Table of Contents for this issue:
Re: Mac Plus HD problems
Earlier Individual Post
External monitor for a color classic
FreePPP
Granny's Classic
Mac SE 1MB System Software
More on LCII
Plus and external HD
Plus display
Plus on the net
Powerbook SCSI
Re: 040 and PPC List?
Re: Daystar Turbo 601
Re: FreePPP and a IIfx
Re: Video with Mac Plus
redundancy
Specification Sheets
System 6 shareware
ThunderCache from MicroMac
updating the driver on non-Apple Drives
Whacked Mac

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.

Make sure that the bus is getting term power. Check the jumper.

The Mac Plus -does not- supply 'term power' to the SCSI bus -at all-. Luckily, all you need to do to remedy this is install a diode in the proper place. If you open it up, and remove the logic board, just to the left of the SCSI connector you'll see a place for the TrmPwr isolation diode that Apple chose to leave out. The board is marked properly, so simply installing a 1N914 diode in this location will take care of things in this regard.

Doesn't the Sys 7 Control Panel 'Startup Disk' take care of this? 'Startup Disk' is not mentioned in your post, so maybe it just got overlooked?

The Plus doesn't support the Startup Disk Control Panel. A startup volume setting wasn't added to the PRAM until the Mac SE.

When a Plus is started-up, it loads the -first- System folder it finds, and checks for it in this order: Floppy; SCSI ID 6, SCSI ID 5, ... to SCSI ID 0. If you have a drive partitioned, and both partitions have a System folder, it loads the one whose volume name comes first alphabetically.

Therefore, you have to make sure there is -no- start-up floppy in the drive to Start-up from the HD. If it still comes up with the "Question-mark Disk" on start-up, then it's either the term-power problem previously mentioned, or possibly a damaged or poor-quality SCSI cable.

Hope this helps! And please keep us posted! :)

Albert L. Lilly III:
7.5.5 takes up nearly 5MB on my Classic II, with no extras (QD GX or Powertalk, etc.)

Michael Hackett:
I don't dispute the first point, but with no add-ons, 7.5.5 only takes 1.5MB of RAM on my Duo 210. With a fewextensions, you can still keep it under 2.5MB.

I, too, would wonder why your memory usage is so high. I run a LC 475 on O/S 7.5.5, and with no extras run about 2 Megs. Under a standard configuration, which includes about sixty Extensions and thirty Control Panels, I average about 3.8 to 4 Megs. If you're using 5 Megs -bare- on a Classic II, you should seriously consider checking all your Control Panel settings. Something is amiss. Also, I've run my 4 Meg Plus on O/S 7.5.5, and it worked without a problem.

George

Hi All,

I just wanted to apologize for sending out the individual post in response to a post I received ealier Saturday. I did not pay close enough attention to the listed address, and it went to the wrong server. I hope you all can overlook my mistake.

Al

[From the List Manager:

The Classic Macs subscibers are a great bunch of people - apparently no one was upset by the individual posts yesterdays.

Until Majordomo is set up we have found a workaround to the problem - the technical name of the list is now changed after each broadcast and the old name deleted, making it impossible for anyone but the list manager to broadcast to the entire list.

Thanks, Al! You've made some excellent contributions to the discussion.]

Doe anyone out there know of a card compatible with the color classic that will let me attach a 13" monitor to the unit. If anyone has done this, are the results satifactory? What would something like that cost? My unit is running with a 33 MHz DayStar accelerator with FPU, so it has a little more horsepower than the basic C.C. (although I don't know if this will effect video at all).

Mark DeHart

I use a IIfx 1120(extern)/8 with a 14". I have a problem with "FreePPP2.5v2", When i chose "Open FreePPP Setup" from the meny (phone beside the clock), nothing happens!. Somebody know why, or what to do??

Perhaps you could give a better explaination of 'nothing happens'? Really nothing? or you get a box but dont know what to do with it?

I've had friends puzzled over FreePPP who didn't realize you have to press on that little triangle in the lower left to get the Setup Box to 'open up'.

bob

Peter in Hawaii asked:
Grandma's Classic ... 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!!

