TylerEss
Well-known member
Here it is, after years of waiting!
The DayStar Turbo601 does *not* work in the SE/30, and I'm pretty sure we won't ever convince it to.
The good news:
-With the Turbo601 installed, the SE/30 produces the "PowerMac" startup chime. This indicates it's working to at least a limited extent.
-After sitting on for 15 minutes or so, the 601's heatsink is fairly warm.
-My voltages aren't drooping.
The bad news:
-With the Turbo601 installed, the SE/30 sits forever without initializing its video hardware. This is similar to the lengthy startup delay with a IIfx ROM SIMM installed, but waiting 15 minutes or more does not resolve it.
-This same failure occurs with the stock SE/30 ROM and with a IIfx ROM.
Looking at this behavior, I'm pretty sure that the #1 thing holding back PowerMac SE/30 development is lack of drivers in the PowerPC-native ROMs onboard the Turbo601. The IIfx/si/ci ROM SIMM hack clearly only works because Apple was using "universal" ROMs at the time -- ROMs with all the drivers for the whole extant Mac family.
We've always talked about the Turbo601 as if it had "PowerMac 6100 ROMs" onboard, but I'm pretty certain they're specially prepared PowerMac ROMs with drivers added for all the II-series onboard devices. If that's the case, as it seems to be, then to move forward would require the skills to disassemble the Turbo601 ROMs and build new ones that would support the SE/30. I'm not sure that we have that between myself, Jeff, TRASH-80, and the rest of the crew, even given unlimited time to work on the project.
I just couldn't resist coming out of "retirement" to tie up the strings on a dream that started back in 2006 on AF and has had a lot of input from a lot of smart people over the years. Hearing others' results that it didn't work was one thing, but I think these details and speculation really close the book on it for now. :'(
The DayStar Turbo601 does *not* work in the SE/30, and I'm pretty sure we won't ever convince it to.
The good news:
-With the Turbo601 installed, the SE/30 produces the "PowerMac" startup chime. This indicates it's working to at least a limited extent.
-After sitting on for 15 minutes or so, the 601's heatsink is fairly warm.
-My voltages aren't drooping.
The bad news:
-With the Turbo601 installed, the SE/30 sits forever without initializing its video hardware. This is similar to the lengthy startup delay with a IIfx ROM SIMM installed, but waiting 15 minutes or more does not resolve it.
-This same failure occurs with the stock SE/30 ROM and with a IIfx ROM.
Looking at this behavior, I'm pretty sure that the #1 thing holding back PowerMac SE/30 development is lack of drivers in the PowerPC-native ROMs onboard the Turbo601. The IIfx/si/ci ROM SIMM hack clearly only works because Apple was using "universal" ROMs at the time -- ROMs with all the drivers for the whole extant Mac family.
We've always talked about the Turbo601 as if it had "PowerMac 6100 ROMs" onboard, but I'm pretty certain they're specially prepared PowerMac ROMs with drivers added for all the II-series onboard devices. If that's the case, as it seems to be, then to move forward would require the skills to disassemble the Turbo601 ROMs and build new ones that would support the SE/30. I'm not sure that we have that between myself, Jeff, TRASH-80, and the rest of the crew, even given unlimited time to work on the project.
I just couldn't resist coming out of "retirement" to tie up the strings on a dream that started back in 2006 on AF and has had a lot of input from a lot of smart people over the years. Hearing others' results that it didn't work was one thing, but I think these details and speculation really close the book on it for now. :'(