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Good video cards for IIsi

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-11-30 08:00:43

I've been restoring and upgrading a Macintosh IIsi, and am thinking about how I could improve performance further. One thing that comes to mind, since I have the Nubus riser card, is upgrading the onboard 'vampire' video.

Am I right in thinking it's a limiting factor?

I am not worried about having higher resolutions or bit depths as I am running an Apple 13" Hi-Res monitor that's fixed at 640x480.

Which cards would provide a performance increase so I can (for e.g.) play Hellcats more smoothly?

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-11-30 08:41:26

There are lots of options, an 8bit Radius Pro 8xj perhaps?

Have you considered overclocking to 25MHz? It made a disproportionate difference when I benchmarked a little while ago. These were the relative scores before and after :

Posted by: slomacuser on 2022-11-30 09:09:50

I have Radius Precision color 24x (pro) in it and it runs very well. It is 7” long and it fits perfectly. I have also installed custom rom simm that makes it faster booting, it skips ram check (65 mb).

Hope to try this overclocked variant soon, thanks to @Phipli 🙂

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-11-30 09:11:21

There are lots of options, an 8bit Radius Pro 8xj perhaps?

Have you considered overclocking to 25MHz?

Yep, I've swapped out the clock crystal and am running at 25MHz. It did make a noticeable improvement. I've got 65MB RAM and a 7,200RPM drive in there too.

I guess I'm just curious to know if the onboard graphics is considered a real bottleneck. If not an ethernet card could be a better use of the slot...

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-11-30 09:28:57

There is a Macintosh II Nubus 820-0198-C card on eBay – would there be any point upgrading to this?

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-11-30 09:29:02

I have Radius Precision color 24x (pro) in it and it runs very well. It is 7” long and it fits perfectly. I have also installed custom rom simm that makes it faster booting, it skips ram check (65 mb).

Hope to try this overclocked variant soon, thanks to @Phipli 🙂

I'm surprised it isn't with you yet. It must be getting close 🙂

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-11-30 09:30:21

I'm surprised it isn't with you yet. It must be getting close 🙂

Lots of postal strikes going on in UK right now! Plus Xmas demand etc.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-11-30 09:31:13

There is a Macintosh II Nubus 820-0198-C card on eBay – would there be any point upgrading to this?

No, that card is unaccelerated, you'd likely find it slower, although it would possibly slightly improve RAM access.

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-11-30 09:32:59

No, that card is unaccelerated, you'd likely find it slower, although it would possibly slightly improve RAM access.

OK, so the key is to find an accelerated card. Does that exclude all Apple cards (except the GC one that came with the IIfx)?

I've installed IIsi RAM muncher, btw. I don't know why Apple didn't just install dedicated VRAM on the 'board.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-11-30 09:34:49

OK, so they key is to find an accelerated card. Does that exclude all Apple cards (except the GC one that came with the IIfx)?

The Apple 24 AC is also accelerated, but its mostly 3rd party cards.

I've installed IIsi RAM mucher, btw. I don't know why Apple didn't just install dedicated VRAM on the 'board.

🙂 I'm old fashioned - back when I had used of one I just had the disk cache set to 1MB.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-11-30 09:36:32

Lots of postal strikes going on in UK right now! Plus Xmas demand etc.

Usual post shenanigans - it made it to the international bit and then neither side admitted they had it for 6 days. Its in destination customs as of yesterday.

Posted by: joshc on 2022-11-30 16:00:09

IIsi/IIci Memory Usage - TidBITS

This article originally was part of our forthcoming special issue on System 7, but since it really isn't related to System 7 or software at all, we decided to include it here

tidbits.com

Increase the disk cache to improve onboard video performance in the IIsi. I tried it and it did make a significant difference.

Posted by: rikerjoe on 2022-12-01 04:01:49

I've been restoring and upgrading a Macintosh IIsi, and am thinking about how I could improve performance further. One thing that comes to mind, since I have the Nubus riser card, is upgrading the onboard 'vampire' video.

Am I right in thinking it's a limiting factor?

I am not worried about having higher resolutions or bit depths as I am running an Apple 13" Hi-Res monitor that's fixed at 640x480.

Which cards would provide a performance increase so I can (for e.g.) play Hellcats more smoothly?

I recently restored a IIsi with a Macintosh Display Card and did the following benchmark.

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-12-01 04:54:18

I recently restored a IIsi with a Macintosh Display Card and did the following benchmark.

View attachment 49567

This is really useful to see, thank you!

What is the Macintosh Display card? Is that its proper name? Did it come with another Mac, was it an aftermarket accessory, etc?

Posted by: cheesestraws on 2022-12-01 05:04:51

For what it's worth, after trying both I ended up leaving a network card in my IIsi and doing the disk cache trick that @joshc posted, which I found the best overall usefulness tradeoff. Your mileage may, of course, vary, though...

Posted by: slomacuser on 2022-12-01 05:24:04

Intermediate question. Does the overclocked IIsi needs a heat sink on 68030? The IIci runs at same speed and it does not have it.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-12-01 05:34:08

Intermediate question. Does the overclocked IIsi needs a heat sink on 68030? The IIci runs at same speed and it does not have it.

I mentioned including one because the 68030 in your IIsi is a 20MHz grade chip and 25MHz is a 25% overclock. If you just want to try it, go for it. If it overheats all that is likely to happen is it crashes.

It will most likely be fine.

Posted by: croissantking on 2022-12-01 08:02:17

I mentioned including one because the 68030 in your IIsi is a 20MHz grade chip and 25MHz is a 25% overclock. If you just want to try it, go for it. If it overheats all that is likely to happen is it crashes.

It will most likely be fine.

I think everyone has been successful with the 25MHz overclock - I don’t recall anyone reporting problems unless they tried to go even faster.

Posted by: rikerjoe on 2022-12-01 14:42:06

This is really useful to see, thank you!

What is the Macintosh Display card? Is that its proper name? Did it come with another Mac, was it an aftermarket accessory, etc?

Yes, Macintosh Display Card is the name printed on the silkscreen. It came with the IIsi along with the angle adapter when I bought it via Yahoo Auctions Japan. I don’t know if I came original or was an accessory.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-12-01 14:45:01

To clarify, we'd normally call that the "Apple 4•8 Display Card". It is an unaccelerated framebuffer card, that can do 24bit if you add two VRAM (256k?) SIMMs.

Looking more closely - the SIMM sockets might not be populated, which would make it an "Apple 8•24 Display Card"... the 24bit version. Its hard to tell from the back of the card.

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