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Remnants of the pre-crash BUG Pickles thread

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Found the files I stored from original thread back in May. Are any missing from this rebuilt thread? If so, shoot me a realmail in PM so I can forward the attachments.

BUG-Pickles-files.JPG
Full web pages of auction saved in folder.
 
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Franklinstein

Well-known member
That is really impressive. I didn't realize BUG was around for so long. I have a couple of their earlier NuBus video cards but haven't really even bothered looking for software for them. Nice to know I can try to use them now.

Now if only someone could find a data hoarder from Interware. I still have a couple of their products (notably the Video CD Player card (hardware MPEG decoder) and the PicPom PC Card) that I have never found anything for.
 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
The Pickle is here! This is the B.U.G. Pickles 24A+ Revision C

Gen0dkc.jpeg


First impressions: the nubus connector is cracked and the steel bracket is bent.

k88EJhr.jpeg


Nothing a bit of gentle plying won't fix! With a little care I bent the bracket back into shape and eased the broken part of the connector into a position that won't intrude on the pins. After a visual inspection for any damaged traces or bent pins I decided the card was ready to install in the Quadra 650.

ESDgLKh.jpeg


This hefty card completely dwarfs the VideoSpigot and my GPIB card. I plugged in my monitor and optimistically hit the power button.


51rVt5H.jpeg


Success! For some reason the card defaulted to black and white mode but otherwise everything seemed to be working as expected.

Ji1kV4i.jpeg


The control panel and extensions provided by @cheesestraws loaded up perfectly and recognised the card. A few days ago I was using 256 colours on a 640x480 Performa Plus Display and now I'm looking at millions of colours on a 1024x768 LCD! I'll be trying out a 1280x1024 screen after writing this post.

I did a graphics benchmark on MacBench 3 and got some interesting results when comparing this upgraded Quadra 650 to a Power Macintosh 6100 with internal graphics. There are some areas where the Pickles 24A+ leaps ahead of the 6100 and others where it falls miserably behind.

h4AuCNN.jpeg


This seems odd to me so I plan to investigate this further. The 6100 benchmarks were done at 640x480 whereas I tested at 1024x768 so that could be a factor. Perhaps I haven't installed the drivers quite right. Side note: MacBench tells me that the 24A+ has 3MB of VRAM - wowzer!

That's about all I've done so far, having received the card from Fedex just a couple of hours ago. I'll add a couple more photos of the board below.

9rZcY4I.jpeg

nWT7SR0.jpeg

nYbkLx2.jpeg

eQPFYIO.jpeg


It's a bit dusty, yes... At some point today I'll take a look at the pictures of the earlier revisions of this card further up in this thread to see if I can spot any differences. Before that it is time to go and see just how high a resolution I can get out of this card.

Thanks for reading!
 
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cheesestraws

Well-known member
I finally got around to uploading these to the Garden, here:


Please add PDFs/other information as useful: and if anyone thinks my wording is bad or other folks need more explicit credits please edit it.
 

micheledipaola

Well-known member
I finally had time to play with the cards in this #MARCHintosh, and here are some pics of my Mac IIfx with the Pickles 24A and the cdev; dip-switches on the card are all off except n.1 on:

IMG_20220313_190057.jpg

Acceleration is on and the Zoom feature works flawlessly with ctrl + Up arrow:

IMG_20220313_190109.jpg

The setup is for million of colors:

IMG_20220313_190136.jpg

and the resolution is 1024x768 with a virtual desktop up to 2048x1024 dragging the mouse down and/or right.

IMG_20220313_190152.jpg

I also tried the other BUG card I have, the Pickles 24AW - this card started the quest that got us Shinbayashi san and his source code that @cheesestraws compiled... but the 24AW gives a 69Mhz output according to the screen, and it doesn't work well with it, so probably I should change the dip-switches.... but I can't find the correct setup. So far, the 24A stays in the IIfx, and maybe the 24AW will go in a Iici once I will figure out how to set it up.

I am so happy! Thanks everybody!
 

micheledipaola

Well-known member
Now I am trying with the 24AW and this is what I get:

IMG_20220314_145316.jpg

the screen says it gives 73.8 kHz as horizontal frequency and 69 Hz for vertical at 1600x1024... but I guess something is wrong in the autodetect/autoconfigure routine inside of it. Any hint? Change screen? :D

this card also gives the Display Mode Change control in the cdev (the 24A did not) :

IMG_20220314_145353.jpg

but obviously nothing changes if I use it :(
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
@micheledipaola Do you have an adapter that lets you set it to sync-on-green? Either way, that's impressive. 1600x1024 ... what an interesting resolution. I love that these cards support all these oddball timings. I bet it's really useful on one of those widescreen CRTs from Sony.
 

taddy

Active member
The Pickles 8.24A+ I own is fully equipped with a crystal oscillator.
Does the performance differ depending on the presence or absence of a crystal oscillator?
 

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olePigeon

Well-known member
Just curious: Since we literally have the source code for the software and even the ROMs, would the XA be a good candidate to reverse engineer?
 

Melkhior

Well-known member
Just curious: Since we literally have the source code for the software and even the ROMs, would the XA be a good candidate to reverse engineer?
There's a few chips with a 'BUG' copyright, which are likely to be proprietary. That's going to be a major issue.
I did a graphics benchmark on MacBench 3
Any chance to run with and without the acceleration? And ideally Speedometer 4.02 as well. I ask because in the source code I don't really see an "acceleration" of QuickDraw - there doesn't seem to be any QD trap patched or anything like that. Pan & zoom is done in hardware, but that seems to be it. I wonder if that's really the case, or if I missed something/that part of the code is missing from the released sources.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Yeah, given the high level of custom stuff that seems to be on here, it's probably more effort than it's worth to reverse-engineer. Though I may be wrong.

FWIW, for high resolutions or colour depths for old machines, I'd bet on some productionisable descendent of @Melkhior's design.
 

Paulie

Well-known member
Now I am trying with the 24AW and this is what I get:

View attachment 39428

the screen says it gives 73.8 kHz as horizontal frequency and 69 Hz for vertical at 1600x1024... but I guess something is wrong in the autodetect/autoconfigure routine inside of it. Any hint? Change screen? :D
I know it was over a year ago, but commenting here because I had the exact same problem with a Pickles 24AW (green screen, everything shifted sideways). The problem occurred with two different VGA adapters, a generic 6-DIP one and a Unimac 82D (with 16 switches). Solved it by getting a 10-switch adapter (a 'PTC' one from eBay), and found that it works perfectly with switches 1,4,5 turned on. Had to get my monitor to auto-adjust, but after that it was fine.
 

micheledipaola

Well-known member
I know it was over a year ago, but commenting here because I had the exact same problem with a Pickles 24AW (green screen, everything shifted sideways). The problem occurred with two different VGA adapters, a generic 6-DIP one and a Unimac 82D (with 16 switches). Solved it by getting a 10-switch adapter (a 'PTC' one from eBay), and found that it works perfectly with switches 1,4,5 turned on. Had to get my monitor to auto-adjust, but after that it was fine.
This is great news! I had no time to investigate this further, but now that there is a hint, I hope I will find time to do something. Thanks @Paulie and... could you please post a picture of your adapter?
 
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