Push an LC to the Max

[Dzave]

Hello,

This is my first post here and I had no idea that there were people out that that still have a passion for older Mac systems, what a great resource this is.

I just wanted some input on some ideas for my LC. I know I could find something out there with much more power very cheap but the LC I have is close to my heart. This was the computer my mom bought brand new when I was 12yrs old and started the roots of myself ending up in the tech industry today.

I have done my research and know quite a bit about the upgrade cards that are available. Currently it has memory maxed at 10MB and an Asante 10MB NIC. I really do like the pizza box form factor and the fact that it uses very little power compared to today's standards. I just wanted to keep this around and introduce my kids to computers on the same device I started on.....but with some slight upgrades.

I would really love to find a Presto Plus 040 upgrade card with onboard Ethernet and additional memory but have no luck in finding one. I know people have them but none out there for sale. I am also looking for a nubus video card to fit the LC if I cannot find the Presto, if I take the NIC out, can any card give this thing greater than 640X480?

On to the question.....I am aware that the original SCSI1 throughput is very low but the idea is to use new SSD drives in this old LC. I know there are adapters out there to do the conversion http://www.cs-electronics.com/scsi1-scsi2-adapt.htm/url] ADP-9056 and from there I thought I saw an SCSI to SATA converter http://www.addonics.com/products/io/adsalvd160.asphttp://www.addonics.com/products/io/adsalvd160.asp . I may be way off here so if I am please let me know. I would like to put 2 SSD drives in the LC and if the converter works the power supply could keep up because these use very little power. If that all works maybe a softraid mirror could work....probably not but I can dream, yes it would also be a waste of SSD drives. If that is a no go I would also be curious if SCSI to usb conversion would work to use a flash drive. I have seen a converter cable for usb2 to ultra scsi but nothing down to scsi1.

 

Thanks for reading the long post, after buying parts my luck a transistor would fry or something. Also if anyone has an upgrade card they want to part with let me know.

 

Dave

 

[Charlieman]

The Presto Plus 040 is the ideal upgrade for you. As you say, they are very rare. If anyone has one, can they post a report on how the RAM upgrade works, please.

The LC has a single expansion slot, which is PDS so you can't use NuBus in there. Third party PDS video cards for the LC exist, giving better resolution and colour depth, but you will still be stuck with the 68020 and limited RAM. If you put a card in the PDS slot, you can restore Ethernet using a SCSI<>Ethernet adapter externally.

Using Flash as a SCSI hard drive is doable, and there is a separate thread about it if you poke around the Compact Mac area.

Realistically, you are close to the limits of an LC and if it were mine I would leave it alone, preserving it as the perfect ShufflePuck time wasting device. Then, I would buy an LC475 and hack away at that -- a similar pretty form factor to the LC but more fun to play with.

 

[Dzave]

Thanks for the great advice Charlieman, now that I think about it trying to mod the original LC that far probably wouldn't be worth all the effort. I think I will look to pickup an LC475 and use that as my starting point. I will check out the other forums on the SCSI related mods also.

I think an interesting challenge would be to try to use the lowest end hardware with a PDS video card to give the highest possible resolution. I doubt any PDS video card could do anything over 1024X768.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

You can probably take the logic board out of a 475 and put it in your LC as a type of upgrade. I'm not 100% sure it will fit but it seems like it should.

I know the Quadra 605 (Another LC-style Mac) usually has enough VRAM to do thousands of colors at 1024x768. I took one VRAM card from a 605 and put it into a Performa 450 (LC III) and it had equal capability after that.

Note that you can't leave just 1 VRAM SIMM in a 605...

 

[porter]

You can probably take the logic board out of a 475 and put it in your LC as a type of upgrade. I'm not 100% sure it will fit but it seems like it should.

... and the point would be?

 

[Charlieman]

The LC and LCII onwards chassis is different. Retro-fitting boards in an LC is generally not worth the effort.

 

[LCGuy]

You can probably take the logic board out of a 475 and put it in your LC as a type of upgrade. I'm not 100% sure it will fit but it seems like it should.
I know the Quadra 605 (Another LC-style Mac) usually has enough VRAM to do thousands of colors at 1024x768. I took one VRAM card from a 605 and put it into a Performa 450 (LC III) and it had equal capability after that.

