Table of Contents for this issue:
Plus as Dedicated Fax?
Equipment Available
Great Idea + SE and Non-Readable HD?
Re: PB100 Batteries
Classic II PRAM Battery?
What I've Done to My Color Classic
What Software the //gs Will Run...
PMMU Upgrade for Mac II?
Plus Boot from Zip
Re: Screen Saver for 128K and 512K?
Re: PB100 Batteries
Re: SE/30 SuperDrive Problems
Old 100MB Quantum Hard Drive in SE/30?
Re: System 0.1 on an SE
Re: Sticky SuperDrives
Color Classic: How to Upgrade for AOL 3.0?
Re: SE/30 and Color Video Card
Re: Zip Boot
Re: Mac Plus and your Zip Drive
Re: System 0.1 on an SE
Mac Plus Serial Ports?

I'd like to set up a Mac Plus as a dedicated fax machine is there any
software available on disk that would answer fax calls coming in and
saving the messages on disk? Second choice would be an SE system; I was
trying to avoid an ever-spinning harddrive...

Any thoughts?

Jack

I have a few Macintosh plus and SE's, two Radius full screen monochrome
monitors and an accelerator board for an SE looking for new owners. Price
is right: just pay for the postage... First come, first served...

Jack

I've been restoring old Macs (Plus->SE's) for elderly widows in my town so
they can access email for contact with out of town children and grand
children. It costs me a minimal amount, but makes many people happy. Maybe
some of you could do the same.

Anyway, I'm stumped by an SE. After a little soldering I got the monitor to
work, but when I started it a computer message said the HD was unreadable
and asked if I wanted to eject or initialize it. It would do neither. It
continuously looped with the message and failures.

I tried starting from a disk tools disk and it started but the same message
about the HD came up and I was in a loop when choosing the given options. I
could not get by the message. When an external drive is attached, the same
loop but now the external is included as not being readable.

I removed the internal drive and disconnected the external. The same
message about the HD's not being readable and the loop with the message.
Remember the HD has been removed and the external dis attached.

OK, what's the problem and can I fix it?

waltz
http://www.spacetech.com/wzpage/

Excerpt From: Stuart Bell

Hmm... Well... If and only if the original battery is lead-acid, you
might consider a 6V dryfit lead-acid battery to replace the whole pack
(Sonnenschein or Yuasa - try Maplin and RS again) if you can find one
that'll fit in the space.

They're a bit more fussy about charging, so you might find it doesn't last
very long if the Apple charging circuitry isn't meant to charge dryfit
batteries, but the cells might well be the same sort.

Hmmm. Can anybody tell us with any certainty that there really IS such a
thing as Apple charging circuitry? From the little voltmeter DA I have
installed, it seems like that AC adapter just keeps trying to push 7.5 volts
into the battery as it's plugged in. I have both a 100 and a 170,
and the adapters are identical (in spite of one having NiCad and other
Lead/acid battery). I guess what I'm really asking is whether I should
remove the battery /or unplug the adapter after charging is done - or if
it's smart enough to taper off the charge rate or something. I was going to
call and ask the formerly helpful 800-SOS-APPL, but they no longer support
old stuff.

David Buchner

Does anyone know where the p-ram backup battery is located within a Classic
II? A distant friend described dead-batt symptoms over the phone, and I'm
wondering if I can coach her through the replacement, or if it's internal
and the case has to be unmantled to get at it. Thanks.

David Buchner

Hi, Folks! -I just thought I'd add my $0.02 to all the Color Classic
news going 'round.

This spring, I got the MicroMac accellerator, which works wonderfully...
my only problem was with the shipping. Since I live in Canada, I double
and tripple checked the shipping with MicroMac (order *direct* from
MicroMac - NEVER buy their stuff in a store) I got the product sent on
its way. They said it would take approximately 6 working days to get to
me via UPS. 2 months, a few emails and phonecalls later, I got a credit
card bill for the product, and a letter from UPS saying that my order was
being "processed". The next week, I finally got the product. For me, it
runs like a charm, they threw in a cooling fan that goes in the PDS panel
on the back. The down side was that I got dinged around $80 by UPS...
they charged me the duty (which I knew I was going to be charged ~$38)
AND a UPS processing fee (MicroMac had already charged me $20 shipping)
AND a customs clearence fee. Now, UPS could have called me into their
office where someone signed the customs order, and I would have only had
to pay the duty. However, they didn't. Niether they, nor MicroMac
mentioned any of these extra charges to me, and neither gave me the
option to clear the package through customs myself, even though this is
commonly done. Final verdict, works great, but waay too expensive.

