Table of Contents for this issue:
The AE 68030 Accelerator: What it is/does
Re: Where to buy Mac TV
SE/30 as Dedicated Fax-Back/Voice Mail?
ISP's for Classics?
Browsers on the SE/30
DeskWriter and PostScript: No Go
Re: LC/HP DeskWriter PostScript Compatible
DeskWriter PostScript? Try Ghostscript
Mac Plus Zip-disk Saga?
DuoDisk and Mac Plus?
Mac SE/30 Accelerator + Video Card?
Re: PMMU Upgrade for Mac II
Re: Old 100MB Quantum Drive in SE/30
Re: Color Classic Upgrade/AOL 3.0
Re: Mac Plus and your Zip Drive
Re: LC/HP DeskWriter PostScript Compatible
Re: Booting a Plus from a Zip
Re: The Mysterious Disappearing SE HD
Recording on the Mac
Classic II Weirdness?
Color Classic 640x480 Trick; Accelerators
Re: The Mysterious Disappearing SE HD
Mac Parts Overseas?

Hi guys -

I'm a new member to Mac-Classics so hopefully I'm not covering
old ground with my questions..but here goes:

I have a Mac Classic and I just installed a Applied Engineering
40mhz 68030 with 16mb of RAM on the card in my Classic. (Works
great btw.)

Question 1: Can I now use a current web browser like Netscape if
I turn Graphics off? Do I need to turn graphics off.

Question 2: Is Applied Engineering still around? They mention having
a display adapter card that sits on my accelerator card
so I wanted to track that card down as well.

Question 3: I read in Mac Addict, 'This Old Mac', on the
Mac Plus article that the modem port on the Mac Plus was
limited to 9600bps, is that also true for the Mac Classic? If
not what is its bps limitation?

thanks for the help!
Doran Else

Dear Dorian:
I have a Mac Classic and I just installed a Applied Engineering
40mhz 68030 with 16mb of RAM on the card in my Classic. (Works
great btw.)

I have an AE accellerator installed on my SE. It has a diskette with
Warp030 program version 1.5.1. I need a higher version to be able to use
more than 4 MB contiguously. Did your come with a higher version? If so
could you send it to me.

AE is out of business. Their accelerators are fine. I have had this one
installed for several years. However, I wanted to go beyond 4MB. My board
allows up to 16MB. I just had 16MB installed. The computer can "see" it and
use it, but any individual running program cannot use more than 4MB for
itself, even though I can load many programs at a time. Supposedly
Connectix Virtual will allow me to use more than 4MB contiguously for a
program which requires more, such as the "hog" Netscape. However, the
documentation for that program states that I must have at least version 2.0
of Warp030.

I doubt that you can find the display adapter. It only allowed you to use a
monochrome monitor anyway. The Radius one page display.

Netscape needs at least an 020 processor. I have not been successful in
getting Netscape to install on the SE with the accellerator, because it
reads the internal roms instead of the accellerator board roms to see what
kind of computer it has. I am going to try to completely install the System
( I now have 7.1 on that machine, and I am going to go to 7.5. I am
successfully using Netscape on my SE/30 with system 7.5. I don't run with
graphics turned on because it's too slow ( I use a 28.8 modem and dial-in
access). When I want to see a particular graphic I turn the Images on.
Works fine. I would not recommend running ANY browser with the graphics on
unless you have something faster for a connection than a phone line
dial-in. ISDN perhaps?

I was successfully using a 14.4 modem on my plus. I am now using a 28.8 on
my SE/30, and I used a 14.4 on my SE. I'm pretty sure that I used the 28.8
on my plus occasionally also until I dropped prodigy because I had the
prodigy software on the plus.

Please get back to me about which version of Warp030 you have.

Thanks.
Donna Pointer

Does anyone know where I could find a MacTV for sale?. You know, the all
black Macs with the T.V. Tuner? I've been looking for a while and the
people who have them for sale never seem to know enough about them to
make me feel comfortable buying them.

Nick,

The Apple Resource Center (www.thearc.com) has the most reasonable prices
I've found on used Macintoshes, peripherals, and parts. I picked up my
Portable from there a few months back and have been quite satisfied.

Sun Remarketing and Shreve Systems also sell used Macintoshes, but their
prices seem to be awfully exorbitant. ($899 for a IIfx 8/160 isn't even
remotely reasonable.)

Hope this helps!
Nick

I was wondering if anyone knows of any software that will allow my old
SE/30 to be a dedicated automatic "Fax Back" machine. And, is there
anything like "Front Office" that will allow my old SE/30 to have a
voice-mail system using a voice modem?