Note that you can't leave just 1 VRAM SIMM in a 605...

The board will fit, but you'll also need to bring over the fan and speaker from the 475 (or an LCII or LCIII) - the original LC has a speaker/fan unit that is not compatible with newer boards.

For the record, a LC475/Q605 (exactly the same machine in a different case) can only do 16 bit (Thousands of colours) at a maximum resolution of 832x624 - the machines only support a max of 1MB of VRAM, which allows Millions of colours at 512x384, Thousands of colours at 640x400, 640x480, 800x600 or 832x624, or 256 colours at 1024x768 or 1152x870.

 

[Dzave]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. The main thing I wanted to stick with was the form factor so I am open to options. The funny thing is after I find all the parts, upgrade cards, memory, that I would want in this thing with shipping, etc I would probably have as much money wrapped up in it as a G4 mini but that was not my overall goal really.

I went to a local used electronics dealer and found a Performa 467 which was missing a HD and got if for $8, picked up a 32MB simm for another $6, and a 2.1GB HD for another $2 so really I thought this would be a fine starting point for me. My LC is in a different state at the moment and I wanted to get started with something. The bad news is I think the power supply is bad! 36watt, turn it on and no fan, no sound, nothing. And the HD looks to be a hair too tall, it looks like a brick, controller on the bottom so case will not close.

Maybe I can find a Quadra 605 that would probably be just as cost effective versus a replacement power supply, looks like I will I will need to have my parents ship me my old LC and use that power supply to get this one going.

 

[Unknown_K]

Maxing out most machines is not good for your budget unless you get lucky and find a good deal.

I have a Sonnet presto Plus currently in my LC 550, it works ok (68040/33, ethernet, 32MB SIMM). Got lucky in getting that card, no way I would pay ebay prices for it since I am not a huge LC fan.

Unless you realy love an LC 1, I don't see the need to go crazy with expensive upgrades. People who tend to go crazy tend to realy like the machine for some sentimental reason.

 

[equill]

The point, if there is a point, in upgrading older machines is that you can, to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps the Classic/Classic II are the least amenable to that generalization, being obdurately in the 'lesser' category, but UnknownK has fingered the reason why we do nurture and cherish our oldies.

I like to think that had I owned the machines that I do now when they were new, I should have been just as keen to push them as far as I do long after their time, given due circumspection about upgrade costs in those bygone days. Having served my time in (paid) museology, I have no leaning towards 'original' state in mere appliances.

de

 

[porter]

The point, if there is a point, in upgrading older machines is that you can, to a greater or lesser degree.

I didn't see the point of taking a motherboard out of a 475 to put in an LC. Just use the 475.

 

[Dzave]

I agree with Unknown K, the LC 1 is really not that desirable compared to others. But for me it is a sentimental thing. I remember the 14.4k modem connected and the aol floppy that seemed to arrive weekly via mail. The machine has been in the family since new, the "better" 68k macs I just don't look at the same way I do the LC. At the time I was rather young so now I can take the same machine and see it in a whole new way and really see what makes these machines tick. While this may not have much of a practical purpose today, it is interesting.

Thanks for all the advice, I doubt there is much more to say on this topic but it did help me realize my goals for a project like this. I will probably mess with more than 1 machine but the LC will be my favorite even if slower.

 

[equill]

... I didn't see the point of taking a motherboard out of a 475 to put in an LC. Just use the 475.

No-one was impugning your opinion, and neither would I hack a DP MDD into a Plus case, even if it were feasible. My own upgrade of older Macs always stops short of case and chassis mods, but squeezing the last drop of performance out of the logic board is a satisfying—even if economically futile—exercise. So my Macs are all upgraded to the nth degree, but their persons are never harmed during the making of this product.

However, I do plead guilty to converting my first LC II into a Q605 long before I found my first genuine (apart from the CCs) feets-machine.

de

 

[Unknown_K]

I have 2 LC3's One is the stock unit with FPU and ethernet, the other has a 68040 motherboard in it from a newer model because the old MB died because of bad caps. I recently got a supermac spigot LC and I am deciding which machine to stick it in (hate giving up ethernet). Sooner or later I will fix the dead MB.

