My Mad B&W G3 Setup!

[Snial]

Classic development from Apple consisted of MPW and ResEdit. <snip>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer's_Workshop

Didn't Apple release the last version for free too?

Here's a question for you MPW experts: did someone ever implement tab completion for MPW?

I was brought up on Sinclair ZX Basic, syntax-perfect, Single-Keyword-Entry editing in the early 1980s and after that, nothing else has come close !

So many choices! I might go for a USB MidiSport 2x2 to begin with, alongside a micro arduino to experiment with as that seems a fairly cheap route.<snip>

And indeed I've already bought one, for just £11 (+P&P). The adventure begins! I realise I can't do any DV video editing until I get the SATA setup, because the 16MB/s limit on the other IDE bus won't be fast enough. However...

Prepare to be Dazzle*d! This thing can capture composite video via USB on an iMac/266!

 

[adespoton]

Didn't Apple release the last version for free too?

I was brought up on Sinclair ZX Basic, syntax-perfect, Single-Keyword-Entry editing in the early 1980s and after that, nothing else has come close !

And indeed I've already bought one, for just £11 (+P&P). The adventure begins! I realise I can't do any DV video editing until I get the SATA setup, because the 16MB/s limit on the other IDE bus won't be fast enough. However...

Prepare to be Dazzle*d! This thing can capture composite video via USB on an iMac/266!

View attachment 91985

Ooh! I used to have one of those hooked up to my DV SE! And I had a HiFi VCR hooked up to the video out, which means I had an entire composite video pipeline. I found that the Dazzle* tended to blur the 320p signal a bit though; eventually, I replaced it with a Sony Digital8 handycam, which allowed me to use Firewire to stream 480p DV to/from the computer, and a high quality composite video I/O on the camera itself. It was more expensive of course, but the results were very much improved.

 

[Snial]

Ooh! I used to have one of those hooked up to my DV SE!

Unexpected, since it has FireWire!

And I had a HiFi VCR hooked up to the video out, which means I had an entire composite video pipeline. I found that the Dazzle* tended to blur the 320p signal a bit though;

I would expect so. Dazzle has to get the video data rate to somewhat below 12Mbits/s as it's a USB 1.1 device: pretty heavy compression.

And I have the original installation CD! It's Mac OS 8.6 compatible! Wooh!

eventually, I replaced it with a Sony Digital8 handycam, which allowed me to use Firewire to stream 480p DV to/from the computer, and a high quality composite video I/O on the camera itself. It was more expensive of course, but the results were very much improved.

Undoubtably! I do have a Canon MV500i DV Camera. I don't have an analog camera... aaah, but I think the Canon can output composite, so I might be in business ;-) !

 

[Snial]

I recommend the @dosdude1 patcher, see here.

Hi folks,

So, I have tried to use the dosdude1 patcher and of course, it hangs because it has an AM28F010, which, as per this comment, needs 12V to program it.

Gosh. I can't believe it's even possible to buy a flash chip that needs 12V any more and I had completely forgotten that the original Intel 28F010's needed 12V (is this +12V? or -12V?) despite having worked with them in the early 1990s on my first embedded programming job (we made ISA-card based SSDs that emulated hard disks (not floppy disks) via an Int 13h interface. Each card could take up to 24x 128kB chips and I think we could support 2 or 3 cards (or 4?) in a single system, providing 6MB to 12MB of Solid State Storage).

Wow. I guess this means I'm going to have to build a programmer. How can I do that? Well, I have a Maplin bench power supply which can generate 12V (or -12V I guess if I swap polarity) and I have an arduino MEGA 256 which works at 5V and has lots of pins. I suspect this means I have to do it the hard way:

1. Desolder the flash chip (PLCC I think so at least the pins are big enough).
2. I have a socket for a PLCC that might be the right size. I'll need to build an arduino shield to program it. Except that, of course, I'll only have stripboard to interface the PLCC socket with the shield, that's going to be interesting.
3. Write some arduino code to program it. The Arduino has 256kB of flash space, so it should be possible to just embed the whole of the ROM in the sketch without a serial download. Fun! I'll program it slowly, because my rats nest of wires from (2) won't take high frequencies.
4. Program the chip - here I'm assuming the address pins and data pins match the card? Of course, Address and Data could be in any order!
5. Solder the ship back in the SATA card.
6. Reboot.

Does this sound correct? One more question. There's two header pins on the top-left of the card (if you hold the card with the logic facing you and the PCI bracket on the left). What's that for?

 

[croissantking]

Hi folks,

So, I have tried to use the dosdude1 patcher and of course, it hangs because it has an AM28F010, which, as per this comment, needs 12V to program it.

