Table of Contents for this issue:
MACII ROM
PB SCSI and Plus
Re: Classic Macs Digest 11.20.2
Re: HD SC and my IIcx
Upgrade to 7.5.5
Video with Mac Plus
Plus and external HD
Grandma's Classic...
Re: Alternatives to RAM Doubler for 68000 Macs
RE: Alternatives to RAM Doubler for 68000 Macs
LC II RAM
040 and PPC List?
IIsi and Daystar Turbo 601

Alan Larson asked:

I have a MacII with the original 800k floppy drive and an extra (and empty) floppy drive bay and plug on the main board adjacent to the plug in connection for the 800k floppy drive. I would like to add a Superdrive to the machine in the extra drive bay and have both floppy drives available to me. I understand that I may need some sort of rom upgrade and also the drive (and brackets?). The machine does have a Marathon 33mhz '030 accellerator installed. Does this affect at all what I may need for Roms?

Apple's official ROM upgrade kit(P/N MO244) came (comes?) with five chips, four ROM chips and a SWIM chip. Depending on the vintage of your logic board these are labeled a little bit differently. I don't know if the accelerator negates the need for these.

Dave asked:

Someone told me that they run a Mac Plus at 1:1?? Can anyone confirm that?

Sure, you can do that. Most formatting software suggests the proper interleave ratio when you are formatting a drive and offers up its opinion as a default setting. You can usually override that. I've run Hard disks at various different settings on my Mac Pluses and never really been able to tell the difference in speed (pprobably because I just use them for simple word processing) Theoretically the Plus' processor can't handle the data fast enough at a 1:1 ratio which means the disk has to spin more times to read the data. With the 3:1 ratio, the data is written to the disk in intervals that the old 68000 can read in a continual swoop.

I have no idea if interleave has anything to do with your SCSI bus connection problem. Are you using the right cable? There are two types of SCSI cables for Powerbooks. One type is for hooking up to peripherals. The other type is for hooking up to another computer and using its SCSI devices as if they were the Powerbooks own. There are certain other possible problems, which I have since forgotten. Apple Talk is a whole lot easier and once you set it up, it's easier to do subsequent link ups without messing around.

Mark Chapman wrote:
Thanks for the reply. It never occured to me to look for upgrade paths for my portable because I thought that it was an orphan. Nevertheless I love it. The only problem I run into consistatantly is lack of memory and lack of speed. It only has a 68000 (actually the manuel calls it a MC68HC000) so that eliminates RamDoubler. Does anyone have any suggestions?

One possible solution for classic (sure sounds better than older) Macs is to use Ram Charger. It is supposed to work on 68000 chips. I won t claim to be an expert but I have played around with it on my Power 100. It s seems to work but I got rid of it since it was a demo (yes you could download it off Info-Mac & try it)! I have 32 meg so it seemed needless on my system and my Plus doesn t need it. It s one claim over Ram Doubler is compatibility with 020 and 68000 chips. Oh & it can run with Ram Doubler for those who can use both (squeeze the most from that memory). I would only suggest it if you have no room for expanding memory since memory is now cheaper.

Till Paris, Michael

Recently I bought a 150MB hard drive for my IIcx, and it wasn't an Apple or Quantum hard drive, it was an IBM. Then I decided to upgrade to 7.5.3 from 7.1, so I ran HD SC to update my drivers, but it wouldn't recognize my HD. (It said something to the effect of "No SCSI devices found.")

To my knowledge HD SC only works with Apple hard drives.

will not installing new drivers come back to bite me someday?

My IIci has a 340 Quantum formatted with Anubis by Charismac. I've gone from System 7.1 to 7.5.3 and now 7.5.5 . So far no problems. The 340HD used to be in my IIcx. I'd also be interested to hear the opinions on updating the HD SCSI driver when upgrading systems.

--ben

There have been several questions requesting info.- how to get upgrade stuff to 7.5.5.

Check with E-mail to WestCode Software Inc (westcode@westcodesoft.com) at 15050 Ave. of Science, Suite 112 SanDiego CA 92128 phone 619 487-9200 Fax 619 487 9255. My records (hope they are correct) show I bought a system 7.5 CD disk and OneClick from them for $54.98. I backed up the CD on 1.4s and it took 8 floppies.

