19 Oct
2000
19 Oct
'00
2:27 a.m.
I found a nice Mac II yesterday with Natl. Instruments HPIB,
20MB memory, Asante NIC, and framebuffer. What makes it
special is that it has a Daystar accelerator that plugs
in the 68020 and MMU sockets; the accelerator
has a 68040 @ 33Mhz. I had not planned to keep any NuBus
machine (I'm tossing stuff out due to an impending long trip),
but, since I have the Natl. Instruments software for the
HPIB card, and some other interesting Nubus DSP cards,
I am tempted to keep it... so I thought I'd ask some questions
to help me make up my mind.
Does anybody know more about this accelerator? What kind of
performance does it yield compared to, say, one of the later
Quadras? Are there basic differences in the I/O and bus
architecture that will prevent the 68040 from reaching its
full potential on a Mac II mainboard as opposed to a 68040
in a Quadra? Do Quadras have faster SCSI?
Also, the machine has two floppy drives; how do the Mac II
drives rank among those found in Apple machines in terms of
usefulness/durability?
Thanks for your suggestions,
Carlos.
--
Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu
428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
19 Oct
19 Oct
4:03 a.m.
Carlos,
That NI GP-IB card may not be GP-IB! I have a NI NuBus card with what
looks like a HP_IB connector but I couldn't find it on NI's site so I
E-mailed them and asked about it. It turns out that it isn't GP-IB but some
kind of data aquision card. I don't remember the model number but it's
around here somewhere.
Joe
At 10:27 AM 10/19/00 -0400, you wrote:
I found a nice Mac II yesterday with Natl. Instruments HPIB,
20MB memory, Asante NIC, and framebuffer. What makes it
special is that it has a Daystar accelerator that plugs
in the 68020 and MMU sockets; the accelerator
has a 68040 @ 33Mhz. I had not planned to keep any NuBus
machine (I'm tossing stuff out due to an impending long trip),
but, since I have the Natl. Instruments software for the
HPIB card, and some other interesting Nubus DSP cards,
I am tempted to keep it... so I thought I'd ask some questions
to help me make up my mind.
Does anybody know more about this accelerator? What kind of
performance does it yield compared to, say, one of the later
Quadras? Are there basic differences in the I/O and bus
architecture that will prevent the 68040 from reaching its
full potential on a Mac II mainboard as opposed to a 68040
in a Quadra? Do Quadras have faster SCSI?
Also, the machine has two floppy drives; how do the Mac II
drives rank among those found in Apple machines in terms of
usefulness/durability?
Thanks for your suggestions,
Carlos.
--
Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu
428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
3:41 a.m.
Greets,
>Does anybody know more about this accelerator?
Look up your MacII on http://www.lowendmac.com and there is (almost always)
a section with details on the various accelerator options for the model in
question.
Lowendmac must be the best resource of it's type I have ever encountered.
They have a wealth of links as well. It's always my first place to turn.
Bill Layer
Sales Technician
<b.layer(a)vikingelectronics.com>
+----------------------------------+
Viking Electronics, Inc.
1531 Industrial St.
Hudson, WI. 54016 - U.S.A
715.386.8861 ext. 210
<http://www.vikingelectronics.com>
+----------------------------------+
"Telecom Solutions for the 21st Century"
5:15 a.m.
Bill Layer wrote:
Thanks a lot, Bill! There, I immediately found a lot of info about
this generation of Macs; now I know that this particular accelerator
will fit in the cache slot for a IIci without any adapter, and,
I happen to have a IIci as well :-) . My plan now is to
beef up the IIci with the accelerator, more memory, a video
card and I'll have a neat, small 68K-based Mac II to play with.
I will be limiting the mac side of my collection to a Classic II,
an SE/30, the accelerated IIci and an 8100.
--
Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu
428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
>Does
anybody know more about this accelerator?
Look up your MacII on http://www.lowendmac.com and there is (almost always)
a section with details on the various accelerator options for the model in
question.
Lowendmac must be the best resource of it's type I have ever encountered.
They have a wealth of links as well. It's always my first place to turn.
7:30 a.m.
Hi Carlos,
Thanks a lot, Bill!
Anytime :) Glad I could help..
