Sixty Eight Thousand Inc revival thread

[jeremywork]

I don't know why I forgot about this one, but it was another we lost last year.
Here's all the source material I can remember posting, and some new since then.

Back in February 2021, a seller liquidated what appeared to be the remaining cache of RMA and test cards from the inventory of Sixty Eight Thousand Inc or one of their contractors. It comprised mostly of IIfx SCSI Bolts, Nubus Hurricane coprocessors, Quadra PDS Bolts, and a different i860 based card from 'Team ASA.' There was also a Quadra 800, which I sincerely regret passing by due to the potential software it may have retained.

(If you purchased a Quadra 800 from eBay seller 'autoex209' in February or March 2021 AND it contained a hard drive with data AND you retained an archive of that data, you may make my year!)

I kept pictures of all sold cards in this imgur album:

https://imgur.com/a/lyQsXxN

As I won the first few cards, the seller graciously offered to send a 'binder of related documenation' which turned out to be packed with juicy internal stuff. I've procrastinated on scanning this with a legitimate scanner, but I'll attach the phone camera versions I posted last time for now.

As far as my collection of hardware sits, I have:
• A pair of IIfx SCSI Bolts (one ROM marked DashTalk II Version 1.0B, the other handwritten as v3.0.2; both ROMs had the same checksum.)
• One 040 PDS Bolt (ROM marked RAID Warrior v1.0, handwritten BAD, but this card works the best of all so far; actually mounts drives and is bootable.)
• A Nubus Hurricane Rev A (missing the Mach220 at U13, the crystal oscillator, the i860 and 82495, SIMMs and Nubus bracket)
• A Team ASA board with one of the serial ports populated

The ROMs from my three SCSI PDS cards are attached.

I'm going to post my progress testing in a reply below to cut down on noise in the top post.

 

[cheesestraws]

To re-note this: I also got one of the 040 PDS Bolt cards and a Hurricane. The Hurricane is missing similar parts; the 040 Bolt works beautifully. Same ROM as yours, IIRC.

 

[jeremywork]

Hurricane status:
For no practical reason, I've been doing my best to bring the Rev A (prototype) Nubus Hurricane back to life. I'm a bit out of my depth, but I started with the easy part and purchased the missing components to fill the board out.



The biggest gotcha is the Mach220 at U13, the DRAM controller, which needs to be programmed to function. Luckily the equations for 'U13dumb' were included in the binder (included in 0. PDF above) dumb seems to imply memory density needs to be set before flashing the Mach220; the smart version would detect the SIMM size, though this code wasn't among the rest. I'll happily settle for fixed memory size if the thing works in some capacity. I've manually transcribed the document into a TXT file, attached.

Happily, following the email exchanges at the end of 'PDF 0.' it seems my Hurricane was one of the least problematic ones they had.

Question: Is this text to be directly flashed into the Mach220, or is it meant to be compiled into binary first? Total noob in this regard (though before I've given up I'll probably learn some more )

 

[jeremywork]

SCSI PDS card status:
Before I dive in too deep, I'll introduce another card I acquired more recently. I've seen it colloquially referred to as the Data Cannon from Storage Dimensions, though according to the manual it came with there were really three different cards marketed with this name (I'll get into this later.) The version I have is for the 040 PDS and came boxed, though the box seems to have originally been marked for the 030 PDS version. It's identified to the CPU as "Stone Board" from Storage Dimensions, Inc. and I'll probably refer to all of these cards by their TattleTech name down thread to save confusion.



If I were to guess, these three PDS cards share a lineage, and the fourth and final iteration would be the Raven Pro PDS from MicroNet (anyone want to sell me one?)
Auction photo below (wish I had noticed before this lot ended for just over a hundred dollars)



I will note the Stone Board in this photo has Storage Dimensions Inc. silkscreened where mine has stickers. I don't want to damage the stickers if I can help it, but I wonder if it says Sixty Eight Thousand under there.

