Daystar IIsi/SE/30 Adapter, $150 on Ebay!!?

[kjbjm]

You guys are funny, especially JDW. I was the seller of this card and I know a lot about vintage macs. I know for a fact that this adapter works with a turbo 040 in an SE/30 because that's what it was running in until recently. Yes the adapter is designed for a IIsi and requires case modification to work in an SE/30. You can also buy 120 pin eurocard adapters from digikey and make an extender or an angle adapter that allows the card to clear the frame.

I personally believe that anyone who bids on one of these cards should know what they are all about. Just type "daystar turbo 040" into google and you have a huge amount of information including lowendmac.com and gamba's site in the top hits. In fact I think I linked gamba's site in the listing. Fact or fiction, the buyer has to do the research. I have bought many things off EBAY and other sites. I never bid on anything unless I've fully researched the part. As for the 5x acceleration I got that from http://lowendmac.com/sable/05/1129.html. Maybe that was a mistake, but I didn't run the speedometer tests myself before disassembling the mac.

As for my integrity as a seller, the part was originally listed on EBAY at 4.95 and there is not a shred of information on the listing that is not backed up by data. Mentioning the TS adapter is part of fully informing the buyer about options. I could have said "This is the ONLY way you're going to get your turbo 040 to work" but that's not true. You go ahead and sell your old mac parts for peanuts and that's what people will treat them like. Sell them for what they're worth and maybe people will keep them in circulation so we can all benefit.

One final thing for JDW. If you thought I was stupid and didn't know anything about the product that I was selling why didn't you message me to help inform me so I could correct the mistake? If you thought this was a scam listing or that I was deliberately lying to my bidders why didn't you alert EBAY? People who rant and rave but never do anything about it drive me nuts.

And one final message to equill. I'm glad you're enjoying the turbo 040. That was the one that I had running in my SE/30 and it was great. I've moved on to a mystic color classic now and will eventually start on a IIci when I get the resources and space.

I never seem to end do I? this is the last finally, I promise. Anyone who wants a turbo 040 -- I have 2 more, one is a first edition that doesn't have cache. I can let them go at the price equill paid plus shipping (less whatever you think for the lack of cache on the one).

Ok, I'm ready, let the flames begin.

Go old macs!

 

[equill]

Equil: You were the one who snagged a "dead" SE30 motherboard from ebay recently with 128MB of RAM for $52? If so is the motherboard realy dead?

I haven't even attempted to fire it up, because the Fatal Gods were obviously already in control. Just about every capacitor (perhaps other than the axial-lead caps) that could have leaked appeared to have leaked. There was some corrosion of the pins of a few ICs. The RAM-slot clips were of the plastic rather than the metal variety, and every one of them in Bank B had broken. The red objects in that bank in the pic were stabilizing (neoprene?) plugs to jam the RAM cards in place. Bank A is perfect. In all other respects the MLB was in good condition, although I had to let the battery (0.9V) go ...

However, I scored 128MB of 30-pin 70ns RAM (USD60), a socketted-CPU MLB which will clean up nicely and be recapped, and I have met enough done-in RAM slots in my time to have devised a replacement clip to suit. All in all, a useful acquisition.

de

 

[equill]

... Ok, I'm ready, let the flames begin.
Go old macs!

No flaming from this quarter, but amusement. Your wording simply implies that it is the mere act of bidding that confers a 5 times acceleration:

'Bid now and watch the speed of your SE/30 increase by up to 5 times!'

de

 

[kjbjm]

Oh, now I get it, you're right that is kind of amusing [] ]'>

 

[Unknown_K]

Equil: You were the one who snagged a "dead" SE30 motherboard from ebay recently with 128MB of RAM for $52? If so is the motherboard realy dead?

I haven't even attempted to fire it up, because the Fatal Gods were obviously already in control. Just about every capacitor (perhaps other than the axial-lead caps) that could have leaked appeared to have leaked. There was some corrosion of the pins of a few ICs. The RAM-slot clips were of the plastic rather than the metal variety, and every one of them in Bank B had broken. The red objects in that bank in the pic were stabilizing (neoprene?) plugs to jam the RAM cards in place. Bank A is perfect. In all other respects the MLB was in good condition, although I had to let the battery (0.9V) go ...

