Macintosh SE Mystery Card - Help solve the puzzle!

[AppleMacintosh]

I picked up a Macintosh SE and a Macintosh SE/30 from a local craigslist ad for FREE. The SE/30 works beautifully and is in excellent condition. What a find!

But the Mac SE was advertised as "for parts only" due to an unknown flaw. The back of the SE was marked "Two 800k Drives" but the front bezel had a hard drive light and drive slot cover. Someone apparently upgraded it at some point. The case was missing its screws, so I pulled the back cover off and discovered a missing hard drive. I also discovered a MYSTERY accelerator card that was FORCED to fit inside the SE case. I tried to remove the logic board, but this mystery card was preventing it from sliding out. On further inspection, the bracket on the right side of the logic board had been mangled at some point, apparently to accomodate the upgrade. I was forced to re-mangle the bracket to get the logic board out so I could inspect the accelerator card.

Here are some pictures of the card:





The card features a 68EC030 chip, which was new to me. It has a socket for a coprocessor and is labeled "Applied Engineering TW1325". A little Googling showed this to possibly be a TransWarp 030 card. The crystal on the board is a 25mhz crystal, but if it's clock doubled it could be a 50mhz card. I'm just not sure.

I'd like some help identifying the card and what computer it was designed for. Clearly it was not an SE compatible card. It almost looks like an LC upgrade.

Can anyone help me out?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Check out this scan dump: Accelerator Comparisons: July 1991 MacWorld

It mentions IIci and IIsi Accelerators from this company.

 

[AppleMacintosh]

Interesting article. There appears to be several similar models from Applied Engineering, so it's impossible to know from this article which of those models were intended for IIsi or IIci.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

If that socket has the right pin count for a Math CoPro, my guess would be IIsi.

It's really strange to see those PDS contacts unshielded/unkeyed, which makes think "prototype" or "hack" right off the bat. The positioning of that (partial?) passthru connection makes me think IIsi as well.

Physical fit of the board would be the telling point, so far as I can figure.

How wide/long is the card?

Is there a matching hole hidden behind the connector in the shot for the one on the outrigger?

What is the height of those pins for the PDS.

More pics?

 

[IamSpartacus]

I count 96 pins, which rules out the IICI or IISI/SE30 which have 120 pins. The LC PDS is 96 pin, but it's electrically incompatible with the SE.

That card was made for an SE. As for the fitment issues, who knows?

 

[tt]

Most likely it is designed for the SE, but the poor fit is odd. I guess it's poor or over-constrained engineering. Using the pins instead of a EURO-DIN makes sense since they were making a cheap pass-through. The other connector could be for some type of proprietary add-on. Probably a cheaper and later in the game alternative (given the CPU) to upgrading the SE.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Those wire wrap pins look strange, but would be a male passthru connector on the top side of the card. The card on the back edge looks an awful lot like a Radius MagicBus connector. Did Radius buy up this company too?

 

[Gorgonops]

There's an "Applied Engineering Transwarp TW2325" accelerator on eBay right now that looks like it's pretty much the same board re-designed to fit the Mac Classic instead of the SE. Searching for "Applied Engineering Transwarp SE" generates multiple hits referencing a line of accelerators of various speeds for the SE, including a list of "discontinued accelerators" on Low End Mac and a "Mac Driver Museum" link to a driver disk. (If you believe the link apparently the upgrade limits an SE to System 7.0.1 or lower.)

 

[AppleMacintosh]

Thanks for the excellent responses. I'll try to post additional photos soon. I think I'll operate the SE without the card however. I usually like my Macs stock. If I want a faster SE with an 030 I'll just use my SE/30. What a concept!

 

[Bunsen]

Using those pins instead of a shrouded EuroDIN might have saved a little vertical height.

 

[trag]

Is it possible that a EuroDIN was installed at that position, and the plastic housing around the pins was removed/broken off and the soldered pins remained? I think I see a keying hole on the circuit board in one photo where the bump from the EuroDIN housing would go.

Also, is that PLCC socket the right number of pins for an FPU? There were some FPGA chips which came in 84 pin PLCC packages. It's unlikely, but the upgrade could use an FPGA for its GLUE logic and somebody might have salvaged the FPGA out of the socket at some point.

I think this latter possibility is unlikely because there appear to be four PLDs on the board to serve the GLUE function.

 

[Charlieman]

Applied Engineering promised video and ethernet options for this board and its mates (TransWarp SE, 1300 and 2300). It seems plausible that they used the Radius Magicbus for the add-ons which they didn't have to make themselves.

AE were a serious engineering company so there would have been logic to any perceived madness in the design. My guess is that the spare socket was for an FPU and that the glue chips also served cache RAM on the other side of the board. Most AE designs had cache.