone have a scan of the Mobius 030 manual?

Want to get this old girl I've been handed running. Not sure what the little daughter board north of the video card VRAM & Xilinx fpga does. The bit that has the 3-pole shunt. Also keen to have a play with the external video for giggles.

Thanks :)

20201013_190720.jpg

 

gpbonneau

Well-known member
Hello,

I have the same, but 25Mhz version, not 33Mhz.

But the position of the jumper is the same :

RAM :

Jumper to 0M = No RAM on the Mobius board.  

Jumper to 4/8/16M = four SIMMs on the Mobius board (four 1MB or 2MB or 4MB SIMM).

By the way, if you have 70ns SIMMs, you can remove W12 shunt to run the board at 1 wait state.

FPU : Jumper to 25M if a FPU is installed.

The Mobius board run very well with System 7.0.1, Mobius Driver (v4.99), Compact Virtual 3.0 and 16MB on the Mobius board (4MB on the SE board are used as RAM disk).

Picture 5.jpg

The Mobius board has 64KB VRAM and was sold with a monitor (One Page Display or Two Page Display), but I found it without.

The Mobius Display driver seems to work well... I tried to do a video cable and connect it to a monitor but failed, I think I don't have the right monitor :-(

Picture 4.jpg

image.jpeg

I have the Mobius 030 manual as PDF file, I try to join it and to email it to you.

View attachment Mobius-030.pdf

image.jpeg

 
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uridium

Well-known member
You are an absolutel Goldmine of info on these lovely old ladies :) Thank you for the manual. I intend to inhale it tonight as bedtime reading. Much appreciated.

Having a skim through it, I'm wondering if I can run 4x1mb on the SE mainboard and 4x4mb on the Mobius030 for 20mb ram.

MacOS 7.0.1 .. interesting. I've been wondering which version I want on it but am cautious as the support software may not want something newer than 7.1. Thank you for the advice. I need to do some more soldering on the SE logic board to replace some damaged connectors and hopefully things should be working. I'll post photo's. Also the analog board has issues and I'm awaiting parts but.. covid.. shipping.. *sigh*

Also appreciate the advice on the 1WS setting. The RAM is all 60ns so that's quite useful. If the cache control allows for burst-mode on the 030 cache settings, it'll make a pretty noticable difference. I shall report back once it's working and benchmarked.

I also intend to stick my files and this manual up on my site for future people.

Best Wishes, (Thank you again!!)

Al.

 

gpbonneau

Well-known member
Having a skim through it, I'm wondering if I can run 4x1mb on the SE mainboard and 4x4mb on the Mobius030 for 20mb ram.
Due to the limitation of SE board (68000), you cannot use 20mb of RAM, only RAM installed on the Mobius 68030 board can be used (16mb max).

To optimize SIMMs installed, the Mobius driver allow you to use SIMMs installed on the SE board (4mb max) as a RAM disk, it's better than nothing ;-)

se-mobius-2-514x344.jpg

MacOS 7.0.1 .. interesting. I've been wondering which version I want on it but am cautious as the support software may not want something newer than 7.1. Thank you for the advice. 


I tried some other versions (7.1 US, 7.1 FR, 7.0.1 FR) without success... :-(

That is due to the way of Mobius driver patches the system... made for 6.0.5 to 7.0.1 version (US) only, from the time the card was sold.

 
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Obsolete_techie

New member
Hi everyone,
At the beginning of this year I was lucky enough to buy a Mac se for $35. Once I opened it I noticed that it had card installed in the expansion slot. After an exhaustive investigation I was able to find it was a mobius 030 accelator card its missing the memory. I was wondering if theres a special type of memory? I know that the manual only says 30 pin 70ns an above. Is there a specific one for the mobius acceleratior? Like name brand? I would really appreciate any help to find the right one. I also found this type on ebay but Im not sure if there compatible with the mobius accelerator.Screenshot_20210825-194033_eBay.jpgScreenshot_20210825-194020_eBay.jpg
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
I also found this type on ebay but Im not sure if there compatible with the mobius accelerator.