However, I scored 128MB of 30-pin 70ns RAM (USD60), a socketted-CPU MLB which will clean up nicely and be recapped, and I have met enough done-in RAM slots in my time to have devised a replacement clip to suit. All in all, a useful acquisition.

de

I ended up with the case and drives from that system. The seller is local to me, nice guy. I was going to bid on the unit for the RAM but ended up getting a complete SE/30 with 128MB RAM for free from another source.

Since I had a SE30 mb and ethernet card in stock I installed it into that free case and now have a working system (socketed processor as well).

He sold a set of Xceed video cardsaround the same time, too pricey for me and no grayscale adapter anyway.

 

[JDW]

To begin, WELCOME TO 68kMLA, kjbjm!

You guys are funny, especially JDW.

Funny? No. (I know you were just being nice by saying that though.)

On edge about EBAY listings? Perhaps. :b&w:

I know for a fact that this adapter works with a turbo 040 in an SE/30...

Happy to hear it. But I didn't doubt you on that point. Also, I too have confirmed (see my posts above) that the IIsi adapter does in fact work on the SE/30 logic board in conjunction with Daystar accelerators (both old and new); and like you, we both understand and admit in this thread that this requires a metal frame mod to properly seat the IIsi adapter.

You can also buy 120 pin eurocard adapters from digikey and make an extender or an angle adapter that allows the card to clear the frame.

That wasn't mentioned in the auction (nor was it necessary to mention, I suppose). But thank you for mentioning that here.

I personally believe that anyone who bids on one of these cards should know what they are all about...Fact or fiction, the buyer has to do the research.

Fiction, then. There are a lot of newbies on EBAY. I too was once in that category. At that point in time, I did not "know what they are all about" and I relied upon the information in listings to educate me on many things. Yes, I did Google outside EBAY for additional info, but not everyone is as thorough as I am in checking something out. And the fact remains that I am "greatly pleased" as a buyer when a listing provides an abundance of facts for me, such that I don't have to spend an enormous amount of time elsewhere to figure out "compatibility" for my particular classic Mac.

But thank you for explaining your integrity as a seller. It is nice to hear from sellers, especially those who care about the classic Macintosh community.

One final thing for JDW. If you thought I was stupid and didn't know anything about the product that I was selling why didn't you message me to help inform me so I could correct the mistake? If you thought this was a scam listing or that I was deliberately lying to my bidders why didn't you alert EBAY? People who rant and rave but never do anything about it drive me nuts.

I never thought you were "stupid." I have stated in this thread that I do not agree with the lack of details in your auction about SE/30 compatibility for a IIsi adapter. And to ensure others are fully informed, assuming they come across this thread or Google up my photos, I have put information on Flickr to ensure no one will be led in the wrong direction as to the SE/30 compatibility of the IIsi Daystar adapter.

Why didn't I message you to help inform you of a mistake in your listing? Quite simply because I only learned of your listing after reading this thread. And I read this thread long after your auction had ended. That is why. And yes, I have taken my time in the past to email other EBAY sellers when I found an error in their listings, even in cases where I had no interest whatsoever in bidding on that listing!

Why didn't I alert EBAY? Because your listing, even though not detailed enough for my tastes, is common among may classic Mac EBAY listings today. Therefore, am I alone going to change EBAY by complaining about sellers? I don't think so, which is why I don't waste my time on EBAY complaining about these things. But posting on this site is special because I often post here and am alerted to happenings in the classic Mac community. I post here to informed others and to be informed. Yet another reason I did not speak directly with EBAY was because I wasn't interested in personally bidding on your auction. I was alerted to your auction after reading this thread.

But again, my issue with the listing was and still is that it lacks certain details about SE/30 compatibility, above and beyond mere "electrical compatibility." But your kindness in replying to us in this thread indicates you may rectify that in the future, if not but by providing more info for those poor souls out there who are not as Google-savvy as you and I are. And honestly, the more details you put into an auction, the higher the bid price will likely be. At least, that's how I am. I bid higher when I am impressed the content of an EBAY listing (for an item that interests me, of course). Please impress me in future listings! :b&w:

As to "ranting and raving without doing anything," I will again point you to the photos I uploaded to Flickr. I took time to shoot those photos only after having posted in this thread. I then took time to comment extensively under those photos, not to pound on you or your listing, but to educate others in the classic Mac community. If that is "not doing anything," then I truly am sorry. But in my mind, I have done something above and beyond a simple "rant." (Technically, my "rant" was confined to my opening post in this thread. And I never mentioned your EBAY seller name, either in this thread or in my Flickr photo comments.)