The only reason I don't have a LC 1 or 2 is because I have not run into one locally yet, and do not plan on spending money to buy one on ebay. If anything a dual superdrive LC1 would be of some small interest, but anything pre LC3 is kind of crippled.

While quite a few people here used these old Macs when you were young (and have some sentimental attachment), I used nothing but PCs during the 90's and collect XT/286/386/486 because I wanted to relive those days with the hardware I could not afford at the time. For me the old macs are new since I never owned one or used on (other then a pizza box I had to get some excel files off of at work once before it got mothballed in the sales department). Mostly I like upgrading machines, if you havn't figured out yet I am a Nubus fanatic, house is full of cards and all my machines have their slots full.

If I had more space and a bunch more money I would collect the early compact 68020/030 CPU upgrade boards. So many different varieties were made and most are lost to the ages never to be seen again. I prefer keeping the stock motherboards in systems (unless its broken) and using machine specific upgrades then to hack up or swap motherboards. The only hack I have done was to unsolder the video plug on a IIci motherboard and stick it into a IIcx case since I didn't need built in video anyway and the case was handy.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

You can probably take the logic board out of a 475 and put it in your LC as a type of upgrade. I'm not 100% sure it will fit but it seems like it should.

... and the point would be?

I was thinking this would be an option if he wanted to keep the same original LC case for nostalgic reasons and only upgrade the inside. There would probably be no functional or structural point in doing this though.

I wasn't aware the board wouldn't be a straightforward swap so that would complicate things.

 

[Dzave]

I think I found an LC 475 that will fulfill the need to mod out the pizza box form factor style machine. While swapping the motherboard out into the LC case would work it really becomes a totally different machine. I plan to keep the LC stock with memory maxed out and ethernet, no proc upgrade card. I want to preserve as much as possible the experience of using this computer as I did originally....and yes that includes the slowness and apps it could run. Hopefully it will stay running for years to come and can show others family etc the same machine that got it all started for me.

Technically this was not my first machine though, I had a Commodore 64 but at that time I was even younger and just knew how to start games....LOAD ,8,1 or something, wow I still remember. But I just don't have a passion for that or to write basic and play back from cassette tape.

 

[Charlieman]

Useful LC 475 upgrades?

* Swap the 68LC040 for a full 68040.

* Overclock if you feel confident that it won't affect the PDS slot. If you feel clever, modify the board so that it can run at variable clock speed.

* Experiment with PDS cards -- SuperMac VideoSpigot (as mentioned), high res 24 bit video cards.

* Big 1/3 height, low power SCSI drive.

* PSU upgrade -- there is nothing special about it apart from the form factor.

* External SCSI ethernet for when you have the PDS slot occupied. A LocalTalk to Ethernet hardware bridge is an alternative if you don't need to exchange large files.

* PDS extenders that allowed two PDS cards to be fitted exist. I presume that they require a case extender.

 

[porter]

My Q605 has full 68040 and PDS ethernet. That'll do nicely.

 

[LCGuy]

I think I found an LC 475 that will fulfill the need to mod out the pizza box form factor style machine. While swapping the motherboard out into the LC case would work it really becomes a totally different machine. I plan to keep the LC stock with memory maxed out and ethernet, no proc upgrade card. I want to preserve as much as possible the experience of using this computer as I did originally....and yes that includes the slowness and apps it could run. Hopefully it will stay running for years to come and can show others family etc the same machine that got it all started for me.
Technically this was not my first machine though, I had a Commodore 64 but at that time I was even younger and just knew how to start games....LOAD ,8,1 or something, wow I still remember. But I just don't have a passion for that or to write basic and play back from cassette tape.

Good on you...my first Mac was an LCIII, anyway, a few years ago I got the itch to upgrade the Hell out of it. However, I quickly got bored with it and put it completely back to stock - even going as far to remove the 16MB 72 pin SIMM that Dad paid $120 to have installed in 1996. Now its "not too stock, not too maxed out" with 20MB of RAM and a 250MB HDD, and runs System 7.1, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If it was the machine that got you into computers, and you've had it since new, IMHO, you want to preserve it and keep it as original as you can...but thats just me, and I'm a purist.