On another note, soon after I got the accellerator installed, I found the
japenese webpage (see back issue of this digest) which explained how to
display 640x480 on a CC monitor. I made the adjustments, and that works
great, too! Now I can run about 65% more apps than I could before;
especially the Macromedia Director type apps. One note to those
considering changing the wiring in this way on their CC: I found that
after I rewired, I lost my thousands of colors setting on my monitor;
I've now got max 256 again. I haven't tried removing my VRAM yet to see
if the screen will operate without it, but on the other hand, Quicktime
movies seem to be running just as well as they did when I had thousands
of colors and the smaller resolution.

So, it is possible to have a 640x480 50Mhz CClassic with 24 meg real RAM.
--And the 640x480 trick is free!

Andrew Ludgate
http://www.geocities.com/collegepark/3817

In reply to:

David, here's a place to start, such as it is:

http://www.cfn.cs.dal.ca/Services/PDA/appleII.html. There's not
much there, but note the program for converting Apple iie Dos 3.3
programs. With that you can run pre prodos Apple iie software. If you
do a search <<apple ii gs>> you will get 20,000 hits. You can modify
your search from there. The software is out there. Lots of it. Don't
give up.

Best, Harold
Harold Rhenisch

The //gs will run *any* Dos 3.3, Prodos 8, or Prodos 16 software. You do
not need a program to convert Dos 3.3 programs or games--those run fine
as is on my //gs. You just need to make sure you have a 5.25 drive
hooked up to the //gs.

I think what you *might* be referring to is the fact that you cannot
startup/boot a Dos 3.3 program from the GS/OS desktop. Most Dos 3.3
software is self booting from the 5.25 floppies anyway, so this is really
not a problem.

--bj

I've got a Mac II which I'm trying to upgrade so that it will read more
than 8Mb of RAM. I've heard that a certain "PMMU" chip will take care
of this, so I asked some salesman guy which chip I needed and he sent me
part no. xc68851rc16a. It didn't work. Then I read somewhere that the
part no. I needed was mc68851rc16a. Can anyone clear this up? Now I
hear that you *also* need PAL designated RAM chips.

Can someone tell me EXACTLY what I need and not assume that I know
exactly what you're talking about with all the jargon? Also, would it
be easier to just purchase a IIx logic board instead of trying to update
the original logic board? If so, what "exactly" is involved with doing
that -- other than the obvious, physical installation?

Thank you so much.
Del Ahlin

I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to boot my Mac Plus from an Iomega Zip
drive. The Zip drive is significantly more quiet than the ancient "zero
footprint" CMS drive now attached to the Plus. I know that there are some
flaky quirks with the SCSI implementation in the Plus, but there's gotta be
a way to make this work.

As far as I know, (and I've tried just about everything) The Plus won't
boot from a Zip.

JAG

A weird little oasis on the web. Download my Subgenius music, Mac
shareware, other assorted waste of bandwidth.
Http://www.eden.com/~arena/jagshouse/jagshouseone.html

On 18 july mulholla wrote:

I have one each of the 128k and 512k . . . does anyone know of a screen
saver, maybe even a DA that would blank the screen?

I've used a DA screensaver called Sleep w/ system 5.3. A white "apple" moves
about the blacked out screen.

....rich

I have a PowerBook 100 that is showing pretty clear signs of a
dead battery. If I pull the plug I can watch the power in the battery
symbol drain away and the screen go blank within just a few seconds,
even with the disk not running. If this were the only problem, it's no
big deal. I've got a source for a replacement battery and I'd order one
right away.

The clinker is that after a few hours in this dead battery state,
the internal clock also fails. In other words, it's acting like the
backup batteries are dead too. They're not. I have just replaced them
and the three together register slightly over 9V.

