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| Messages - Tech_and_Music | |
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1
Hardware / PCI-PCI Bridge cards no longer a bridge too far for Gazelle!
December 24, 2022, 22:30 |
Some good news for the owners of PowerMac/Performa 5500 and 6500, or even the infamous Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh! A long standing bug in OpenFirmware, that prevented cards utilizing PCI-PCI bridge chips, has finally been fixed! PCI-PCI bridge chips are used on cards that are effectively multiple PCI cards in a long trenchcoat, running a PCI bus on the other end towards the various chips. Sonnet made the Trio card, combining ATA, FireWire and USB, but various others, including no-name cards combining SiI3112 SATA, FireWire and USB, also exist. The SATA cards have been particularly interesting, as with a ROM swap, they can run the SeriTek firmware that allows SATA disks to work in Classic Mac OS, masquerading as a SCSI bus to the OS. However, in the 6500, 5500, and TAM, all using the Gazelle board, these PCI-PCI bridge cards did not work. For some reason, OpenFirmware would see the PCI-PCI bridge chip, but would not enumerate the devices beyond the bridge. The 6400/5400 Alchemy board did not have these problems, nor did any other Macs. Sonnet had a solution for their card, by writing a NVRAMRC script that manually laid out the devices for OpenFirmware, so the Mac could detect and interface with the devices on the card. However, this was device specific, and rather treating the symptom than the problem. Later revision Sonnet cards didn't work with the patch, despite being the same product, because they used different revisions of the bridge and controller chips. Over on 68kMLA, I pitched the idea back in 2021 to the forums to see if the patch could be modified for the use with the SATA/FW/USB card, after swapping such a card for a Radeon card with Knezzen, as his 5500 couldn't use the card. User Cheesestraws put in a valiant effort, and did get it mostly working. However, after dosdude1 made a video on the same type of card two weeks ago, interest in the thread quickly grew, leading OpenFirmware wizard joevt to enter the thread and tackle the problem. In the following post, he managed to find and eliminate the problem entirely. (modern browser needed) It appears that the ATi fCode in the Gazelle ROM is bugged, leading to OF no longer being able to enumerate beyond the bridge chip after it had been initialized. The fix in the proposed NVRAMRC script is a simple but effective solution (though complicated to understand for us mere mortals!): Get to the ATi fCode last, after the devices beyond the bridge are already properly enumerated. This fixes the problem itself, and allows any PCI-PCI bridge based card with compatible devices on it to work with these Macs. And that's great news, as these Macs either have two, or even just a lone PCI slot. While these cards have gotten hard to come by, it is nice that these machines now have the ability to utilize them. And a quarter-century old bug has been eliminated. Somewhere, the poor Sonnet engie who painstakingly wrote the original NVRAMRC script screamed in agony, and has no idea why 
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2
Emulation / Re: Emulators on System 7
August 18, 2021, 08:31 |
I believe the person who did it was Dana Sibera, also known as Nanoraptor/Velociraptors on Twitter et al., where she shares her fictional, photoshopped Macs. |
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3
Feedback & Ideas / Re: Looking for helping hands
August 16, 2021, 21:54 |
Would a piece on SATA PCI cards in the System 7 domain be of any interest? I could probably write a decently sized piece about this topic, that could be of help to those with PCI Macs capable of running Sys7, who are looking for storage options. |
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4
Software / Re: Websites that work with System 7 browsers
August 02, 2021, 12:05 |
http://subclub.org - The Sub Club website. A site all about subminiature 16mm and 110 cameras and film, used in many spycams by James Bond and his (real world) colleagues! While not directly Macintosh related, I'm sure there's an overlap in these hobbies 
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5
New Member Welcome / Re: Hello from across the pond!
August 02, 2021, 11:59 |
Welcome, fellow Dutchie
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6
Hardware / Re: Working System 7 Macs - to recap or not?
