Yo compacters everywhere, Welcome back to the second part of this exciting saga of the old Mac.
(part 2 of 2) $1 bought me a card with an 030 20 MHz processor, a 68882 FPU, and four 1 MB RAM SIMMs in it. Umm... The motherboard still has four 256k RAM SIMMs where you might expect them. This is a type 176 motherboard with soldered RAM resistors and PRAM battery. The Varta battery still meters her proper voltage. A close look at the RAM resistor shows it has been snipped once and later resoldered. Umm... The solder of the battery is factory original. Is there no end to the life of some of these batteries? This thing is sixteen years old! While the CRT has a hint of screen burn, it is not bad at all. The analog board shows no burn about any of its connectors or the flyback transformer. This is good. Let us take a closer look at this accelerator board plugged into the PDS slot. I have a variety of these boards for comparison. This one is bigger than most being quite tight in the shallow flat space such boards occupy. Labeling is typically sparse. "TOTAL SYSTEMS", "QUESSE COMPUTER CO INC", and "COPYRIGHT 1989" is as good as it gets. It has two of its RAM SIMM sockets above the board and two more below it. Interesting. In addition to the PDS plug, there are five plug or plug-like things on it. One is a four pin item that looks like the kind of place you might plug a CD-ROM audio cable onto. Its pins are bent over to allow it to clear the chassis a fraction of a millimeter above it (Do millimeters have fractions?). A long double row of 64 pins project rearward. These were the pins I first saw from above. A shorter double row of 26 pins also exists. A curious 64 hole socket kind of thing exists across the bottom of the card above but off center from the 68k processor on the motherboard. A second socket identical to the 030 socket sits right alongside the processor sitting in its own socket. There is a crystal can on this card. Right next to its fox icon it says 32 MHz. Given the 20 MHz 030 chip, I judge it to be half clocked at 16 MHz. You know I gotta try it. It all goes back together better than most that I've pulled apart. Then the North American power grid is connected to it along with the necessary ADB cable. Phhongged into life while I slide an 800k boot floppy into where it belongs, we have an alive and well SE. Well, when I put the boot floppy into the lower floppy, all worked well. In the upper floppy, all it wanted to do was puke it back out accompanied by a flashing ? inside the image of a floppy on the CRT. I'll bet this happened at RE-PC too. Likely, they didn't even try the lower floppy. I rebooted with a number of System 4 through System 6 boot floppies at hand. In the lower drive, all was well. In the upper floppy; Question Mark city. With the SE booted to the lower floppy, any floppy in the upper drive faced the dreaded "Do you want to reformat?" or something like that. Looks like I've got a drive to do a floppy douche to. The About This Computer window shows 4 MB so I guess I don't get credit for those 256k thingees still on the motherboard. But I haven't got much on these boot floppies to look at those 030 and FPU toys on the card. So... I shut 'er down, plug in my external drive with a whole lotta system and diagnostic utilities on it to have my look. And lookie here... Along the way, I adjust the screen to where I think it ought to be. Big, bright, focused, and centered. Pretty neat. I will always be of praise to our Jeff Garrison for what he has taught me about screens and things. Anyway, MacCheck says I have an 030 puttering along at 16 MHz but with no FPU. Norton's tells me I have an 020 at 3 MHz, and no FPU. Go figure. Norton's averages the performance of the card in this SE as about two and a half steps for every step an SE takes without this card. Eeh. TechTool also says it is an 020 without an FPU. Speedometer shows this card a bit better than two steps for every step of the SE with that series of interestingly named exercises averaging three steps for every one of an SE. For an accelerator card, this is not dramatic. Before shutting down to run the next check, I try something a bit more subjective. I play one of my regular games; MacMines by Cary Torkelson. This game runs a bit jerky on a 68000 processor becoming quite smooth even on a slow 030 such as the SE/30. On a Classic II or a Color Classic MacMines is still a bit jerky, much better than an SE but not as smooth as an SE/30. Then I connect this SE up to the external drive I use with my 030 compacts. As this card has an 030, maybe I ought to see how it does with the drive I use with my SE/30s and Classic IIs. Surprise of all surprises. This card enhanced SE will not boot to any of the hard drives I use for 030 compact Macs. I'm not sure what I learned by doing this. Ummm... I can put an SE/30 motherboard in this SE and it will boot to these drives just fine as the SE/30 does. Snap in a card with an 030 and an FPU on it - but don't expect it to start to a hard drive used to start 030 Macs all the time. Mmm... The last oddity: With this card removed, the SE audio is quite normal. With the card in, any audio signal carries significant audible interference. I'd love to identify the character of the signal on a scope. I do believe it to be a digital RF sideband created when modulated by the real audio. Conclusions? You betcha. A good clean SE definitely still in its first life and entitled to keep living it. An interesting though unimpressive accelerator card. I suspect I am missing a chip or some other item from one of those plugs on the card. It doubles the processor speed with the promise of the better architecture of the 030 chip. But I don't see much of it. I certainly don't see the FPU. It seems not to hurt anything. So I will leave it for what benefit it gives. Then reality sets in. I do not need another 800k SE, especially one with an early chassis and a type 176 motherboard. On the pallet, it is a pecking order kind of decision. I have better SE innards in need of a decent case. I have an FDHD SE for this mediocre card to do its thing in. I have another ancient SE which can use this PRAM battery. The analog board with its clean plugs will find a new home soon. The card? I dunno. It seems not to even fit very well in this SE. Those pins on the card that I see from up above; those pins are within one and a half millimeters of that toroidal core looking thing right behind them. What would have ever plugged into it? What other Mac could this card really be for? Well, I needed that clean case anyway. (Sorry, my compact made me do it. This was just over the 10k line so I split it. I promise I will never ever, but no, never do it again.) Bill -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. 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