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Performa 630 DOS issues.

Solvalou

Well-known member
Hi again chaps.

I've drawn a blank on this one so I figured you guys are the best people to turn to.

So I have a couple of issues with my 630 that have cropped up since I've upgraded the HD to an 8GB one (2x 4GB partitions).

First one is that it crashes a few seconds after selecting "Shut Down". Not sure what might be causing this, it was shutting down perfectly fine before.

Second is to do with mapping a hard drive to the DOS card. 

When selecting "New Drive File" and making a file for the DOS HD (doesn't seem to make a difference what size I make it) and selecting "Initialize Drive File" and saving it on my System 7 booting Partition then going to "Create", it goes to "Preparing drive file" progress window and hangs after about 5%.

Sometimes it will just produce a blank white box after about 10-20 seconds, sometimes the "watch" mouse pointer disappears and sometimes it produces a pale yellow window with a 'picture frame' style outlines around the boarder.

Very bizarre.

Anyone have any thoughts to where I should look? I know the hardware is working fine, I can boot and enter the DOS mode fine, just can't seem to make a drive file.

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Brett B.

Well-known member
Odd... is there a newer version of the PC compatibility extensions that you could try?  I'm running OS 8.1 on mine and it's relatively stable.  I don't know if OS version has an effect on that stuff or not, other than support for HFS+ drives.  Fairly sure I've got a 10GB drive in my LC630.

Another thing to try is to pull the logic board out and wipe off the edge connector with a clean rag, and maybe reseat everything on the board as well.  Mine works great until I remove the logic board.  If I don't wipe the edge connector off I'll lose something... could be the DOS card, could be the TV tuner, but usually it's the ethernet card.  It's flaky as hell but it's been like that for about 20 years so I've got a good routine down to fix it every time.

 
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Solvalou

Well-known member
Well I'm running 7.5.5. I generally want to avoid 8.1 as System 7 is notably more spritely and 7.6.1 doesn't have quite the legacy support 7.5.5 has.

My old HD has 7.5.5 too and doesn't exhibit these kinds of issues.

However, that idea of re-inserting the main board is a good one, I'm not sure why O didn't think of trying that. Might get the IPA out for it too, certainly can't hurt.

It's pretty loaded up (full 040, DOS, Comm card, TV/AV stuff, etc so there's plenty to go wrong!

I will try that now. . .

 

AlpineRaven

Well-known member
I noticed that any systems below 8 is funny with larger than 2gb HDD.

I did have issues with 4gb HDD on other day and decided to format the HDD again to 1gb and problem was solved with DOS compatible as well

Cheers

AP

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
I'm just wondering now if maybe a smaller boot partition size would help.  Seems like I ended up with 2GB and 8GB partitions on mine.

Nothing wrong with running OS 7.  I overclocked mine to 40MHz so 8.1 runs extremely well, and noticeably better than at 33MHz.  

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
The OS 7.5 CD install complained about the drive size being too big, but it seemed to no issues with the 8GB drive being split into 2x 4GB partitions, only after updating to 7.5.5 and adding some software did it start to cause the freezing shut down issues.

Still no idea what's going on about the freezing of trying to create a PC drive file though.

I'd love to take this thing upto 40MHz, trouble is I'm not a great soldering expert. I have a half decent iron but I need experience which I have no time to achieve right now. Especially anything SMD.

Of I could find someone who could do the work I might look into it. With that performance boost, it might make 8.1 a more smooth experience. Is there any tutorials for overclocking the 630?

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
Sorry to double-post, just a quick question for the gurus.

The OS8 disk tools has an option to partition a drive as a ProDOS format, could the DOS hardware access that partition if it is formatted that way?

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
ProDOS is Apple II format... totally different from MS-DOS/FAT.  I think the ONLY way to boot the DOS card is from a floppy, CD, or a partition file created by the DOS card utility.

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
ProDOS is Apple II format... totally different from MS-DOS/FAT.  I think the ONLY way to boot the DOS card is from a floppy, CD, or a partition file created by the DOS card utility.
Ah I see. Il probably just make a file the size of the second partition in that case.

8.1 seems to have installed okay, will let you know of the PC side of things are working.

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
Well after installing to 8.1, I can finally make the DOS drives on the secondary partition with success. Not sure what the issue was before but I'm more than happy now so thanks for the advice on updating the OS.

Everything seems to work great, albeit, slightly slower than 7.5.5 but I can live with that (hope to get it overclocked in time anyway!).