July 10, 2021, 00:11 |
From my experience, it'll be the first gen PowerPC Macs that soon need replacement now, rather than later. The first-gen PowerPC Mac boards I got from Japan, a country where due to heat and humidity, cap problems are far more aggressive, were all badly leaking. While the ones stored in calmer western climates are still doing alright, it's time to get those recapped. The 8600 is a little further down the line, at least logic board wise, but being proactive on this could potentially buy you a lot of time with your machine. If it is a machine you really care about keeping around for as long as possible, I'd give it serious thought. |
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7
Software / Re: Websites that work with System 7 browsers
April 21, 2021, 20:14 |
My personal website is aimed at systems running System 7 and similar(ly age) operating systems: http://techandmusic.nl I'm slowly adding more and more content to it. There is HTTPS available, but more for modern browsers that complain if HTTPS isn't used (TLS 1.2 and 1.3 only, so too new for old browsers). I'm also in the planning stages of running a server on a 68k Mac at home, which will be hosted on http://68k.nl if and when launched
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8
New Member Welcome / Re: Hi from a Performa 6400!
April 14, 2021, 21:39 |
Quote from: Bolkonskij Do i smell a hardware swap here? :-D You could say we're trading cards 
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9
New Member Welcome / Re: Hi from a Performa 6400!
April 11, 2021, 19:03 |
Quote from: cballero I also like the nice aqua bg you added to your website top navigation bar. The aqua background graphic themes complimented all of the the aqua and multi-colored themed G3 iMacs and iBooks in the late-80s very nicely! And then contrasting the new with those beautiful reverse-colored 1-bit Mac icons is simply a truly perfect combination of old and new Thanks! It's indeed kind of a fusion of the older and newer Macs I love, so the combination was rather fitting Quote from: Bolkonskij Apart from upgrading it, what kind of work are you doing with your 6400? Always happy to hear what people use them for! For me, I mostly just use my old Macs to tinker with the old hardware and software, try out old games, apps, and various operating systems like System Software/Mac OS, A/UX and Linux among others, and also work on the electronics side, like recapping my Macs or making things like BlueSCSIs by hand. I've recapped a bunch of my Macs already, and recently even managed a Cube PSU recap and an SE/30 analog board and PSU recap with frying myself or the Macs Quote from: Knezzen Always liked the look of the 6400. Yes, I know some people don't, but it's definitely one of my favourites, a rather daring design during a bad time at Apple, that honestly stands out, in a good way if you ask me. Quote from: Knezzen Really regret. not getting one instead of the 5500 Those AIOs have always been super cool too, though! It is after all the original formfactor the Mac came in, back in '84, even if slightly less bulbous  I'd want a black one if I had the space to spare! 
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10
New Member Welcome / Hi from a Performa 6400!
April 07, 2021, 21:25 |
Hi everyone, I'm Daniël, also known as Tech&Music. I'm a 22 year old retro Mac and computer collector, currently also the webhost for techandmusic.nl. I'm posting this from my Performa 6400 (the computer prominently seen on S7T's frontpage, unless it's a PM and/or 6500 ) I picked up yesterday. It's currently fully skinned, with no broken plastics (somehow!). It is a bit rough here and there, and pretty yellow, but it's still a sweet little machine. I love the fact it's a super fast System 7.5/7.6 machine, and has the potential for some neat upgrades.I already got it with maxed out L2 cache and RAM, and this is one of the TV/FM tuner and AV input models too. I've installed a SATA/FireWire/USB2.0 PCI card. The SATA portion works under all Classic Mac OS versions, while USB and FireWire will work on later versions of 8 and 9. Slightly cheating by currently being booted into OS 9 as I'm typing this, but I have it multibooted with the stock 7.5.3 Performa 6400 install, and OS 8.1. It's just on a test SATA SSD for now, my final plan is to give this a main SSD for (stock) 7.5, 7.6, 8, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9 and 9.1, and a secondary SSD for all the quirky betas and alternative OSes. I have plenty more of 68k and PowerPC Macs, many capable of running various flavors of System/Mac OS 7, so I'll probably stick around here for a while Glad to see this site back in action, I've come across it before, but sadly my true Mac collecting days didn't start until 2015 or so, thus by the time I found this place, it had already been frozen. But after a successful defrost from its cryogenic sleep, I'm glad to be here! |
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