Sixty Eight Thousand Inc - technical information, schematics, documentation

[cheesestraws]

@Bolle I would be very happy to lend you either or both of the cards I seem to have just acquired for science, should that be of use

[Libretto]

Another auction is up for four of the hurricane rev B boards. These also have all PLCCs removed.

[cheesestraws]

Well, looks like these are noticeably less rare now than they were a week ago

[Unknown_K]

20 hours ago, cheesestraws said:

Well, looks like these are noticeably less rare now than they were a week ago

Looks like the only person who ever had these is ditching them so they won't turn up again.

 

The boards look interesting but with missing chips and 0 drivers not sure they will be useful.

[Libretto]

my assumption is the seller acquired a big pile of this stuff from an estate sale or the like, probably from one of the employees or developers at 68k.

 

I have little hope for the hurricane boards being made functional or useable (even if we got them working, we'd have to code an extension to make use of the coprocessor or obtain the software, and probably only a couple of apps could even make use of it)

 

but the SCSI cards are awesome because either they can be made to work, or new ones can be built based on the design/ROMs

[cheesestraws]

19 hours ago, Unknown_K said:

Looks like the only person who ever had these is ditching them so they won't turn up again.

 

I was being somewhat facetious.

 

19 hours ago, Unknown_K said:

The boards look interesting but with missing chips and 0 drivers not sure they will be useful.

 

No, but the SCSI cards are likely to be.

[jeremywork]

20 hours ago, Libretto said:

Another auction is up for four of the hurricane rev B boards. These also have all PLCCs removed.

Dang, more pics added!

 

20 hours ago, cheesestraws said:

Well, looks like these are noticeably less rare now than they were a week ago

Personally I'm rather happy they're becoming less rare. Owning the only one of something sounds cool and all, but in practice I'd much rather know I'm not the only one with the power to preserve or destroy something, even if unintentionally.

 

19 hours ago, Unknown_K said:

Looks like the only person who ever had these is ditching them so they won't turn up again.

 

The boards look interesting but with missing chips and 0 drivers not sure they will be useful.

The first couple Hurricane boards were mostly populated, and the associated docs may contain enough info to fill in the blanks. The seller offered me dibs on what I wanted after I won the first couple auctions. They told me they'd send me the docs since I was interested in a few, and then asked candidly what I thought the rest were worth. I indicated how unobtanium they'd been up to this point, that Sixty Eight Thousand was a less common name but still a well respected one, and suggested they'd probably be able to get whatever price they asked, within reason. I'm quite pleased the auctions were listed so relatively inexpensively, considering that comment.

 

20 hours ago, Libretto said:

I have little hope for the hurricane boards being made functional or useable (even if we got them working, we'd have to code an extension to make use of the coprocessor or obtain the software, and probably only a couple of apps could even make use of it)

I've considered the Hurricane more of a coder's toy than a turnkey accelerator. Working properly in the right hands, I imagine some fun could be had.

[cheesestraws]

19 hours ago, jeremywork said:

Personally I'm rather happy they're becoming less rare. Owning the only one of something sounds cool and all, but in practice I'd much rather know I'm not the only one with the power to preserve or destroy something, even if unintentionally.

 

Oh, I absolutely agree; perhaps my tone didn't come across right.  It's less scary when one isn't the only owner of something.

[jeremywork]

20 hours ago, cheesestraws said:

 

Oh, I absolutely agree; perhaps my tone didn't come across right.  It's less scary when one isn't the only owner of something.

It can sometimes feel both ways at once after a purchase of something you never expected to see again. 

 

I'll agree, the seller's "SUPER RARE" descriptor was probably a bit more accurate on the first auction than the most recent 

Though at first it was one of the few cases I thought SUPER RARE wasn't embellishing.

Edited March 9 by jeremywork

[Libretto]

21 hours ago, cheesestraws said:

 

Oh, I absolutely agree; perhaps my tone didn't come across right.  It's less scary when one isn't the only owner of something.

