PEx ROM Project

[trag]

What generation was James' PEx?

That's a good question. I have not heard from him.

Maybe I'll try Linkedin. I think we're in each other's network. That should get around the SPAM filter, if that's where my email to him is going.

I hope he's okay, what, with all the Covid pestilence and such.

Does no one remember his user ID here? I know he had one.

1) jt, what was the name of the other forum (besides Applefritter) where there was a PEx ROM thread. I think you linked me into it several years ago. You can PM me if you don't want to post it out here.

2) jt, did Hap give you a download/extract of his ROM contents? He hasn't visited in the last day or two, and I'd like to get going on the comparison of the ROM extracts. See if Digibarn's is different from CaptainSerial's is different from Hap's?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Forgot: Nope, no drives of any kind have ever been hooked up as I've never seen a flash of question mark.

With only the bootstrap ROMs on board I get that beautiful startup chime and then nothing happens until I shut it down. I think I'll see if one of my PCI Thunder Cards will show the Radius flash screen. If that blips at all during boot it just might mean something?

Very curious about this little doohickey:



It's labeled as a JUMPER(?) or might it be a serial connection? I wonder what shorting it might do, maybe spew some data out of something somewhere during the boot process?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It was probably the defunct ThinkClassic, if not bbraun's site, dunno?

hap hasn't given me his ROM dump, no reason to, I'd not have any clue as to how to make use of it. A clone of his PEx ROM is the carrot on the end of the stick for me to try to put Humpty-Paladin-Dumpty back together again. What a freakin' nightmare that project is.

 

[trag]

I think I'll see if one of my PCI Thunder Cards will show the Radius flash screen. If that blips at all during boot it just might mean something?

I think that would be a great test to try. Might give us some more useful information. Have you connected a mouse or keyboard before booting? That could matter too.

 

[trag]

It was probably the defunct ThinkClassic, if not bbraun's site, dunno?

hap hasn't given me his ROM dump, no reason to, I'd not have any clue as to how to make use of it. A clone of his PEx ROM is the carrot on the end of the stick for me to try to put Humpty-Paladin-Dumpty back together again. What a freakin' nightmare that project is.

I think that was it, ThinkClassic. Jessenator linked to mac68k.info in another thread and that was interesting too. Is the latter bbraun's site? Seemed to be filled with discussion of his and Doug's projects.

No nightmare. We get the code from Hap. Compare it to the other two. I make a few more DIMMs. No biggy. It will take a little time. Just need @haplain to put in another appearance.

I got the Flash chips out of the attic today, hence my Lounge thread. Turns out I have 799 of the chips for making these ROM DIMMs in the attic. Well, now in the garage. So we're not going to run out of chips. I have 18 of the 20 boards I recently had fabbed. So we have plenty of new, blank firmware PCBs.

Biggest challenge will be running Rob's ROM deinterleaver & reorderer to convert the ROM dumps into code for Flash chips.

 

[trag]

It's labeled as a JUMPER(?) or might it be a serial connection? I wonder what shorting it might do, maybe spew some data out of something somewhere during the boot process?

I have no idea what it will do. Yes, it is labeled as a jumper, which implies shorting the pins together for some mysterious result....

For that matter, what do the jumpers on the IIfx do? All I can figure is if they're not in the stock configuration, the IIfx won't boot.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

No nightmare. We get the code from Hap. Compare it to the other two. I make a few more DIMMs. No biggy. It will take a little time. Just need @haplain to put in another appearance.

The nightmare is trying to get the zillions of shards of hap's Paladin back together again. Looking forward to that challenge for some time now, but life seems to have gotten in the way at every turn.

I'll dig into the Radius drawer for another card. The one I had in there or the MultiSync panel it was supposed to drive wasn't doing anything, could have been the cable as well, too many variables for a change.

I've always started my board up from an ADB KBD's power button, should I put a mouse on that chain as well?

 

[mg.man]

Hey folks... I love a great quest... but don't really have any hardware or particular PEx knowledge. That said, I've been rooting around the Internet since the early days and have been reasonably successful hunting down the odd / illusive bit of s/w. When coming up to speed with this saga, I did find the following...
- https://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/12/01/prototype-le-powerexpress-alias-power-mac-9700/
Is this a PEx you're aware of?

Also... I found a post on AppleFritter with the following...

Thanks HC for all the tips... I was wondering about early versions of Mac OS X too... I've got my hands on OS X Public Beta, 10.1.4 and 10.2 to see if these will now boot with the ROM SIMM - will certainly give them a go.

In terms of video, I was thinking of trying some A/V connectors from a PM 8500 (with ribbon cable) and seeing if this will fit the similar-looking slot on the PEX. A VCI card would be cool - you never know what might turn up.

