Recent content by Franklinstein

It's probably not a problem if you're the only house in a 20 mile radius, but in high-density housing, your WEP network's probably going to be cracked within 30 minutes of standing up. Mine usually was, even with MAC filtering (they'd just clone something's address). The whole point of a network...

I got one of those at a flea market for like $20. It was in good condition but wouldn't boot. Turns out something goes bad in the top case and so the power button (and keyboard) doesn't respond. It turns on by shorting a couple traces on the logic board but it's mostly useless if it only powers...

It's kind of pointless these days to run an older wifi system, especially if other people who are inclined to snoop are around, so I'm not super knowledgeable about the AirPort hacks anymore. I'm pretty sure the AirPort slot uses a subset of the PCMCIA standard in that it's only providing an ATA...

It's possible the Amiga '060s use the host CPU for initial boot, then there's a handoff after a certain point where the '060 is initialized, its IPLs are loaded to RAM, and the host CPU is halted. In the same way, you could get an '060 in a Mac if you treat it like Sonnet did the 601 PDS G3...

As I understand it, the '060 drops some hardware instructions to save transistors (or more accurately, to use them on other features). These missing instructions are then written into a software-based emulation library that's loaded at some point in the boot process. When a deleted instruction...

I'm not sure that's a hybrid machine so much as a LaserDisc player that could run specialized interactive discs. Like saying the Sega Saturn was a hybrid machine because it could play CDs as well as games, or the PS2 because it could play DVDs and CDs as well as games. I actually bought some...

You're absolutely right. The 68k family had a plethora of support chips available to get maximum performance in a variety of implementations. But my point was: the 68000 COULD run by itself, whereas the 88100 could not. The 88110 could also stand on its own. This means that a personal computer...

While the 88110 may have been OK by itself in a PowerBook or something super low-end, if you wanted an L2 cache at all, you also needed the 88410. In a desktop like the 5200, that's one more chip than the 603 requires (which can manage an L2 cache as-is), which in turn increases cost, which is...

Is there a reason you're so fascinated by the M88k Macs? If Apple went through with it, I still don't see enough of an adoption rate to get the M88k to go more than a few generations before someone (either Apple or Motorola) got tired of it. Part of the reason 68k went as well as it did was...

For funsies I looked up chips for sale and some 970MPs turned up. Out of curiosity I did a cursory search for a mod for the iMac G5 to upgrade the CPU but haven't turned up much. I know the G5 wasn't a hot target for mods owing to the fact that it was already a fairly high-strung, fragile, and...

People have air cooled the 970fx-based 2.7DP to mixed results (I have, and it mostly works but can overheat depending on what software's running - it doesn't always seem to figure out that it's getting hot until it's nearing 80°C unless iMovie (for example) is running in the background, then...

An interesting idea. There was mention of sharing the CPU and it sort of implied that the FPGA swaps attention between the Mac and Genesis environments as necessary, so I wonder: how does that work? Does the Mac have its own video output separate from the Genesis, allowing gaming and Mac usage...

A little bit of a necropost, but basically: if it's a 160~800MB Quantum drive, it probably has a bumper hidden under the platters and as such is extremely difficult to repair. 9/10 difficulty, except for the single platter drives which are 8/10 (you don't have to keep multiple platters in sync...

As much as I like the old CDC/Imprimis-origin Seagate drives, they're getting old(er) and I don't trust them. Too many use rubber bumpers that, when they disintegrate, allow the armature to travel beyond its normal boundaries and this usually results in catastrophic damage. I had one model (I...

I can probably help out eventually but I'd have to see if my PB100 is still alive. Also I'd have to get a FloppyEmu (which I probably should anyway). Is there a particular revision/variant that would work best for this?