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Simple revive of a dead Nubus Jackhammer...

lobust

Well-known member
I recently bought a nubus Jackhammer on ebay, and tried it for the first time this evening.

I was extremely disappointed to find that in both my nubus macs (Quadra 700 and 800) it was totally DOA. Didn't show in the Jackhammer CDEV, totally AWOL in Tattletech; I tried the usual swapping everything, removing everything, resetting the pram, booting the system with the slot empty first to reset the card slot pram.

Nada.

Reading the manual, I saw a note about force flashing the ROM by holding down option and clicking on the version number in the Jackhammer control panel:

1665359349698.png

I tried it in the 700 using control panel v3.2.3, and up popped a dialog box with a radio button set of all the slots (logical and physical) in my Quadra. Of the two physical slots, one was grayed out and one was selectable. I powered down, moved the card to the other slot and tried again, sure enough this time the other slot was selectable instead. I crossed everything, and clicked OK...

And now it works!

After the fact, I found this old post by Bolle: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?thr...mer-nubus-card-qaudra-840av.32059/post-342695

If the Mac won't boot at all with the card in place I would say bad ROM.

The 12V write enable to the two flash chips is always active on those cards. You can run them this way but most manufacturers of flash chips say you shouldn't if you don't want to write to them.

I suspect this leads to corruption if something unexpected happens. Have seen this on two Jackhammers already.

Desolder the two flash chips and see if the Mac boots again with the card installed. If it does you need to erase or programm them in an external programmer and solder them back on.

I put sockets on my card to get them out easily in case they get corrupted again.

So I guess this is a common problem, but maybe others did not know that you can force flash the ROM in the control panel?

As an aside, what is the best version of HDT to use? I downloaded v2 on my Quadra running 8.1, and it works but it is very crashy... 1.x seems to old and 4.x is PPC only...
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
I recently bought a nubus Jackhammer on ebay, and tried it for the first time this evening.

I was extremely disappointed to find that in both my nubus macs (Quadra 700 and 800) it was totally DOA. Didn't show in the Jackhammer CDEV, totally AWOL in Tattletech; I tried the usual swapping everything, removing everything, resetting the pram, booting the system with the slot empty first to reset the card slot pram.

Nada.

Reading the manual, I saw a note about force flashing the ROM by holding down option and clicking on the version number in the Jackhammer control panel:

View attachment 47401

I tried it in the 700 using control panel v3.2.3, and up popped a dialog box with a radio button set of all the slots (logical and physical) in my Quadra. Of the two physical slots, one was grayed out and one was selectable. I powered down, moved the card to the other slot and tried again, sure enough this time the other slot was selectable instead. I crossed everything, and clicked OK...

And now it works!

After the fact, I found this old post by Bolle: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?thr...mer-nubus-card-qaudra-840av.32059/post-342695



So I guess this is a common problem, but maybe others did not know that you can force flash the ROM in the control panel?

As an aside, what is the best version of HDT to use? I downloaded v2 on my Quadra running 8.1, and it works but it is very crashy... 1.x seems to old and 4.x is PPC only...
I would run FWB HDT 3.0.2. If you find just the 3.0.0 download, you can update it to 3.0.2.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Thanks, 3.0.2 "PE" is on the garden. Is that good to go, or is "PE" some cut down "lite" thing?
I believe it's mostly missing RAID features. You should be fine with that. I can dig up the regular 3.0.2 if you need it. Let me know.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
I see that pretty much no versions of the regular FWB HDT are uploaded on the MacintoshGarden. I probably should upload all of the versions of FWB HDT that I have archived on my drives. Back in those old days, I purchased a hard drive, and it came with FWB HDT 1.x. I was sent upgrade offers in the mail, and I purchased most of the versions that were released, and archived the original install media.

I'll see what I can do on Monday about uploading them, and I'll post a link here when I've done it.

Edit: I went ahead and uploaded what I had easily accessible to me and it can be found this way:

 
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lobust

Well-known member
I see that pretty much no versions of the regular FWB HDT are uploaded on the MacintoshGarden. I probably should upload all of the versions of FWB HDT that I have archived on my drives. Back in those old days, I purchased a hard drive, and it came with FWB HDT 1.x. I was sent upgrade offers in the mail, and I purchased most of the versions that were released, and archived the original install media.

I'll see what I can do on Monday about uploading them, and I'll post a link here when I've done it.

Edit: I went ahead and uploaded what I had easily accessible to me and it can be found this way:

Much appreciated, I will experiment with this hopefully this evening.

Have you experienced the corrupted ROM issue before on the Jackhammer?
 

Phipli

Well-known member
I see that pretty much no versions of the regular FWB HDT are uploaded on the MacintoshGarden. I probably should upload all of the versions of FWB HDT that I have archived on my drives. Back in those old days, I purchased a hard drive, and it came with FWB HDT 1.x. I was sent upgrade offers in the mail, and I purchased most of the versions that were released, and archived the original install media.