If people would like to have a play around with the ROM files I've made available the following:

* PEX ROM SIMM Dump
* Original OF 2.0a9 Flash Chips Dump
* Digibarn OF 2.3 Flash Chips Dump
* OF 2.3 Device Tree listing (from Digibarn's Flash chips)

Those links are dead... but WayBackMachine to the rescue (above files - and some others - attached)

Please forgive me if this is all known and not useful... this is a great adventure you're all on!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Great stuff, thanks! That's the much rarer, manHattan, 3 slot MiniTower/Desktop form factor board. @haplain will need to translate the revision level designation. I like the sound files, gotta check mine again, I haven't heard any musical intro to the "KILL ME!" error code. It'll be interesting do see the comparison between DigiBarn and manHattan late version ROM dumps!

 

[haplain]

If I recall... very fuzzy. I think both of mine have different chimes. The one that @blitter has is fully operational. I think/recall it freezes on startup but if you reset the finder it will come to life. There are some fairly nutty files on mine from what I recall as well. I think blitter was trying to or going to dump the ROM. Let me see if I can have him get back to me and chime in here.

The second PEX I have, I forget what I need, perhaps an OS but again it's been AWHILE. I plan on selling the second one at some point, once I get it up and running, but if someone in the area wants to grab it to do some poking I'm happy to lend it out. I really don't want to ship it anywhere though.

 

[mg.man]

Poking around some more... came across this - https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/donvac
This guy (https://www.reddit.com/user/fingerzdxb/) posted some internal pictures in that thread and seems to be into the prototypes - he has a more recent post (1 month ago) showing a prototype IIcx...

 

[trag]

Thinking about it some more, I think James's PEx operated properly with the DigiBarn module installed. He'll be along in a while, so can correct me if I'm wrong. Linkedin worked for contacting him.

I don't know which PEx he has.

If my memory is correct, then there's a good chance one of the three "working" modules jt is testing will work in James's machine. Trying it would narrow down the possible reason jt's machine isn't booting 1) bad DIMM 2) wrong firmware on DIMM 3) problem with hardware/machine in which DIMM is installed.

If one of the three works in James's machine, then that eliminates #1 as a possiblity. We can't do much about #3, probably. So we'll focus on finding other firmware versions if they are available. It sounds like it, since Hap says he gets two different chimes on his machines.

The name of the file that mg.man posted suggests that is from James Little, so that's probably another copy of the Digibarn dump.

 

[jimjamyahauk]

Hello Everyone! Thanks for @trag and all getting back on this. First, I cannot believe I've not contributed to this specific ROM thread in the past!
I'll address that now! Also, just to connect the last info and work on my PEX board I did (https://www.applefritter.com/node/23597) (nb this specific board tech info also on https://www.applefritter.com/node/6148 and https://www.applefritter.com/node/23138).

Also wanted to revisit the past a bit and say was originally amazed that after pestering and then sucessfull shipping of the DigiBarn ROM SIMM that it would work on my prototype board - resulting in a boot to the Mac OS ROM. It was also possible to 'update' the PLCC chips from their board to mine (which were a previous version). And that it was possible to boot 8.6 and 9 on it after some OF nvram patches.

It was this that made is seem tantalisingly possible that if we could recreate the DigiBarn ROM that we could all have "working" PEX units.
Total hats off to @trag for actually having the skills (and now time) to make this dream a reality!

So, to cover some of the points/brain dump of pertinent issues from the longue and this thread I've picked up so far (apols for any repeated info you already have):