What are "horizontal line patterns"? If these patterns are actually a checkerboard, there's a good chance that a ROM chip has worked loose. Check it out at board ref E1. Remove and reset (after taking all normal precautions to avoid getting zapped). The chip is smaller than the socket, so be sure you reinsert it to the left (away from battery)

Is it possible to run sys 7.0 with only 1 MB of ram? I'm not talking about useablility, as in being able to start apps..., but rather actually installing and booting in sys 7.0 (w/ tuneup). I have a ppc 7100 and an SE which I hope to upgrade from 1 MB to 4 MB, but I wanted to know if this is even feasible?

Dave Zelenski:
Memory on the LCII must be added in pairs of 30 pin SIMMs. Possible configurations are 6, 8 or 12 MB of total RAM. Minimum speed is100ns, so 60 or 70ns is fine. I recommend GURU (GUide to Ram Upgrades, freeware from Newer Technology) to anyone interested in memory issues.

You might want to check closer on your upgrade. According to "MacWorld Secrets" by David Pouge and Joseph Schorr, the LC and LCII can only be upgraded to 10 MB of RAM. If you put two 4MB simms in two MB's will be wasted. It is some kind of flakey deal about these two machines. I have tried this at work and it does ring true.

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.

This may sound like an odd question, but:

What color is your Plus?

If it is not a "Platinum Plus" you may have older ROMs that had the irritating "unit attention" bug in them. This bug prevented certain SCSI drives from ever booting, if they took a long time (1 sec) to reset from a "unit attention" command.

Since the drive mounts (and presumably reads amd writes correctly) when the Mac is booted from a floppy, I doubt that termination has anything to do with it.

-RZ

Vince Renaud asked:
The screen (on a Mac Plus) flickers intermittently on the right side and sometimes has some funny lines.

Pretty sketchy description, but if it is wiggling like a worm on the right side it could either be a bad ground (check the grounding cable screws and for the presence of the ground clip on the inside of the case). It could also be the BU406 transistor at board ref Q3.

george

I just got a great little MacPlus for $20. Is it possible to set it up for internet use? Also, what suggestions can you make on upgrading it to it's fullest potential (i.e. RAM,Hard Drive,) & where's the best place to shop for these ?

Rex-

I used MacWeb to browse, Newswatcher for news, ircle for chat and Eudora for email on my Plus. It has 4 megs of ram (the max) and a 40 meg drive. I use config PPP and MacTCP 2.06. I use system 7.01 (available at the Apple web site ot MacUser's software archives). 7.01 uses approx 1.5 megs with very few extensions.

I plugged in a Zip drive to transfer the system since it was too big for the 800K floppy drive. To find MacWeb, do a search at http://www.download.com.

If you can't find it, I'll be glad to email it to you. It takes about 2 megs to run.

JAG

Cesare Cioni asked:

this Powerbook can be connected with a cable (that I have) to the SCSI port of another Mac that will them see the Powerbook as an external hard disk. Very practical indeed. But - can I also connect external SCSI peripherals (such as a Zip drive) to the Powerbook 100? Do I need a different cable?

There are two different cables, one, like yours, and another meant for external peripheral devices. The off-white Apple brand cable (P/N M2538LL/A) is for regular SCSI devices. It has 29 pins on the square end. When connecting to another Mac to use its SCSI device, use the dark grey cable (P/N M2539LL/A). This one has 30 pins on the square end.

george

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.

Fernan:

I sort of think this list might be of interest to anyone with 68K Macs, including quadras, and wouldn't mind if 040's were included in the list of approved topics.

Nevertheless, the IO-MUG (Internet Only Macintosh Users Group) is a general purpose Mac list which isn't too overwhelming (~30K bytes/day, in digest form) with a friendly, knowledgeable core of contributors. I'm not sure of the signup procedure, but you can go to their web site at http://www.iomug.com and link to a subscription email form.

HTH
Gary

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?

The Daystar Turbo 601 PPC upgrade card requires the use of System 7.5 so you will have to purchase this as well. You will also have to upgrade your software to PPC native versions if you have not already done so to get the benefit of increased speed. Consider getting a IIsi with enough RAM and hard disk space to accomodate both System 7.5 and those modern PowerPC applications that generally require a lot of RAM and hard disk space. In other words, installing this card into a 5/80 IIsi, which is typical in the used market, may not get you anywhere in practical terms. But if you can find a machine that has been upgraded to 17 Mb of RAM and at the very least a 200 Mb hard disk, at a reasonable price, it may be worth it.