I'll see what I can do on Monday about uploading them, and I'll post a link here when I've done it.

Edit: I went ahead and uploaded what I had easily accessible to me and it can be found this way:

Thanks MrFahrenheit. Much appreciated useful applications.

What format exactly are the .img files? Don't disk copy images need their resource forks protecting? Or am I getting muddled?
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Thanks MrFahrenheit. Much appreciated useful applications.

What format exactly are the .img files? Don't disk copy images need their resource forks protecting? Or am I getting muddled?
Believe they’re DiskCopy images. Tests in the past showed they upload and download just fine. Let me know if you can’t use them and I’ll convert them to something else. In a test, when I uploaded and downloaded, they seemed fine.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Believe they’re DiskCopy images. Tests in the past showed they upload and download just fine. Let me know if you can’t use them and I’ll convert them to something else. In a test, when I uploaded and downloaded, they seemed fine.
That sounds good, thanks for confirming. I've had issues with .img files in the past, but it sounds like it was likely the uploader being creative in some other way.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
That sounds good, thanks for confirming. I've had issues with .img files in the past, but it sounds like it was likely the uploader being creative in some other way.
I downloaded the two .img files that I uploaded in SheepShaver on Windows 10, and they download as .txt files. I used ResEdit to change file type/creator to dimg/ddsk and the 2.5 version image mounts, but the 3.0 version image does not. Hmmm....

Let me stuff them later today and re-upload them. Sorry about that!
 

Phipli

Well-known member
I’ve fixed the .img files and replaced them with .sit.
Thanks! Very useful to have on file. Sorry for complicating things.

Just one cautious check - you did use a version of Dropstuff newer than (or equal to) 5 didn't you? 😆
 
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MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Thanks! Very useful to have on file. Sorry for complicating things.

Just one cautious check - you did use a version of Dropstuff newer than (or equal to) 5 didn't you? 😆

I appreciate the pointing out that the .img files were problematic.

As for StuffIt, I used StuffIt in OS X on my G5. Is that incompatible ?

Edit: I downloaded these .sit that I just uploaded, using SheepShaver and unstuffed them successfully using StuffitExpander 5.5 on Mac OS 9. The images mounted after unstuffing.
 
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Phipli

Well-known member
I appreciate the pointing out that the .img files were problematic.

As for StuffIt, I used StuffIt in OS X on my G5. Is that incompatible ?

Edit: I downloaded these .sit that I just uploaded, using SheepShaver and unstuffed them successfully using StuffitExpander 5.5 on Mac OS 9. The images mounted after unstuffing.
I don't use OSX much these days, but I think the format was consistent for a good while after the change in version 5 if not still. The only issue with using later versions is that it tends to use a high compression ratio that takes an age to decompress on old hardware.

Thanks again :)
 

CC_333

Well-known member
I think the format was consistent for a good while after the change in version 5 if not still
In 2002, the newer .sitx format was introduced with Stuffit 7.x, which, thankfully, has a classic Mac OS version.

I don't have any experience with it, though, so I think it would be best to stick to the lowest common denominator of Stuffit releases, which seems to be 5.x (it can run on almost anything except Macs with a 68000 (All compacts other than SE/30 and Classic II, Portable, and PowerBook 100) running System 6).

c
 

Phipli

Well-known member
In 2002, the newer .sitx format was introduced with Stuffit 7.x, which, thankfully, has a classic Mac OS version.

I don't have any experience with it, though, so I think it would be best to stick to the lowest common denominator of Stuffit releases, which seems to be 5.x (it can run on almost anything except Macs with a 68000 (All compacts other than SE/30 and Classic II, Portable, and PowerBook 100) running System 6).

c
I was always more of a Compact Pro kind of person :)

For MacintoshGarden's sake I tend to drop a copy of Expander 4 and Expander 5 on my machines. Plus MacZip. I can't remember why I always used to use Compact Pro... there was a reason.
 

CC_333

Well-known member
I can't remember why I always used to use Compact Pro... there was a reason
I think it was basically because it was better at doing Stuffit than Stuffit was:

Wikipedia says:
At the time of its introduction, Compact Pro offered, by far, the fastest and best compression on the Mac. In use, "Compactor files were never more than 1% larger than StuffIt Deluxe's "Better"/"Best Guess" modes, but anywhere from 25% to 400% faster."[2] Ironically, Compact Pro was even faster than StuffIt at extracting StuffIt files, often at least double the performance. It also allowed background operation under MultiFinder. Its speed remained superior to most other systems even after major upgrades had ended. Testing in the late 1990s show it remaining significantly faster and smaller than versions of StuffIt from years later.

c
 

chelseayr

Well-known member
@CC_333 I'm only going by hazy memory here but didn't 5 (or was that 5.5) create some specific differences that made it not work well with other versions? its been quite a while but I do recall something about that eg someone couldn't open a 5-something file with 6 but had no problem with opening 4.5-created file otherwise

if I'm somehow wrong about that then no problem still :)
 
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