T.J.

I live in the San Franscico Bay Area and I am having difficulty locating a
ISP that can accomodate my recently purchased Mac SE. to get on line. It
seems they only accept machines with a minimum of 8megs of ram and a 14400
baud modem. I am out of luck in both respects and need help to find an ISP
that will accomodate me. Your help will be appreciated..

Clarence Searles

Clarence Searles (MacSkaTeer)
San Francisco, California

I run Netscape successfully, AND America Online 2.7 on my SE/30. The only
cavaet I have for anyone running Netscape or a similar browser on their
small BW screen is that sometimes one cannot see the resize buttons or the
"Enter" buttons. Programmers seem to assume that you have a larger
(preferably color) screen.In the Prefs screen you can't get at them at all
in Netscape. The solution is: assume that the button is there and simply
hit Return and your prefs will be entered and then you can get back to the
program.

AOL also makes their screens too big, but sometimes you can resize them.
Their use of colors though sometimes gives you completely black panels
where you can only "see" the little round circle buttons and not the words.
Just click on the button anyway and you then will be sent to the reference
and you will then know what it is. AOL tells me that version 3 won't run on
an SE or plus (I have both also) at all.

Donna Hood Pointer

Hello to the list from a new old-Mac owner. I just purchased an LC/HP Desk
Writer combo. I was wondering if I can run/print ppost script on it. If so
what do I need ? directions/pointers to info sources greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.
Mike
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/olympiccollector

You can.... but you need a Post script printer.
The DW is not a Post script printer (unfortunally). There are software
emulators for InkJet printers but I doubt the DW is compatible with the
software...sorry.

LF

Find out why the Mac is
still the best computer out there
"Mac to The future"
http://members.aol.com/mac2k

Mike,

I do not believe the original DeskWriter was PostScript compatible.
Later DeskWriter models maybe... In any event, I encourage you and any
owners of HP printers to go to the HP Web site. You can download the
latest driver versions for their printers at:

http://www.hp.com

The latest DeskWriter "500-series" driver is much more capable than the
one I got with my original DeskWriter many years ago.

- Ken Watanabe

Hello to the list from a new old-Mac owner. I just purchased an LC/HP Desk
Writer combo. I was wondering if I can run/print ppost script on it. If so
what do I need ? directions/pointers to info sources greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

Mike
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/olympiccollector

Hello to the list from a new old-Mac owner. I just purchased an LC/HP Desk
Writer combo. I was wondering if I can run/print ppost script on it. If so
what do I need ? directions/pointers to info sources greatly appreciated.

Hi Mike!

You would need the freeware Ghostscript program to be able to do
postscript-printing on the DeskWriter.

(You can find that in your favorite Info-Mac-Mirror-Site.)

Other Solutions would be a normal ("buy-it-in-a-shop") software
postscript program. But they cost heavy money ...

Regards,
Sascha
http://www.access.ch/private-users/swelter/

The thread on zip-disk only mentions Iomega. Does any of this apply
to Syquest 135's . I remember reading a post where someone had his up
and functioning . My problem is in setting the read ratio to a lower
setting. I use Silverlining-lite which comes on-disk and am able to
mount the drive but it is so slow as to be unusable.

Larry

I recently acquired an Apple DuoDisk double 5 1/4 drive at a thrift
shop. It has a female 25 pin connector with a somewhat inverted
exclaimation-mark labelling and an arrow pointing to an Apple //
block and a bigger arrow pointing up to an Apple logo. On my external
800 drive on my Plus there is a removable plastic plate with the
same inverted exclaimation-mark ( I surmise Apple's symbol for a
disk-drive ) and a 25 pin port. Is it possible to daisy-chain these
drives ? I have also heard that the Plus is notorious for P-Supply
problems. Would there be problems with available power ?
Likely Mac newbie fantasy but it would be neat to check out some
old Apple 5 1/4 disks I have.

Larry

MicroMac, maker of various accelerators for older Macs, advertises their
DiiMO 030 accelerator for the Mac SE/30 as having a "pass-through" PDS
slot so that a Mac SE/30 user can install the accelerator and another
PDS card such as a video card for external monitors.

Does any reader have a DiiMO 030 and video card in their SE/30? The
DiiMO 030 is a 50 MHz 68030 accelerator with 64KB cache and optional
FPU, BTW.

Another concern is the SE/30 power supply. Does it have enough juice to
power two PDS cards and the rest of the SE/30?

Thanks.
- Ken Watanabe

From: Del Ahlin
Subject: PMMU Upgrade for Mac II?

