> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:44:45 -0500
> From: Brian Lanning <brianlanning at gmail.com>
> It already has scsi and ehternet so I'm not sure what else I would put
> in there unless I found something unique or interesting.
The built-in SCSI is unenhanced SCSI. That means that its maximum
theoretical performance is 5 MB/s. It's okay, but can seem a trifle slow.
The best SCSI NuBus card only goes up to Fast & Wide (20 MB/s theoretical
maximum). There are no Ultra-SCSI nor IDE/ATA NuBus cards for the Mac.
If the thing has an original hard drive in, you could probably get some
speed boost just by installing a more modern SCSI drive with a faster
media speed. As slow as the built-in SCSI was in older Macs, the hard
drives of the day usually couldn't sling data even that fast.
> I still need to track down that goofy ethernet dongle that gives you an
> rj-45.
The connector is called an AAUI (Apple AUI) so you need an AAUI to UTP
transceiver. Of course, if you're hunting on Ebay, there's no telling
what the seller will call it. There were also transceivers for thinnet
and thicknet, so do not accidentally buy the wrong one.
Those things were cheap to free a few years ago. They may have all made
their way through the second-hand system to the point where they're not as
easy to come by now. If you have a Goodwill Computer Works store in your
area, you might check their cable bins. Ours used to be full of the
transceivers.
> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:49:18 -0500
> From: Brian Lanning <brianlanning at gmail.com>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com>
> wrote:
>> A Radius card would go nicely in a unit like this, though.
>
> ok, so I'll start shopping for that.
>
> I'm having a hard time telling the difference between the video cards.
> They all look the same to me although I'm sure some are better than
> others.
It's been a while since I checked, so my memory may be faulty, but I think
that I remember that the built-in video on the Quadra 700 and 900/950 is
faster than you're likely to get with a NuBus card. It's primarily a
bandwidth issue.
Telling the difference in NuBus video cards can be truly dizzying.
The four main players were Raster Ops, Radius, SuperMac (not the later
Umax owned clone maker), and E-Machines (not the much later PC maker).
Around '94 SuperMac bought E-Machines. Not long after that Radius bought
SuperMac.
When they were being made, the NuBus video cards fell into two categories:
consumer and professional. The late model consumer cards are good
yeoman-like cards. The professional cards have some great QuickDraw
acceleration on board.
The fastest Mac NuBus video cards were the Radius Thunder IV GX series and
the Villagetronic MacPicasso 340 (not the 320). I think Sonnet also sold
the latter under another name. Raster Ops may have had a card in the same
class, but I'm just not very familiar with the Raster Ops products.
The Thunder IV GX series came in four models, 1152, 1360, 1600 and the
Thunder 24/GT. The first three indicate the first number in the highest
resolution of the card which supported 24 bit color. The latter,
differently named card is just like the 1152, except it lacks the DSP
daughter board. The IV GX models were about $3000 when new. The Thunder
24/GT was a bargain at just under $1000.
All of these usually command a pretty high price if they come up for sale
at all, but they are faster (in some functions) than a PowerMac PDS-based
HPV card. They excel at tasks which are amenable to Quickdraw
acceleration. They are still limited by NuBus' bandwidth and so are not
so good at throwing frames up on the screen in quick succession.
The late model consumer level cards include the Radius PrecisionColor Pro
24 series and the E-Machines Futura II series. Each of these contained
three or four models which carried different amounts of VRAM.
To truly muck things up, there was an earlier card called the Radius
PrecisionColor 24 (no Pro) and the Futura (no II). The earlier cards
were bigger and slower and less compatible. Again, Raster Ops probably
had something too.
SuperMac's last professional level card is often recommended by people and
it's a good card by all accounts (I haven't tried one).
The Futura II SX had a couple of optional daughter boards. One was a DSP
coprocesser board, which isn't all that interesting these days. The other
was an ethernet daughter board, which isn't especially enhancing in a
Q700. The ethernet driver for the daughter board doesn't work with Open
Transport and will freeze the machine at boot time if both the driver and
Open Transport are loaded. The ethernet daughter board only works with
Classic Networking.
Okay, that's probably way more detail than you need, but how often do I
get to dump this accumulation of now mostly useless knowledge out?
Personally, I would just get the VRAM, unless you need support for larger
displays for some reasons.
Jeff Walther
Well, I did something mildly stupid recently, and I did it even though I _knew_ the dangers. Some people might not know these dangers (or think about them), so I figured I'd post a word of warning, since this is bound to come up in classic computing.
So, I was recently givin a copy of "Mario All Stars" for the Super Nintendo. It played, but the save game feature doesn't work. These cartridges use a battery-backed SRAM chip to store save games. So, my assumption was that the battery was simply dead.