My plan now is to
beef up the IIci with the accelerator, more memory, a video
card and I'll have a neat, small 68K-based Mac II to play with.
I will be limiting the mac side of my collection to a Classic II,
an SE/30, the accelerated IIci and an 8100.
Does the accelerator solve the memory addressing problems in the IIc
series? These models have 2MB of RAM built-on , plus two 30-pin sockets
which will take 4MB SIMMS. Problem is, even with two 4MB SIMMS installed,
the machine will only recognize a total of 10MB of RAM, not the 12MB that
is physically present.
If that 68030 accelerator card also comes bearing an 68882 FPU, the system
can then be used to run NetBSD (one of the free UNIX-like operating
systems). For that matter, it might also run the M68K linux, but on 10MB
I'm not sure how these systems will perform. FWIW, the SE/30 will also run
NetBSD, and that model can easily be expanded to 32 or 64MB of RAM.
Bill Layer
Sales Technician
<b.layer(a)vikingelectronics.com>
+----------------------------------+
Viking Electronics, Inc.
1531 Industrial St.
Hudson, WI. 54016 - U.S.A
715.386.8861 ext. 210
<http://www.vikingelectronics.com>
+----------------------------------+
"Telecom Solutions for the 21st Century"
8:51 a.m.
Bill Layer wrote:
Well, I've just assembled a IIci system with the accelerator
(btw, it is a 33MHz 68040, not a 68030). The "happy mac" icon
that shows up when the mac finds a system disk also says "Turbo 40"
or some such. The IIci doesn't have any built-in RAM, but it does
have eight 30pin SIMM sockets. I put 4x4MB + 4x1MB for the time being,
and under 7.0.1 it does find all 20Megs. I timed the machine
My plan now
is to
beef up the IIci with the accelerator, more memory, a video
card and I'll have a neat, small 68K-based Mac II to play with.
I will be limiting the mac side of my collection to a Classic II,
an SE/30, the accelerated IIci and an 8100.
Does the accelerator solve the memory addressing problems in the IIc
series? These models have 2MB of RAM built-on , plus two 30-pin sockets
which will take 4MB SIMMS. Problem is, even with two 4MB SIMMS installed,
the machine will only recognize a total of 10MB of RAM, not the 12MB that
is physically present.
If that 68030 accelerator card also comes bearing an 68882 FPU, the system
can then be used to run NetBSD (one of the free UNIX-like operating
systems). For that matter, it might also run the M68K linux, but on 10MB
I'm not sure how these systems will perform. FWIW, the SE/30 will also run
NetBSD, and that model can easily be expanded to 32 or 64MB of RAM. from the moment the turn-on chime sounds until it
finishes booting
(using a 2GB Seagate drive): Twenty seconds. Sweet :-) . And it
even loads six or seven extensions. I added an Asante NIC, a GPIB
board by National Instruments, and a Rasterops video card that
also has an S-video connector. I'll have to install the GPIB
software and find out about other OS; I think that 8.1 was the
last one that ran in 68040-based machines, and 7.6.1 the last
one which ran on older macs.
There is also one 72 pin SIMM socket in the mainboard next to the
cache slot (which is where the accelerator goes). I wonder what it is
for...
--
Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu
428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
3:59 a.m.
Hi Joe;
Joe wrote:
That NI GP-IB card may not be GP-IB! I have a NI
NuBus card with what
looks like a HP_IB connector but I couldn't find it on NI's site so I
E-mailed them and asked about it. It turns out that it isn't GP-IB but some
kind of data aquision card. I don't remember the model number but it's
around here somewhere.
I'd be surprised if this is not a gpib card; it even has the TNT4882-AQ
chip by National Instruments. You can see a picture at
http://huey.ee.cornell.edu/nitnt.jpg
and, while we're at this, take a look at the 68040 accelerator:
http://huey.ee.cornell.edu/daystar68040.jpg
and some of the other NuBus cards that I have:
http://huey.ee.cornell.edu/dt2255.jpg
http://huey.ee.cornell.edu/lab-nb.jpg
http://huey.ee.cornell.edu/nubus_dsp.jpg
--
Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu
428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
8831
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6 comments
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b.layer＠vikingelectronics.com -
cem14＠cornell.edu -
rigdonj＠intellistar.net