Took a gamble on a Mac Plus and SE that appeared to have accelerator cards...

[joshc]

Thought as much, I'm still glad I got a Floppy emu, it's a very handy tool, but I will be looking for a more permanent solution, probably a SCSI2SD...unfortunately when you have 7 Macs (OK, nobody forced me to get that many Macs, but you know...) that all need a permanent drive replacement, it gets costly very quickly.

Looking forward to seeing the 'possibly accelerated' SE soon! :rambo:

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I'm hoping that to some extent I can just shuffle the external SCSI2SD from one Mac to another, since I probably won't be using multiple systems at once very often.

 

[Dog Cow]

when you have 7 Macs that all need a permanent drive replacement, it gets costly very quickly.

That's the reason why I gave up on vintage Macs with internal hard drives and switched to Apple II exclusively for many years. Now I'm back to pre-SE, floppy-driven Macs.

Failing or lack of hard drives ranks right up there with failing capacitors as the most annoying aspect of vintage Macintosh computing. :-(

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Great news that you've got it up and running!

I'll add to that: for me, finding non-functional and flaky manual inject FDDs has become a massive PITA. Has anyone done a repair howto for those as has been done for the earlier drives?

 

[Mighty Jabba]

Turns out the package I thought was going to be the second system was something else, so I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer. 

By the way, I tried a number of different combinations of settings so it’s possible I’m misremembering, but I think I still had to use the special SCSI2SD settings designed for the Plus, even though I was using the additional SCSI port. And I also had to use an additional USB power adapter for the external SCSI2SD unit since it apparently requires more power than the port can give it. 

Now I have four 2GB virtual hard disks (actually more like 1.89GB apiece) all mounted on the system at once, which is pretty impressive for a Plus, but I’m not sure what I’m going to use all the space for. 

 

[Mighty Jabba]

Finally managed to get System 7.1 installed. As I mentioned, Floppy Emu seems to have issues with this machine, so I had to use another Mac that was able to use both the SCSI2SD and Floppy Emu at the same time in order to install it, but it seems to be working fine with Gemstart 3.0, and it's a real speed demon compared to all of my other compact Macs! (Admittedly, the newest one I have is an SE, but it's still very impressive.) It's a bit of a shame that I can't really get to the floppy drive to fix the darned eject gear, but I am very wary of removing all of the various parts of the accelerator card and power supply just for that, so I guess I will just use the old paperclip method when I do need to use a real floppy.

Am I right that 7.1 is probably where I should draw the line for this machine?

 

[jessenator]

The advice I've gotten points about there for 030 machines, maybe going up to 7.1 pro? Don't know about an upgraded to 030 machine, but it's been recommended for a stock 030.

I've been recommended 7.5.3 max if you've got an 040. And 7.6.1 for PPC machines pre-G3.

Again very general stuff.

 

[Crutch]

By the way, I tried a number of different combinations of settings so it’s possible I’m misremembering, but I think I still had to use the special SCSI2SD settings designed for the Plus, even though I was using the additional SCSI port. And I also had to use an additional USB power adapter for the external SCSI2SD unit since it apparently requires more power than the port can give it. 

That’s interesting and a bit surprising, I am running a SCSI2SD 5.1 externally on mine right now just using SCSI bus power.  Have you checked the voltages on the accelerator PSU?  (I also had to still run the special Plus SCSI settings.)

I recall based on something (maybe the GemStart Readme?) that GemStart 3.0 doesn’t like System version above 7.1 but that might be wrong.  

 

[Mighty Jabba]

That’s interesting and a bit surprising, I am running a SCSI2SD 5.1 externally on mine right now just using SCSI bus power.  Have you checked the voltages on the accelerator PSU?  (I also had to still run the special Plus SCSI settings.)

I tried again, and you're right -- it will work without the extra power supply. I guess I got confused when I was trying various combinations of settings. That's good, since it's one less thing to worry about.

The Gemstart 3.0 readme says that it is compatible with all versions of system 7 that were available at that time, which was up to 7.1. So it's possible that it could work with 7.5.X. Maybe I should give it a try. How much of a performance hit do you think there would be?

 

[Crutch]

I think you’ll find it much slower. I run 7.1 on my Plus and 7.5.5 on my 50MHz SE/30. I’m not sure I would love 7.5.5 even on that accelerated Plus ... but I could be wrong! Would be interested to hear if it works. 

 

[Mighty Jabba]

The seller I bought the second upgraded machine from was taking their sweet time shipping it and never gave me a tracking number, and now I've been told that they accidentally shipped it to a location 2,000 miles away from me. Supposedly they will be shipping it straight from there to me rather than sending it back to him (which would involve another cross-country trip), but I'm not super impressed with this guy. So we'll see if I actually ever get it.

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I finally received the second machine today. It's an SE with a Radius 16 accelerator. The only reason it was on my radar at all was that the seller had posted a photo of it starting up with the Radius badge, as you can see below. (I am unable to upload images to this forum now, and they don't seem to want to display as inline images, so I have linked them.)

https://mightyjabba.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/radius_mac_se1.jpg

The bottom internal floppy seems to be broken and always think there is a disk inserted, so I have disconnected it for now. The top internal floppy is missing because this machine has an internal hard disk. However, it seems to not be working.

https://mightyjabba.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/radius_mac_se2.jpg

Here is the board. I assume I should go ahead and snip off that Varta battery? The machine does boot up when using the Floppy Emu in floppy disk mode. I got "write state changed" error when trying to use hard disk mode, but that was before I disconnected the internal floppy, so it might work now. It reports 4MB of RAM. 

https://mightyjabba.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/radius_mac_se3.jpg

Any ideas about possibly getting the hard disk to work?

 

[Jinnai]

Give it a spin?

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I have done that successfully once before, but some people were saying elsewhere that there might be less drastic things that could be tried first. 

 

[MOS8_030]

Find a 16mhz 68881/82 for that empty socket!

 

[Mighty Jabba]

Well I fixed the floppy drive but the hard disk may be a lost cause. I can’t even open it up because one of the screws is stripped. Does anyone know if the Radius cards require software like the other accelerator I have?

 

[Crutch]

You’ll want these drivers most likely.  I know they work because I uploaded them.  I think your Radius SE will run fine without the drivers, but you may not get the performance boost.  https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/radiusware-1990-displays-41-accelerator-29-radiusmath-15

 

[Mighty Jabba]

Thanks for the help again, Crutch. I have been having some issues testing this new machine out because it won't normally boot with either SCSI2SD or Floppy Emu attached, so I'm stuck with what I can get on a floppy. However, I did discover completely by accident that if you hold down the mouse button at boot you will get a menu that allows you to disable various things. If I disable the accelerator, Floppy Emu will work, and probably SCSI2SD as well, but I haven't tried that yet. And it also seems somewhat slower with the accelerator disabled, so I'm thinking that I'm getting the benefits even without the drivers. 

I tried copying the Radius files to a floppy but every time I try to open the floppy on the machine I get a bomb error. Not sure what to make of that.