Apple Nubus 8/24GC and Control Panel

[beachycove]

So, for the first time, I have been playing around properly with an 8/24GC Nubus card acquired some time ago. Acceleration for this card is provided by the 8/24GC Control Panel. There are two versions of this Control Panel available in Apple's older software downloads (part of the same d/l, in fact), and there is a PDF manual available separately.

The version for System 7 works just fine in System 7 (the little rocket goes up nicely on booting, and all's well with the world). The version for System 6 refuses to work in System 6 (6.0.8 ) (the little rocket is crossed out, and nothing I do — following the manual — seems to want to make its engine roar).

Now, I want the System 6 version to work, if possible, in a IIfx that I have here running System 6, as the ultimate System 6 machine, basically. Elsewhere in the IIfx there is an Apple 8/24 Nubus card (the one that teams with the 8/24GC) and a bog-standard Asante ethernet card with drivers. The System installation is otherwise minimal.

There was a ROM update for the 8/24GC card, I believe, and of course we mostly apply these patches when they come out, so most likely whoever owned this card did so years ago. Could this be the reason for the failure of the software in System 6, and if so, what can I do about it? The only other complication I can think of is that 32-bit QuickDraw is installed in System 6. Apparently the 8/24GC Control Panel patches 32-bit QuickDraw on booting, so I am assuming that it needs to be present.

Does anyone know the deep lore?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I wouldn't think so, but I've only ever used the 8*24*GC with 7.1.

 

[PappaDF]

Apologies in advance if reviving a thread this old is frowned upon. My only reason for posting here is that this is the thread a person tends to land on when searching for why the System 6 version of the 8•24 GC software won't engage, so it seemed the most useful place to leave a note for anyone hitting the same wall.

This may not be everyone's problem, but it's easy to check and harmless to try, so here it is:

A lot of ctrl-panel copies floating around, targeting System 6 (including some on macintoshrepository.org) ship the file named "8•24 GC SW". Try renaming the file from "8•24 GC SW" to just "8•24 GC" (drop the space and "SW"; keep the • bullet), and reboot. For me the rocket lit up after that (assuming you have 32-bit qd already installed).

It seems like sys 6.0.8 itself (only tested with that version) has built-in startup code (a rom patch that lives in the sys file) that brings the accelerator up on every boot. At startup it literally does: look up the string "8•24 GC", OpenResFile a file by that exact name, and if it finds it, run that file's gc24/32 resource - which is the only thing that actually installs the ".GraphAccel" driver.

I only confirmed this by poking at it in an emulator, not on real hardware, so please take it with a grain of salt. But the rename costs nothing to try, and it worked for me.

 

[David Cook]

You're absolutely right. Looking at the ROM source code, the name of the GC accelerator control panel is in string resource 'STR ' -16454.