Mac SE and a Novy 68030

[Crickster]

Hello all, I recently acquired a Mac SE with a Novy accelerator card in it.  I'm a bit of a sucker for CPU upgrades as all of the Mac's I've ever owned minus my 2012 MBP have had some kind of aftermarket CPU add-on to extend their longevity.

I took the board out of the SE and it appears to be Novy Systems 25Mhz 68030 which is quite a bit more than the seller thought it was.  I've downloaded the driver from the Mac Driver Museum but am unable to test it out as I'm waiting for my SCSI2SD to arrive.

I couldn't find much information on the card, does anyone know what goes in the two other spots above the CPU?  Also does anyone know of a way to physically check ram capacity, it looks like I have quite a bit but on he machine itself it only reads 4MB.

Finally I've been told the SE doesn't need a recap but I get crackley noise from the speaker and headphone jack.  Is it time to recap it?

 

[Crutch]

Congrats on picking up this accelerator, these are really cool.  I have the Novy Quick30 for one of my Mac Pluses.  The large square socket there is for an FPU, 68881 or 68882.  They’re readily available on eBay and elsewhere for maybe $20.  If you get one, be sure to plug it in with the right orientation, with the gold diagonal aligned with the “notch” in the center of the socket (I know that’s obvious but I’ve made the mistake myself).  I don’t know what U30 is for, my Mac Plus version doesn’t have that socket.

Once you have your SCSI2SD you’ll want to run this with the right drivers.  I use the Mobius drivers for mine and they work great.  Your machine may not see the performance benefit without the driver for reasons that aren’t clear to me (I would love to understand this actually...).   https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/accelerator-card-drivers

I don’t have an SE but believe they’re limited to 4 MB RAM, right?  If so the CPU will only see 4 MB on the board without the drivers running.  If you install the proper drivers you can then run Connectix’ Compact Virtual and access the rest (I think up to 16MB) as virtual memory.  (On my Plus, I could only access 8 MB total this way, so this is hearsay.)

Do you get the crackling sound all the time, or only when you try to play a sound?  If the latter, that’s unfortunately a normal consequence of running a fast accelerator in these old machines.  Running with the proper drivers will help, but probably not fix it entirely.

 

[Crickster]

Thanks for the response!  The SE's hdd is on death's door at the moment so I'm trying not to run it more than I have to until I can properly back it up.  I didn't see any sort of drivers when I was quickly rummaging around in it and there is no pop-up logo on startup like the Radius cards.

The crackling audio is only there when playing sounds so it really looks like the drivers are the main issue at hand here.  Thanks again for your help!

 

[Crutch]

In the particular case of the Mobius drivers, there is an extension called Mobius Sound which should help with the sound issue specifically once you’re ready to try it out.

 

[trag]

U30 looks like it is for an oscillator.   Perhaps the 68030 and the math coprocesser can be driven at different speeds?

The clue that suggests that U30 is for an oscillator is the fact that none of the pins are populated, except for the corner pins.  This is the footprint of a full metal can oscillator and not much else.

 

[MOS8_030]

U30 looks like it is for an oscillator.   Perhaps the 68030 and the math coprocesser can be driven at different speeds?

The clue that suggests that U30 is for an oscillator is the fact that none of the pins are populated, except for the corner pins.  This is the footprint of a full metal can oscillator and not much else.

Yes, exactly.