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| WarpSE: 25 MHz 68HC000-based accelerator for Mac SE |
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Kay K.M.Mods Active Tinkerer Tokyo -------- Joined: Sep 23, 2021 Posts: 320 Likes: 715 |
Jul 7, 2022 - #221
The Turbo 040 I bought the other day is also broken, and any further investment in the SE/30 seems wasteful. Instead, I would like to support Zane's project[+1] It's completely different from other clones. If there is a pre-sale, I will buy it, and I think there are many people who donate if the funds are tight. Of course I too. Liked by retr01andJDW |
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Bolle Tinkerer -------- Joined: Nov 1, 2021 Posts: 55 Likes: 95 |
Jul 7, 2022 - #222
Liked by Kay K.M.Mods |
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JDW Administrator Japan -------- Joined: Sep 2, 2021 Posts: 2,536 Likes: 1,984 |
Jul 7, 2022 - #223
The good news is that such cannot happen with Zane's accelerator -- no TS adapter required! Liked by retr01andKay K.M.Mods |
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Kay K.M.Mods Active Tinkerer Tokyo -------- Joined: Sep 23, 2021 Posts: 320 Likes: 715 |
Jul 7, 2022 - #224
Here's what I did: -The ROM was replaced by flashing 4.1.1 and 4.0.1. -Cleaned contacts -Replaced the CPU with another one that works None of them worked. I'm guessing that GAL is bad, I can't do a reverse engineer, so repairs are impossible! But if you can repair it, I think there is also a chance for this. @Bolle Would you like to have this repaired? Thanks for the details @JDW And I know this post belongs to @Zane Kaminski . Sorry for my personal writing! If the Zane card is complete, I will definitely buy it. Liked by Zane KaminskiandJDW |
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alxlab Active Tinkerer -------- Joined: Sep 23, 2021 Posts: 293 Likes: 323 |
Jul 7, 2022 - #225
That's interesting since the spec sheet seems to imply the hsync goes nowhere near the frequency of the compact macs. Guess it goes to show you that it doesn't hurt to try and see if a screen will work. Maybe any LCD wit the Pixelworks PW172 will work with a compact Mac then. My newer HP e190i is speced to go down to a hsync of 24kHz and just says signal out of range when I tried to hook up the SE's video signal.
Liked by Zane Kaminski |
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BFEXTU Tinkerer -------- Joined: Jul 15, 2022 Posts: 177 Likes: 152 |
Jul 15, 2022 - #226
Good job on getting it to work. Liked by JDWandZane Kaminski |
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JDW Administrator Japan -------- Joined: Sep 2, 2021 Posts: 2,536 Likes: 1,984 |
Jul 15, 2022 - #227
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jasonbuchwald New Tinkerer -------- Joined: Apr 8, 2022 Posts: 11 Likes: 3 |
Jul 17, 2022 - #228
Liked by Zane KaminskiandJDW |
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winters New Tinkerer Western Virginia -------- Joined: Mar 23, 2022 Posts: 17 Likes: 13 |
Jul 18, 2022 - #229
How am I just noticing this thread now?! As stated above by others, I am very interested in this as well, even if it is to be a beta tester :D
Liked by Zane Kaminski,JDWandretr01 |
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Zane Kaminski Administrator Columbus, Ohio, USA -------- Joined: Sep 5, 2021 Posts: 372 Likes: 615 |
Jul 18, 2022 - #230
Liked by rikerjoe,JeffCandJDW |
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Lovemyclassicmacs New Tinkerer -------- Joined: Mar 31, 2022 Posts: 7 Likes: 8 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #231
Afternoon all
I'm interested in the card also when ready. I have a few SE being a collector and would like to see how it goes. So far very impressive Liked by retr01,Zane KaminskiandJDW |
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Zane Kaminski Administrator Columbus, Ohio, USA -------- Joined: Sep 5, 2021 Posts: 372 Likes: 615 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #232
Yeah we will be doing the bringup soon... just have to do a laundry list of things that make a bit of money sooner:
Liked by jasonbuchwald,retr01andJDW |
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JDW Administrator Japan -------- Joined: Sep 2, 2021 Posts: 2,536 Likes: 1,984 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #233
[fingers-crossed][fingers-crossed][fingers-crossed] |
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Zane Kaminski Administrator Columbus, Ohio, USA -------- Joined: Sep 5, 2021 Posts: 372 Likes: 615 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #234
So I think all this stuff but for the RAM2GS and RAM2E will be done within a month. Then RAM2E and RAM2GS, then I can do the WarpSE bringup. Liked by retr01,JeffCandJDW |
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retr01 Senior Tinkerer Utah, USA -------- Joined: Jun 6, 2022 Posts: 2,474 Likes: 810 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #235
Oh boy! I want the 8 MB SE/30 ROM SIMM! :love: Please reserve me one. PM'ed you, @Zane Kaminski. |
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retr01 Senior Tinkerer Utah, USA -------- Joined: Jun 6, 2022 Posts: 2,474 Likes: 810 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #236
I better hurry and get my hands on a SE. :D I missed out on a super nice dual 800k SE, dang. I will keep my eye out for a nice one. |
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retr01 Senior Tinkerer Utah, USA -------- Joined: Jun 6, 2022 Posts: 2,474 Likes: 810 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #237
The idiocy of Apple for not connecting 24 lines out of the 68000 to address 2 to the 24th bytes, which translates to 16 MB, drives me crazy. @Zane Kaminski, I am sure you are aware of this already.
