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Quadra 650 cache card
- Thread starter Dookie
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There are also 68040 pds accelerator cards which can replace/ bypass the 33 MHz 68040 in the Q650 with a faster 68040, and these typically come with a large (commonly 128k) cache. Much of the speed boost comes via the cache.
I have one of these: a "Daystar Quad 040." There were several others, too, but the Quad040 was a 40 MHz Quadra accelerator with 128k cache for the "pds" Quadras: the 650, 700, 800, 900 and 950. I use it regularly in a Quadra 650 that I mainly use as a scanning station, with plenty of ram and utilizing a nicely-preserved Apple Color Onescanner 1200/30. It has done yeoman's service and has never let me down, but that is mainly working with documents and such rather than photographs. When scanning photos, it's admittedly less than snappy - but it still does a good job and is not what you'd call impossible to work with. If I did any number of those, however, I'd switch to a 604e machine, minimally, or just find something more current. Life's too short.
Daystar claimed that the cache made a Mac with the Quad 040 installed faster than an 840av. It was also possible to add a dsp card to this particular product, for speeding up Photoshop and a few other applications, and for levelling the playing field again with the av Macs. Unfortunately, I have never been able to find one of these add-on cards, but I can confirm that Speedometer, for what it's worth, tells me that my "Q650" CPU is faster than an 840av. (There are other significant differences between the machines, however, that make me question this - e.g., the 840av has faster nubus slots, better scsi, direct memory access, and some other marvels beyond the dsp chip.)
What you get with one of these is then two 68040s in one unit, with one of them having a large-ish cache attached. On booting, the machine starts up via the factory-installed processor, but it then it switches via a control panel to the pds card, just as also happens when a 601 ppc card is installed.
One further point of Quadra lore: the AWS95 (aka Q950) contains a scsi-DMA card that has an UPGRADEABLE cache, up to 512K if you can find the requisite chips (and no, you can't easily find them, either). The card probably wouldn't fit in anything but a Q900-950, as it is truly big, but when booted in straightforward MacOS rather than A/UX in one of these machines, the card behaves simply as a big cache card. In A/UX, for which it was designed, it dramatically assists with server functions under load.
I have one of these: a "Daystar Quad 040." There were several others, too, but the Quad040 was a 40 MHz Quadra accelerator with 128k cache for the "pds" Quadras: the 650, 700, 800, 900 and 950. I use it regularly in a Quadra 650 that I mainly use as a scanning station, with plenty of ram and utilizing a nicely-preserved Apple Color Onescanner 1200/30. It has done yeoman's service and has never let me down, but that is mainly working with documents and such rather than photographs. When scanning photos, it's admittedly less than snappy - but it still does a good job and is not what you'd call impossible to work with. If I did any number of those, however, I'd switch to a 604e machine, minimally, or just find something more current. Life's too short.
Daystar claimed that the cache made a Mac with the Quad 040 installed faster than an 840av. It was also possible to add a dsp card to this particular product, for speeding up Photoshop and a few other applications, and for levelling the playing field again with the av Macs. Unfortunately, I have never been able to find one of these add-on cards, but I can confirm that Speedometer, for what it's worth, tells me that my "Q650" CPU is faster than an 840av. (There are other significant differences between the machines, however, that make me question this - e.g., the 840av has faster nubus slots, better scsi, direct memory access, and some other marvels beyond the dsp chip.)
What you get with one of these is then two 68040s in one unit, with one of them having a large-ish cache attached. On booting, the machine starts up via the factory-installed processor, but it then it switches via a control panel to the pds card, just as also happens when a 601 ppc card is installed.
One further point of Quadra lore: the AWS95 (aka Q950) contains a scsi-DMA card that has an UPGRADEABLE cache, up to 512K if you can find the requisite chips (and no, you can't easily find them, either). The card probably wouldn't fit in anything but a Q900-950, as it is truly big, but when booted in straightforward MacOS rather than A/UX in one of these machines, the card behaves simply as a big cache card. In A/UX, for which it was designed, it dramatically assists with server functions under load.