I've got a Mac II which I'm trying to upgrade so that it will read more
than 8Mb of RAM.

<snip>

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?

You need PAL SIMMs and MODE32 software to use more than 8MB RAM in your
Mac II.

Going to a IIx logic board would require getting a high density floppy,
which would greatly increase cost. Rather than investing in a new logic
board (which you don't need) and a new floppy drive, look into some of
the Mac II accelerator cards. Sonnet and MicroMac each have 33MHz 68030
upgrades for $100 and up.

Daniel Knight

From: "Birchall, Richard"
Subject: Old 100MB Quantum Hard Drive in SE/30?

My brother-in-law gave me an old SCSI Quantum hard drive, which came out
of an old mapping workstation or something like that.

<snip>

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

Very likely. The Mac Plus wasn't sensitive to spinup time, but all other
Macs have been.

Daniel Knight

From: DValdez420
Subject: Color Classic: How to Upgrade for AOL 3.0?

Can any one help me?
I have a mac color classic. I can't run aol 3.0 because my computer is
too slow. Any solutions?

I hope you saw Andrew Ludgate's post about the MicroMac accelerator.
Sonnet also makes a Color Classic accelerator, which is reviewed on my
site.

Daniel Knight

From: Charlie Schorner
Subject: Re: Mac Plus and your Zip Drive

Thanks for the input, but unfortunately, there's something about the Plus's
ROM or PRAM which will not allow this control panel [Startup Disk] to work.

Macintosh boot sequence without specified startup disk:

1. internal floppy drive
2. second internal or external floppy drive
3. SCSI hard drive with highest ID

Set your Zip to 6 and everything else to a lower ID. Should solve it.

Daniel Knight,
webmeister, Low End Mac User
http://www.iserv.net/~dknight/leu/

From: Mike Sullivan
Subject: LC/HP DeskWriter PostScript Compatible?

Hello to the list from a new old-Mac owner. I just purchased an LC/HP Desk
Writer combo. I was wondering if I can run/print ppost script on it. If so
what do I need ?

Assuming sufficient RAM and hard drive space (8MB RAM, 8MB disk space
required), look into StyleScript from InfoWave (formerly GDT) to see if
your DeskWriter is compatible.

http://www.gdt.com/html/stylescript.html

Daniel Knight,
webmeister, Low End Mac User
http://www.iserv.net/~dknight/leu/

Subject: Re: Booting a Plus from a Zip
From: Vince Salupo

You need to update(downgrade) the driver on the disk to version 4.2. I
have a plus that boots fine from a Zip. But I found out the hard way that
upgrading from the Iomega Driver 4.2 to anything higher caused the
blinking question mark on my Plus at boot.

Vince, thanks for sharing that. I'm making this information available on
the Mac Plus page on my site.

Daniel Knight,
webmeister, Low End Mac User
http://www.iserv.net/~dknight/leu/

From: mark akins
Subject: The Mysterious Disappearing SE HD?

My problem is that when the SE has been off for awhile, I will turn
it on and the SE cannot see the hard drive. If I turn it off and then
turn it back on, it can now see the hard drive.

Sounds like sticktion, which prevents the drive from spinning up as
quickly as it should. 40MB Quantum drives were noted for this problem.
Best solution: replace the drive.

Daniel Knight,
webmeister, Low End Mac User
http://www.iserv.net/~dknight/leu/

Ian Hamilton,

Here are some comments about recording onto your Mac, in response to a
post on 7-23-97 from TrigonMan3. I'm not sure Macway is the
right forum for this discussion, but here are my 5 cents worth anyway.

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about recording onto your Mac
from a portable Tape or CD player, Boom Box, VCR, or a Microphone. Let me
add a few notes. I am employed as an audio recording engineer at a
post-production facility in Hollywood, CA, and do this every day.

The audio input jack on recent Macs (the "Microphone" jack) is not really
designed to accept a Microphone. It is a Line-Level audio input. Let me
explain, without getting into a technical discourse.

There are two audio voltage levels consumers need to be concerned with.
First is Line Level (-10 db) which most consumer gear accepts through its
line input jacks. This is a fairly high voltage. The RCA jacks on your
Stereo, VCR, Boom Box, CD, and Walkman are all this level. Thus you can
plug outputs into inputs on all these devices and get acceptable results
recording from one to the other.