Then check with the magazine MAC Addict E-mail customer service: (subscribe@imagine-inc.com) Type "MacAddict" in the subject line. Their magazine issues each come with a CD. The upgrades to system 7.5.5 came on their CD disks (vol. 3&4) and will probably be repeated on later issues. Or, call (credit card orders) 415 468 4869 Mon-Fri 9 to 5 in California. Their one year subscription is $29.95. Next, you can download from AOL or another source "Splitit", a little program that will split large applications and files into small parts that can be loaded onto 1.4 or 800K disks for loading into a Classic Mac. I have not tried Splitit yet, but that's what their blurb says. Good luck!

To any "techy" types.

I have a Mac Plus that I am getting set up for sister in university that has video problems. (Here roomate has a Windoze machine but they find the word processing a printing such a pain that all they do is play games on it!!)

The Mac has been in storage at our company for about 4 years so I suspect that I have a dried out capacitor on the analog board. The screen flickers intermittently on the right side and sometimes has some funny lines. If anyone has a suggestion as to what the problem would be, or if there are schematics for the analog board of a Mac Plus out there somewhere I would sure appreciate it.

The machine still works great and I would love to have a Mac Plus in my sister's dorm doing real work while the Windoze box plays games.

Thanks for the help.

Vince Renaud
vrenaud

It was inevitable. I picked up a 4MB Plus at the local flea market. I have bought an external drive for it (Maxtor 213L in no-name case). The drive mounts correctly when booting from floppy, but refuses to become the system disk, i.e., it won't boot. I have: reformatted, installed the system software (7.0 & 6.08), verified that the drive has internal termination (the terminating resistors on the drive itself are in place) and removed any external termination. Still, it refuses to mount before the floppy system boot. Help! It has me stymied.

Aloha! I'm a very new subscriber to this great list with a question... Grandma's Classic that she has owned since '91 to keep her B&B; books and reservation database straight on is exhibiting some strange startup behavior. When she first turns it on at first there is no startup chime - just a screen filled with horizontal line patterns. After several seconds the picture shrinks to a small square in the middle of the screen. Everything then proceeds normally!! I've never seen this before and don't know what to do. Does anyone know if this is a symptom of a dying battery? If so, who/what/where/how do we get it replaced? Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Peter in Paauilo, Hawaii

Subject: Alternatives to RAM Doubler for 68000 Macs
From: TiagoK

Virtual Memory is a part of the system software (look in the Memory control panel). You can use part of your hard drive as RAM. Also RAM Charger from Syncronys Softcorp works on 68000 Macs. It optimizes the allocation of memory, making it work more efficiently.

Virtual memory only works on 68030/040 Macs (or 68020 with an MMU) ...

Virtual Memory is a part of the system software (look in the Memory control panel). You can use part of your hard drive as RAM. Also RAM Charger from Syncronys Softcorp works on 68000 Macs. It optimizes the allocation of memory, making it work more efficiently.

Virtual Memory will not work on an 68000 powered Mac because it does not have the hardware to support it, ie a PMMU. If it appears in the Memory control, it's a mistake and won't actually work. (or you have an SE/30) There was an Optimem demo with the serial number written in the README file that was around the Net and some CDs a year or two ago, it works OK on old Macs. Don't ask, I don't have it any more.

Regards
Paul B Jones

I am working on a lab with LCIIs with 4 MB of Ram on the board. Can I add a single 4 MB Simm to ugrade to 8 Megs? or do they need to be added in pairs? What about Ram speed? Can it be 70 or 60 ns?

Perhaps any of you know of a list for the discussion of the newer Macintosh models...

As i mentioned in an earlier post i have a Plus, a Classic II and a Quadra 605 (which would be off-topic in this list) in the lab. And i have a PowerMac 7200/75 at home.

I suppose many of you may have a newer model besides the loved Classic Macs and may know of such a list.

Excuse me if this is off-topic.

TIA.
Bye.

I recently received free a Daystar Turbo 601 PowerPC upgrade card with adapter for the IIsi, and 16MB of RAM. What can I do with these goodies? Anyone have any experience with this upgrade card? Is it worth buying a IIsi cpu to stick it in?

Bob Joyce
rtjoyce
bob356