That looks like it's 80ns RAM (the -80 on the end of the chips is the clue here). The ns (nanosecond) rating is the amount of time it takes for the memory chips to go and actually fetch what it's been asked for; the faster the computer the less time it wants to wait around for the RAM to work out what the answer is.

So you need 70ns or lower RAM. If the RAM has the information available before the computer can use it, that's fine: it'll just wait. So personally I'd be looking for SIMMs that physically look like the ones in the photo you provided, but had -70 or lower on the end of the chip numbers.
 
I've scanned and uploaded the Mobius 030 Accelerator manual for Mac SE and Classic here and on Macintosh Garden https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/accelerator-card-drivers . Enjoy.

The manual was from my original 1993 purchase for my SE. Sadly I no longer have that board, but the SE lives on, with a bit more compatible MacSpeed 16 MHz 68000.

Also- including my receipt for the Mobius as a curiosity.
 

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  • Mobius-030-Accelerator-Manual.pdf
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Obsolete_techie

New member
I've scanned and uploaded the Mobius 030 Accelerator manual for Mac SE and Classic here and on Macintosh Garden https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/accelerator-card-drivers . Enjoy.

The manual was from my original 1993 purchase for my SE. Sadly I no longer have that board, but the SE lives on, with a bit more compatible MacSpeed 16 MHz 68000.

Also- including my receipt for the Mobius as a curiosity.
Awesome 👌🏼thank you so much for uploading these files. It will definitely help me figure out the card.
 

Obsolete_techie

New member
Has anyone ever install a coprocessor (fpu) on the card? I actually found one on ebay and was wondering if its possible to install one.
 
Has anyone ever install a coprocessor (fpu) on the card? I actually found one on ebay and was wondering if its possible to install one.
I think that should be fairly straightforward. For my SpeedMac board there was coprocessor socket. I installed a MC68882 and it worked fine, but not all software is compatible with the SANE “trap” that most SE accelerator’s control panels use to enable the 68882. Also, the MC68882 sold on Ebays sometimes are pulled from old boards so their pins require some straightening
 

warmech

Well-known member
Hmmm... you know, A/UX requires a 68030/040 with FPU and PMMU (and compatible network card, but an Asante EN/SC is allegedly supported)...

I wonder if you could trick A/UX into running on an SE or Classic, lol?

EDIT: Just realized my own stupidity - access to the PMMU and FPU are software-governed by the Mobius drivers.
 

SE-Newbie

New member
First off, thank you all for the awesome information here! I'm a Macintosh SE newbie, and just purchased one with the Mobius card installed. I have the Mobius.hqx driver file, but it needs the Mobius Software disk, correct?

If anyone here can share the Mobius 030 Display Software (from the user manual), I'll be forever indebted. :)
 

SE-Newbie

New member
For posterity, here is the info I found after spending a couple of weeks. :)
The Mobius v5.01 disk files can be found here: https://vintageapple.org/macdrivers/accel.shtml

I'm also attaching the files below. Note that the file size is 90 KB and 10 KB. The driver listed in #7 above (~290 KB) seemed corrupted and can not be de-compressed. I used Stuffit_Expander_4.0 on a Mini vMac to get these 4 files from Mobius.hqx below:
Mobius 030 (v4.99)
Mobius INIT (v4.99)
Mobius Display (v2.5)
Mobius Sound (v5.01)
The 5th file on the Mobius v5.01 disk is Mobius 7.0.1 Fix (v1.0).

I have my accelerator board running with 16 MB of memory, and 4 MB on the Logic board. System 6.0.5 runs well for me. Wait State set to 2 with jumper. Even though my memory SIMMs are 70 ns, Wait State 1 still hangs the system occasionally.

Hope this helps someone in the future.
 

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  • Mobius.hqx
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  • Mobius7.01Fix.sit.hqx
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GaryFDes

Member
I know that this is an old thread but I thought I would help out people in the future.