Gosh. I can't believe it's even possible to buy a flash chip that needs 12V any more and I had completely forgotten that the original Intel 28F010's needed 12V (is this +12V? or -12V?) despite having worked with them in the early 1990s on my first embedded programming job (we made ISA-card based SSDs that emulated hard disks (not floppy disks) via an Int 13h interface. Each card could take up to 24x 128kB chips and I think we could support 2 or 3 cards (or 4?) in a single system, providing 6MB to 12MB of Solid State Storage).

Wow. I guess this means I'm going to have to build a programmer. How can I do that? Well, I have a Maplin bench power supply which can generate 12V (or -12V I guess if I swap polarity) and I have an arduino MEGA 256 which works at 5V and has lots of pins. I suspect this means I have to do it the hard way:

1. Desolder the flash chip (PLCC I think so at least the pins are big enough).
2. I have a socket for a PLCC that might be the right size. I'll need to build an arduino shield to program it. Except that, of course, I'll only have stripboard to interface the PLCC socket with the shield, that's going to be interesting.
3. Write some arduino code to program it. The Arduino has 256kB of flash space, so it should be possible to just embed the whole of the ROM in the sketch without a serial download. Fun! I'll program it slowly, because my rats nest of wires from (2) won't take high frequencies.
4. Program the chip - here I'm assuming the address pins and data pins match the card? Of course, Address and Data could be in any order!
5. Solder the ship back in the SATA card.
6. Reboot.

Does this sound correct? One more question. There's two header pins on the top-left of the card (if you hold the card with the logic facing you and the PCI bracket on the left). What's that for?

I had the same issue, but used a T48 to program it.

 

[joevt]

So, I have tried to use the dosdude1 patcher and of course, it hangs because it has an AM28F010, which, as per this comment, needs 12V to program it.

Gosh. I can't believe it's even possible to buy a flash chip that needs 12V any more and I had completely forgotten that the original Intel 28F010's needed 12V (is this +12V? or -12V?) despite having worked with them in the early 1990s on my first embedded programming job (we made ISA-card based SSDs that emulated hard disks (not floppy disks) via an Int 13h interface. Each card could take up to 24x 128kB chips and I think we could support 2 or 3 cards (or 4?) in a single system, providing 6MB to 12MB of Solid State Storage).

Wow. I guess this means I'm going to have to build a programmer. How can I do that? Well, I have a Maplin bench power supply which can generate 12V (or -12V I guess if I swap polarity) and I have an arduino MEGA 256 which works at 5V and has lots of pins. I suspect this means I have to do it the hard way:

1. Desolder the flash chip (PLCC I think so at least the pins are big enough).
2. I have a socket for a PLCC that might be the right size. I'll need to build an arduino shield to program it. Except that, of course, I'll only have stripboard to interface the PLCC socket with the shield, that's going to be interesting.
3. Write some arduino code to program it. The Arduino has 256kB of flash space, so it should be possible to just embed the whole of the ROM in the sketch without a serial download. Fun! I'll program it slowly, because my rats nest of wires from (2) won't take high frequencies.
4. Program the chip - here I'm assuming the address pins and data pins match the card? Of course, Address and Data could be in any order!
5. Solder the ship back in the SATA card.
6. Reboot.

Does this sound correct? One more question. There's two header pins on the top-left of the card (if you hold the card with the logic facing you and the PCI bracket on the left). What's that for?

Read the chip first in your programmer and compare with a ROM dump from Open Firmware.
This will verify the address and data lines are correct.

I just finished adding emulation of flashable ROM chips (AMD Am28F020 or Intel 28F020) to my fork of DingusPPC (code not committed yet). These are chips used for the ROM SIMM slot of PowerSurge/TNT/Apple Network Server machines. Apple made a utility to flash these chips in Mac OS.
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/apple-network-server-macos-based-roms-found.4756/post-41630
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/apple-prototype-rom-flasher-utility.45480/page-3#post-511697

 

[Snial]

Read the chip first in your programmer and compare with a ROM dump from Open Firmware.
This will verify the address and data lines are correct.

I just finished adding emulation of flashable ROM chips (AMD Am28F020 or Intel 28F020) to my fork of DingusPPC (code not committed yet). These are chips used for the ROM SIMM slot of PowerSurge/TNT/Apple Network Server machines. Apple made a utility to flash these chips in Mac OS.
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/apple-network-server-macos-based-roms-found.4756/post-41630
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/apple-prototype-rom-flasher-utility.45480/page-3#post-511697

(and @croissantking , @adespoton ). I don't really have a proper programmer. To program the Flash I'm thinking of doing something fairly nasty:

I don't have a suitable hot-air gun, never likely to do enough of this to justify buying one & I'm not good at wicking away solder. I have an Arduino Mega2560 and I've just ordered a prototyping shield. I've also been writing some programming code for the Arduino. There's easily enough I/O on that to handle every pin on the Flash chip and I have a little rectifier to generate 12V, or I could just set my bench PSU to output that, since I think it can be on all the time. I've written code to program an Am28F020 in the past, so I don't think that's a problem.

