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| 12" PC Compatibility Card in a Beige G3 |
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-06-24 03:27:29
I'll have to move out of my bedroom and sleep in the under stairs cupboard.
Wow, and the PC cards were probably more powerful than the host Mac 😀 The 7200/120 is sort of interesting - only it and the 9150 got the 120MHz 601. Also the 8200, but that is just a 7200.
I keep meaning to benchmark a 120 601 against a 120 604, but never quite find the time. |
Posted by: Snial on 2026-06-24 03:31:16
I do actually have a few 7200s.. so.. the theat is real, @croissantking 😉 Macs were quite popular in the Amulet Research group at Manchester Uni in the late 1990s. Steve Furber had a Duo 230 which he upgraded to a Duo 270c or 280c, but my supervisor, Doug Edwards bought a PowerMac 7200/75/16MB (or maybe 90) in late 1996, a bit before I bought my PM4400/160/32MB. So, oddly enough I felt his was the more serious machine even though mine was higher performance and just as expandable (and OF outputted to video, whereas I believe it outputted to serial on the early PM7200). |
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-06-24 03:56:04
(and OF outputted to video, whereas I believe it outputted to serial on the early PM7200) Unusual - all of the macs I've tried default to the serial port, although you can override it.
Using keyboard and screen does tend to be slightly unreliable in the beige era. If you type too fast it misses characters and you can't delete without it getting confused.
If I'm really fed up I use a USB to 422 adapter from my modern Linux laptop, but truth be told, I mostly just use OF in screen+keyboard mode and think about every keypress to get it right. |
Posted by: Snial on 2026-06-24 07:19:08
Unusual - all of the macs I've tried default to the serial port, although you can override it. I never even tried to use it from the serial port on the PM4400. But if I did, I would have had to use my Sinclair QL to interact with Open Firmware :-D !
Using keyboard and screen does tend to be slightly unreliable in the beige era. If you type too fast it misses characters and you can't delete without it getting confused. Curious, again, I don't remember OF being too slow on the keyboard. For me the experience was a lot like the Sun boot prompt.
If I'm really fed up I use a USB to 422 adapter from my modern Linux laptop, but truth be told, I mostly just use OF in screen+keyboard mode and think about every keypress to get it right. Maybe I'm a slower typist ;-) . But also I rarely try to do anything clever with OF, so maybe I'm never in a position where I'm rattling off commands like @joevt ! |
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-06-24 07:34:26
Curious, again, I don't remember OF being too slow on the keyboard. For me the experience was a lot like the Sun boot prompt. It just drops characters if you touch type fairly quickly, but because deleting doesn't work properly it is more of an issue that it should be. Most of my experience is with a 6500 which should be pretty similar to the 4400. |
Posted by: joevt on 2026-06-24 12:34:09
Open Firmware has a weird input behaviour for serial on Old World Macs (and telnet on New World Macs). Maybe it affects keyboard input as well. If you paste more than 14 characters at a time, it will throw away characters. I haven't traced the execution path that causes this. It would be pretty easy to do using my fork of DingusPPC - it has code to dump an Open Firmware stack trace. I could make it do that whenever it's trying to read a character to see where it is throwing away the characters.
For serial input, Open Firmware has a dl command which is a super tight serial port input loop that does not waste time echoing characters to output so you can paste a lot of text without using text pacing options in your terminal app to slow down the paste.
Open Firmware output to screen is slow when it comes to scrolling.
I believe New World Macs defaulted Open Firmware input / output to keyboard / screen.
The 4400 ROM appears to default Open Firmware input / output to ttya like most Old World Macs. |
Posted by: Durosity on 2026-06-24 15:35:04
Also the 8200, but that is just a 7200 It’s an 8200 in a prettier but MUCH more awkward case. Also I happen to have one.. but it’s as dead as a doornail. |
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-06-24 15:48:50
It’s an 8200 in a prettier but MUCH more awkward case. Also I happen to have one.. but it’s as dead as a doornail. Yeah, I have one too. It's mostly OK other than the usual CD drive. The PSU was blown and a cap had been knocked off, but the motherboard etc work fine.
Something inside the PSU properly exploded - huge soot mark and the protection chip was split open with bits of the housing missing. |
Posted by: Realitystorm on 2026-06-24 16:47:41
You mentioned using Mac OS 9.2.2/9.0.4 with v2.1.7 drivers. and Mac OS 8.1 with v1.6.4. I assume you have tried OS 8.1 + v2.1.7?
Also are the files you are using for the dos volumes on a HFS or HFS+ volume? If HFS+, try an HFS volume.
You probably saw the thread for me trying to get 8.1 + v1.6.4 and v2.1.7 working on my 630 DOS system and how flaky that was. |
Posted by: croissantking on 2026-06-24 18:19:57
You mentioned using Mac OS 9.2.2/9.0.4 with v2.1.7 drivers. and Mac OS 8.1 with v1.6.4. I assume you have tried OS 8.1 + v2.1.7? No, I didn’t. (Yet)
Also are the files you are using for the dos volumes on a HFS or HFS+ volume? If HFS+, try an HFS volume. HFS+.
But I am seeing corruption on reads and writes on DOS formatted floppy disks, so I don’t think it would be that.
You probably saw the thread for me trying to get 8.1 + v1.6.4 and v2.1.7 working on my 630 DOS system and how flaky that was. I haven’t come across it, but would be interested to read it.
Anyway - I got one of these cards working correctly on a B/W G3 (loose logic board) running Mac OS 8.5.1 and PC Setup 1.6.4. Loaded up a Windows 98 SE image and it just works, no data corruption is evident. I’m not sure what’s up with the Beige G3 - I’ll move over the B/W G3’s boot drive to it and see if it works there. |
Posted by: Realitystorm on 2026-06-25 04:43:58
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Posted by: croissantking on 2026-06-25 12:08:32
I moved the hard drive to the Beige G3 and all the same problems are still happening.
So the cards work in a B/W G3, but not a Beige G3, with the exact same software configuration. |
Posted by: mg.man on 2026-06-25 12:35:12
I moved the hard drive to the Beige G3 and all the same problems are still happening. Ugg... random question... what VRM is in your beige G3? I know there was one brand that caused issues with (Sonnet?) G4 ZIFs... |
Posted by: croissantking on 2026-06-25 12:44:16
Ugg... random question... what VRM is in your beige G3? I know there was one brand that caused issues with (Sonnet?) G4 ZIFs...
It’s the ‘Switch Power’ one, but I’ve tried a Raytheon.
The problematic one was made by Royal Technology or something like that. They’re very rare though, I’ve never seen one. |
Posted by: mg.man on 2026-06-25 12:47:44
They’re very rare though, I’ve never seen one. I think I have one if you wanna try it... 😂 |
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-06-25 13:12:03
I think I have one if you wanna try it... 😂 There is a chance perhaps we don't get the bad ones in the UK? If they weren't supplied to the Cork factory. |
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