Thanks for sharing this.
I wonder if any of the PDS adapters purported to be included with the Power Workstation ever made it into the wild then. Mine didn't appear to come with one even though it's mentioned and pictured in the manual.
68kmla.org
Ya, the pricing doesn't suggest that the accelerator is included, but then the MicroMac website says this:I was under the impression that the Accelerator was an option, not included in the baseline product. Product pricing seemed to indicate that when I last looked at this stuff. Installation in the WorkStation was outside the scope of the Accelerator's manual?
edit: yep pricing info is upthread:
MicroMac Power WorkStation - Did anyone ever buy one?
So MicroMac is sort of weird. I'm certain the company went out of business 15 years ago, but their website is still up and running. One of the products they apparently sold was the MicroMac Power WorkStation. This has to be one of the coolest LC upgrades to have ever existed. Anyone here...
Create a post in our 'Trading Post' subforum instead, prospective buyers are not going to see your reply to this thread.
68kmla.org
@LCLover I sent you a private message, but just realized that maybe you're not getting them as a new member? I can't remember if there's a probationary period or something before you can use private messaging here.
Email notifications for DMs are still broken, so if the new member isn't logging in often, they might not have seen it yet.
I've still never been able to track down the elusive dual-slot PDS adapter that came with the accelerator option for the Power Workstation. After looking at pictures of other multi-PDS adapters for the LC's and consulting with people smarter than me, I suspect it was mostly a passive adapter, possibly with some programmable logic to handle PDS cards that needed bus-mastering. I'm told that shouldn't be necessary for a simple ethernet card though, so I simulated a completely passive adapter by adding a passthrough to this ethernet card and stacking some of the LC accelerators I have ontop of it:Got to thinking about this one. At least one of these expansion setups had switch selected, multiple PDS slots. Wondering if there might be any interest in coming up with a new build equivalent with a PCB supporting accelerator and choice of expansion cards.
First thing that comes to mind would be NIC + VidVard + Apple II cards. Amounts to passive backplane with A/B/C Interrupt select.
Not my cup of tea, but if someone wants to take the notion up in a dedicated hacks thread I'd jump right in.
). I also noticed this subtle language in the Power Workstation's product description:
Yes, interware booster/micromac thundercache (essentially identical in function) can cohabitate with a second card. I suspect most of the dual PDS adapters were just for the accelerator + expansion card case since there's no way to have two IO cards (which use the $E space, unlike most accelerators)I've still never been able to track down the elusive dual-slot PDS adapter that came with the accelerator option for the Power Workstation. After looking at pictures of other multi-PDS adapters for the LC's and consulting with people smarter than me, I suspect it was mostly a passive adapter, possibly with some programmable logic to handle PDS cards that needed bus-mastering. I'm told that shouldn't be necessary for a simple ethernet card though, so I simulated a completely passive adapter by adding a passthrough to this ethernet card and stacking some of the LC accelerators I have ontop of it:
View attachment 82038 View attachment 82039
My LCII booted fine each time, but the machine couldn't see the ethernet card. However, the only two LC accelerators I own are both maybe too "fancy" for this experiment, as they have added cache and RAM. I suspect that a simpler accelerator, like an Interware Booster, may have worked, but I don't have one (someone wanna loan me one?
I think that further confirms that only very specific accelerators would work with the MicroMac dual-slot PDS adapter (or any of the other multi-PDS adapters for that matter).
One of the accelerators I tried this with was a 50Mhz ThunderCachePro, and /PDS.AS was never asserted with it stacked ontop of the ethernet card IIRC.
