• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

PerformerPro Accelerator Board by Harris International?

wottle

Well-known member
I picked up a non-working Mac SE from a local woman. I believe the power supply is likely bad but haven't gotten around to testing the voltages yet.
However, when I took it apart to assess the state of the analog and main boards (worried about the PRAM battery leakage), I realized this machine has a 68030 accelerator plugged into the PDS slot - labelled as the PerformerPro by Harris International, Ltd. It appears to be a 25MHz processor and has some empty sockets for other chips, assuming an FPU. Not sure what the second one would be for.

Anyone have any information on this? I couldn't find anything on Google, and the closest I could find was the MicroMac Performer/PerformerPro devices, which appear to behave the same, but definitely look different and obviously a different manufacturer.

I actually have a functioning SE that has a working power supply and analog board, so I decided to see if the main board / RAM still worked. Fortunately, it booted right up with my SCSI2SD plugged into it.

Everything seems to be in working order, and I'm planning on pulling it to give it a thorough cleaning, but wanted to ask about these PDS accelerator cards. As best I can tell, they seem to require a system extension to take advantage of the CPU on it, but I could be mistaken. When running the SE, the LED2 (amber) is lit up, but not the LED1 (green). I have not idea what either means. Is there a way in Mac OS 6 / 7 to get CPU information. And if so, would that software even recognize the accelerator? It really seems like this card should make my SE closer in performance to an SE/30, which would be great.

Any advice / help would be greatly appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • tempImagebdcqr0.png
    tempImagebdcqr0.png
    17 MB · Views: 54

wottle

Well-known member
Lost my post, looks to be a Revision E 1993 streamlined for SE support only with provision to piggyback a VidCard? Components look the same. Is there an empty socket on the bottom for Classic support?

Yeah, I saw the MicroMac stuff but felt like the pictures I saw of the MicroMac cards were different. Probably just different revisions. Even though the software links on that page were broken, I found them on their software page. I was able to get the PerformerPro Control Panel and the Speedometer software. I confirmed without PerformerPro it shows the CPU as a 68020 and after it shows the 68030 (https://photos.app.goo.gl/nCHgiCSLjDWd4Vhw9)! Pretty excited that worked. It's running right now so I'm not sure if it has the socket for Mac Plus / Classic support. Next time I take the machine apart I'll pull it off and check.

Any secret to removing the card from the PDS slot? I gave it some moderate prying before I tried to boot it but got nervous when it didn't budge. Concerned there may be a plastic latch that I didn't want to damage.

Also any idea what video cards would be possible to piggyback onto it?

I'm in the process of building an upgraded PSU with a Seasonic one I got from this video:
and planning on recapping the analog board in another of his videos (Thanks, JDW)!
 

Realitystorm

Well-known member
I'm currently in contact with Michael Harris on linkedIn, he's the founder of Harris Laboratories that later became Harris International. He's going to see if he has any information / disks in storage.
I'll post what I find on my site along with the other information I'm gathering about accelerator cards.

Wottle, if you could take some more photos and give me permission to use them on my site I'd appreciate it.
 

wottle

Well-known member
I'm currently in contact with Michael Harris on linkedIn, he's the founder of Harris Laboratories that later became Harris International. He's going to see if he has any information / disks in storage.
I'll post what I find on my site along with the other information I'm gathering about accelerator cards.

Wottle, if you could take some more photos and give me permission to use them on my site I'd appreciate it.
Absolutely. I will try to disassemble it to get batter pictures. I actually think I may have the box (in rough shape) and maybe some additional documentation if you think that would he nice to have pictures of.
 

Realitystorm

Well-known member
Absolutely. I will try to disassemble it to get batter pictures. I actually think I may have the box (in rough shape) and maybe some additional documentation if you think that would he nice to have pictures of.
Pictures/scans of documentation would be great to have, also image any driver disk, or backup any enablers you have. I'm trying to find out now if there is any connection between the Harris and MicroMac cards.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
I'm currently in contact with Michael Harris on linkedIn, he's the founder of Harris Laboratories that later became Harris International. He's going to see if he has any information / disks in storage.
Nice! If you get a chance, please ask him if the very simple MicroMac Performer was his project. Maybe he can say what might need to be done in its GAL formulas to get it to run at 32MHz from a 16MHz line on the Mac Plus or if the 16MHz reference line on the SE PDS might be run through the same GAL for that 32MHz kick in the pants.

@Bolle said the timings are too tight, he tried it for me, but maybe there might be a fix for that.

BTW, @Bolle, how goes the Performer Project?
 

Bolle

Well-known member
BTW, @Bolle, how goes the Performer Project?
Well, it's done basically https://github.com/TheRealBolle/Performer-SE-PL-CL

Again, it does not matter where the clock signal that runs the CPU and bus logic state machine comes from. There is no magic happening with the clock doubler GAL, the same could be done with a simple tuned RC network and an XOR gate. They just needed a way to generate a synchronous clock signal that's aligned with the logicboard clock.
If you wanted to run the CPU asynchronously from the logicboard bus you'd need to design a new state machine to keep the timing requirements of the devices on the bus happy.
There's other accelerators that are designed to do this. Unfortunately the Performer is not.
 

wottle

Well-known member
Sadly no. No disks and the hard drive was not working when I got tue machine. Had to do fresh install of 6.0.8 and use the Micromac drivers to get it to work.
 
Top