Thank you.

 

[trag]

Any Daystar adapter made for the IIsi is not the same as the Daystar adapter made for the SE/30. They are 2 separate products. Yes, I have an original Daystar owner's manual that shows all the Daystar adapters ever made, and IIsi and SE/30 adapters are very differently shaped beasts (even if they both will "electrically operate just fine" in either the IIsi or SE/30).

After reading this, I went and checked my box 'o cards again. I knew I had two PDS adapters in there which were slightly different. Interestingly, one has the corner of the circuit board which drops down lower than the top of the DIN connector, like the one discussed in this thread. The other has a PCB that stays nicely elevated. However, they both have two slots facing horizontally, which leads me to believe that despite the different styles, they were both intended for the IIsi.

However, wasn't there a thread a long while back about Daystar eventually using the same PCB for both adapters and simply populating it differently? E.g. one DIN connector only on the SE/30 version, with a right angle DIN so it points up and no FPU socket installed.

I also have the metal backed SuperMac adapter, but that is simply two PDS slots, not a "cache" slot and PDS slot. And so, not all that interesting. If I ever dig past the boxes covering up my workbench at present, I'll fire up the scanner and make pics. That's one reason I appreciate JDW's pictures so much. He can actually do what I only put on my list.

Now that I just gotten off my podium about EBAY scams, I will admit that I paid almost $200 (including shipping to my Japanese address) for that TS Adapter, direct from Manabu Sakai at ARTMIX. And after speaking with him at length, it is clear that he created the TS Adapter himself and was forced to contract for "hundreds of pieces" from the Asian manufacturer. As such, he cannot get a return on his initial investment without charging a rather high price for the TS Adapter. As such, the price makes logical sense. In contrast, many EBAY prices for no-so-rare, old equipment makes no logical sense to me.

A year or two ago when folks were complaining about the high cost of Artmix's creation, I pointed out some of the economic realities of such a project. I wouldn't be surprised if he still hasn't made his investment back. At that price (and depending on how many are "hundreds"), he may only have to sell 50 to 100 to make back his cost, but that's no mean feat. In the mean time he's lost the use of thousands of dollars, and must store and manage his stock. I understand that living spaces in Japan tend to be rather cramped. Is that true?

 

[trag]

The RAM-slot clips were of the plastic rather than the metal variety, and every one of them in Bank B had broken. The red objects in that bank in the pic were stabilizing (neoprene?) plugs to jam the RAM cards in place. Bank A is perfect. In all other respects the MLB was in good condition, although I had to let the battery (0.9V) go ...
I have met enough done-in RAM slots in my time to have devised a replacement clip to suit. All in all, a useful acquisition.

de

Fire up the heat gun and replace the entire SIMM socket assembly...

But cover up any nearby components with something first, so they don't come lose and blow away.

The first time I did heat gun desoldering, I lost a bunch of small surface mount components off of the patient. I shouldn't say lost, as I had possession of them, I just had no idea which ones went where. We live and learn. Since then, I cover up nearby parts with modeling clay.

 

[trag]

That question is at least part of Bunsen's impetus to a clone-the-IIcx-adapter question above, I suspect.
The necessary traces and components of the IIcx adapter could be arranged on a smaller card, The real crunch is that the position of the on-card IIci PDS slot would still be awkward to arrange while keeping it parallel to but far enough away from the SE/30's 030 PDS slot and the CPU plug. So it is physically a pain.

You've given this much more examination than I have thus far. So here's the question, is there room under there for a Turbo040 or PowerCache to fit, if the adapter is miraculous enough? Leaving the PDS slot free, of course.

Both Turbo040 versions? Or only the more modern one which does not have the cache daughter board?

Worst case, we could go to a six or eight layer board if necessary, so that it is no bigger than a 128 pin 13 X 13 socket and Euro-DIN connector. Even worse case, we use surface mount for the CPU socket and put the Euro DIN on the same real estate on the other side of the board. Oops, that isn't going to work. There's no SM version of the Euro DIN connector. Silly me. See what happens when I think out loud...

