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SE/30, MODE32, & System 7.5 - I can NOT get this to work!

I think your stuck as 16mb simms were not available when the SE/30 came out and was unsupported.  The fact you can see more than 8 mb means 32 bit addressing is on.  If its erroring out I would think its hardware or rom issue.  Mine are both working with 20mb and 7.5.5 and mode 32 installed, no pram so a restart is needed to see the ram after setting 32 bit adressing on.

 
I wonder if it needs PAL based RAM? But I could have sworn other people had full 128MBs working in an SE/30 in the past. 

Check to see what RAM speeds you have. that could make all the difference in the world. I couldnt get 150nS RAM working in my IBM PS/2 but 120nS RAM worked perfect. 

 
I think your stuck as 16mb simms were not available when the SE/30 came out and was unsupported.  The fact you can see more than 8 mb means 32 bit addressing is on.  If its erroring out I would think its hardware or rom issue.  Mine are both working with 20mb and 7.5.5 and mode 32 installed, no pram so a restart is needed to see the ram after setting 32 bit adressing on.
It sees more than 8MBs only while in System 7.1 with 32-bit Enabler.  I can't get MODE32 to work in either System 7.1 or 7.5, it freezes at the Happy Mac.  7.5 works fine in 24-bit mode.

 
Do you have access to a IIsi/IIfx ROM SIMM to see if the RAM behaves with that?
Nope.  I do have a red DougG3 ROM in my IIci I could use if someone can send me a good ROM.  I already tried my modified ROM in the SE/30 and it didn't work.  I think because it has the Daystar INIT loaded in-rom and there's no Daystar card installed.

I also tried to follow the hack on the website that was posted, but there's no "7.5 Update" file in the System Folder, just the System.

 
I'm also less concerned about getting the 128MBs RAM working than I am getting MODE32 working without the computer freezing.  I'm going to rummage for an SE/30 board that will boot without being recapped and see if it works.  Maybe I'm inadvertently doing something bad when I recap.

Analog board wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?

 
Yay!  Progress!  I grabbed a random motherboard out of the pile o' boards.  It booted fine with MODE32, despite having no sound and smelling like fish when it warmed up.  That got me worried that maybe I was damaging the motherboards somehow when I was recapping them.

On a hunch, I thought... MAYBE it's the RAM.  So I swapped the RAM directly, slot for slot, from the working board to my recapped board.  It worked!

So I think there's something about this hodge podge of RAM chips of which Apple's 32-bit enabler is more tolerant than the MODE32.

I'm gonna AltaVista some of these chips and see how fast they are.  Maybe Techknight is onto something.  Maybe Apple's 32-bit enabler doesn't care about that 10ns, but MODE32 does.

That's a lot of maybes, but it's the best lead I have.

 
Hmm.  Well, I hope it's good news.  Mostly because it just occurred to me that I swapped out 8MBs of RAM.  It's not running more than 8MBs.  I need to do more testing.

 
Yep.  Unmolested SE/30 also freezes with the other RAM installed.  OK, so I've narrowed it down to RAM, I think.  This is going to take a lot of searching as I weed out what RAM is what.

 
I also tried putting 128MBs into the unmolested SE/30 and I get the same thing.  Chime of death with all 128MBs.  So I'm leaning towards the RAM I'm using?

Those RAM chips work just fine in my IIci and Radius Rocket.

I need to see if I can find a full set of 8 same-brand 2MB or 4MB RAM chips.

 
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Is there such thing as too fast?  The RAM in my RadiusRocket is 60ns, the RAM in my IIci is 70ns.

Most of the RAM is 80ns.  At least the 1MB modules are.  I think I found some 4MB 80ns chips.  I'm going to give those a try, see if MODE32 works with it.

 
Finally, some success!  4x4MB in bank A, 4x1MB in bank B, all 70ns.

These were the only chips that were 70ns, the rest were all 80ns with a couple that were 60ns and one that was 10ns.  So I wonder if mixing different speed RAM would cause MODE32 to hang.  Odd that Apple's 32-bit Enabler didn't care.

 
I'm gonna give my 70ns 16MB SIMMs a try.  I know all 8 won't work, but if I can get it to boot correctly with 80MBs of RAM, that should be more than enough for System 7.6 or even 8.

 
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