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Topic |
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shaktiman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1226 Posts |
 Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 07:46:03
No I hav'nt seen it done, sorry to dissapoint.So What would be needed for this, I realise it may or may never happen, but stranger things have! & surley it can be talked about. What would be the best way to go? We would need an adapter, now we could do either Nubus to USB(must be hackable?) or Nubus to PCI? Next I guess we would need drivers for the devices?, well can 68k macs only support drives on the scsi/ide? so that is now a Nubus to scsi convertor lol What has got me going is that my wife bought us a 128 MB usb stick & it would be cool to be able to plug it in to the 840av. my 840av has got double speed Nubus slots, so they are good yes, our best bet is to use an 840av? if we went from the device side, we could make a USB device that tricked the computer into thinking it was an scsi device, that would be handy, a 25 pin scsi cable to a USB cable, to a USB dirve. shaktiman Quadra 840av, prettymuchmaxedout8xcd drive
os 8.1
128 meg ram, 500 meg hard drive
3 monitors 15" & 14" & 14" |
tachyon
Starting Member
Australia
29 Posts |
Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 18:33:22
Surely you meant to type "USB on 68K". No can do. USB has a 5V rail to provide power, and requires a host of System-level software support that did not exist in 8.1, which is the latest OS that the 68Ks can run. I think there was a hack to get 8.5 to run on a 040 somewhere?
So basically the USB PCI card was the only way to provide USB ports to computers that didn't have it. Cheaply. TECHNICALLY these things are possible, but they require legions of engineers whose time would be better devoted to putting people on Mars, or something.
Your chances are better in dreaming about IDE 68Ks, like the LC630, with a modifyed USB bridge board out of an external USB drive hanging off the internal IDE bus. The LC630 would have to boot from an external SCSI device as a result.~~
Master 68k liberator. Too many to list. Retained collection includes SE, Classic, ClassicII, IIsi (w/NetBSD) IIvx, LC, LCIII, LC475, Quadra840AV,950(w/PPC card) PB145,520,190 & many contraband Powermacs. Last one liberated:LC580. |
Brett B.
Junior Member
USA
105 Posts |
Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 18:52:46
i was thinking, what about USB PCMCIA cards for 68k powerbooks? it'd be very cool to have USB on my 540c.. optical mice, speakers, etc.. 
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cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 19:23:43
If you're talking about getting NuBus from a PCI slot (like if I wanted NuBus slots in my 7300..) then yeah, those do exist, not sure exactly where you'd go around getting one though...  Official 68k videographer
Official MLA TourGuide
Editor of the MLAgazine
"I'm just a normal computer geek who somehow landed a social life" |
redrouteone
Junior Member
USA
226 Posts |
Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 20:54:08
The problem is that there are no USB-NuBUS bridges. There are lots of PCI-USB bridges so a PCI USB card is simply a matter of hooking the wires to the right place. I do believe that the USB spec is freely available and I know that the NuBUS spec are. For some one that knows what they are doing it should not be too hard to program a micro-controller to bridge the two. The problem is that I do not know what I am doing. I may look into this over the christmas break. I never let ignorance stop me until I destroy something that was perfectly good. The drivers would be another issue but I believe that would could some how use the drivers from 8.6. For sure we could get them to work on the NuBUS powermacs. Perhaps we could some how back port the USB stack from darwin to OS 7.
--Eric
___________________________
I'm like the Pepsi employee that drinks Coke. I work on PCs at work but use a Mac at home
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Derekcat
Junior Member
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 01 Dec 2003 : 23:30:39
quote:
i was thinking, what about USB PCMCIA cards for 68k powerbooks? it'd be very cool to have USB on my 540c.. optical mice, speakers, etc..
Not possible from what I've seen…
every USB PCMCIA card I have see was 32 bit [you know, that little gold strip on the top of the end]heh… No one even makes 16 bit Ethernet cards for Macs anymore… [WHY ON EARTH would someone want a 32 bit Mac Ethernet card?!?! All the macs with 32 bit slots HAVE Ethernet!… Don't mind me - I'm still not happy at D-Link about that…] If I open my window all the bugs will get in…That's just one more reason to use a Mac!
Mac Portable
LC ||
SE/30
||si
||ci
Quadras: 660av, 950
PMs: 6100/G3/233, 6214CD, 5400/120, 7100/80av, 9500/G3/300
PB 5300ce
SuperMac C600 180, 240 |
The Balance Of Judgement
Senior Member
Ivory Coast
1006 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2003 : 11:02:02
It would be alot easier to just reverse hack the USB to ADB systems to work in the opposite direction to allow basic devices such as Mice and Game controllers to function on an older non-USB system.Even once you have a USB system hacked in your older Mac, and even if it can run the hack binaries to drive it, it's not going to accept newer software drivers meaning you are out of luck. It would only be usefull for basic stuff, like mice and keyboards, and even those would be available only after a complete boot.
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Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER
USA
2899 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2003 : 12:50:03
quote:
It would be alot easier to just reverse hack the USB to ADB systems to work in the opposite direction to allow basic devices such as Mice and Game controllers to function on an older non-USB system.
That's about the extent of it, cinemo and I beat the crap out of this issue in the forums here and over on fritter with Dr. Bob in friendly opposition to the entire concept of USB on 68k.Creating a uni-directional microcontroller based USB -> ADB interface for slow input peripherals, like pointing devices and keyboards, was the only thing that was determined to be a possiblility. The problem is not the processor itself, it's that the system level software is only available for the PCI architecture. Theoretically, the PPC 1400c and all 68k PowerBooks are incompatible with PC Card based USB bridges no matter which system level software they are running. NuBus architecture PPCs are just as out of luck as 68k machines when it comes to PC card based USB bridges. AFAIK!  jt  ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF |
cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2003 : 18:30:00
Just so's y'all know, Mac OS 8.1 has USB drivers.I've even seen 8.0 run successfully on my iMac. In addition, it's not to hard to make the USB exensions run crashfree on a 68k (because they get installed *anyway* with my OS8.1 CD that came with the iMac) Official 68k videographer
Official MLA TourGuide
Editor of the MLAgazine
"I'm just a normal computer geek who somehow landed a social life" |
Nubus on a 68k?
68k of the Week: kastegir's PowerBook 180.