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I guess I need to get out more. But, if that card's for this machine, it looks like onboard video is replaced with the NuBus controller, so you'd have to spend one of your two PCI slots (or NuBus, I guess) on a video card.

I know one of the PowerComputing models supposedly had an option for a combo PCI/NuBus board. I've never seen photos of the hardware online, let alone IRL, so I'm not sure they ever shipped. Would've been kind of neat to run a Radius Rocket in the equivalent of a 9500.

Sometimes it's not obvious when a discrete component gets knocked loose or off. Look for anything, especially capacitors, that may not sit properly or some pads that look like something used to be there. I think the power supplies on those are custom but you can hack an ATX power supply into...

I forgot that was a thing, though you'd think I'd remember since my favorite iceBook has a smelly keyboard. It's not too bad, but it is persistent and there's nothing to be done to be rid of it except to replace the keyboard. Also, the clear keyboards show EVERYTHING underneath the keys. Hair...

Most of my 68k collection came from working at a recycling center about 20 years ago. Instead of cash, I'd get my pick of computer equipment (within reason). Nobody cared about RISC workstations, 68k, or beige PPC stuff, just the relatively modern consumer systems that they could easily resell...

If you want an iBook G3, get one of the colorful ones. The white ones (especially the 700-900MHz versions) were notorious for logic board failures, particularly involving the GPU. I've seen some of them with 5 different MAC address stickers from having the logic board replaced that many times...

It helps find shorts with a thermal camera, but it also provides safe voltages for tracing circuits and avoiding potentially troublesome devices that would normally interfere (or that may be defective) such as soft power circuits or voltage regulators.

I blew out an external SCSI hard drive years ago by crookedly installing a terminator. Oops. Gotta pay attention next time, I guess. Anyway, you'll probably want to get a bench power supply and inject voltage directly, bypassing the soft power and related control/regulators and allowing a slow...

The character storage/display requirements/limitations were definitely a thing in the 16-bit era, but most of these Interware cards were from the mid-late '90s and KanjiTalk had been a thing for years, so using English to save space or improve legibility wasn't strictly necessary anymore. Plenty...

My first Mac II also had the FDHD upgrade. I think it had an upgraded hard drive though, which is too bad because I really like the 5.25" Quantum drives. At least it was better than the Sony SRD-2040 that some models came with (these drives were notorious for stiction). Eventually I found a...

I figured VRAM was more important to getting higher resolutions than RAMDAC clock speed so I'd try to increase that first, but I'm definitely not an expert. I have a couple of GrandVimage cards that are depopulated on VRAM so I'd be interested to find out what may be required to get them to the...

Honestly, I find that most PCs of that era were either 72-pin SIMM or SDRAM (PC66) compatible. I rarely come across 3.3v EDO. It feels like consumer PCs kinda skipped the EDO/FPM DIMMs and went straight to SDRAM, though I'm sure there are plenty of Super 7 boards with universal RAM slots that...

Did you try swapping power supplies between them, or finding a known good one to try? Also, disconnect everything (expansion cards, RAM SIMMs, cache DIMM, disk drives) and try again. If it stays dead even with a known good power supply and a totally bare board, there's an obvious fault somewhere...

Apparently PowerPC Enabler 1.1 (and the updated v1.1.1) was intended to support the speed-bumped x100 Macs (6100/66, 7100/80, 8100/100 and 110, and probably some clones), so I assume there was a ROM change between the original and speed-bumped models that made the Enabler necessary. It's...

I probably have a stock 8100/110 somewhere but I'd have to dig for it. I have an 8115/110 with an overclock (to 120MHz) that's readily accessible though. Do you think the easter egg is linked to a gestalt ID or a ROM check? If so this machine may satisfy it.

The 603 has a 32-bit address bus and a selectable 32/64-bit data bus. The 603UM says that operation must be selected at boot, so it's not dynamic: you get either a 32 or 64-bit data bus. According to the Dev Note for the 5200, Capella resides on the 64-bit 603 bus along with ROM and L2 cache. So...

The original 603 probably could've gotten away with 16kB of cache if it was unified. Having it split into two 8kB sections is really what hampered it, especially with the 68LC040 Emulator which some resources suggest could run more efficiently with a minimum of 16kB (whether unified 16kB or...

Were they old-school Motorola chips or newer Freescale-branded ones? I may have seen some etched Freescale PLCC chips but they're a lot newer than the Moto ones. Maybe it'd be more accurate to say "etching PLCCs wasn't common until the late '90s/early '00s"? I don't remember etching/engraving...

Yeah counterfeits are a thing. It's less so much of a problem with midrange chips than those at the high end (i.e., you're more likely to get a counterfeit 50MHz 68030 than a counterfeit 25MHz 68030). Generally be wary of "NOS" chips because these are easier to re-mark than a used chip (you...

The Diamondtrons are Mitsubishi's off-patent Trinitron clones. Usually they have faults in the HV circuit as mentioned, but whether it's a dodgy flyback, some other failed component, or just poor manufacturing (i.e., bad solder joints) it's hard to say. I have one of these and a later ADC CRT of...