Some years ago, I purchased a secondhand Mac II that was kept in excellent condition, with its batteries replaced with sockets and an internal SCSI2SD installed to boot from. I've since upgraded it with a Daystar Turbo 040, a Farallon EtherMac ethernet card, and 20mb of RAM, installed MODE32, and gotten an external SCSI2SD and a serial-to-MIDI adapter. It's a nice little (big) machine to play with!
I've recently started using Cubase on it, controlling a Roland SoundCanvas. Obviously not a replacement to composing on my modern PC in Reaper with VSTs, but the novelty of composing on classic hardware and software is fun.
Still, I hunger for more. I'm interested in pushing this machine as far as it can plausibly be pushed, mainly just for the "because it can be done" factor.
So in order to expand the possibilities, I'm hoping to do the FDHD ROM upgrade at some point (minus the floppy -- I haven't been using the floppy drive at all), but it seems like it's very hard to come by these days. I saw a thread on TinkerDifferent a while back where a user had managed to roll their own by writing a downloaded IIx ROM onto four new ROM chips in a specific arrangement.* I don't have the equipment or familiarity to create such a thing myself, so I'm curious if anyone here would be willing to do it for a price, or point me in the right direction to take care of it myself. Combined with the Turbo 040, I think this would fulfill the FDHD upgrade requirements, but I might be overlooking something.
*I don't have a SIMM slot for an easy IIx ROM upgrade, but the four ROM chips at least appear to be socketed, if I'm not mistaken.
I've recently started using Cubase on it, controlling a Roland SoundCanvas. Obviously not a replacement to composing on my modern PC in Reaper with VSTs, but the novelty of composing on classic hardware and software is fun.
Still, I hunger for more. I'm interested in pushing this machine as far as it can plausibly be pushed, mainly just for the "because it can be done" factor.
So in order to expand the possibilities, I'm hoping to do the FDHD ROM upgrade at some point (minus the floppy -- I haven't been using the floppy drive at all), but it seems like it's very hard to come by these days. I saw a thread on TinkerDifferent a while back where a user had managed to roll their own by writing a downloaded IIx ROM onto four new ROM chips in a specific arrangement.* I don't have the equipment or familiarity to create such a thing myself, so I'm curious if anyone here would be willing to do it for a price, or point me in the right direction to take care of it myself. Combined with the Turbo 040, I think this would fulfill the FDHD upgrade requirements, but I might be overlooking something.
*I don't have a SIMM slot for an easy IIx ROM upgrade, but the four ROM chips at least appear to be socketed, if I'm not mistaken.