Or move the adapter board up higher, and mount the Turbo040 on the underside of the adapter, if that will make the geometry work better.

The height is controlled by the sockets, but also by the header pins which go between the sockets, and those headers can be had (or could be had, I'm not very optimistic about their availability these days) in various heights.

Really worst case, use two circuit boards connected by flat flex cable so the Turbo040 need not be sitting right next to the socket, nor in a horizontal orientation. However, this runs the risk of too long connections. Still, 16 MHz gives one a lot of wriggle room, it's slow enough.

 

[trag]

Also, do you know what ROM version you have on your Turbo 040? As I mention under my Daystar Turbo 040 photo, I have the latest 4.11 version ROM. The card actually came with an older ROM, but the seller (Manabu Sakai of ARTMIX, maker of the TS Adapter) upgraded the ROM for me, for a $59 fee (allowing me to keep the old ROM chip).

The last time I sold a Turbo040 (several years ago), I included extra ROM versions for free. [] ]'>

Do you have a full 68040 installed or an LC version? I ask because in my experiments (again, several years ago) I found that the 'i' version needed a different ROM from the latest 4.11 otherwise it would not work properly. I don't remember if "would not work properly" was wouldn't boot up at all, or if it was subtler incompatibilities which made their presence known over time.

Hmmm. I started keeping a lab notebook for this stuff way back when. I wonder if those experiments made it into there. If I ever remember when I'm home, I'll check.

But even with the newest version ROM, I still found that I could not READ/WRITE 1.4MB floppy disks when I had a non-stock SE/30 ROM in the machine. But when I put in an SE/30 ROM, the floppy drive worked just fine. So there appears to be an incompatibility with the Daystar Turbo 040 and IIfx/IIsi ROMs.

This is where you need Gamba's IIci ROM. It would be interesting to know whether you have the same issue with the IIci ROM, especially because the Turbo040 is designed for the IIci. However, my guess is that Artmix's board is simply too high/long. He has extended those traces an awful lot, and the floppy drive seems more sensitive to timing than any other component. Still, at 16 MHz I would have thought that he could get away with it.

But those are just hypotheses. We need experiments!

But if some of you run the same tests as I and find no problem, then perhaps I could say it is the TS Adapter. Because again, I am not using a Daystar Adapter in conjunction with my Turbo 040 -- I use the TS Adapter.

JDW, if you would like to borrow one of my IIsi adapters, email me at trag@io.com. I'm not sure if you've made the connection, but I, trag, am the Jeff Walther you just bought two sets of capacitors from recently. It probably will cost less than $10 to ship each way. You would have to do the experiment outside the SE/30 chassis, as I've never purchased a right angle Euro DIN and won't be doing a Digi-Key order any time soon.

 

[trag]

This thread inspired me to shoot some photos today. I've flickrized my TS Adapter & Daystar Turbo 040. I put comments under most of those photos, which explain a lot about the Adapter and the popular accelerator used in it.

One last posting, and then I will be out of thoughts...

JDW, I know you were posting your experiences there, but the wording makes it sound a bit like the version of the Turbo040 board is speed dependent.

My understanding, which could be wrong of course, is that it is a time dependency. The early version of the Turbo040 is the one with many GAL PLDs on board and the FastCache socket on the back. The later manufactured Turbo040s are the ones with the large square ASIC and the cache soldered down on the board.

I spoke with a Daystar tech way back when about this once, IIRC. He claimed that the ASIC version was also faster. I guess (he didn't put it in these words) that they were able to tighten up some of the timings when they put it all in one ASIC rather than spreading it across PLDs. I guess that would make sense. They could probably do a larger combinational cloud between register steps in the ASIC and therefore eliminate some layers of flip flops.

 

[TylerEss]

Oh yeah, stupid question JDW:

Do you still have the same floppy drive problems with a DayStar adaptor (either IIsi or SE/30) as with the TwinSpark?

Also, I've got a IIfx ROM SIMM now... I should try and see if my (external) floppy drive works with the Turbo040, IIsi adaptor, and IIfx ROM SIMM.

When we worked on this previously, my lack of a non-stock ROM prevented me from attempting to reproduce your issue...

