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Jessenator's conquests
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2022-02-07 06:11:49
Personally I'd lean into the "rat look" and start dreaming up ways to make that thing look even worse. How about some speed holes?

"distressed rustic" is proper fashionable these days, I believe
Posted by: macuserman on 2022-02-07 07:23:06
I have a 575 that is yellow but the plastics are intact so far fingers crossed, unfortuantely the board was sold out of it so it is brainless. If you were close enough I bet we could find a way to make your horrible one unite with mine and make some sort of resurrected machine.
Posted by: jessenator on 2022-02-07 09:29:05
start dreaming up ways to make that thing look even worse.
Some heat damage from re-entry on its voyage to hell and back!

"distressed rustic" is proper fashionable
Rustic Rat™ —it's its name now : P

the plastics are intact so far fingers crossed,
Yeah, be ever so ginger when/if moving it…


I've actually considered a way to get an 040 board in there, just to trigger the Mystic folk. I doubt I could source an LC PowerCache-like upgrade to even get it close to 50.

I wonder what other boards would actually fit, aside from the price-gouged 575. Maybe an LC 580 board? Don't know about edge-con-pin adaptability, though. From a cursory look, the 580 uses a different connector/harness a la 630/640/6200/5200? Oh well. I'll make the Rustic Rat what it can be!

The screens on 5xx Performas are quite nice - I hope yours has held up!
it's got a rough spot (more prominent in the photo than in-person) where it must've got touched by a magnet, (and perhaps a bit dirty still…)
Posted by: CircuitBored on 2022-02-07 10:47:02
Rustic Rat™ —it's its name now : P
Perfect!

I wonder what other boards would actually fit

If something doesn't fit then just cut and drill until it does. 😈 Hot-rod-esque protruding heatsinks and PCBs could be the next big thing in vintage computing!
Posted by: LaPorta on 2022-02-07 11:16:05
I must be the luckiest guy ever or something: I have an LC 520 in perfect condition with no cracking!
Posted by: CC_333 on 2022-02-07 15:11:21
Then apparently I'm lucky too, as I have TWO 57x machines, and both are intact and more or less undamaged (a chip here and there). The only obvious thing is the clips holding the rear panels on are broken.

And miraculously, my first one from 2005 (a 578) has survived being moved, without much special attention, at least twice in the past 4 years.

c
Posted by: jessenator on 2022-04-16 18:07:46
After a happenstantial exchange with @treellama on IRC I agreed to purchase a 4MB SGRAM module for the LPX-40/Tanzania/4400/StarMax etc etc motherboard, and it arrived in good time! Booted right up in my StarMax 5000.

It allows the onboard Rage II+ DVD chipset to support 24-bit color at up to 1152x870, 16-bit up to... somewhere, but I have no monitor to test that anymore. Feels maybe a touch snappier, but that might be some sort of cognitive/observational bias placebo or whatever. I decided to run MacBench's complete graphics suite of tests, and the results were interesting. The baseline is the standard, on-board video with 2MB or EDO VRAM, and I also compared the results from a PCI Rage128 video card.

Since it's an aggregate, it's very interesting to see that the Rage128 is only 70 points ahead of the on-board SGRAM score.


Here's a patch of test scores that favor the on-board (vs the Rage128 only because apparently I run inconsistent tests…):


And here's a patch of test scores that favor the Rage128:


And these just have my head scratching a bit…
Posted by: treellama on 2022-04-17 15:40:40
Nice!
Posted by: jeremywork on 2022-04-18 01:36:08
After a happenstantial exchange with @treellama on IRC I agreed to purchase a 4MB SGRAM module for the LPX-40/Tanzania/4400/StarMax etc etc motherboard, and it arrived in good time! Booted right up in my StarMax 5000.
Glad to see you finally scored one!

Those benchmarks are interesting to say the least. I suppose a similar effect may be had by installing the 2MB -> 6MB upgrade on the Beige G3s/tray load iMacs, though there are three different ATI chips used at different points on those boards, and in that case the 2MB of base memory stays put on the board when the upgrade is added, so the memory access speed isn't likely to change as I suppose EDO vs SGRAM may.
Posted by: jessenator on 2022-04-18 23:30:04
I just realized I took photos of the module and didn't post them :| So here they are! This was one of two that I've seen …ever, and that second one wasn't even in person.





This, the scond one isn't mine, but is a different design, which is interesting:



There's at least a third one, which has an Apple p/n of APL4400-4V …that would be interesting to see as well.
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