I'm having this problem with a hydra systems andor one board I bought last year, outside of rumors or overseas private collections, I can't find proof another one exists, haha

 

(it's a mac SE on an ISA card for use in a windows PC)

[jeremywork]

23 hours ago, Libretto said:

I'm having this problem with a hydra systems andor one board I bought last year, outside of rumors or overseas private collections, I can't find proof another one exists, haha

 

(it's a mac SE on an ISA card for use in a windows PC)

Whoa, imagine this is it?

https://tidbits.com/1992/02/03/mac-in-a-pcandor-one/

 

I finally sat down the other day and came up with a list of all the products that put a PC in your Mac, maybe someday I'll have to do one for the products that put a Mac in your PC 

[Libretto]

On 3/9/2021 at 5:33 AM, jeremywork said:

Whoa, imagine this is it?

https://tidbits.com/1992/02/03/mac-in-a-pcandor-one/

 

I finally sat down the other day and came up with a list of all the products that put a PC in your Mac, maybe someday I'll have to do one for the products that put a Mac in your PC 

Yep. It's in practically mint shape, but no software can be found anywhere.

[cheesestraws]

On 3/9/2021 at 4:56 AM, jeremywork said:

I'll agree, the seller's "SUPER RARE" descriptor was probably a bit more accurate on the first auction than the most recent 

 

I mean, in the global sense they're still very rare, it's just amusing to see them all turning up at once like this...

[olePigeon]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sixty-Eight-Thousand-INC-68000-NUBUS-MAC-CLONE-SUPER-RARE-CARDS-LOT-4/154365652290

 

More cards, but these ones are missing all the chips.

[Libretto]

looks like the seller's out of them now, or at least hasn't listed any in a few weeks

 

I got my three today and will dump the ROMs off the SCSI cards anyway

[jeremywork]

20 hours ago, Libretto said:

looks like the seller's out of them now, or at least hasn't listed any in a few weeks

 

I got my three today and will dump the ROMs off the SCSI cards anyway

Awesome!

 

This task hasn't fallen off my to-do list either. Can't hurt to have duplicate ROMs, and perhaps the versions are different.

[cheesestraws]

Here's the ROM off mine.  Labelled "RAID Warrior 1.0 337640".

raidwarrior.rom

 

edit: it's a 27C256

Edited April 1 by cheesestraws

[Libretto]

These are mine.

 

Quadra PDS SCSI card: Just labelled "RAID Warrior v1.0" with no penned build. "28-Sep 93" and "Raid Warrior driver 2.6" readable in the ROM. Checksum 0x00260B4E

IIfx PDS SCSI card: "DashTalk II version 1.0" and "drive ID 1" sticker. Beginning of the ROM says "SCSI Bolt Release 3.0" and "Bassomatic 5.0". Checksum 0x001D26E68

 

Both are LC27C256.

 

I don't have the coding skill to get a functional extension for these, but it doesn't seem like it would be immensely difficult to do given available info and the Raid Warrior card being shown usable.

RAIDWARRIOR_1.0.BIN DASHTALK2_1.0.BIN

Edited April 8 by Libretto

[cheesestraws]

Looks like you've got the same ROM as me, the files are identical

[cheesestraws]

Initial "HCL" for the RAID Warrior card (lol) from an afternoon's experimentation:

• scsi2sd 5.0: does not seem to work, and in fact wedges the whole machine solid
• MacSD: works entirely too well, mounts 8 copies of the same hard disc image
• Ancient slow Apple 40meg HD: works, infuriatingly, perfectly

[CC_333]

@cheesestraws Perhaps the card uses a weird, quirky, not-quite-standard SCSI implementation, hence the compatibility problems?

 

I'm only speculating, of course;  the SCSI2SD, in particular, is well known for weird compatibility issues on anything not 100% standard, probably owing to its relatively advanced customizability. 

 

c

[jeremywork]

On 4/8/2021 at 1:50 PM, cheesestraws said:

Initial "HCL" for the RAID Warrior card (lol) from an afternoon's experimentation:

• scsi2sd 5.0: does not seem to work, and in fact wedges the whole machine solid
• MacSD: works entirely too well, mounts 8 copies of the same hard disc image
• Ancient slow Apple 40meg HD: works, infuriatingly, perfectly

This experience is too relatable 

 

Have you managed to find any program which can format the RAID Warrior drives? The experience I had was that my existing Mac OS drive just works, but it’s not shown in any of the utilities I checked. 
 

FWIW, I tried out the SCSI Bolt on my VSO’d IIfx but did not see any drives mount, either at 40 or 50MHz. The card is detected, so I may need to try more drives to be sure.