18 Jun
2003
18 Jun
'03
7:48 a.m.
My friend and I are collaborating on juicing a IIci as
high as it will go.
Right now it has 128MB RAM, two SCSI disks (No floppy mod) a Daystar 100MHz
PowerPC upgrade card, and a fast Radius video card. I'm working on a fast
SCSI controller, and maybe a faster video card.
What would be the fastest video card you could drop in a classic, NuBus
based Mac? I've got a Radius 24MXtv that's about the old equivalent of a ATI
All-in-wonder, all singing and all dancing, but drivers are impossible to
find.
There's a particular Radius model that escapes me which blows the doors off
everything. Again, drivers will be the killer here. I *think* it's the
Thunder IV GX.
My favourite accelerated NuBus video card, and the one I always try to get
(Mike Ford knows my affinity for these), is the exceptional 8*24*GC. This
monstrous card has a very fast 2D accelerated pipeline in addition to
providing very good 24-bit colour. Screen repaints are extremely snappy,
in addition to copies and blitting (I ran a benchmark against internal
video using Snooper, and the results were very impressive).
The bad news with the GC is that the control panel, which is required to
enable QuickDraw acceleration, is notoriously finicky. It will only run
100% on System 7.1 or lower; on 7.5 and up it will cause screen glitching
(probably some off-screen GWorld interaction), and I don't know if it will
run at all in OS 8. It also won't work on 68040s. (However, all my 68K
Macs in day-to-day operation are '030s or lower running 7.1 or earlier
[except the NetBSD IIci], so this is perfectly fine with me.) By the way,
I did try the control panel under A/UX once and I was VERY sorry. It took
me almost an hour to dig it out of there since it made A/UX Finder
system-error every time I tried to log in (a frantic Launcher shell
session and some threats of violence later, order was restored).
You, however, are in an interesting position. It has been said that the GC
*will* be accelerated using the ATI PowerPC Graphics Accelerator extension
under OS 7.6, and since you've got a 601-based IIci, you might be able to
test this out. GCs are not that expensive, and even if you can't get the
acceleration working, you'll still have a decent 24-bit card (without the
accelerator, it's functionally identical to the Apple 8*24). Here's an
article on that topic:
http://www.lowendmac.com/video/apple8-24gc.shtml
While you're at it, read all the LowEndMac video card reviews; they're very
interesting.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- The truth is out there. The speculation, however, is really out there. -----