Found DOS card in a boxed 6115 CD

[wottle]

I picked up a boxed 6115 a while back and didn’t do anything with it when I first got it other than to open it up and remove the battery, then try to power it up.

Unfortunately, I got no video out on the multisync 15” monitor that came with it. So I set it aside, having other more pressing projects to work on; however I was confused by the weird sequence of dongles needed to connect the monitor. Given the machine looked to have come from a school, and there was a “Apple presentation system” box in with the stuff, I assumed it was for hooking up to a TV or projector.

Well, I finally wrapped up a few of my other projects and pulled the 6115 back out to see if I could clean it up and get it running. I popped the case off (predictably snapping off one of the two tabs holding it down) and decided to remove the weird card that was connected to one of the connectors from the Y shaped adapter.
After removing it, I realized there was a CPU and RAM on the board, and I suspected it might be a dos compatibility card. A quick search using the part number on the card confirmed it was indeed the DOS compatibility card. I never had one, so I don’t know how it works, but I guess the special cable allows for the machine to output the dos side’s video over a single connection to the monitor.
And there’s another connector on there that may be for a joystick?

I still am unable to get the monitor to show anything, but I’m hoping to try a Mac VGA adapter and plug it into a known working monitor tomorrow.

One question I did have: near the back of the board where the external connector is, there’s a smaller board screwed down to it. Any ideas what that extra board is for?

 

[warmech]

Congratulations! Not only do you have a DOS card, you also have the proprietary connector cable for it (which is arguably worth more than the card itself at this point)! To answer your last question first - that smaller PCB screwed down to the larger one is a SoundBlaster card, which means you have a Houdini II DOS card (the original DOS card was just the "Houdini"). The original Houdini had no sound capability (except maybe a piezo beeper speaker - I can't recall), but Apple added a SoundBlaster 16 to the Houdini II, along with CD audio passthrough (the two ribbon-cable connectors adjacent to the SB16). Additionally, the Houdini II could accept additional RAM modules (the original model shared memory with the Mac - the II could as well, but you wanted to avoid that if at all possible).

Jumping back a bit, there's one quick thing to note as to why you might not be getting video out. First, I think the 6110-series require a battery to boot (or you can cycle the power switch a few times to trick it). If you aren't getting a boot chime, drop in a new battery give it another go.

As far as the octopus-like cable you have goes: the 26-pin connector goes to the DOS card; the male DA-15 connector with a monitor symbol on it goes to the video-out port on the Mac (or, in your case, to the female DA-15 end of the HDI-to-DA-15 adapter); the female DA-15 connector with a monitor symbol on it attaches to the male end of the cable going to the monitor; and the remaining DA-15 connector (which should have a joystick on it, I think?) is for a joystick and can be left disconnected if you don't have one. Once you have everything connected, you can boot up the Mac and install the PC Setup software and drivers (I don't have a link handy at the moment, but I'll find one in the morning) and you'll be good to go from there. It will allow you to create a virtual hard disk for use with the card, which you can then boot into and install DOS, Win 3.X, or Win 95. Once you have the OS installed, you'll need to install drivers off the accompanying driver disk (should be downloadable alongside the PC Setup disk) to get CD-ROM and SB16 support up and running. After that, you're good to go.

Word of advice - Windows 95 is technically compatible, but really drags its feet; this thing was made for DOS 6.X and Win 3.0/3.1. I've got Win 95 on mine but, even with maxed out specs, it's performance is average at best. Upgrading the Houdini's RAM to 64MB and (ideally) replacing the 486DX-66 with a compatible 5x86-esque CPU (I have a 100MHz Cyrix in mine) are recommended if you want to push this thing to it's limits. Due to how the card is designed, however, it's clock is divided in half; that 486DX-66 is really just running at 33MHz. If you can get a 100MHz 5x86 (hopefully with an adapter that doesn't cost an arm and a leg), you can run the system at 50MHz. The only issue is that a CPU like that will need to have a decent heat sink and sit on top of a voltage adapter; said adapter/CPU/heat sink sandwich will effectively butt the PPC's heatsink right up against the 5x86's and really stymie airflow in the case. If you have another PDS-capable Mac (that's not in a 6100-series case), you can drop it in there and it will run just fine (and likely have decent airflow for cooling).