 

[JDW]

The other has a PCB that stays nicely elevated.

I would love to see a crisp photo (both sides), at 1024 pixels, of that "nicely elevated" Daystar adapter, trag!

The last time I sold a Turbo040 (several years ago), I included extra ROM versions for free.

A kindred spirit. That is why I mentioned earlier in this thread that I sold a IIsi adapter for US$35 (after informing the buyer that he would need to cut up his metal chassis), which included international EMS express mail shipping to the buyer in the US. I felt no need to reap tremendous profit off a fellow classic Mac enthusiast.

Nevertheless, both you and I have admitted in this thread that Manabu Sakai has clearly spent a considerable sum on R&D for that TS Adapter; hence his desire to get a decent ROI wherever possible. I therefore will refrain from condemning the man for his $59 price tag on the ROM upgrade. But I will admit, it is "not cheap."

Do you have a full 68040 installed or an LC version?

Full version 040.

This is where you need Gamba's IIci ROM.

I would love to borrow someone's IIci ROM to give it a compatibility test. But in the meantime, I await Equill's test results.

It's difficult for me to see it as a "ROM incompatibility" alone because again, the DiiMO has no problems at all, regardless of ROM. Could be the 040, I guess. But it could also be the TS Adapter. Since Equill will be testing without the TS Adapter, he can offer further insight into this matter.

As to borrowing your IIsi adapter, I would first love to see some photos of what you have!

I spoke with a Daystar tech way back when about this once, IIRC. He claimed that the ASIC version was also faster.

Be that as it may, have a look at my Flickr photo. You will see the VLSI chip (ASIC version) on my card. The B&W photo taken of the Daystar User Manual shows the older, non-ASIC version of the card. I once owned that older version too. Both the ASIC and non-ASIC versions of the card exhibited the 1.4MB floppy incompatibility when used with non-stock ROMs and the TS Adapter. So the problem doesn't appear to be related to the ASIC or absence thereof.

Do you still have the same floppy drive problems with a DayStar adaptor (either IIsi or SE/30) as with the TwinSpark?

Tyler, I tested that a very long time ago (early 2005? late 2004?). I just don't remember about the result with the IIsi adapter. I can only remember that it works with the Turbo 040 in the SE/30, except for the fact you must cut up your metal chassis to make it fit.

For this reason, I look forward to Equill's test results, as he will be testing with a Daystar IIsi adapter, I believe. If he then puts in a IIfx or IIsi ROM and has no problems with reading/writing 1.4MB floppies, then clearly, it is the TS Adapter that is at fault. But if he too has the same problem, then it is not the TS Adapter but rather a ROM incompatibility which, apparently, is not fixed even in the latest 4.11 ROM. (In which case we need a Daystar engineer to write us an even newer ROM fix. [] ]'&gt

I'm not sure if you've made the connection, but I, trag, am the Jeff Walther you just bought two sets of capacitors from recently.

Jeff, forgive me. At times, I can be about as dense a neutron star!

Thank you again for the wonderful capacitor offer. And I would encourage my fellow SE/30 owners on this site to take advantage of your offer. It's a great way to replace all the caps on the logic board, with top quality replacements!

Jeff, since I read that you supplied Gamba with some IIci ROM chips (and code) back in 2003, would you happen to have the means to make a IIci ROM? I am skeptical if it would work, but I love to test!

 

[TylerEss]

JDW: Last night I tested the floppy drive with this configuration:

SE/30 (80MB RAM)

IIsi adaptor

Turbo040 (later ASIC version) (4.11 ROM IIRC but I can TattleTech it if needs be) (40MHz 68040 @ 48MHz overclock)

Asante MacCon si

IIfx ROM SIMM

7.5.5

External 1.44MB floppy (upgraded external 800k drive with auto-inject SuperDrive mechanism)

Same results as you: proper operation with 800k floppies, inability to read 1.44MB ones (shows 'disk is unreadable' dialog box and formatting fails almost immediately)

Having reproduced your results, I think the Turbo040 and the IIfx ROM SIMM are incompatible in the SE/30. The only better test would be a Turbo040 attached to the proper DayStar SE/30 adaptor, but I don't imagine that there'd be any difference, since they're the same circuit, differently shaped.

