Power Macintosh 7200/90 L2 Cache

[Becks79]

Ha that's right! Hope the Adjustable Keyboard and the HPV card is still working - I hadn't recapped it iirc I saw a PCI firewire card btw which should work? seemed reasonable - https://www.finn.no/recommerce/forsale/item/454291512

The box says OS X, but it might still work? I dunno.
But if the Yamaha card works, it will give me good stereo playback and recording, which will be enough for this system. I'll just send mix-out to a stereo pair on my audio interface and send that to the Mac, and Bob's your uncle.

 

[Becks79]

I've ended up working on a music project today, so haven't really looked into retro computer stuff today ^^

 

[Becks79]

Hmmm...
I have an Nvidia Quadro4 100NVS PCI... I wonder if I could flash that with the GeForce 4 MX bios and use it in my 7200.
Anyone have any experience with that?

 

[Phipli]

Hmmm...
I have an Nvidia Quadro4 100NVS PCI... I wonder if I could flash that with the GeForce 4 MX bios and use it in my 7200.
Anyone have any experience with that?

The CPU will be too much of a bottleneck for anything that could take advantage of that card even if you got it working.

The onboard video is pretty good for 2D and if you want some 3D, pick up a Mac Rage 128 - there are quite a few about. Even that would be overkill for a 7200/90.

 

[Becks79]

The CPU will be too much of a bottleneck for anything that could take advantage of that card even if you got it working.

The onboard video is pretty good for 2D and if you want some 3D, pick up a Mac Rage 128 - there are quite a few about. Even that would be overkill for a 7200/90.

I've been looking at Rage 128 on eBay (there are none available "locally" that I've seen), and they are not that cheap at the moment, at least not when factoring in shipping + import tax. I already have the Quadro, so I was just curious if it would work. I do not expect to be able to run anything with proper 3D on the 7200, but it would allow for higher resolution and colour depths, without having to spend money on VRAM dimms. Mine only has the 1MB onboard, which isn't really good for very much.

 

[Phipli]

I've been looking at Rage 128 on eBay (there are none available "locally" that I've seen), and they are not that cheap at the moment, at least not when factoring in shipping + import tax. I already have the Quadro, so I was just curious if it would work. I do not expect to be able to run anything with proper 3D on the 7200, but it would allow for higher resolution and colour depths, without having to spend money on VRAM dimms. Mine only has the 1MB onboard, which isn't really good for very much.

Well, if you look in a moment, all you see are chancers with crazy high prices, but I'd you take your time, you find the £5 and £10 cards. Or ask if anyone has any VRAM SIMMs for the 7200, 8200, 7500, 7600, 7300, 8500 or 8600. They all take the same VRAM. You can upgrade with one, or three.

Don't underestimate the onboard video. It is one of the only beige macs that shipped with some kind of onboard graphics acceleration, although I believe you have to turn off virtual memory for it to work.

Macs are not PCs - the onboard graphics capabilities weren't budget.

I already have the Quadro, so I was just curious if it would work.

What you already have is obviously the most affordable because you don't need to spend anything, but it will be faff, plus will limit your OS compatibility due to the drivers (and without drivers will be slower than onboard).

I can't see a PCI firmware for a similar card, only AGP for that family... Sadly I don't have any of that era of nVidia cards because they're expensive, so no personal experience.

I'd ask if anyone has an ATI Radge 128 PCI card spare in the trade part of 68kmla if you want 3D, or a Rage IIc / VRAM SIMMs for the motherboard if you're less bothered about 3D. Or a Twin turbo - they do high resolutions at high bit depths, but don't do 3D, so lots of people aren't interested in TwinTurbos (they're over priced on eBay atm).

 

[Becks79]

Yes, a TwinTurbo would be fun, due to it being pretty much Mac only hardware. I know they did a PC version, but I don't think it was very common.
And I am aware that the onboard video is decent, I just don't want to be limited to 256 colours or low resolutions. I keep hearing people saying "just buy..." But I've been looking for affordable VRAM simms for my 8100 for a while now, and haven't seen any. Plenty of the small 256kb ones for older Macs, sure, but none of the ones I need. And my searches for ones for the 7200 haven't been successful either.
And it doesn't help if some pop up at a decent price if shipping to Norway is $50+. Yep, shipping to Norway does tend to be really expensive.

 

[slomacuser]

I have vram chips and a twinturbo. I can ship to you for a symbolic price

 

[joevt]

I can't see a PCI firmware for a similar card, only AGP for that family... Sadly I don't have any of that era of nVidia cards because they're expensive, so no personal experience.

There's a version of the GeForce 4MX firmware for AGP/PCI at
http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2
The problem is that the firmware has dependencies on New World Open Firmware.
Modifications are required to make it work on Old World Open Firmware as discussed for newer Nvidia cards like the 7800 GT at
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/.
I haven't created an Old World version of the 4MX firmware yet.
The 4MX firmware contains a ndrv driver for classic Mac OS.

Don't underestimate the onboard video. It is one of the only beige macs that shipped with some kind of onboard graphics acceleration, although I believe you have to turn off virtual memory for it to work.

The video output is described in the developer notes.
https://sphinxgroup.org/DataSheet/Apple/PPC_7200.pdf
The 7200 uses Platinum.
The 7500/7600/8500/8600 use Control.
They have VRAM that runs at the normal bus speed (37.5, 45, 50 MHz) instead of PCI bus speed (33 MHz).
Maximum resolution with 4 MB VRAM: 1280x1024 16bpp or 1024x768 24bpp
The dev note for the 7200 says there's some 2D acceleration with Platinum + Iridium. This acceleration is not emulated by the DingusPPC emulator. It just has the register names. I think we have all the documentation to implement it though.
I guess disabling virtual memory is required to ensure that bitmaps are physically contiguous in RAM since Platinum doesn't support a DMA scatter/gather list and the 7200 doesn't have an IOMMU? Operations that only access VRAM should work regardless since VRAM is always physically contiguous. Operations that access DRAM could be divided into separate operations for each physically contiguous part.
The 2D acceleration is for CopyBits type operations with no scaling, and no line/circle/rectangle/poly/region drawing operations.
I suppose it could do horizontal or vertical lines which are just rectangles...
Text drawing of bitmapped fonts mostly involves CopyBits type operations.

 

[Phipli]

The 2D acceleration is for CopyBits type operations with no scaling, and no line/circle/rectangle/poly/region drawing operations.

Interesting - it's a while since I've read the details and had forgotten. Sounds like it would be useful for Photoshop scrolling.

 

[joevt]

It can do fill operations - solid color or patterns. A pattern is a source bit map that is used repeatedly. A solid color is like a pattern that is one pixel in size.