One issue I currently have is the CD drive doesn't seem to work on the DOS side. I'm fairly sure there's an issue with my config.sys or possibly autoexec.bat.

Does anyone here have one of these with working CD support who can take pictures of their autoexec and config info?

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Brett B.

Well-known member
I'm just curious, now that you have the DOS partition file created, could you go back to 7.5.5 and keep that file intact and use it?

I know I got the CD-ROM working on mine at one point.  I will check and see if I still have it configured.  I know I have wiped and reloaded Windows on it a half dozen times recently and my latest attempt was to get Windows 95 installed and working correctly.  

There is a disk with DOS drivers on it that needs to be installed while DOS is running, did you do that?  It includes stuff for sound, drive sharing, etc... and probably the CD drive too IIRC.  You may also have to enable drive sharing from the Mac side from within the control panel.  

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
I'm just curious, now that you have the DOS partition file created, could you go back to 7.5.5 and keep that file intact and use it?

I know I got the CD-ROM working on mine at one point.  I will check and see if I still have it configured.  I know I have wiped and reloaded Windows on it a half dozen times recently and my latest attempt was to get Windows 95 installed and working correctly.  

There is a disk with DOS drivers on it that needs to be installed while DOS is running, did you do that?  It includes stuff for sound, drive sharing, etc... and probably the CD drive too IIRC.  You may also have to enable drive sharing from the Mac side from within the control panel.  


I did actually think this, I'm not sure there's a way I can just format the primary booting partition without destroying the DOS file drive partition.

There might be a way to downgrade but I can see OS 8.1 putting up a fight to achieve this.

If you could take a picture of your config and autoexec that would give me some insight. There's probably loads I can edit and/or delete, but is not so easy to decipher what's actually useful being as this isn't just a plain ole x86 PC.

I've made some edits with moderate success and have plenty of experience with autoexec and config. There's plenty of room for improvement still and much as I want to change the order of the commands and other stuff around to save conventional memory, doing this seems to just break everything. So unless someone has alot of experience with these 'hybrid' systems and/or has managed to fine-tune their setup, I'm stuck with them looking fairly messy.

Yeah I did all that, the posting even detects the drive fine (drive E:). But I might have to look at that drive sharing. Never thought about that!

Will keep you posted. . .

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
Here's my autoexec and config files... not that it's going to do much good to copy them, the CD-ROM seems to be recognized on the DOS side but when I try to run dir on it, I get an error.  Whatever disc I insert mounts on the Mac side.  Very odd.  

FWIW when you install the PC drivers on the PC side, the installer creates a folder called alt_cfgs that contains autoexec.apl and config.apl that I'd think would work... but I get the same results.  Error browsing to the disc and it still mounts on the Mac.

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Solvalou

Well-known member
Thanks for that and sorry for the lateness of my reply. I've shelved the machine for now. It sounds like you have exactly the same issue as me.

I wonder if Vogons might be more helpful for this. It might generate some interesting discussions at the very least.

In the mean time, please do post here or message me if you get any success with CD-ROM support through DOS!

 
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Brett B.

Well-known member
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.  Please update this if you get it working - I am just short on time for playing with old computers this time of year and won't get to it for a while but I'd like to know what the fix is... it's gotta be some little detail we overlooked.

 

Solvalou

Well-known member
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.  Please update this if you get it working - I am just short on time for playing with old computers this time of year and won't get to it for a while but I'd like to know what the fix is... it's gotta be some little detail we overlooked.
Not at all, your input, like everyone's is always valuable.

I'm in the same boat, like most of us working class. Sadly these have to take priority over our unhealthy obsession of old/vintage silicone!

No doubt I'll necro this again sometime and see if we can finally solve this mystery!

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
One thought about 7.5.5 vs. 8:

System 7.5.5 officially supports up to a maximum of 4GB volumes/partitions noted here. The page doesn't list specifically what happens on an IDE-having Mac like the 630 or 580, I'll ask @defor if he has guidance on that, at some point.



If you revisit this, I would consider trying the following things:

  • 7.5.5 configured with 3+3+2GB partitions
  • Using 7.6.1
The other thing you can do to at least improve boot time and memory usage is turn off or throw away extensions not related to things you're doing. I'll have to look, it's probably time for me to pull this system out anyway, but on my 840 with 8.0 or 8.1 on it, I'm down to around 12 megs of RAM used.

 
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