The other level is Microphone Level, which is the voltage coming out of
an unamplified microphone. This voltage is tiny: about -60 to -90 db. It
must be amplified up to Line level before a consumer device can use it.
The device that performs this job is called a Microphone Pre-Amplifier.
These days, it is usually just one chip on a circuit board. So if your
recording device has a Microphone input or jack, it also has inside it a
Microphone Pre-Amp, to boost the minute voltage from the Microphone up to
Line level so the rest of the recording circuitry can make use of the
audio signal. When you plug a Mic directly into a Cassette recorder to
record your voice, this is what is happening.

However, on your Mac, things are different. The Audio input jack is Line
level only, and has no built-in amplifier. It is designed to accept
directly the outputs of consumer audio devices like Walkmans, CD Players,
and BoomBoxes, and should do reasonably well at recording from them with
only the correct kind of adaptor cord. The Input on Your Mac is a 1/8"
stereo mini-jack. The output on your audio device may be the same
(Walkman or BoomBox headphone jack), or it may have 2 RCA jacks(VCR or
Stereo) or a 1/4" phone jack. Radio Shack and other electronics retailers
have a variety of these cords and adaptors on hand, and should be able to
help you find the right ones. Usually, plain old straight-thru cords will
work. You don't need any kind of "attenuator" cord, which cuts down the
level.

So now you're saying - "How come The Apple Plain Talk Microphone works
when it is plugged into my Mac? It's a Microphone, isn't it?" Well, yes,
but it is a one-of-a-kind, special microphone that only works with your
Mac. Furthermore, it is the only Microphone you can plug into a Mac
directly. Other Mics won't work. The reason: Apple Plain Talk Mics have a
Microphone Pre-Amp built into their case. They have to be powered with DC
Voltage to work, and they get this voltage from the input jack on the
Mac. The voltage coming out of a Plain Talk Mic is very hot - approaching
Line level. So the Mac "sees" a Plain Talk Mic as if it were a cassette
deck or CD Player - at the same audio level.

If you want to use another type of Mic with a Mac, you will have to buy a
Mixer or Microphone Pre-Amplifier. The Mic plugs into the Mixer, which
boosts the output and sends a Line level signal out to the Mac. These
devices can be found at Radio Shack or other retailers, and are usually
not too expensive. Here's another idea to try if you have a Stereo or
Boom Box with a Microphone Input(rare these days). Plug your mic (Not a
Plain Talk!) into the Stereo, load a cassette, and put it into Record.
Take a cord and hook up the Headphone Jack output of the Stereo into your
Mac, using the correct cord or adaptor. It may just work - you are using
the Stereo as a Mic Pre-Amplifier!

If you want to record from Prerecorded cassettes or CD's to your Mac, I
suggest using the Headphone Jack output. Why? Because it has a Volume
control - the main Volume Knob on the Player - and you can experiment
with different levels sent to your Mac. (The Mac has no input level
control.) Most portable audio players have plenty of level out of the
headphone jack - in fact, many have too much. There is no degradation of
signal out of these headphone jacks as opposed to the other outputs on
the device. The problem is one of getting the right level going in, and
the Volume control really helps. The 5-Pin 1/2" round jack found on some
devices is a 5-Pin DIN Jack, commonly used in Europe for audio devices.
It has 2 Inputs, 2 Outputs, and a Ground all on one connector. You can
get an adaptor for it at Radio Shack, but don't use it unless you know
which pin is which. It's too easy to get the Inputs and Outputs mixed up,
and DIN levels are hotter than ours. With a modicum of fiddling, you
should be able to get fairly high-quality audio onto your Hard Drive, for
use in your favorite Mac audio applications. Remember, the Mac's Input
jack is Stereo, same as the Output Jack on your Portable. This info
applies to faily recent Macs - Quadras, PowerMacs, and later - with
16-bit "CD Quality" audio built in.

Ian M. Hamilton
Chief Engineer
Tele-Talent International
http://www.tele-talent.com

Jeffrey D. Bipes

Hi everyone,

Can someone please help me - a couple of weeks ago my classic 2 started
behaving a little wierdly, i.e. forgetting where the printer port was and
thinking the date was 1954, I presume that the date/time batt needs
replacing - does anyone know what the battery type is, where it is located
and what the procedure is.

Thanx for your help.
Patric

As I've been getting a lot of letters about my upgrades, I thought I'd
forward this to the group.

On 8/2/97 10:19 PM, F.Mushkin wrote:

Please, please tell me what you think of the upgrade - is it still sharp?

-yup! Pleased to say, things are actually sharper than they were with
the old resolution... this has something to do with my tinkering with the
CRT adjustors, and I think it also has something to do with the higher
voltage (amperage?) being fired through the CRT.