Last note before I fall asleep - the ribbon cable for audio I mentioned earlier: the one marked "CD IN" connects to the 6115's CDROM and the one marked "SOUND OUT" connects to the Mac's logic board for CD audio passthrough. You'll need that connected properly to get CD audio when in DOS mode for any games you may want to play.

 

[slomacuser]

I have upgraded mine Houdini II with Kingston Turbo Chip worked well but had issues installing Windows 3.1. The CPU replacement is incompatible with card as there is no BIOS settings available ...

 

[wottle]

I have upgraded mine Houdini II with Kingston Turbo Chip worked well but had issues installing Windows 3.1. The CPU replacement is incompatible with card as there is no BIOS settings available ...

View attachment 3859 View attachment 3860

I can definitely see the problem with the space. That setup you have essentially looks like it takes hot air from the PPC heatsink and blows it onto the 486 heatsink, and then it bounces off the board and gets moved across the PPC heatsink.

 

[wottle]

Congratulations! Not only do you have a DOS card, you also have the proprietary connector cable for it (which is arguably worth more than the card itself at this point)! To answer your last question first - that smaller PCB screwed down to the larger one is a SoundBlaster card, which means you have a Houdini II DOS card (the original DOS card was just the "Houdini"). The original Houdini had no sound capability (except maybe a piezo beeper speaker - I can't recall), but Apple added a SoundBlaster 16 to the Houdini II, along with CD audio passthrough (the two ribbon-cable connectors adjacent to the SB16). Additionally, the Houdini II could accept additional RAM modules (the original model shared memory with the Mac - the II could as well, but you wanted to avoid that if at all possible).

Jumping back a bit, there's one quick thing to note as to why you might not be getting video out. First, I think the 6110-series require a battery to boot (or you can cycle the power switch a few times to trick it). If you aren't getting a boot chime, drop in a new battery give it another go.

As far as the octopus-like cable you have goes: the 26-pin connector goes to the DOS card; the male DA-15 connector with a monitor symbol on it goes to the video-out port on the Mac (or, in your case, to the female DA-15 end of the HDI-to-DA-15 adapter); the female DA-15 connector with a monitor symbol on it attaches to the male end of the cable going to the monitor; and the remaining DA-15 connector (which should have a joystick on it, I think?) is for a joystick and can be left disconnected if you don't have one. Once you have everything connected, you can boot up the Mac and install the PC Setup software and drivers (I don't have a link handy at the moment, but I'll find one in the morning) and you'll be good to go from there. It will allow you to create a virtual hard disk for use with the card, which you can then boot into and install DOS, Win 3.X, or Win 95. Once you have the OS installed, you'll need to install drivers off the accompanying driver disk (should be downloadable alongside the PC Setup disk) to get CD-ROM and SB16 support up and running. After that, you're good to go.

Word of advice - Windows 95 is technically compatible, but really drags its feet; this thing was made for DOS 6.X and Win 3.0/3.1. I've got Win 95 on mine but, even with maxed out specs, it's performance is average at best. Upgrading the Houdini's RAM to 64MB and (ideally) replacing the 486DX-66 with a compatible 5x86-esque CPU (I have a 100MHz Cyrix in mine) are recommended if you want to push this thing to it's limits. Due to how the card is designed, however, it's clock is divided in half; that 486DX-66 is really just running at 33MHz. If you can get a 100MHz 5x86 (hopefully with an adapter that doesn't cost an arm and a leg), you can run the system at 50MHz. The only issue is that a CPU like that will need to have a decent heat sink and sit on top of a voltage adapter; said adapter/CPU/heat sink sandwich will effectively butt the PPC's heatsink right up against the 5x86's and really stymie airflow in the case. If you have another PDS-capable Mac (that's not in a 6100-series case), you can drop it in there and it will run just fine (and likely have decent airflow for cooling).

Last note before I fall asleep - the ribbon cable for audio I mentioned earlier: the one marked "CD IN" connects to the 6115's CDROM and the one marked "SOUND OUT" connects to the Mac's logic board for CD audio passthrough. You'll need that connected properly to get CD audio when in DOS mode for any games you may want to play.

Nice. Thanks for the information. I definitely noted the connections to the CDROM and main logic board when disconnecting the two small ribbon cables. I was able to get it reconnected this morning.