As @cheesestraws and I mentioned, the 040 PDS Bolt (which I'll call RAID Warrior from now on) just works™ when plugged into a SCSI drive, and will happily allow my Quadra 950 to boot from it (no SCSI Manager 4.3 required.) Despite this, I've yet to find any utility which allows me to tinker with drives attached. The most info I've been able to get is from the 'Get Info' window in Finder. With the Stone Board and the SCSI Bolt (IIfx) I haven't been so lucky. I assume the first step is to find some software the RAID Warrior actually works with and then try that on the other two, but known good drives won't automount the way they do on the RAID Warrior (they do, however, probe the drives before extension load time, and will hang the boot process if termination or IDs are conflicting.)

The Stone Board included two (presumably OEM) software diskettes with MacinStor 3.14, which seemed to already be available on Macintosh Garden (attached below anyhow.)

MacinStor - Macintosh Garden

MacinStor is a hard disk management tool that allows you to format, partition and password protect SCSI hard disk volumes. Version 3.0 includes support for more advanced features such as drive mirroring and spanning, allowing software RAID 0 or 1.

macintoshgarden.org

Despite being included with the Stone Board, no SCSI devices are detected (and only seven IDs are presented, which isn't congruent with the 16-bit SCSI interface.) Detects the RAID Warrior but behaves identically with that one. My IIfx is far away, so I haven't tested that one yet (it has the SCSI Bolt with fuse and termination resistors, for any with keen eyes looking at the above photo.)
I did purchase this set of older floppies several moments ago, just for good measure. https://www.ebay.com/itm/153765504092
Will post updates when I get them.



Transoft SCSI Director is the only other software I've found which actually acknowledges the prescense of these SCSI controllers, though interestingly they're all just '68000 SCSI Bolt' with no devices present.

I'm working on creating PDFs of the Macinstor documentation included with the Stone Board, and will post it here shortly.

 

[jeremywork]

I started with the MacinStor Installation Instructions booklet because it's fewer pages and contains information most pertinent to these cards. The MacinStor User's Guide will come later, though at a glance it focuses almost entirely on using the software with the Macintosh built-in SCSI controller, and only makes sparse reference to a PDS card.

In the Installation Instructions book, diagrams illustrate the basic layout of three cards: 040 PDS, 030 PDS, and Nubus. One is obviously the Stone Board, the second is a dead ringer for the SCSI Bolt, and the third appears to be a simplified diagram of the ATTO SiliconExpress II (nothing from MicroNet matches more closely than this.)

 

[jeremywork]

Here is the MacinStor User's Manual (and the Warranty form, just for fun.)

They don't seem to pertain very much to using these SCSI cards, but since they came with the Stone Board they may as well be here.

@Unknown_K, I seem to recall you having experience with the Data Cannon and/or Raven Pro PDS boards. Any experience with SCSI utilities which can read the attached drives?

 

[Unknown_K]

It's been ages since I messed with them, and the drivers are on my server which is down for the moment. Don't even remember where that card is.

Do you have a manual about the orientation of that add-on board?

 

[jeremywork]

It's been ages since I messed with them, and the drivers are on my server which is down for the moment. Don't even remember where that card is.

Do you have a manual about the orientation of that add-on board?

No worries, hope you don’t have too much trouble getting your server back online. This old stuff can always wait.

The add-on board with the termination resistors? All it seems to say in the Macinstor Installation booklet (PDF two posts up) is to remove the resistor packs when using both internal and external drives.
It also says ‘only Macinstor drives are supported at this time’, but it seems to run a normal load-time probe on a connected 16-bit Pocket Hammer drive I have. If I set two drives with the same ID or leave off the external terminator Mac OS startup freezes for a while, so I think it’s all working normally. Just no mounted volumes, even when adapting the drives to 8-bit mounts them fine on the built-in SCSI.
I could remove the entire termination resistor add-on board and see what’s under it. I suspect it’s just a straight bridge.
It kind of looks like on the RAID Warrior card they were going to implement the external port and the termination resistors together on a daughter card, but shipped it instead with just a cable running to the internal connector. Not really sure it even shipped; might just be a prototype.

 

[taddy]

Is it possible to use MicroNet's SCSI utility?

Current MicroNet Software

I couldn't find anything else that looked good.

