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Radius SE Accelerator Card

Posted by: traildog64 on 2019-01-31 17:20:40 Hello. I'm new to this site. I've had a Mac SE in storage for years. Only recently have I again started playing with it. I was happy to see that someone had previously upgraded the floppy to a SuperDrive. My SCSI hard drive was dead, but I was able to install a SCSI2SD card, which works great. I'm looking forward to playing some vintage Infocom games like Suspended. I also bought a Radius SE accelerator card years ago, but never used it. It looks pristine to me, but I'm no expert. I've been looking online for any documentation that might exist for these. I've found a few mentions of the cards on various sites, including this one, but no documentation. I've seen pictures of the cards, and some drivers. Would anyone know if these are plug 'n play, or what might be required to make them work? Thanks in advance.

Posted by: maceffects on 2019-01-31 18:08:10 I want to see it required drivers installed first, but I cannot recall for sure. Either way, it’s good measure to install anything on the system before trying regardless.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2019-01-31 18:43:47 It definitely requires a driver and the docs don't say which for what, but my Docs are from '87 fr the Accelerator 16. Older ROMs are limited to System 6 and the upgraded ROMs, when installed on the Accelerator 16 support Systems 7-7.1 Maybe info and the proper drivers for yours are here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/radiusware-1990-displays-41-accelerator-29-radiusmath-15 The Radius Technical Hotline Q&A is back up online again: http://radius.vintagebox.de/RadiusQA/accelerators.html Haven't looked any further than that, I haven't even got mine up and running yet, too much else to do.

Posted by: Crutch on 2019-01-31 18:57:55 I have a Radius 16 running in a Mac Plus and it's awesome - which accelerator do you have?  The link TRS80 posted above are the drivers I uploaded recently from the original floppy I have. But from what I can tell, at least on a Plus you actually don't need the drivers to make the board work (you do though, I think, to get accelerated math from the 68881/2 if you have one installed) -- you can just plug it in and turn it on.  Maybe different on an SE. If you have a Radius 16 and don't have the installation docs, I can take photos of mine this weekend and share them somehow, but they are for the Plus version so might not be useful.  But it occurs to me you might have the Radius 25 for the SE in any event, which I'm sure is excellent.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2019-01-31 19:10:53 Interesting, if that's the case, the "driver" may only be the control panel that allows the user to turn the accelerator on and off for compatibility's sake as needed. traildog, has yours got the optional Math CoPro on board?

Posted by: traildog64 on 2019-01-31 20:49:17 I don't know how to tell if the card is the 16 or 25. Can you tell from the photo? It does appear to have a co-processor.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2019-01-31 22:55:02 16

Posted by: Crutch on 2019-02-01 04:01:36 Yep, see how the chip designations end in 16 then a letter ... that’s the speed in MHz.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2019-02-01 07:16:10 IIRC the 25MHz version has a significantly larger PCB with a different outline, but the picture I recall may have been of the Plus sand SE versions.

Posted by: traildog64 on 2019-02-01 17:40:52 I appreciate the responses. If anyone does have an image of the 16's documentation, I'd appreciate that too.  Thank you.

Posted by: joethezombie on 2019-02-01 18:20:26 I have the User's Manual and addendum for the 25 I could scan in, but not the 16.  They look very similar though: https://archive.org/details/RadiusAccelerator25

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2019-02-01 19:59:22 I'll see what I can do about scanning my pages, someone else will need to build a PDF out of them. Let me know size/res/etc for the PDF.

Posted by: Crutch on 2019-02-02 10:37:26 I just checked and have the following: * Radius Accelerator 16 installation guide for the Macintosh Plus -- definitely not useful to you (the Plus board installation is a bit of a pain, damn grounding screws, I'm guessing yours is much easier on the SE) * RadiusWare manual for the Macintosh SE - odd that it came packaged with my board since mine wouldn't work on an SE.  Anyway this only describes how to use the RadiusWare control panel, which is actually pretty self explanatory so probably isn't super useful to you.  However I'll try to upload it somewhere when I get time (and will try harder if you think you actually need it! - let me know).

Posted by: traildog64 on 2019-02-02 12:33:52 Hi Crutch, I appreciate your offer. I’m going to install the card and see what happens. Perhaps I won’t need the software to make it work.

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