• 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.

New profile posts

What's new New posts New media New media comments New resources New profile posts Latest activity
alectrona2988
i know this could be a very divisive subject among a lot of vintage laptop enthusiasts as it takes away a good amount of the charm from a vintage laptop, but what do yall think of the idea of modern LCD replacements for vintage laptops, especially those whose screens have deteriorated or are just broken?
finkmac
finkmac
shouldn't be divisive. working screen > bad screen. i support modern replacement efforts for lcd panels.
3lectr1cPPC
3lectr1cPPC
Working screen > bad screen, but original screen > modern screen.
If there was a laptop I really loved for the form factor, and my only option for using it was a modern reproduction screen, I'd take it. But the original screen's appearance/quality is a huge part of the appeal for me - be it passive matrix or active.
H
halkyardo
If you can find a panel in the right size and resolution, and work out how to interface it, I think it's a great idea. Though I suspect that could be a big "if" unless you're willing to hack up the bezel to accommodate a display of a different size and aspect ratio - a lot of the mono PowerBooks whose displays suffer the most are 16:10 640x400, which is a bit of an oddball.
alectrona2988
got a powermac 6400 off of ebay, can't wait for it to arrive. also getting a radeon 7000 to flash to a mac ROM and will transfer my g3 upgrade from my 6360 over. its gonna be a killer system 7 machine
  • Like
Reactions: Snial
View previous comments…
finkmac
finkmac
of course you can. the flashed sil3112s work on any pci powermac.
I
itallstartedwithanLCIII
Congrats! I recommend Zone 6400 (https://web.archive.org/web/20220522165815/http://zone6400.com/) for resources.
I've had a lot of trouble getting an ATI Rage 128 to work on my 6500 due to conflicting extensions, and clashes on the PCI bus with the ATI Rage II on the motherboard (see Gazelle PCI hack thread on 68kmla).
Given that the 6400 doesn't have on-board ATI graphics, you may have better luck :)
alectrona2988
alectrona2988
yeah, a few people said that the 6400 was better for upgrades. i still can't wait for it to get here, ive lowkey wanted one since i was a kid because they looked cool (and, unlike a good chunk of performas like the 5200 and 6200), are actually cool.
alectrona2988
i have a couple of pre-balled 1GHz 7455A chips and i'm thinking i want to get a 2002 eMac and a spare board, and swap one in. also i have a couple of dead G4 cards and the 2002 eMacs and iMac G4s have provisions for L3 cache. pretty sure you can tell what this girl is thinking about doing
alectrona2988
has anyone tried to upgrade the L2 cache or the CPU on a sonnet crescendo L2 card? i have an old G4 7400 card sitting around, plus a crazy idea... but i guess i would only just be able to get 1MB of L2 from 512KB given my equipments capabilities...
Phipli
Phipli
Daniël
Daniël
The Sonnet G3 cards of various types (be it the NuBus, PCI or L2 cards) do work with the G4 swapped in, with the Sonnet extension then correctly detecting it as a "Sonnet G4" card. You do however need to lower the core voltage (750s generally run above 2V, the 7400 needs 1.8V), and just to be sure: You can only use the 7400 due to the cache voltage, the 7410 wouldn't work.
P
Hi Berenod,
did you succeed with your inquiry for the pinout of M7783?
I have also a blown up AC-Adapter and would like to replace it with a standard 24 V power supply.
Does it really only need 1 voltage?
I am confused about the 3 Pin connector and don't know where to apply the 24 V.

Appreciate your help
Peter
M
More new shiny things:
IMG_3489(1).JPG
alectrona2988
did an onboard RAM upgrade on my IIsi not too long ago, swapped out the 128KB chips for 512KB chips and now my IIsi has 4MB of 70ns onboard memory. yes it will likely make it slower, but i felt like it, also i know i am not the first one to do this lol
  • Like
Reactions: croissantking and Phipli
View previous comments…
M
max1zzz
Nee to have a look if I have any assembled, if not I still have loads of blank PCB's and components, drop me a PM :)
finkmac
finkmac
why an sca adapter over a nice SD adapter? those disks are rather loud and hot...

actually i ripped one out of my iisi. silly thing!
alectrona2988
alectrona2988
i already have a lot of SCA disks around from when my high school tech teacher was getting rid of them and i'd like to put them to good use. sure they take up more power, they scream bloody murder, and they run hotter than the sun (and i already know this)... but i have a lot of them and i need to put them to use.
alectrona2988
has anyone tried to use a manual inject floppy drive on a mac that takes auto drives?
View previous comments…
Phipli
Phipli
Puts a little bit of silicone grease in the gearbox? Might help.
alectrona2988
alectrona2988
did that, still noisy. like something's grinding, even though the gears are still perfectly fine. i think the motor is worn out??
Phipli
Phipli
If it is the actual motor it might be contamination. Have you put some machine oil on the motor bearings? Can't remember if you can get to them.