I have been trying to get my Mobius-30 card display output going to HDMI for a while now.

First thing I want fix from above is the position of pin 1. I doctored the picture because I don't have one myself (probably should have taken a picture when the back was off):

image.jpeg
I know the position of pin 1 because there is a triangular locator located on the connector connected to the board and the same triangular locator located on the cable connector of the cable I got with the card. The cable also has pin 1 on the ribbon cable identified with red hash marks along the length of the cable. The 9 pin connector has the pins marked on it and they match a standard Female connector.

Female 9 pin.PNG
The nine pin cable itself that came with the card has the following mappings:
9-PIN123456789
10-PIN9678210543
(Maybe this will help someone attaching their Mobius One or Two page monitors to the card)

I made a new cable with the following connections (male 9-pin to male 15-pin):

Male 9 pin.PNGimages.jpg
9-PIN222347899
15-PIN1231314781011

Then I put this 15 pin signal into an "Extron RGB-HDMI 300 A"

The picture came out looking great on an HDMI monitor at 1080p.

The Mobius display program worked on both 7.0.1 and 7.5.5 when selecting the Mobius Two Page SE selection.

I will mention that while the video part of the card works fine, because I cannot use the Mobius CPU extension (it crashes while loading), the 7.5.5 OS thinks that the CPU is an 68020 instead of the 68030 and the memory as of yet is not recognized. For 7.0.1, the Mobius CPU extension does work fine, the CPU is correct as 68030 with a math coprocessor and 16 meg of memory is identified correctly when using the Virtual program that is suggested in the manual.

Hope this helps someone else trying to get video out working correctly.

Gary
 

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  • Female 9 pin.PNG
    Female 9 pin.PNG
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  • Male 9 pin.PNG
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Realitystorm

Well-known member
I just picked up an SE with the 25Mhz board installed and I'm putting together a entry for my site. One thing I realized from reading the manual was that these sold with a 68EC030 which is missing the Paged Memory Management Unit (PMMU). I plan to upgrade mine to a full 030 to see if that will let it work with 7.5.5. According to the manual Appendix D that upgrade is "supported". Has anyone already tried that?
 

Realitystorm

Well-known member
So, I've upgraded to a full 68030 chip with a PMMU and 16MB of RAM, and I was able to run System 7.1 with system update 3.0 using the Mobius CPU extension + the Mobius CPU 7.01 fix. I tried 7.5.5 and it crashed. My RAM is 60ns, so I plan to do some benchmark tests with 1 vs 2 wait states. At the moment I have 4MB system RAM and a 16MB RAM, I plan to install Virtual 3.0 and see what it get's me for system RAM.
 

Realitystorm

Well-known member
So, I discovered even without any extensions enabled for the Mobius, and without Compact Virtual installed, the Mobius CPU and first 4MB of RAM appear to be active on my SE. So some benchmarks so far on System 7.1.3 + Apple Personal Diagnostics:
  • without enablers or Compact Virtual are about 9 times faster for CPU and RAM than a Mac Plus.
  • with the last available Mobius extension I get about the same 9 and 9
  • with Compact Virtual 3.02 (replaces the Mobius extensions and control panels) the CPU slows down to about 5 times that of a Plus, and when I extend the memory past 4MB to the 16MB (what's installed on the Mobius) the memory the memory benchmark is actually slower than a Mac Plus....
So I'm either getting a false benchmark from Apple Personal Diagnostics, Compact Virtual's method of accessing the memory past 4MB is slow, or the benchmark is trigger the swap file Compact Virtual creates (I can't find how to shut that off) and that's slowing everything down.
 

GaryFDes

Member
I have the cable from the card to the back of the computer so I don’t need that.
What I do need is for someone to pin out the cable from the back of the computer to a two page display.
Does anyone have a service manual for the two page display or can they pin out the DB9 cable that comes with the two (or one) page display?
 
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