The nasty thing is that I'm thinking of just clipping the pins; removing the remainder from the pads; then wiring it up directly using the remainder of each pin to my programmer and when I've finished doing the same back on the board. How stupid is that?

Another mechanism, I think would be to use a scalpel type knife: I'd place the knife against one corner of pins; heat it up with a soldering iron until it melts the solder and I can slide it along one edge, under the pins, dragging the solder in order to disconnect. Could that work?

The less stupid option, I think is to start off the same way, but then buy an AM28F020 from RS components (or Farnell).

 

[croissantking]

The nasty thing is that I'm thinking of just clipping the pins; removing the remainder from the pads; then wiring it up directly using the remainder of each pin to my programmer and when I've finished doing the same back on the board. How stupid is that?

It’s certainly not conventional.

But if it works, it works.

Another mechanism, I think would be to use a scalpel type knife: I'd place the knife against one corner of pins; heat it up with a soldering iron until it melts the solder and I can slide it along one edge, under the pins, dragging the solder in order to disconnect. Could that work?

I don’t fully understand what you mean sorry.

The less stupid option, I think is to start off the same way, but then buy an AM28F020 from RS components (or Farnell).

I agree.

Also, there are various types of low melt solder (chipquik smd1 being the most well known) and I recommend it highly. You flood the pins with the stuff and then you can remove it just by heating all around it with a soldering iron. The special solder stays melted for far longer than normal solder.

 

[Phipli]

The nasty thing is that I'm thinking of just clipping the pins; removing the remainder from the pads; then wiring it up directly using the remainder of each pin to my programmer and when I've finished doing the same back on the board. How stupid is that?

https://ebay.us/m/aKCpRF

Edit - ah, sorry, I misunderstood.

I wouldn't do what you're suggesting. Hold off a few days and we'll see what we can work out.

 

[joevt]

Here's a question for you MPW experts: did someone ever implement tab completion for MPW? That was something that was always a pain point for me once I started doing dev work on VAX, IRIX and other unixes in the 90s -- csh had nice tab completion, and every time I went back to MPW, I'd try to tab complete and then have to undo and manually type, or manually set up command key shortcuts.

I don't know about tab completion in MPW. People made patches to MPW to add features.
- PopupFuncs 2.8.1
- MPW Technicolor 0.9.6
- MPButtons 2.2

With MPW, every menu can be modified and commands added (including shortcuts). I suppose a command can help with tab completion. It could present a Commando interface with a list of possible completions?

 

[adespoton]

I don't know about tab completion in MPW. People made patches to MPW to add features.
- PopupFuncs 2.8.1
- MPW Technicolor 0.9.6
- MPButtons 2.2

With MPW, every menu can be modified and commands added (including shortcuts). I suppose a command can help with tab completion. It could present a Commando interface with a list of possible completions?

Yeah; I've used PopupFuncs and MPW Technicolor, which help. I've fiddled around with a Commando interface with a completion list, but found it somewhat lacking -- it still throws a mental roadblock in the workflow. I've got used to doing a LOT of tab completion in my IDEs/text editors over the years.

 

[adespoton]

(and @croissantking , @adespoton ). I don't really have a proper programmer. To program the Flash I'm thinking of doing something fairly nasty:
View attachment 99099
I don't have a suitable hot-air gun, never likely to do enough of this to justify buying one & I'm not good at wicking away solder. I have an Arduino Mega2560 and I've just ordered a prototyping shield. I've also been writing some programming code for the Arduino. There's easily enough I/O on that to handle every pin on the Flash chip and I have a little rectifier to generate 12V, or I could just set my bench PSU to output that, since I think it can be on all the time. I've written code to program an Am28F020 in the past, so I don't think that's a problem.

The nasty thing is that I'm thinking of just clipping the pins; removing the remainder from the pads; then wiring it up directly using the remainder of each pin to my programmer and when I've finished doing the same back on the board. How stupid is that?

Another mechanism, I think would be to use a scalpel type knife: I'd place the knife against one corner of pins; heat it up with a soldering iron until it melts the solder and I can slide it along one edge, under the pins, dragging the solder in order to disconnect. Could that work?

The less stupid option, I think is to start off the same way, but then buy an AM28F020 from RS components (or Farnell).

I bought a hot-air gun ~20 years ago, and it always amazes me how many times it's just the right thing for the job (especially spot-drying paint). Having one with an adjustable flow speed and focus point is also really useful (sometimes you just want a small jet of really hot air, sometimes you want a warm bath of air over a wider area).
To add on to @croissantking 's comment, what I've found useful is melting existing solder and then quickly flooding with the low temp stuff -- it mixes in and stops the standard solder from hardening so fast you can't get all the contacts off the pads. There's probably better methods, but that's what I've tended to do (sometimes with the heat gun blowing and a solder sucker in the other hand to pull it all off as soon as possible).