 

[trag]

Jeff, forgive me. At times, I can be about as dense a neutron star!

Nothing to forgive, but I thought you might not have made the connection when you encouraged me to post a FS message in Trading Post and I already had one there under my trag monicker.

Jeff, since I read that you supplied Gamba with some IIci ROM chips (and code) back in 2003, would you happen to have the means to make a IIci ROM? I am skeptical if it would work, but I love to test!

Gamba's IIci ROM worked, but it may not solve the problem that you are seeing. I think we may need to actually decode the PAL on the IIsi/SE/30 adapter and figure out what it is doing to solve this problem. Hmmmm. Thinking along those lines, has this problem been shown with the IIsi ROM in the SE/30? The IIsi works with that adapter (presumably), so why wouldn't the SE/30, with a IIsi ROM.

I still have the ability to make the Flash chips with IIci ROM code on board. That is what I supplied to Gamba. I chose the chips and sent Gamba the specs. He laid out and fabricated the circuit board, with a little bit of advice from me (but not much) and I sent him the programmed chips, which he attached to the board. Shortly after that he disappeared. :-(

I don't have the ability to easily make the ROM circuit board, and none of the existing modules use a variety of chip which could be easily desoldered and replaced.

I do have a board layout designed for the ROM module which will be compatible with the incredibly common PLCC32 packaged flash chips. But turning that into a board would either require many more hours of fabrication than I will realistically be investing any time in the next 6 months at least, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 - $600 to pay someone like 4pcb.com to fabricate the design.

I also have the firmware code for the various Turbo040 versions extracted around here somewhere. Probably on the hard drive of that old Windows '95 machine that drives my chip programmer...

Anyone here the least bit skilled at reading Mac machine code or doing a disassembly? Come on, don't be shy. Raise your hands.

In this case, what I would hunt for is code at the beginning of the Turbo040 firmware which checks what the host machine identity is. The host machine identity is going to be taken from the ROM. So when a Turbo040 is in an SE/30, but the SE/30 is using a IIfx or IIsi ROM, then the Turbo040 is going to behave as if it is in a IIsi or a IIfx--if it has code to check the host machine identity. Apparently, this is not a problem except for floppy drive timing. Maybe. It's a decent hypothesis. If such a check is done, we could create a version of the Turbo040 firmware such that it uses the SE/30 results even when it thinks it is in a IIsi or IIfx.

Hmmm. The Turbo040 cannot go in a IIfx. There's no adapter for it. So what set of parameters is it using if it finds itself in a IIfx? I would guess that it is defaulting to IIci parameters, which would imply that using a IIci ROM won't get us any better results than the IIfx ROM does.

Another option would be to find the location of the machine identifier in the ROM code and change it to SE/30's code. As long as one is burning the ROM code onto Flash anyway, it would be easy enough to do a small edit before doing the burn. That is, assuming that the machine identifier is not located in many places.

 

[equill]

... 4.11 ROM IIRC but I can TattleTech it if needs be ...

I was thinking (out loud, too soon) in terms of TattleTech, too, but the DayStar CP QuadControl shows the card's ROM version without even being prompted (other than by opening the CP).

... Could be the 040, I guess. But it could also be the TS Adapter. Since Equill will be testing without the TS Adapter, he can offer further insight into this matter ...

Your neutron star is on the rise again, J.

My DayStar Turbo040 is in my IIci, as posted above, and it's the MicroMac Carrera040 that I shall use in the first SE/30 to be accelerated, not least because of its altogether more compact 030 PDS adapter. I have a IIfx ROM (bought from catmistake, some time ago), but it may not see use in the other SE/30 for a while unless another Turbo040 comes to live with me. That could be soonish, or not. After all, the first one was six years in the waiting.

de

 

[TylerEss]

My impression was that the reason the IIfx and IIsi ROMs worked in the SE/30 was that they were "universal" ROMs with drivers for every device in every (modular) Mac ever made up to the date of their manufacture.

With that in mind, the natural assumption would be that the toolbox routine that returns the gestalt ID doesn't just pull it out of the ROM as a constant, but instead queries the hardware and determines the model of the Mac based upon what it finds using some heuristic. The fact that you have to modify the gbly resource in your System file after a ROM swap neither confirms nor denies this: one one hand, the fact that you have to change anything at all means that the ROM swap changes _something_ but on the other hand, the changes you have to make are the same whether you're using a IIsi or IIfx ROM.