Isn't the reason simply that the PB100 will do _anything_ to maintain RAM,
as it might contain a RAMDISK? Hence, once the lead-acid main battery goes
dead, if you're not connected to the mains, it will use the Lithium
batteries to keep the RAN alive.They're really not made for that - only for
PRAM. clock, etc, and so die very quickly indeed. If the lithiums die _with_
main power connected _permanently_ then you have a problem; otherwise, I
think not.

cheers,

Stuart Bell
Running an Acorn Risc PC and an Apple PowerBook in a Wintel-free Zone

Acorn user? Visit http://www.poppyfields.net/sasaug/

It started having trouble ejecting floppy disks. It would lift the
floppy up as if to eject it, but then it would get stuck just before it
started to move forward. Using the paper clip trick worked for a while.
Then it got harder and harder to push the floppy out. Sometimes the Mac
would restart while trying to eject the floppy. Eventually, it pretty
much stopped trying to eject the floppy.

I figured that it was a problem with the SuperDrive and I got a new one.
I replaced it and started using the new floppy. Worked just fine for a
while. Then it started doing the same things. The problems have gone
away for the moment but I'm pretty sure they'll be back.

It can't be the floppy drive since I have completely replaced it and
it's still doing the same thing. I thought that it might be the power
supply (especially because of the restarts), but that doesn't explain why
it's so hard to eject floppies with a paper clip. (I sometimes bend
paper clips instead of being able to push the drive mechanism.) When the
floppy is stuck there is no visible blockage around the edges (as there
would be if I didn't put the drive in right). The problem seems to come
and go in spurts.

Oh, I use this Mac for floppy duplicating. I often run batches of
50-100 at a sitting.

I think the problem _is_ the power supply _and_ the drive. I suspect the
drive is encountering some physical resistance (obstruction in the case,
not likely; loose tolerances on the drive, possible if you bought a
refurb or used and not new; or a problem that lots of auto-inject
SuperDrives have over time -- gummy lubricant). The physical resistance
prevents the drive from ejecting fully and is causing an additional load
on the power supply which occasionally is sufficient to reboot the
computer.

Are you having problems with the power supply otherwise? Does the power
supply fan change pitch frequently? Does the screen seem to shrink when
you access files from the hard disk or floppies? Does the Mac ever reboot
spontaneously? These are indicative of a marginal power supply.

You mention that the problem occasionally goes away. Does it go away
before or after you dupe a few dozen diskettes? Feel free to email if you
like ...

sdropkin

My brother-in-law gave me an old SCSI Quantum hard drive, which came out
of an old mapping workstation or something like that. It said "105" on
the exterior.

I first tried HD ToolKit Personal Edition on it, which didn't work. I
then brought out the big gun, HD ToolKit 2.0, and managed to format it.
The formatted capacity is 100MB.

I managed to install a System folder on it, but am unable to boot off of
this drive. Instead, the internal hard drive boots; if I bypass the
internal drive (Command-Shift-Control-Delete) I get the question mark.

When the Mac boots off of a different drive, this 100MB Quantum is
always the last to show up on the desktop. I have tried both SCSI ID's
#1 and #6, to try playing with the priority. The jumpers are right, and
the SCSI chain is terminated properly (no internal terminating resistors
on the Quantum).

It works otherwise; I'm just curious why I can't use it as a boot drive?
Something to do with the spinup time?

Regards,
Richard Birchall

Boris,

The shortest route to solving this puzzle might be to run down to your
local Thrift Store/swap meet/garage sale/Usenet group and buy a 128 or 512K
Mac for $10. Not only will the System run perfectly, but you'll be bathed
in the original glow of the 128K Mac while writing your review!

BTW, if you thought it was amazing that the original System will boot
the SE, get this: I have several original Mac applications dating from late
1983 and early 1984 that run perfectly on my Power Mac 9600 under System
7.5.5; try the original Calculator, Alarm Clock, Bill Atkinson's QuickFile,
Window, Examine File and other DA's. Also, many real apps, such as
FileMaker v1.0, run great 13 and 14 years later! Try that on a Wintel!