 

[jeremywork]

Is it possible to use MicroNet's SCSI utility?

Current MicroNet Software

I couldn't find anything else that looked good.

Thank you for posting this!
I had looked for MicroNet's utility but previously struck out. The links to downloads are dead on archive too, but knowing the filename lead me here: http://www.knubbelmac.de/software/werkzeuge/ (A very well maintained site) which still had a mirror of MicroNet SCSI Utility.

Unfortunately, no dice with the RAID Warrior or the Stone Board. It will be very nice to use with the NuPort II card I have though!

I received my 3.0 and 2.1 software diskettes from eBay, which also don't help. They seem to be a revision before Storage Dimensions even added the option to switch to a SCSI controller from the Macintosh built-in. Nevertheless, they're attached for posterity. The 3.14 version included with the Stone Board is compatible back to 6.0.7, so an older version shouldn't be necessary.

I wanted to satisfy some curiosities on the card itself. Under the termination resistor daughterboard it looks pretty dead simple (though looks like a touch of liquid got in there at some point, the contact surface is perfectly clean.)


And... oh, I was wrong! Good, a company even more elusive than Sixty Eight Thousand As far as I've heard Tech Noir were responsible for the 55MHz Nexus fx upgrade, and... now this, the NX720.

 

[cheesestraws]

If I were to guess, these three PDS cards share a lineage, and the fourth and final iteration would be the Raven Pro PDS from MicroNet

Thinking about this, though, another option here is that the common ancestor they share is not actually any of the cards in the set, but a documented application note or design note originating from NCR. I spent a bit of time today looking for one—couldn't find one, but it would be highly unusual for one not to exist. So it would be natural for the same design to be echoed in multiple places without there being a piece of hardware that is a common ancestor.

You can see this pattern all over the place on cards of various types, it's natural for hurried designers who want maximum effect for minimum effort, and it seems more Occam-compatible than positing complicated multi-party relationships between manufacturers...

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Wonderful journey back to an exciting time in the history of Mac development. Don't recall seeing anything about these cards IRL at the time or in this Century.

Curious about support of only eight of sixteen possible SCSI II IDs. @cheesestraws I'm wondering if that has to do with limitations of SCSI Manager and OS? In my coffee deprived state, it looks to me like the "upper" eight IDs might have been possible to wedge into the architecture for recognition by the System whilst getting Macs of that time to support 24 IDs across two buses might have been a bridge too far?

This has me wondering about my as yet untested SCSI II Daughtercard for the Rocket?

 

[KPT155]

Is this useful?
I was able to initialize and mount an HD connected to a SCSI BOLT card in a PDS slot on my Dash 30fx.
I was also able to boot from that disk.

 

[cheesestraws]

Is this useful?

Yes, very yes. Any chance you can image this and put it up somewhere, if it isn't already?

 

[KPT155]

This may not be the right thread to ask this, but if you know, please let me know.

A few days ago I turned on my Dash 30fx for the first time this century.
A few seconds later the capacitors on the 5.25" full height Seagate hard disk burned.
I ordered a 33µ tantalum capacitor, is there anything I should check before powering it up again?
I think it was caused by some bugs (of a creature) on the circuit board of the disk in several places.
I cleaned that up.

 

[KPT155]

The installer did not detect the SCSI BOLT on system 7.5.
I used it on 7.1.
Maybe pressing the Drive button installs the driver.
I first pressed the Initialize button and it took over 2 hours for 4GB.
Even now it seems fast enough.

 

[cruff]

Your tantalum capacitor likely just failed itself, it's a known issue. The bugs had nothing to do with it unless they left corrosive fluid on the circuit board that contributed to the failure condition.

 

[KPT155]

Thank you.
I had thought that tantalum capacitors burnout was caused by reverse voltage, so I was relieved to learn that that defect is common.

 

[jeremywork]

I've meant to post an update here for a while now but life gets busy sometimes...