Opening the cartridge revealed the problem. The battery (a solder-tab style CR2032) was actually good, but the positive terminal 'tab' had come off. The spot-welds just let go. It must have been poorly made, and then got dropped at some point. I don't have a replacement battery with solder tabs, nor do I have a way to get one quickly. But, this seems simple enough, I'll just solder the tab back on.
Now, I've soldered to coin batteries before and never had a problem. The trick is to rough up the surface of the battery so the solder can stick, and work quickly to avoid damaging the battery. Well, this battery wasn't having any of that. The solder simply would not flow. It was then that I thought "I can't heat a lithium battery too much - it might explode!". So I donned my full face mask and got back to work.
More attempts to get the solder to stick were failing. I tried piling on more solder, so that the flux might have a chance to get it to flow. It looked like it was just about to stick and.... PFOOOF!!
Yes. Lithium batteries _do_ explode when heated too much.
The battery exploded sending bits of black crud and molten solder (that never stuck to the battery) everywhere. It suprised the hell out of me, that's for sure. I heard a little *plink* as the top cover of the battery landed behind me. I just stared at the bottom of the battery on the bench for a minute, startled. I took off the face mask and went to get the vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess.
After cleaning up the debris and finding the battery tab and the battery cover, I was trying to figure out how to replace this battery - and if I should try soldering to another cell (more quickly, this time). I then looked over at my face mask on the table. It was covered with solder spashes, and quite a lot of it too (remember, I was trying to get the flux to help the solder flow). Had I not been wearing that mask, I would have gotten all sorts of crud in my eyes.
I've always worn this mask when drilling, dremeling, using the table saw, and yes, when soldering to batteries. This is the first time one has actually exploded though. Yeah, it was my fault, I heated it too much - I should have known better. But it's easy to get frustrated and forget. But never forget to put on safety equipment when working with stuff like this. Givin the choice, I'd always rather have a piece of impact-resistant polycarbonate between me and flying shards of hot metal.
-Ian
At 09:41 AM 3/9/2009, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>Wow... CAMAC. I've only ever seen that in one place - AMANDA (the
>precursor project to IceCube).
>I've never seen CAMAC outside of particle physics. I'm curious where
>that MicroVAX has been.
Maybe it was a UW-Madison thing. I worked with them on an early LIDAR
for a meteorology prof who liked to go to the Pole, too. Yup, they
had A/D converters measuring the returned photons.
- John
It appears that the quadra 700 I just received from ebay has no rom
simm. Does anyone know where I can get one, other than waiting an
unknown amount of time for ebay to produce one? thanks.
brian
Lorne, I've got some old Power One siwtchers tucked away. I'll see
if I can find one that's in working shape. They are, IIRC, +24,
+12 and +5 (maybe also -5). The problem with using a PC XT power
supply is that the current requirement for the +24 is substantial.
Cheers,
Chuck
Hi,
Anyone have a IBM XT or clone machine for sale? It needs
to be an 8086/V20 or V30 processor and in a working
state and preferably in the U.K.
Contact me off list if anything available.
Thanks
Ian.
If you can't arrange a group buy and you don't mind white/unprinted
then I could send you a couple of rolls; I don't see myself doing
anything with my PPT perfs and readers any time soon - think of
it: loading Vista from PPT... ;-)
Email off-list if interested.
mike
---------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:47:09 +0100
From: Henk Gooijen <henk.gooijen at hotmail.com>
Subject: 1" paper tape buy ?
Hi all,
I was searching for a company that sells 1" unoiled paper tape, here
in The Netherlands. No luck. After googling and many pages, I found
a company in the USA: http://www.wncsupply.com/paper-tape-rolls.html
I would like to buy one or two rolls of 1000 ft, order# 0400A,
R-V-PU471 Unoiled / Printed Top Arrow yellowish color, but it comes
in either a package of 28 rolls (1) and weighs 40 lbs, or in a quart
package, 7 rolls, still a weight of 10 lbs. The 7 rolls package costs
$80. That OK, but the shipping costs would make it quite expensive.
My question is simple.
Are there people on this list who also want to buy some rolls of 1"
nice looking yellow paper tape? I would take 2 (or 3) rolls.
Hint: Get a paper tape reader from an old CNC machine from eBay.
(I bought one for $30 and another for $79 two weeks ago). You can
interface such a reader to a computer, in my case the SBC6120 !
Think of it ... booting the SBC6120 from a paper tape. Is that cool?
The site also sells nice reels (http://www.wncsupply.com/reels.html).
I wanted to buy the 4" blue ones, but again shipping costs, aarggghh.
However, a nice lady from the company emailed me that she is looking
into the shipping costs, as the costs quoted on their site is a bit
high.
I hope to hear from one or two people also looking for a few paper
tape rolls ... Please contact me off list.
Links to other companies that sell 1" paper tape are also welcome!
Thanks,
- Henk, PA8PDP
