• 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.

Radius Rocket!

IlikeTech

Well-known member
Thanks so much to @nglevin for sending me a radius rocket!  It is the 33 MHz model!  

You cant beat free for something like that!

I’ll test it soon!

 

pb3623

Well-known member
I just bought one off of Dan Knight (of LEM fame) and should have it by the end of the week. Undecided if it’s going in my 700 or 950. Does RocketWare work at all under Mac OS 8?

 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
A rocket in an 040 is kind of a waste. They are great for 020 mac II's and slow 030 machines like a IIx or IIcx (since it does not have a PDS slot).

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
I just bought one off of Dan Knight (of LEM fame) and should have it by the end of the week. Undecided if it’s going in my 700 or 950. Does RocketWare work at all under Mac OS 8?
Quick answer: The Rocket itself runs in RocketWare Accelerator mode under 7.1 Pro max. in a slower Mac. In RocketShare mode it runs up to 7.1 Pro, but can do so while installed in any compatible machine running up to something like 7.5.5 or even higher?

Rocket should be faster than any 040 PDS upgrade card because it has its own memory on board running on its local bus as well as some cache. SE/30 and IIci accelerator boards have to access system memory that's bottlenecked by the clock of the host. The bad thing about the Rocket is that OS compatibility hits the wall after 7.1 Pro. The 030 PDS upgrades do fine at higher OS levels.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
A rocket in an 040 is kind of a waste. They are great for 020 mac II's and slow 030 machines like a IIx or IIcx (since it does not have a PDS slot).
Perhaps waste as a CPU accelerator, but not as a Virtual Machine.  Also, the Radius Rocket passively accelerates Radius video cards.  So just having one in your machine without actually using it is beneficial.

 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
Passively accelerating a non accelerated video card maybe (but not one you would want to use anyway). Both of  my Radius Rocket 25's came from Mac IIx machines and that is where I would use them again.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
It increases performance on both non-accelerated and accelerated video cards.  It's a documented feature.  I tested and measured a small increase in performance with a Radius 24XP.  I don't know how it works, but it does.  It's not a huge improvement and not noticeable for day-to-day use (such as it is with vintage computers), but it's still an improvement.

But if you're tuning your stock Mac for bragging rights, I think it's worth it. ;)

 

pb3623

Well-known member
Bragging rights are good enough for me :)

The machine in which it would make the most sense to use the Rocket is my Iici, but it already has a Turbo 601 so I think it'll go in my 950 until I can acquire a IIfx. I don't have the SCSI daughtercard for it but I'd be perfectly content to have a Rocket just to be able to use it in some way (isn't that why we're in this hobby?) :)

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Excellent! If you haven't seen the info already, you'll need to a couple of upgrades if you haven't done those yet. In the Mac II, the Rocket requires the MMU to be installed and the Superdrive ROMs. Nice to have the drive from the upgrade kit too, but not a requirement AFAIK.

 

nglevin

Well-known member
Does RocketWare work at all under Mac OS 8?
Assuming you meant RocketShare (RocketWare doesn't work at all on the Quadras), it works as far as the early Nubus Power Macs, like the Power Mac 7100.

I remember trying this on a PM 7100 with a Sonnet G(3/4?) upgrade, and it worked quite well. That was running Mac OS 9, though I don't recall if it was 9.1 or 9.2.2.

Though as others have said on the thread, the Rocket is a better buy for the System 6 capable, slower 68k Mac IIs.

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Seems like a lot of Rockets have popped up out of the weeds lately. Used to be just a few of us had them. I never got around to repairing my bought new 33 when another came along when the supply and demand began to increase.

 
Top