Is everything harder to read?

The first few days, everything looked smaller, but now I've become
completely used to it. I was so surprised the other day when I was
sitting at someone else's Mac... the icons were so HUGE! -they seemed to
me to be a big waste of screen real-estate :)

Will you keep my e-mail address and let me know if you burn up your analog
board (God forbid, but...)?

I don't have as much to worry about burning up my analog board... my
MicroMac accellerator came with an extra fan, and so the inside of my Mac
is nice 'n cool. -I've got your address in my address list now, but I'll
probably email Classic Macs if anything goes wrong.
(It's been about 3 months now, and things are still fine....)

I'd love to do it too, but am concerned about sharpness and whether everything just
gets too small to be pleasant. I've got some cd-roms that won't run because
of the 640x480 thing, and I'd love to get them to work.

For me, the smaller picture is actually more pleasent in many situations.
For instance, grainy pictures now appear crisper, and I can now read
entire documents without having to do the big scroll thing. For word
processing and other precision alignment page layouyt stuff, all I do is
magnify the window to 125%. Also, I've played around with Closeview, and
it works quite nicely as an enlarger for programs that don't have a view
% feature.

Another subscriber to Classic Macs told me that he bought an IBM Portable
screen magnifier for his mac. With the 640x480 rez hack, this could
result in normal display size, with the full 640x480 resolution!

Thanks a million for any more details of your experience with this.

No problem!

Sorry you had problems with UPS. Maybe one of us on this side of the
border can order stuff for you and just send it up as a gift...?

That would be nice, but I think I've got about all I can stuff into my
CClassic now :)

Did you consider the Sonnett 040 board instead of the Micromac 030's?
I assume the RAM thing won you over - the Sonnett board has no additional
SIMM slots, but it must be super fast...

I considered the Sonnet board, but after enquiring as to the specifics of
this board from the folks at Sonnet Tech., they emailed me a .pdf file of
their web based descriptions of their products. Now, we all know that
.pdf files are a pain, and that web page is where I got their email
address from in the first place! -Add to that that it took 3.5 months
for them to reply to my email, and... well... I wasn't too impressed with
their customer service.

I also have heard reports from others who have installed that
accellerator, who claim that it is blazingly fast at graphic rendering,
etc, but I figured: since it turns off thousands of colors, and you can't
go above 10Mb of RAM with it, what's the use? Most good graphics
programs require a minimum of 16Mb to run! Also, I have heard from many
that the one thing this accellerator bogs down on is web browsers. Now,
that's one of the main reasons I got my accellerator; and mine works fine
with IE4.0 (the best browser for a Color Classic, in my opinion).

The '040 tempted me to go with them, but I realised that with all the
other restricitons (I don't think you can do the 640x480 trick without
first having thousands of colors) having a blazingly fast CClassic would
be useless if my screen and RAM restricions prevented me from using any
programs which take advantage of this speed boost.

Hope this info is enlightening!

PS: Lito, I'd suggest that you make sure that you fully know the innards
of your mac before messing with the CRT. Basic electronics knowhow is a
definate advantage, and you need a low heat solder gun to make sure you
don't fry your board. Also... the Anode cap on the CRT gave me a few
problems... the webpage just says to disconnect it... it doesn't say how.
What you have to do, (after you've discharged the CRT... which the page
also doesn't say how to do) you have to lift the rubber gasket, and
squeeze the 2 wires inside together to pop the whole assembly out of the
screen casing. If you touch these wires without the CRT discharged, YOU
become the ground wire for a very big amount of electricity.

'till next time,

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

Thanks! That is probably the problem. I have already replaced it
but I will do some further testing... Thanks again!

Regards
Mark

Date: 03 Aug 1997 09:27:47 -0700
From: sdropkin
To: Classic Posts
Mark Akins (RLJF30)
Subject: Re: The Mysterious Disappearing SE HD?

My problem is that when the SE has been off for awhile, I will turn
it on and the SE cannot see the hard drive...

Might be "stiction" -- some of the old 40 MB drives were prone to that,
though I didn't think the Quantums (or the Apple-labeled Quantums) were
as bad as the Sonys in that regard. If the drive never "drops off" during
use, and especially if you don't hear the drive humming to life as you
start up the Mac (put your ear up close to the floppy opening), I'd
suspect stiction. There is no cure for it other than the physical trash
can.

sdropkin

I'm very happy with my humble Mac SE here in Israel. The question is, has
anybody out there had experience with shipping parts overseas from the
States or Europe? Any specific recommendations of good companies with
reliable products?

Thanks
Melanie