Jon Gaines

When I got my hands on a copy of System 0.1 recently (the version which
was delivered with the original Mac128k), I tried to boot my Mac SE with
this disk. To my surprise, it worked. The Mac really came up.
I'd really like to be able to use this System, if only to write a review
about it. Can anyone think how I might do it?

Boris.

Hi Andy,

Tried cleaning the drive? I've never cleaned a superdrive, but on older
400K and 800K drives the eject mechanism sometimes gets sluggish because
the original lubricants turned to goo over the years. By wiping off all the
old goo with a Q-tip dipped in WD-40, I've always been able to restore
these old drives.

JG

I have an SE/30. It's pretty much a stock SE/30. Internal 120MB
Quantum HD and 8 1MB SIMMs. Nothing on the SCSI bus, no periphs, etc.

It started having trouble ejecting floppy disks. It would lift the
floppy up as if to eject it, but then it would get stuck just before it
started to move forward. Using the paper clip trick worked for a while.
Then it got harder and harder to push the floppy out. Sometimes the Mac
would restart while trying to eject the floppy. Eventually, it pretty
much stopped trying to eject the floppy.

I figured that it was a problem with the SuperDrive and I got a new one.
I replaced it and started using the new floppy. Worked just fine for a
while. Then it started doing the same things. The problems have gone
away for the moment but I'm pretty sure they'll be back.

It can't be the floppy drive since I have completely replaced it and
it's still doing the same thing. I thought that it might be the power
supply (especially because of the restarts), but that doesn't explain why
it's so hard to eject floppies with a paper clip. (I sometimes bend
paper clips instead of being able to push the drive mechanism.) When the
floppy is stuck there is no visible blockage around the edges (as there
would be if I didn't put the drive in right). The problem seems to come
and go in spurts.

Oh, I use this Mac for floppy duplicating. I often run batches of
50-100 at a sitting.

Any ideas? I'm fresh out of them myself.

Thanks,

Andy
WWW Pages: http://www.coredcs.com/~aberkvam/

Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 02:18:38 -0500 (CDT)
From: Andy Berkvam
To: Classic Posts
Subject: SE/30 SuperDrive Problems

ImageWriter driver software can be downloaded from Apple as an hqx.
file.

the URL is- http://www.apple.com

From the main menu go to Software page, highlight the Macintosh file,
you will then find the Printing file, open and highlight Other Printing
File where you will find the Imagewriter file.

The software archive is a useful site when looking for utilities, system
software updates, and other software goodies. For the llGs user I
noticed an Apple ll file with llgs system software available for
download.

Happy downloading.
jhyder

Sweet, just what I was looking for a bunch of people with the same type
of problems I am having. I felt so outdated.

Can any one help me?

I have a mac color classic. I can't run aol 3.0 because my computer is
tos slow. Any solutions?

I have global village teleport 33.6 Kbps speakerphone.

I can't get the answering machine to work.
Any other general tips (I will do anything to make my computer faster).
Later fellow 030 processors.

D. Valdez

At 07:09 PM 7/20/97 -0700, you wrote:

I was curious. What happens to the screen on the SE30 with the color card?
Does it go black or can you use it too? Is there software that will let you
switch off the color monitor and use the black and white?

Winsor,

As with all Macs with multiple monitors attached, all monitors are active
and can be "rearranged" in the Monitors control panel. So, you can place
your color monitor to the left of your SE/30, and just drag stuff off the
left side of the SE/30 screen and on to the right side of the other one as
if it were one big monitor. I've also set up mine so that the 13" color
monitor is the "boot" screen (i.e. the menu bar shows up there). The only
thing I keep on the B&W screen is the Global Village Fax incoming page so
that I can see at a glance if any faxes came in during the day.

I don't know of any way to turn one monitor off, but you can always turn
down the brightness knob, or turn off the external monitor altogether, I
suppose.