1. I believe my board must be near the end of the protyping/EVT (EVT3 or EVT4) process as the ROM from DigiBarn worked without issue and the PLCC chips updated to later firmware managed to work too.
   1. There could be issues with some of the other versions of the board as I know video chips changed along with some other controllers along the way - and support for these might have been removed in the later ROMs.
2. RAM - Unsure about this as the PEX is still wrapped up from moving house - but I'm pretty sure it said "The RAM slots say "NB DRAM 3.3 VOLTS." So from memory it's actually 3.3v EDO Non Buffered DRAM on this board.
3. ROM CHIPS
   1. The PLCC chips contain the Open Firmware portion. This can be updated (as shown from DigiBarns to mine, making the OF version go up)
   2. The boot sequence uses the PLCC chips first (can get into OF from them with no ROM SIMM) - although this is default output to the serial port. I seem to remebver needing another Mac to terminal into this to read the output
   3. A sucessful boot will have the PLCC firmware noise, then a second Toolbox ROM boot noise. Any errors could be with the first or second stage I guess?
   4. The PLCC chip code then hands over to the ROM SIMM - which as far as I can tell is actually just the MacOS Toolbox ROM and is 3MB with padding.
   5. In total on a production machine the whole ROM SIMM would be 4MB - containing the OF and the Toolbox ROM.
4. Here is a system report from when it was running 9.0.4: http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/ASP_Report_OS_9_0_4.txt
5. ROM SIMM. The dump of this was made from the DigiBarn SIMM that got sent over to me from Bruce Damer. The dumping was done under 8.6 and 9.0.4 using different tools. It was only 3MB but had padding in. It would make sense that it might have only had 3MB in it if was assuming that he 1MB OpenFirmware was on the PLCC chips.
   1. However, what about trying to boot without the PLCC chips in - at the very least to Open Firmware - that would show if it should be a 4MB or 3MB image. If OF is there on the SIMM then it should be 4MB.
   2. @haplain Do you have a fully loaded ROM SIMM on your board? Exciting if so. Would also be interested in what version of the OF you have there.
6. Booting. To see what it's up to see if you can get into Open Firmware - but you'll need another mac to connect via the serial port and tty - as the default is not any display card - but the serial port.
7. CPU/Video - Mine booted initially with a G4 400Mhz CPU card and a Radeon 9200 PCI.
8. Extra info for sucessfull MacOS boot
   * The Digibarn ROM chips contain open firmware 2.3.* The Digibarn ROM SIMM provides the full Mac OS ROM.
   * A 200Mhz 604e card allows the Mac OS ROM to boot - a G4 upgrade card hangs the whole thing.
   * Onboard mouse and keyboard don't work - but USB-attached ones do.
   * Booting into the classic Mac OS - the flash chips provide a boot chime, which then loads the code from the ROM SIMM, which causes another boot chime (not the standard mac one) to then load the classic rom.
9. Extra ROM Info
   If people would like to have a play around with the ROM files I've made available the following:* PEX ROM SIMM Dump
   * Original OF 2.0a9 Flash Chips Dump
   * Digibarn OF 2.3 Flash Chips Dump
   * OF 2.3 Device Tree listing (from Digibarn's Flash chips)
10. I STILL have the DigiBarn "broken" HDs
    Digibarn also sent over the SCSI HD which were in their prototype - however they both don't work:
    1 x Quantum Viking 3.5 series 455 68pin SCSI-2. Drive spins up but never becomes logically ready
    1x Seagate Barracuda ST34371W 68pin SCSI-2. Drive spins up with lots of vibration but then cuts out.
    Due to the way they were arranged in the case I suspect that the Quantum Viking would have been the boot disk, and the Seagate the additional HD.

 

[trag]

@jimjamyahauk Do you remember if the DigiBarn DIMM worked with your original PLCC ROMs? Or only after you updated to the Digibarn PLCC ROM code?

I am wondering if there needs to be some version agreement between the OF PLCC ROM and the firmware on the DIMM.

 

[trag]

@Trash80toHP_Mini Any version stickers on your two PLCC ROM chips?

 

[jimjamyahauk]

@jimjamyahauk Do you remember if the DigiBarn DIMM worked with your original PLCC ROMs? Or only after you updated to the Digibarn PLCC ROM code?

I am wondering if there needs to be some version agreement between the OF PLCC ROM and the firmware on the DIMM.

@trag I'm pretty sure it worked before I updated the PLCC ROM code - as well as after - but not 100%.

 

[jimjamyahauk]

Anyone ever follow up "Henry" who got the other PEX board at the same time Hawaii Cruiser on AppleFritter got his:

PowerExpress Revisited | Applefritter

www.applefritter.com

Did some googling for kwikdeth and henry and got a climbing YouTube - but the person might be gone from this world, if it's the same https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBw_jSM9RAzcQ5BXOW59Mlg

 

[jimjamyahauk]

ROM SIMM
PEX_ROM_SIMM_Dump.rom
digibarn.zip - Contains all the tools tried to dump the rom from withn MacOS along with the ROM information and PLCC chip dumps

TattleTech
• ROM :
◊ ROM Size = 3,145,728 Bytes
◊ ROM Version = $77D (125)
+ ROM is 32 Bit Clean = Yes
◊ ROM Sub-Version = $39F1
◊ ROM CheckSum = $46001F1B
◊ ROM Start = $FFC00000
◊ MacOS Boot-ROM Name = [None]
+ MacOS Boot-ROM Version = [NA]
+ MacOS Boot-ROM Date = [NA]
+ MacOS Boot-ROM File Version = [NA]

System Info
Production information
ROM revision: $77D.39F1
Serial number: Not applicable
Software bundle: Not applicable
Sales order number: Not applicable

SaveROM



Open Firmware / System Reports
OF_Tree_2_3.txt
ASP_Report_OS_8_6.txt
ASP_Report_OS_9_0_4.txt

PLCC Chips (these also in DigiBarn.zip)
OF_2_3.zip
OF_2_3_dump3.zip
OF_2_0a9.zip
OF2_3_dump2.zip

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Welcome back to the fray!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

@jimjamyahauk I only see three PCI slots in your report? Do you have the 3 slot PEx manHattan or the six slot version with three cards installed and the others not listed because they're empty?

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