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Refreshing a Quadra 605 + Bonus Quadra 650

Forums > Vintage Apple > Macintosh > Macintosh Quadra & Centris

phipli
Tinkerer
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Joined: Sep 23, 2021
Posts: 309
Likes: 215
Mar 19, 2025 - #21
>> Nycturne said:
maybe a new oscillator? Click to expand...
You don't even need a new oscillator. I really need to write the method up more carefully, but for what it is worth :

New Awesome and Easy Way to Bump a Wombat to 40MHz

I've found a new way to overclock Wombats. If you have a 33MHz Q650 or a Q800... Step 1 - bridge J29 with solder, it is next to the CPU. That's it. Your Wombat will now boot at 40MHz. The machine photographed above has a 16.6MHz clock fitted at G3! More detail. So it turns out that the...
[Image: 68kmla.org] 68kmla.org

In short - a blob of solder will get a 33MHz Q650 to run at 40MHz, and if you want it more reliable (using correct 40MHz timings) a little bit more work is needed to give you two jumpers that let you select the speed and ROM timings. Note I think someone on that thread corrected which way round I said the settings were for two speeds - they're right, I was looking at old notes when I wrote my post and didn't have a machine in front of me.
Attachments:
68kmla.org [View]

Liked by Nycturne,Nitram78andkillvore

Nycturne
Tinkerer
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Joined: Dec 18, 2024
Posts: 98
Likes: 62
Mar 21, 2025 - #22
>> Volvo242GT said:
You aren't in the Seattle, Washington area, are you? If so, I hope RE-PC gave you a better deal on the 650 than what it was advertised at (that is, if you wound up getting it there). I do have some RAM SIMMs that I pulled from my 7100/80 when I upgraded it to 56MB of RAM. They'll work in a 650, of course. I may also be switching to a 4x CD-ROM drive in said Mac, which means I'll have the original caddy loader 2x drive with its bezel available. Click to expand...

Not sure what it was listed for when you saw it, but compared to the other Q650s I've seen in the last ~6mo, it was downright reasonable (even ignoring shipping), and in better shape than most to boot. That IIvx they had when I dropped in on the other hand...

I'm not sure I'd want to add a CD drive, to be honest. There's not much that it can handle that BlueSCSI can't, mostly discs that used red book audio alongside the data track. But I'd probably start with the CD-RW SCSI drive I already have on hand first (we used it on the Quadra 800 back in the day). Need to see if it still works though.

>> phipli said:
You don't even need a new oscillator. I really need to write the method up more carefully, but for what it is worth : New Awesome and Easy Way to Bump a Wombat to 40MHz I've found a new way to overclock Wombats. If you have a 33MHz Q650 or a Q800... Step 1 - bridge J29 with solder, it is next to the CPU. That's it. Your Wombat will now boot at 40MHz. The machine photographed above has a 16.6MHz clock fitted at G3! More detail. So it turns out that the... 68kmla.org Click to expand...

Thread reads perfectly clear to me. It just didn't show up high enough in my web searches for whatever reason, so I didn't see it. Thanks for sharing.


Haven't had much time this week due to family stuff eating up much of the free time (and more) I had. I finally got around to picking up a 5.25" drive for the IIe card, and started going through some of our old software disks to see which ones still read. Interestingly, most still work, but an original copy of Frogger has gone bad. An old disk of Lode Runner levels I made when I was ~7 still loaded and played. Nothing terribly interesting in terms of preservation though. At least not yet.

Bad news is that something went wrong and hung the whole system during the boot of the IIe. After restarting, I now get sad Mac chimes when the card is installed. So I'll need to do some digging there when I get time, and hope it's something simple rather than an important chip going bad on the IIe card.
Attachments:
68kmla.org [View]

vtgearhead
Tinkerer
Burlington, VT USA
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Joined: May 1, 2023
Posts: 92
Likes: 35
Mar 31, 2025 - #23
I just successfully added a Spicy OClock to my Q650 and it's running reliably at 44 MHz. I would really like to mount the Spicy board using something more positive than electrical tape or doublestick and am curious whether there's a 3d printable bracket for this purpose?

Opualuan
New Tinkerer
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Joined: Oct 10, 2024
Posts: 14
Likes: 5
Jun 14, 2025 - #24
Great to watch your progress! I have a similar system, and found once overclocking the CPU that the internal video benchmark beat the accelerated Interware PDS card I searched for- disappointing result considering how hard it was to find!

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