This Turbo 601 card came out first in a 66 MHz version and later in a 100 MHz version. Both use a PowerPC 601 processor. The Turbo 601/66 MHz card in a IIsi will be comparable to a PowerMac 6100/66 in terms of speed.

I have never tried the Turbo 601 but I use their Turbo 040/40 MHz (i.e. 68040/40 MHz) in a 32/1080 IIci and it works fine. It is comparable to a Quadra 840AV in terms of speed.

The Daystar home page is at http://www.daystar.com.

Hello MAC friends!!!

I use a IIfx 1120(extern)/8 with a 14". I have a problem with "FreePPP2.5v2", When i chose "Open FreePPP Setup" from the meny (phone beside the clock), nothing happens!. Somebody know why, or what to do??

The first thing I would do is try to rebuild your desktop. Apparently FreePPP likes it if you rebuild the desktop after you install it.

The next thing would be to get the new beta FreePPP Menu Control Panel. Here's a section from its readme:

===========
All About FreePPP Menu 1.5b1

What's Fixed:

FreePPP Setup now will always open FreePPP Setup. Yes that bug is fixed.
===========
So it seems that this new beta version will fix your problem.. It also lets you add other programs to the FreePPP menu just like you can with the Apple Menu.

You can find it at http://www.rockstar.com/ppp.shtml.

Andy

I have a Mac Plus that I am getting set up for sister in university that has video problems....

...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.

Most of the time these sort of video problems are caused by burned contacts on the deflection yoke connector (the 4-pin connector near the top of the analog board). Pull the connector apart, and clean the contacts, then coat them with "cramolin". The contacts may need to be re-soldered to the analog board.

I have a schematic for the Plus, but if this problem is repeatable by tapping on the case, it is not a bad component, but a bad connection.

(If the 3.9 F cap on the analog board goes out, you get a vertical line on the CRT).

-RZ

Question:
1. Is this list available in a digest form? I enjoy the list, but don't enjoy the redundancy of it. It seems like I read the same things over and over. Could it be set up like the MacWay list?

Thanks!
Cris

From the List Manager:

Classic Macs is only moderated for appropriate content. Many of the same topics, questions and answer have been circulating during the fast growth of the list. Now that we have archives thanks to Lewin A. R. W. Edwards I would encourage new list members to both lurk for a few days and look at the archives on the web, where the answer to their problem may already have been covered. Growth is at a much more normal pace now, so the stability of the list is evolving and we should see fewer of the same questions going around. We'll see.

Bill Hitz

For all you folks out there who have just got a good deal (found a classic), you can find out all about it from the Apple Specification Sheets. Go to the WEB with the following address (URL) :

http://product.info.apple.com/productinfo/specsheets/.

There are many listings. I show here just two of the listings you can select from. Click on one of the items and you will get about 3 sheets of data on that Mac.

*Classic_Mac
1.Mac_128K
2.Mac_512K
3.Mac_512Ke
4.Mac_Classic
5.Mac_Classic_II
6.Mac_Color_Classic
7.Mac_Plus
8.Mac_SE-30
9.Mac_SE
10.Mac_SE_FDHD
11.Mac_XL

*Mac_II
1.Mac_II
2.Mac_IIci
3.Mac_IIcx
4.Mac_IIfx
5.Mac_IIsi
6.Mac_IIvi
7.Mac_IIvx
8.Mac_IIx

Remember, if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!

I don't know if this fits the list, but it was because my parents and both of my kids all had SEs that I specifically wrote my shareware application, Birthdays and Such, which I recently released, to run fully and compatibly on System 6 versions as well as on System 7 -- as well as one of the reasons why I made it a goal to keep its memory use very small and its launch time very fast.

Birthdays and Such is a tiny Macintosh application meant to be launched on daily startup, to remind you of the important birthdays and anniversaries in your life. (It's only 17K, plus a sample Reminders text file and a manual.) It works for me, which made me the envy of all my friends and relatives. By setting reminders 10 or so days ahead, I find I'm as on the ball as the best of the rest of my friends and relatives in remembering to buy cards and presents (and to actually send them)--and way ahead of the date-impaired.