I ended up hooking up the machine (with it's octopus connector) to a known good VGA monitor (my massive graphite 21" Apple Studio CRT) and it was giving me an image (no PRAM battery installed). So I think the previous problem is something wrong with the 15" CRT. Given that this was used in a school, I suspect the CRT was heavily used and is likely bad. I'll look to see if there are known problems with capacitors in the monitor and look to see if I can revive it.

Anyway, having resolved the video out issue, it appears the original SCSI hard drive was dead, as I got the question mark disk on startup. So I threw a BlueSCSI in there with an 8.1 install on it and it fired right up. Now I'm just going through the steps to try to get the DOS compatibility card software on there, and I guess a copy of Windows 3.1 somehow.

More to come, but excited to have this cool machine in my inventory.

 

[wottle]

OK, I got System 7.5.3 and 8.1 installed on a bluescsi and installed PC compatibility 1.6.4 on each. I created a new DOS disk image file and mapped it to the C drive. So I believe the PC Setup app can tell there's a DOS compatibility card in the computer. The problem is when I switch to the PC side, I never get video out and when I switch back to the Mac side with the Command+Return hotkey, the PC Setup app just shows the status as "PC is booting" forever. Same behavior in both 7.5.3 and 8.1.

Any ideas on troubleshooting?

I'll probably try another version of the DOS compatibility software and see if that gives me anything different.

Also, I cannot select anything under RAM. That might be because I have dedicated memory installed in the card. I may try removing that and see if allows me to select how much memory I share from the Mac side.

Additionally, how do I do the initial install of DOS / Windows 3.1? I have a CD with Win3.1, but for DOS, will I need to try to make floppies? I don't have any old PCs with floppy drives, so that might be tough.

 

[warmech]

OK, I got System 7.5.3 and 8.1 installed on a bluescsi and installed PC compatibility 1.6.4 on each. I created a new DOS disk image file and mapped it to the C drive. So I believe the PC Setup app can tell there's a DOS compatibility card in the computer. The problem is when I switch to the PC side, I never get video out and when I switch back to the Mac side with the Command+Return hotkey, the PC Setup app just shows the status as "PC is booting" forever. Same behavior in both 7.5.3 and 8.1.

Any ideas on troubleshooting?

I'll probably try another version of the DOS compatibility software and see if that gives me anything different.

Also, I cannot select anything under RAM. That might be because I have dedicated memory installed in the card. I may try removing that and see if allows me to select how much memory I share from the Mac side.

Additionally, how do I do the initial install of DOS / Windows 3.1? I have a CD with Win3.1, but for DOS, will I need to try to make floppies? I don't have any old PCs with floppy drives, so that might be tough.

No video with a "PC is booting" message that never progresses means the PC isn't POSTing. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to immediately switch over to the PC and see the typical RAM test you would expect from contemporary BIOSes. Make sure your RAM is seated correctly and that the CPU is socketed properly first.

There's a final revision of the Houdini's PC Setup software that seems to work best. Now that it's not midnight, I'll see if I can find it on my NAS in a moment.

That you cannot select anything under RAM is normal; with a RAM module installed, the card is disallowed from sharing memory with the Mac.

As for installing an OS, yes, it's done through floppies (or CD, when applicable). When in PC mode, the Mac will give control of the floppy drive and CDROM to the PC (provided you have CD drivers installed). And you don't actually need an old PC to make floppies, however. Just about any cheapo USB floppy drive off of Amazon and a machine running Win 10 or prior will allow you to get the job done.

 

[warmech]

Attached is a zip file with the two setup disks (img format) I used to setup my 6100, along with another zip file containing the SB16 drivers (I've never had a disk image for that, just the files since it's all DOS-based). Somewhere I had a fourth disk with, I think, some additional drivers for Win95 but I can't find it at the moment. I may just find the physical disk I have and image it tonight.

 

[wottle]

No video with a "PC is booting" message that never progresses means the PC isn't POSTing. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to immediately switch over to the PC and see the typical RAM test you would expect from contemporary BIOSes. Make sure your RAM is seated correctly and that the CPU is socketed properly first.

