MOS8_030

Howdy! Sorry for the late reply, I just saw your post. Here's where the reset button is located. http://newton.plumbrook.com/marco/device/dtour/page13.html Also you should replace the LI battery. It's located under the Motorola logo on the back. (The logo is a cover that twists to release.) The red light on the dock is probably indicating it's trying to charge or that the battery is bad. I would try "charging" your bad battery for a while then connect the battery and the power supply to the Marco and try a reset to see it if it boots. I have two batteries and only one will work with my Marco, the other is completely dead. The Marco needs a battery that will take *some* small bit of charge. Getting replacement cells for the battery pack would be easy, opening the case not so much... Maybe someday the user manual for the Marco will get uploaded to the internet.

Whatever is cheapest! I found one that supports N and WPA at the local thrift store for $5 a couple of months ago. I use it with my Linux box out in the shop.

You could install a USB 2.0 card and use a USB wifi device. If you can find a USB wifi device that has the proper drivers. What OS are you running? You could also use a wifi extender and connect to it via ethernet.

Here's a good starting point for checking the floppy drives. Also there are PDF copies of the Dead Mac Scrolls floating around on the web.

Neat-O old machines! The 400K drives may be missing the felt pads or they may need replaced. Yeah, give then a thorough cleaning and inspection.

I don't have any contact with anyone any more. What I was hoping to find in my old email was any zip files with the firmware update I used on the MDD G4 systems or any of the updates for OSX but no luck. There's a very slight chance I may have something archived on a CD somewhere. However I think it's probably only my emails I saved from work. (I've already checked the three Macs and one PC I have my files scattered across.) Anyway, if I do turn up anything relevant I'll post it here. Motorola had a pretty tempestuous relationship with Apple over the years. Supporting Apple required a massive dedication of resources and as soon as Apple announced the switch to Intel Motorola rapidly disbanded the support group and reallocated the resources and personnel.

I'm looking back through some of my old work emails from ~2005 and we were running two Apple test suite tools. One suite was called "iSys" and the other suite was called "INDY". We only ever tested A8 with 10.3 on the MDD G4 systems. I believe the "INDY" software was the old stuff. Here's an interesting bit I found from that time from an engineer at Sonnet: "These are two different things as it turns out. The boot ROM does have to change, typically for PVR changes, but also for cache reporting and processor speed reporting - the new PLL multipliers were not part of the old speed tables. So, one set of changes provides support in the boot ROM. This takes the boot process from initialization, memory configuration, cache configuration, some testing, and then into Open Firmware. Open Firmware then looks for the official boot device; if OS X is selected, it loads a bootstrap program ("BootX") which does some prep, then reads the kernel image from disk into memory, and jumps to it. Once the OS X kernel starts booting, Apple reads the PVR again with a mfspr instruction and then looks up in a processor table all the features and characteristics of the processor. Interestingly, they do not use the information for the boot ROM data structures, but read it straight out of the processor. Frankly, we may have had some hand in that, as OS X was able to boot on some old, old machines (9500 class) using our processor upgrades that never had the PVR value set correctly in the boot data structures. So, this is a second set of changes, this time in the OS X kernel - and very minor, as I stated. I don't see any way around it though - Apple reads the pvr, and there is no intervention in the code stream until it is used to look up the processor info in the table. I routinely have to make custom kernels for new processors (7457, 7447A for example) before Apple provides official support, but we never thought much about it not being part of future OS X versions till the Apple WWDC announcement. I'm happy to provide any further info on the issue, as we really like the 7448 so far and would very much like to use it in our products when it becomes available." And here's a note I sent to my boss around the same time. "We are using a custom kernel now with 10.3.5. That's because the A7PM wasn't out when 10.3 was released. However, I'm sure 10.3.9 supports it. (Your laptop requires at least 10.3.4 I believe) To get A8 to work we had to do a firmware update so the system (hardware) would recognize the part. That's a fairly trivial update. The same custom 10.3.5 kernel works with A8. (I don't know why.) However, I've tried to boot 10.4.x with A8 and the OS won't load. I assume because the OS doesn't recognize the PID. So, yes, in order to run A8 on 10.4.x Apple will have to update the kernel. He's absolutely right that because of this it may be very hard or impossible to make a 7448 upgrade for older Macs. Of course Apple has always discouraged upgrades anyway, so any support for 7448 wouldn't be done just for them.... He (and we!) can only hope that Apple will use the 7448. It makes it kinda hard for the upgrade companies to move forward. If you would like more information I can make some discreet inquiries to the Northern folks. I'd like to get a kernel for A8 and 10.4 anyway." (I never did get any support for 10.4 to run on the 7448) I also found some comments about getting the MPC8641D (dual-core 7448) to run on the Mac back then, but that was after extensive hardware/software hax.

My memory is hazy but I think the voltage was 1.5v and the temp was 110c. Apple supplied the firmware patch. I have searched my "archives" and I can't find any copies of the Apple software. In addition to the firmware update we also had a hardware test suite that ran in in OF.

Very nice early Macs! I'd like to see the guts as well.

Yes, I understood that. I meant you're probably right about his battery.

Ah, good point. Also I see the price has gone up since I purchased mine. (It's 20 years old and long dead.)

Yes, the Portable needs a good 9V battery to be installed. I use this lead-acid battery. It will fit inside the portable, and trimmed down a bit can be fitted into the original battery case. Although theoretically the battery you have should work as well. It is likely your Portable will need to be recapped to some extent. If you do a forum search you'll find several threads relating to recapping Portables and there are several members here with specific Portable experience. Perhaps they'll participate in this thread.

What exactly happens when you try to launch the utility?

Good score. I had to recap the power supply in mine.

Every 040 has a FPU. Probably why the software reports hardware FPU present. Technically this is true, the chip has an FPU. LC's are just 040's that have faulty FPU's that were disabled by blowing fuses on the chip. This happens during testing. If the chip passes all other tests but has a faulty FPU it will be downgraded.