Does it make the noise when you run the motor not inside the floppy drive? Unscrew it and lift it out, but leave it plugged in. It should run continuously when you eject I think.
M
New shiny thing in testing:
IMG_3480.jpg
  • Like
Reactions: Snial, EtherRad, cheesestraws and 2 others
View previous comments…
M
max1zzz
Well if someone wants to donate a LC PDS video card to the cause! :ROFLMAO:

Adding multiple PDS cards gets a bit more complicated as you have to handle card selection, smooshing one card and a accelerator together is much easier as the accelerator is not really a PDS card. Maybe I need to get my hands on one of those crazy expansion chassis's that let you have multiple PDS card sin a LC.....
  • Like
Reactions: Phipli
robin-fo
robin-fo
I have a Radius Pivot LC PDS card. How would you clone the main ASIC there? Wouldn‘t it be more feasible to adapt some simple PDS video card logic (maybe even SE/30 internal video bumped to 640x480)?
C
cheesestraws
yeah - I have a spare LC PDS graphics card but it looks like it relies on unobtainium chips so it probably wouldn't help you much.
C
*rolling the bad idea dice* NT4 on alpha running services for mac, for no apparent or good reason
  • Like
Reactions: Juror22 and halkyardo
finkmac
finkmac
but what if the idea was worse?

"running on a multia"
C
Cory5412
You know, I'm actually not sure that the multia would be any worse at basic file services than the alphastation I've got, I suppose it'd depend on what internal and external storage it allows. And, you can argue how much that matters with modern SCSI replacers... hmmmm
Juror22
Juror22
Thanks for reminding me that I have an Alpha box in my queue of things as well... focus! focus!
C
man now i'm thinking about my 8500/601-100 pentium-166 build idea and thinking I might need to put some time into that
CircuitBored
This is hands-down one of the strangest things I've ever seen in an electronic device. Do we think it's there for ease of replacement or because someone said "sod it, put it wherever it fits"?
IMG_7402.jpeg

(Sony HVC-3000P)
  • Like
Reactions: Snial
View previous comments…
Phipli
Phipli
Agree with demik.

Used to be common to find high power parts thermally coupled to the chassis or case. Weird thing is that it isn't mounted from the PCB, but perhaps they were expecting vibration / movement?
CircuitBored
CircuitBored
@demik @Phipli oh yes, I've seen the chassis used as a heatsink plenty. I've just never seen a component like this just floating, connected only by a block connector! Having given the rest of the unit a once-over it seems like they really had no other place to put it, as the two main control boards are quite surprisingly air-gapped from the chassis, save for some grounding wires.
luRaichu
luRaichu
C
well this is extremely silly

IMG_3034.JPG
  • Like
  • Love
  • Wow
Reactions: daanvdl, ymk, nickpunt and 6 others
View previous comments…
Phipli
Phipli
1000017411.jpg

My 400MHz G4 works, although BeOS doesn't recognise the processor correctly. Gets the speed wrong and calls it unknown. Guess my 466MHz G3 would be faster given BeOS isn't using Altivec.
  • Like
Reactions: ymk
Phipli
Phipli
1000017413.jpg


I realise that my cache must not have been set up properly on my G3 466MHz because I don't imagine BeOS is altivec optimised, so there is no reason for the G4 400 I just benchmarked in a virtualised Mac to outperform my previous high score from the faster G3.
  • Like
Reactions: Snial
Phipli
Phipli
Updated performance of my Interware 466MHz card. The cache mustn't have been enabled properly before. Here I have speculative addressing turned off. Not sure if I could work out a more optimised mode with it on for some memory regions and... We'll, off for slots etc.

1000017439.jpg
Top