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SE/30 with an as-yet unidentified expansion

Franklinstein

Well-known member
So I was browsing auctions and I come across a non-functioning SE/30. 'Great,' I think, 'I need one to fill one of those neat-o clear cases that I ordered.' As I looked at it, I noticed a mystery connector on the back. I thought it was a standard Ethernet card of the era with a D15 AUI connector, but usually those lack the screw threads and are off-center, and/or also include a standard Ethernet connector such as RJ45 or BNC. The only other thought I have is that it's possibly a Micron Xceed of some variety. Apparently someone else noticed this too because they kept driving the price up on it. I'm hoping it's the Xceed, because otherwise I paid about $250 for a generic SE/30 with a random networking card. I'll find out in a few days what it actually is.

Se30 rear.jpg

 

EvilCapitalist

Well-known member
Bezel doesn't look right for it to be an XCEED, though I'd say it is a video card of some sort.  Like you said, Ethernet cards typically have more than one connector type; the only ones I've seen that don't are the really old ones for the SE that were BNC only.

 

omidimo

Well-known member
Could be a Lapis ColorServer, I once mistook an Xceed card for that and paid too much.  :?:

 

trag

Well-known member
There were quite a number of non-Xceed SE/30 external monitor cards back in the day.  With a bewildering assortment of supported monitors/types.

 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
Sadly it's not an Xceed, but an Interware Vimage SE/30. Apparently, by the scant information I could find, it can do up to 24-bit color at 640x480. A lesser version of the card, the Vimage 8 SE/30, only does 8-bit color.

Unfortunately this system did not include a hard drive and I do not have the software for the card. Sad face :(  It apparently will work without software but fine-tuning or informational display is only possible with the software, or possibly with a compatible piece of software from one of the NuBus Vimage cards I do have disks for.

The SE/30 itself is in good shape with minimal capacitor leakage, so it should be easy to clean up and get back in good running order. It appears to have somewhere between 8 and 20MB of RAM, depending on the capacity of four of the multi-chip SIMMs (they're likely 1MB or 4MB but maybe I'll get lucky and they'll be 16MB).

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Someone will have the software rotting on a floppy somewhere. It will pop up someday.

 

EvilCapitalist

Well-known member
Ahhh Interware.  It seems like they made some very interesting products back in the day based on the few things I've seen come up for sale with their name on it, but sadly I get the feeling we'll never know exactly how much cool stuff they made because there's very little information about their older products floating around.  The version of their website that the Internet Archive managed to save somehow didn't save the drivers that were on there and the oldest version is from ~98 so a lot of the interesting products would have been long discontinued at that point.

 

jessenator

Well-known member
Didn't Interware make those speedy, but cache-less 030 accelerators sold only in the East/Asia/South market?

 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
Yeah it's tragic that their drivers have all but disappeared. Even Japanese sites don't have a trace of them.

Here's the Vimage SE/30. This is apparently the original version with those old SIP RAM modules. There was a later version that used what is probably EDO.

I actually got a few boxed Interware devices last week but sadly only the Goomers (PCI hardware MPEG1 encoders) had the driver disks; the CinemaGear and all of the PC Cards came diskless. I do have a couple of Grand Vimage video cards that were boxed with software that I purchased last year sometime and there may be generic Interware software on them.

VimageSE30.JPG

IMG_5120.JPG

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
View attachment 27036

If those had cache they would have been the perfect PDS accelerator because they had a pass-through PDS slot on top.
Not requiring adaptation for a "UNIVERSAL" type accelerator based on the IIci Cache slot simplifies things nicely. The setback on the passthru makes it look like they might have offered a "Right Angle" version for the IIsi and this "Wrong Angle" version for the SE/30? Setback appears to be the wrong way though, strange.

 

Alex

Well-known member
Quick headsup (I will read this post entirely to help on finding software)

Have you looked at the internet archive gerenally?

How about using the waybackmachine? I put up an article on medium.com, titled "A WayBack Machine Downloader Using the Terminal to Excavate Digital Artifacts from Archived Websites on the Internet Archive" that might come in handy.

If you want me to use the downloader I will be happy to do so, I just need some leads like company name, board name, just about any clue to narrow down to a few targets and then try the downloader to see what comes back.

 

Alex

Well-known member
I decided to run the following command on the waybackmachine but I don't if this is what I should be after so if anyone interested writes back I can perform another scrape.

Here is the command:

wayback_machine_downloader -d /Users/alexsantos/Desktop/interware  -c 3 --only "/\.(hqx|sit|bin|zip|tar|z|gz|uue)$/i" www.iijnet.or.jp


I then created a text file of the tree and it's attached here so you can learn if any of these items should be uploaded somewhere for whoever needs it.

Maybe I will just create an open directory with an anonymous login so folks can just pull it off mt FTPSE server.

I am more than willing to rerun the downloader. What would help me most is if I have an old web address(es).

Cheers!

View attachment Interware.TREE.txt

 

EvilCapitalist

Well-known member
Have you looked at the internet archive gerenally?
Sure have.  That's where I found out that the oldest version of their website that had been archived was still at least ~5 years after these things had been discontinued (so no mention of the products in question, let alone drivers for them) and even the products they mentioned on the archived version of the site only had dead links to the driver downloads.

Not requiring adaptation for a "UNIVERSAL" type accelerator based on the IIci Cache slot simplifies things nicely. The setback on the passthru makes it look like they might have offered a "Right Angle" version for the IIsi and this "Wrong Angle" version for the SE/30? Setback appears to be the wrong way though, strange.
I think the adapter is upside down in that picture.  It was the only one I could find so I couldn't be choosy about resolution, though I should have checked orientation.

 

Alex

Well-known member
ok well we have to hunt it down. do you have any other leads? pls provide as much detail as possible and i'll help in the effort

 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
Pretty much any leads would be in Japanese; most of this stuff wasn't sold outside of that market, the only real exceptions being some of the G3 upgrades (and those usually work with the PowerLogix G3/G4 Profiler extensions anyway). The same is true of BUG: really cool but niche products for a specific market with no real presence in the rest of the world and not much left of their legacy products on the Internet. Also really awesome to find would be Mac drivers for the Nakamichi CDROM changers. Back in the day you could mail-order them from Nakamichi but after several changes in corporate structure the option is no longer available. I can find references to them online but no actual downloadable files.

I actually found a floppy disk in a related box that may contain the Vimage PC Card software but I have yet to try it because my 5300ce is being difficult (as these things are wont to do). 

 

Alex

Well-known member
I acan give you access to FTP, please image that disk to me and I will get in archive.org through one of the archivists. If possible scan the disk itself or a photo will do. That diskette will absolutely deteriorate over time unless it is preserved.

In terms of the Japanese material, have you tried to google translate what you are looking for in Japanese and then google search it or search it on the waybackmachine? If you want FTP access, which I recommend, please provide that answer to me over PM so that I can arrange it even today. I will then send you a link to the iamge on archive.org.

Please follow-up so that we can preserve this rarity for all.

 

Alex

Well-known member
Do you know the name of the file you are after? I am downloading a bunch of japanese related mac sites as I write this, Maybe in the resulting stack of files I can find it.

 
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