Would it be possible doing better than what Apple and many of the accelerator companies did back in the day and connect the complete address lines so that the 68000 can address the maximum 16 MB of RAM as it was designed to? |
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Crutch Tinkerer Chicago -------- Joined: Jul 10, 2022 Posts: 293 Likes: 228 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #238
I'm not sure it's really fair to describe it as idiocy ... in 1984 surely nobody was thinking anyone would desire to upgrade their 512k Mac to 8MB! Perhaps it was a different story by 1986 ...
Anyway I don't think it's just a matter of connecting address lines. Making the full theoretically-addressable 16MB available to RAM would preclude memory-mapped device access, which is a concept deeply baked into the operating system. |
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JDW Administrator Japan -------- Joined: Sep 2, 2021 Posts: 2,536 Likes: 1,984 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #239
I've been exchanging PM's with a former SuperMac engineer. He mentioned to me today that the ProdigySE could support 8MB, thanks to its 68851 PMMU chip, which is shown in the following control panel...
[Image: 1660141823137.png] So merely, connecting address lines alone is not something that would enable more than 4MB of RAM on an SE. The PMMU pages RAM in 4mb chunks. So if any new accelerator like WarpSE were to add RAM as a daughter card (like the ProdigySE did), it would most likely need similar RAM paging via the 68851 or similar chip. That's really the big benefit of the SE/30. We can finally break past the 4MB RAM limit. And while I've never found the need for the 128MB RAM that the SE/30 offers, I do find 32MB of RAM on my SE/30 to be enough most of the time. The only app that would really need more is Photoshop, but who wants to use an SE/30 as their main Photoshop machine? Now, in the case of an SE, 8MB would probably be adequate to run most programs the SE is otherwise capable of running. 4MB is just too limiting once the OS is loaded. Even so, if you run System 6 on your SE most of the time, 4MB of RAM is not an issue. Even without the added RAM, a faster CPU is really a big help. In my tests using the 16MB SuperMac SpeedCard, which uses a 68000 CPU, it really makes the machine much more usable. The major downside is the distorted sound. And while the cure for that is disabling the SpeedCard, it also kills the benefit of the card too. Have speed and great sound is ideal. 8MB of RAM, while not absolutely necessary, would be icing on an otherwise very delicious cake.
Liked by retr01 |
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Zane Kaminski Administrator Columbus, Ohio, USA -------- Joined: Sep 5, 2021 Posts: 372 Likes: 615 |
Aug 10, 2022 - #240
Yes, it's not as simple as just decoding the rest of the address lines. Nor is the 68851 or paging MMU in general really the secret sauce. It would be easy to make a circuit with a PAL or something that could re-map the addresses of the I/O chips and ROM, moving them out of the way so as to make room for 8 contiguous megabytes of RAM. The difficult part is booting up the Mac with all of those devices and ROM memory at the wrong addresses.
James, maybe your friend from Supermac can shed some light on how exactly the card software worked with the Mac OS. My impression is that the extension which enables 8 MB of RAM must modify the low memory global variables which point to the various I/O devices and RAM (SCSIBase, ROMBase, etc.), enable the 8 MB address mapping, then do a partial reboot of the system which basically consists of jumping to a specific point in the boot routine. Anyone have any thoughts about how to overcome this I/O device address issue? Liked by retr01 |
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