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    Massive (filthy) find in South Carolina

    I don't know much about the 610s, but I can mark some of the more interesting parts on the LC475/Q605 boards: Custom Apple Parts: - ADC/DAC - Custom Apple sound chip. - ADB Controller - Self explanatory. - Antelope + Clock Gen for Video - Video output subsystem. Clock generator for this may...
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    Massive (filthy) find in South Carolina

    I totally didn’t realize there were some LC/Performa 475s in this collection of machines, that is a shame to see. I wonder if it’s worth trying to salvage some of the more proprietary chips from these boards.
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    2025 PowerPC Challenge

    Yeah, this gets weird, because the SATA card I have in my Quicksilver likes my two OWC SATA SSDs, an Electra 3G and Electra 6G. I really don’t know what’s going on here, but HrutkayMods did mention forward compatibility issues with early SATA I chipsets, which is about the only thing I can think...
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    New to Me: Quicksilver G4

    I recently came across a cheap 933Mhz Quicksilver processor card harvested from a machine. It was cheap enough that I figured ”why not”? So today I put it into the system which gave me a chance to finish cleaning out the dust bunnies in harder to reach spots in/under the heat sink and the...
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    Refreshing a Quadra 605

    Been a while since the last update, but a few things have happened: * Got the 1MB VRAM in from Europe. * Ordered some OS-CON capacitors to replace the under-rated solid Tantalums that came in the kit I bought (20V Tantalums for 12V filter caps? That’s not great). * Finally decided to move the...
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    MacOS System 7.5 Pro - Copland aka 8.0

    I do wonder about that. Early alphas for developers in 1997 (which this has a 1997 copyright) were stamped with MacOS 7.7 as the version. MacOS 8 became the name later in development as the July release approached. MacOS 7.7 releases also didn't yet have the "About this Computer" banner that was...
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    Disk Jockey, a disk image file maker for your retro stuff - Beta for version 3!

    Keep in mind that's HD SC Setup, not Drive Setup. Of the two Apple tools, only Drive Setup can mount drives. But it does require 7.1.2 or later. I use it with 7.5 as my main OS on my 040 Mac. SCSI Probe is probably easier than going through the trouble of installing 7.1.2 and Drive Setup if you...
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    Disk Jockey, a disk image file maker for your retro stuff - Beta for version 3!

    Unfortunately that approach doesn’t work with TR5.2, as it has pre-packed a lot of files into a single large binary file. So the contents are too large for the copy approach, and the files we want to remove are packaged up with data we want to keep. How I got it working was with the latest disk...
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    2025 PowerPC Challenge

    You happened to quote my answer to this question, although it might be a little jargon-filled? I think @Certificate of Excellence and @HrutkayMods brought up good details here on the tests of cables, as well as a good alternative explanation for the issue you are running into, and I don't really...
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    2025 PowerPC Challenge

    The cables are all wired the same. It's a simple cable with a pair of receive and transmit wires (each), and then 3 ground wires. All cables are "compatible" with all three protocols. What makes a difference is the amount of shielding/insulation newer cables get which helps prevent EMI in...
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    Need solution for HDI-45 to DB-15 connectors for video out

    The original problem I saw is that the headers "fit" in 3 different positions, one correct, two incorrect. I don't think anyone wants to be trying to debug an adapter where a user plugged it into the wrong set of pins. 1, 2, 19 and 36 are all shield/ground pins, and spaced in such a way that...
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    2025 PowerPC Challenge

    I'm not sure why it specifically has to be SATA-I? The wiring is the same. Does the G5 use a non-standard connector or something? I ask partly because I'm using SATA-III cables with my SATA-I card and SATA-II SSDs...
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    Need solution for HDI-45 to DB-15 connectors for video out

    I'm curious, why not not use additional pins for stability and keying the headers so it's harder to insert it into the wrong pins, or are they just not shown?
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    Tantalum vs Electrolytic. Can I just always use tantalum?

    Agreed. I cannot tell the difference with my Polk Reserves, but I don’t listen that loud. Now, if the caps were actually in the analog side of the circuit, I could maybe see someone hearing the difference, but they’d have to listen pretty loud to hear it. TI did some measuring that suggested...
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    Tantalum vs Electrolytic. Can I just always use tantalum?

    After looking at the Quadra 605 schematic again and comparing to the recapping list, every single replaced capacitor is a filter capacitor. 4 of them are used to smooth out the power signals the sound chip uses, yes, but these are still used to shunt power supply noise to ground. What I see of...
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    New to Me: Quicksilver G4

    The Adaptec card uses reprogrammable flash for the firmware, but it has a small 2Kbit EEPROM that is used to customize the vendor info given to the host machine. Remove or disable the EEPROM and the card acts like a standard SilTech card and can then be reflashed in OS9 with the 128KB ROM. No...
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    Tantalum vs Electrolytic. Can I just always use tantalum?

    I'm sure this is not everything, but the two things off the top of my head that I'd keep in mind: 1) Make sure to properly derate the tantalums. Many of these capacitors are filter caps meant to smooth ripple coming from the power supply rails. The brand I use say derate by 50% when constant...
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    Need solution for HDI-45 to DB-15 connectors for video out

    On this vein of thought, I’d be tempted to look at a panel mounted connector with a ribbon cable, and a simple PCB that presents a header for the ribbon cable. Too bad there isn’t a CAD model of the logic board to play with.
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    New to Me: Quicksilver G4

    Next round of changes, the CPU fan arrived along with an Adaptec SATA card. The fan isn’t quite as strong as the original, but as the original was spec’d to cool dual CPUs, it should be adequate unless I do eventually splurge on a dual CPU card. At least the whine from the old fan is gone and...
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    Need solution for HDI-45 to DB-15 connectors for video out

    Thanks for this, seriously. I’m still working on improving this particular habit myself, so I get it. My EE is quite rusty, and one reason I’m messing with older hardware is that I put that part of my degree aside as my career moved further and further from the low-level stuff. I want to shake...