So, it doesn't seem like putting a IIfx ROM into your SE/30 makes it identify as a IIfx, nor does using the IIsi ROM identify it as a IIsi, yet putting a non-stock ROM does make it identify as something *different*... can anybody run TattleTech on an SE/30 with a non-stock ROM and tell us what model TattleTech thinks it is? If not, I'll try to do it when I get to work.

If the debian initrd images work, I'll probably try the floppy drive under Linux, where there's supposedly a working SWIM driver. If that works, it at least proves that this problem is fixable in software...

 

[JDW]

...has this problem been shown with the IIsi ROM in the SE/30?

Yes, same problem when using the IIsi ROM. But again, I am doing the test with a TS Adapter. I am not able to test the IIsi ROM with the IIsi adapter because I sold the IIsi adapter a couple years ago.

So Tyler's test confirms the problem! Yeah! Not only confirms it, but also confirms it on EXTERNAL drives too -- I only confirmed it on the INTERNAL floppy drive. So Tyler's test in combination with mine shows that neither the IIsi nor the IIfx ROM is compatible (IIfx ROM having been tested with the IIsi adapter in Tyler's SE/30, and both ROMs having been tested with the TS Adapter in my SE/30).

Tyler also mentioned his RAM, OS and Ethernet configuration. But I tested with many different RAM sizes, different RAM chips (sometimes filling all slots, sometimes only one bank, etc.), OS's from 6.0.8 through 8.1, with and without the MacCon attached. The same 1.4MB read/write problem occurs regardless of RAM, OS, and Ethernet configuration.

It also occurs regardless of the INITs, including the Daystar QuadControl CP used with the Turbo 040. Yes, I tested with it and without. And when I had the CP running, I changed various cache settings -- every combination I could think of. Nothing worked to solve the 1.4MB floppy problem EXCEPT putting the stock SE/30 ROM back into the SE/30.

I actually wrote extensively about all my various tests on this site, prior to the hard drive crash a year ago. All those hours of typing in my detailed reports vanished when that crash occurred. Here are the only older threads still in existence on this subject: Thread#1 & Thread#2.

Prior to the crash, the threads containing my posts were found at the following URLs:

http://www.68kmla.org/viewtopic.php?p=34873#34873

http://www.68kmla.org/viewtopic.php?p=48778#48778

http://www.68kmla.org/viewtopic.php?p=53786#53786

http://www.68kmla.org/viewtopic.php?p=53921#53921

But even Google doesn't have that info caches anymore.

I've discussed this in the past a bit in this AppleFritter thread. But that thread mainly talks about on screen artifacts and vertical bars. It does have some photos of interest for you though.

Shortly after that [Gamba] disappeared.

I've always wondered why he fell off the face of the planet, but perhaps he literally is no longer with us on this earth?

One last note...

Back in December 2005, Tyler and I exchanged some emails about the .SONY driver and a ROM patch Tyler put together for me. Looking through our old emails, I see that we played with this in a resource editor for a number of days, but ultimately the patch didn't work. :'(

So perhaps if anything needs to be patched, it would appear to be the ROM code of the Turbo 040, which for whatever reason is incompatible with IIfx and IIsi ROMs when used in the SE/30.

 

[TylerEss]

Just to clarify, my SE/30 with Turbo040 and IIfx ROM SIMM reports Gestalt ID 9, which is the normal SE/30 Gestalt.

My Turbo040 has 4.01 ROM. I'm having terrible stability problems running 7.5.5 with IIfx ROM. (I don't care because I'm reverting to stock ROM right now, but wanted to mention it.)

 

[JDW]

I found the IIsi and IIfx ROMs to be the same in terms of compatibility when used in conjunction with the Daystar Turbo 040 40MHz card. I didn't notice much of a difference when using the stock SE/30 ROM either. Most of the incompatibilities I saw had to do with the cache in the 040 -- some software just won't run at all or will crash, even if you disable the 040 cache in QuadControl.

The only difference I've seen between the IIfx and IIsi ROMs is that there are no horizontal lines at cold boot with the IIsi ROM. But you get the lines with the IIfx ROM.