Since my original testing I've acquired both a SCSI2SD v6 (Rev f) and two Stratos CF AztecMonster cards which have been quite useful for SCSI benchmarking (and quite nice to use as primary media too!) The RAID Warrior card encounters odd hangups with the AztecMonster adapters. When booted to a different source the CF's throughput is excellent, though occasionally the disk access light stays pegged for up to 10 seconds and the host system stalls, usually recovering and continuing though occasionally fatally crashing. When setting the CF as the boot drive these stalls are nearly constant, and the system can take half an hour to hit the desktop (if it doesn't break before then.)

The RAID Warrior loves the SCSI2SD on the other hand. Pretty much the same throughput (~8.5MBps on the Q950; ~8MBps on the Q800) but no stalls, and completely stable as a boot drive.



Though I'd had no success with hard drives on the IIfx SCSI Bolt I retested with these two adapters to find the same symptom persisted. In the midst of this I was really excited to read @KPT155's post above, (thank you so much for imaging that disk!) and so I started testing out the SCSI Bolt Installer software, but couldn't get it to say anything more than 'No Drives Found.' Many restarts later I elected to swap the SCSI Bolt for the second one I purchased (pictured in post #4.) Since it was missing the termination resistors, fuse, and had a handwritted ROM label I had guessed it would've been the lesser of the two likely to work, but after popping a fuse in and attaching an external terminator the SCSI2SD's volumes popped right up on the first boot, just as on the RAID Warrior. Booting from the volumes worked flawlessly, and the disk throughput was even higher than the Quadras at ~9MBps. I've meant to return to testing the original Bolt now that I know this works; there's one jumper on the card which is in the opposite position between the cards. (Perhaps this turns on the HVD side and disables LVD?)

I then swapped it for the AztecMonster, and was pleasantly surprised to find it did not exhibit the stalling condition that both seemed to have with the RAID Warrior. Though the card I was using was marked SanDisk 4GB rated at 30MB/s (maybe a counterfeit label) I found the writes to be extremely lackluster, and this was not the case with a newer SanDisk 32GB card rated at 120MB/s. The latter was able to achieve the highest speed yet, ~9.5MBps.

Interestingly, the SCSI Bolt Installer program still indicates no drive can be found, but the Macinstor™ utility included with the Storage Dimensions card causes the SCSI Bolt's bus to be probed repeatedly while the program is open (despite still indicating no drive is present.) This is so far the best sign of communication I've had with any utility on any of these cards.

P.S. I once expressed concern over using IIfx PDS cards with the Variable Speed Overdrive installed, since Apple's Technote indicates the PDS card's clock must be externally supplied to sync with the host's 40MHz clock, as only 20MHz bus clock is available on the slot. This might be relevant to accelerator cards like the TokaMac, but as @Bolle suggested to me at the time I've found the SCSI Bolt works perfectly fine at 40MHz, 50MHz, and anything else I set it to on the fly. (Is this because the card is buffered?)

Thinking about this, though, another option here is that the common ancestor they share is not actually any of the cards in the set, but a documented application note or design note originating from NCR.

This would make sense. I dumped the ROM from the Stone Board (AT27C256R -20DC) so perhaps it could be compared with the ROMs from the top post (other than the plain English scattered in I don't really know where to start.) Unfortunately I still haven't made the Storage Dimensions card do anything, though whenever I get to following the jumper theory on the SCSI Bolt I may find a similar jumper mismatch here.

Curious about support of only eight of sixteen possible SCSI II IDs. @cheesestraws I'm wondering if that has to do with limitations of SCSI Manager and OS? In my coffee deprived state, it looks to me like the "upper" eight IDs might have been possible to wedge into the architecture for recognition by the System whilst getting Macs of that time to support 24 IDs across two buses might have been a bridge too far?

This is one of the bigger mysteries to me too... Hopefully I can get it to mount something eventually; then I can see which SCSI IDs work. I also wonder about the MicroNet Raven Pro PDS, which would have two 16-bit controllers and would be an even bigger waste if only 8 IDs were usable. I don't think this card could have 24 anyway though, just 16. The 8-bit port is connected to the 16-bit controller for backward compatibilty the way it would be on the Jackhammer or SEIV.

I also took some cleaner photos of all the SCSI cards (large JPEGs):