The San Jose Mercury News said, "Worth its weight in happy spouses, friends and associates."

Birthdays and Such runs on almost every Macintosh computer that's been made since 1986 -- Mac Plus through the latest PowerMacs. It requires only System Software version 6, but takes advantage of System 7 features when available.

Birthdays and Such is What'sItWorthWare--that is, you decide what Birthdays and Such is worth. (If you use it, it's worth _something_.) I urge you to share it. Your friends urge you to share it (ok, they would if they knew you had it, and how useful it is).

The steps to use Birthdays and Such are simple: You type important dates into a text file (just modify the sample "Reminders" file that's part of the package -- nope, no h.i. -- that keeps the player tiny and fast-launching). And you set Birthdays and Such to run every time you start your Macintosh.

Then every time you turn on your Mac, it starts up Birthdays and Such. The program looks up the current date and scans the Reminders file for upcoming events. And voila, in the topmost window on your screen, it displays just those--the ones you need to do something about.

(If you leave your Macintosh running for days at a time, that's ok, too: Leave tiny Birthdays and Such running, and it will update to the next day's reminders every night on the stroke of midnight.)

You can download your copy off AOL (from the Mac Utilities Forum, search for "Lichty") or CompuServe (it's in MAUG / Go MAUG / Mac Applications Forum / Libraries / Gen. Business/PIMs[6]) or the Web (at http://www.shareware.com, search for "Birthdays-and-Such").

Ron Lichty, author/programmer, Birthdays and Such

Robert W. Picton posted:
I've only just joined the Classics list and so have missed some of the discussion on the Thundercache card for the LCII.

Is there somewhere in the US that would supply one to me in the UK? There's only one supplier over here and the cost is horrendous compared with the $64 plus $10 post I read about this week in these pages. Am I correct in assuming there's no difference to the internal workings of the accelerator given the different mains voltages in the UK and the USA? Any contact e-Mail addresses gratefully accepted!

There are a number of very good options for you to consider. There is one minor caveat - none are free. However, if you have a modest budget, you can really blast off and remove the restrictions tying your Mac LCII to the 10 meg RAM limit.

Do you receive any of the mail order catalogs? If so, I suggest you order it from MacMall. If you don't have the catalog, their number in the USA is 1-800-222-2808. International customers should call 1-310-225-2800 or fax 1-310-225-4000. I find they consistently have the best prices - no sales tax either!

Tell them you want to order the ThunderCachePro Accellerator from "MicroMac Technologies. http://www.datamem.com/datamem). Their memory comes with a lifetime warranty.

So for less than $350, you can get that LC II outperforming any 68030 Mac out there, including the LC III. Good luck with your upgrade!

Hope this helps!

Joe Benevides

Several posts recently have asked about updating the drivers on non-Apple Drives...such as:

The CharisMac Anubis formatter V2.54N worked fine for me when I put a IBM SCSI-2 P/N 06H8558 540 MB hard drive into a *IIsi*, and installed Mac OS 7.5.3. I didn't take it to 7.5.5 though.

Actually, you can use res-edit to modify HD SC to all it to work on all drives. It's very simple. A program has been written to patch HD SC 7.3.5 without Res-Edit as well.

I posted a note in there early on about this and got similar advice. But...I did try the patched (using ResEdit) HD SC and it could not write to my Quantum drive. It could see it but not write to it. I COULD use the patched HD SC to update or reformat an EZ135 but NOT m Quantum.

I got HardDisk TookKit PE and that worked great. I also found friends who had gotten HDT PE with new drives they had purchased and they had no further use for it....although it is commercial, you may be able to find it very cheap.

I'ld be interested in hearing more about CharisMac Anubis...where did you find it? How much was it?

bob

There is a web page at http://l0pht.com/~spacerog/index.html (thats a zero in the domain name) that has all kinds of fun stuff about old macs... being used as WWW servers! They have an ftp server run off a MacII something, and a WWW server run off a MacPlus. I am working on a project with them (we've met my eMail, but never IRL) on making an Apple IIe web server. Anyway, it shows macs being used for great stuff! I am thinking of making my SE into a web server now 8-]

Leif

leif