The B&W internal screen remains B&W, but I've found that there's something
about the ROMs in my SE/30 that makes it work oddly, even without the
external monitor. If I run a program on any other B&W Mac (512K, PB100 are
two others that I've got), color information in programs gets turned into
some sort of acceptible dithered-pixel display. That sort of thing is part
of the Mac Human Interface Guidelines. But, something about my SE/30 must
tell the software that it's driving a color screen already, because they
can look very ugly on the screen, and are sometimes unusable.

Anyways, I hope this helped, and I hope you don't mind my passing this
along to the mailing list too.

Charlie Schorner

At 07:52 PM 7/20/97 PDT, you wrote:

how do you boot from a zip???

Well, you copy a System folder to it, then, on any Mac newer than a Plus,
you go to the Startup Disk control panel, pick the Zip drive, close the
control panel and re-boot. If you hold down the Option key when you select
Restart from the Special menu, the Zip disk will not get ejected during thr
re-boot process. Otherwise, just jam the Zip disk back in as soon as it
pops out.

Hope this helps...
Charlie Schorner

At 10:59 PM 7/20/97 -0700, you wrote:

Hi charlie

this is just a wild shot in the dark, but under system 7.5 once booted
up, have you tried in the start up disk control panel changing to your
Zip drive? you have to give your zip drive a different name other
than the one you're using for your mac plus.

let me know
Chris.

Chris,

Thanks for the input, but unfortunately, there's something about the Plus's
ROM or PRAM which will not allow this control panel to work. That's the
usual procedure to use with any Mac newer than a Plus. This control panel
was included as far back as System 6. I'm not sure what you mean about the
name changing comment, though. My plus doesn't have a name :(

Normally on my Plus, when the system is first starting up, it checks for
the presence of a hard drive. If it finds one (well, if it finds one of my
old CMS drives) with a System folder, it boots from it. Otherwise, it just
looks for a floppy. With the Zip drive attached, the Plus checks it out,
then decides to not boot from it, and asks for a floppy.

By the way, once booted from either a floppy or another hard drive, the Zip
disk mounts and works perfectly.

Thanks,
Charlie Schorner

Jon,

The shortest route to solving this puzzle might be to run down to your
local Thrift Store/swap meet/garage sale/Usenet group and buy a 128 or 512K
Mac for $10. Not only will the System run perfectly, but you'll be bathed
in the original glow of the 128K Mac while writing your review!

I'm sure that'd be the best way, but 128ks don't abound in Germany as
they apparently must do in the US. And I wanted one point of the review
to be that I used this SE for it.

Thanks,
Boris.

Hi there,

I've just read that the Mac Plus doesn't support hardware handshaking over
its serial ports.

In the light of Apple's Developer Note 25, can anyone explain how this can be?

Hope you can help,
Rowland.

DV25

[snip]

The 3 Types of Serial Operation:

Macintosh CPUs' async serial operations have all been based on the Zilog
8530 SCC. Apple has included this chip in several combination chips, but
all such variations have had three basic types:

A - straight SCC and programmed IO

This is the classic setup. Every SCC interrupt must be handled by the
CPU and Serial Driver explicitly. All Macintosh CPUs aside from the ones
listed below (and future models, of course) can be assumed to have this
hardware architecture.

B - SCC with Input-Output Processor (IOP) and programmed IO

The Macintosh IIfx, Quadra 900 and 950 models have a simple IOP
architecture which offloads some of the SCC interrupt handling
operations from the CPU. The Zilog SCC is combined into a custom chip
and is not directly available. These are the machines that have the
Serial Switch control panel: it allows native operation of the IOP/SCC
for best performance, and emulates the Zilog SCC interface when set into
Compatible mode for those few applications that access the SCC directly.
The Serial Driver for these machines remains interrupt driven and must
respond to IOP/SCC interrupts via the CPU.

C - SCC with Direct Memory Access (DMA) controller

The Quadra 840AV, 660AV and Power Macintosh
6100/7100/7200/7500/8100/8500/9500 CPUs (and their Performa derivatives)
are equipped with a custom controller which completely offloads the SCC
interrupts from the CPU. A low level chip protocol shuttles bytes
directly out of the SCC into memory. The Serial Driver's need for CPU
interrupt handling is much reduced to almost nonexistent since the SCC
is completely decoupled from the CPU in normal operations.

[snip]