There's a final revision of the Houdini's PC Setup software that seems to work best. Now that it's not midnight, I'll see if I can find it on my NAS in a moment.

That you cannot select anything under RAM is normal; with a RAM module installed, the card is disallowed from sharing memory with the Mac.

As for installing an OS, yes, it's done through floppies (or CD, when applicable). When in PC mode, the Mac will give control of the floppy drive and CDROM to the PC (provided you have CD drivers installed). And you don't actually need an old PC to make floppies, however. Just about any cheapo USB floppy drive off of Amazon and a machine running Win 10 or prior will allow you to get the job done.

Still no luck getting it to get past booting. I swapped a SIMM from the main board to see if it would change the behavior. Other than making the Mac OS side of things not boot with all extensions on, the behavior was the same. No video out. I also tried hooking the video out to two different monitors (one for the Mac side of things, one for the PC. Still no video out on the PC side. I did order some new RAM, and will install that once it arrives.

Appreciate you sending me the versions you are using. I'll try that. What version of Mac OS are you running it on? I've seen some posts of people saying they could get it to work on System 7, but not 8...

 

[wottle]

Unfortunately, my new SIMM arrived and I was still unable to get it past the "PC is booting" phase. No video out on the PC side at all. I did try with the version of the PC Compatibility software, running on System 7.6 and still no luck. I also added a PRAM battery temporarily to make sure that wasn't causing boot issues.

The DOS card gets extremely hot while the machine is running. Could the CPU gone bad from overheating? Has anyone done a CPU swap on these and what CPU would work best?

Not giving up on this thing yet!

 

[warmech]

It's entirely possible the the 486 is just toast. That card is basically a run-of-the-mill PC; it should POST and give you the same basic info on screen as any other contemporary machine. That it's not even getting there is pointing more and more toward a CPU issue, just as it would in a PC. Something you might do: check the orientation of the CPU. If the mitered corner of the CPU doesn't line up with the socket corner adjacent to the barcode and RAM socket, then it's seated incorrectly and will absolutely not work (see attached image). Also, make sure the CPU is completely seated flush with the socket. If part of the CPU is angled up out of the socket just a bit, it could be just enough to prevent contact with all the pins.

As far as swapping CPUs - yes! You can absolutely swap out the CPUs on those cards - they run stock with a 486DX2-66, which is still a pretty commonly available CPU in retro PC building. Stay away from eBay and try to find a local retro computing group; chances are, if you explain your situation, you'll probably find someone willing to part ways with one for relatively cheap. Heck, some folks may be willing to toss one your way if for no other reason than getting to see a novel piece of hardware come back to life. At the very least, you could probably borrow one to test with. You're not in the Dallas/Fort Worth area by any chance, are you?

 

[wottle]

Sadly, no. I'm in the Charlotte, NC area. I'll check around locally and see if I can find one. When I looked, the CPU seemed seated properly, but I might try to pop it out and re-seat it.

Really appreciate all the advice!

 

[wottle]

Progress update! I removed the CPU, took off the heat sink, applied new thermal compound, and reseated the CPU (it was properly aligned when I removed it, and appeared to be fully seated). Tried one more time to boot and IT WORKED!

I get video out. I was able to create a DOS boot disk from an old PC I had lying around and get it to boot from the floppy! Now, I'm in the process of creating DOS install floppies, getting a Windows 3.1 install CD to work, and try some old Windows programs. Once I get Windows 3.1 installed with Apple's utilities, it should be much easier to get programs loaded onto it. Trying to find working 3.5 floppies I can write to is proving to be a challenge.

Thanks again for the advice!

 

[warmech]

Progress update! I removed the CPU, took off the heat sink, applied new thermal compound, and reseated the CPU (it was properly aligned when I removed it, and appeared to be fully seated). Tried one more time to boot and IT WORKED!

I get video out. I was able to create a DOS boot disk from an old PC I had lying around and get it to boot from the floppy! Now, I'm in the process of creating DOS install floppies, getting a Windows 3.1 install CD to work, and try some old Windows programs. Once I get Windows 3.1 installed with Apple's utilities, it should be much easier to get programs loaded onto it. Trying to find working 3.5 floppies I can write to is proving to be a challenge.

Thanks again for the advice!

Excellent news! I'm so glad it was just the CPU needing to be reseated. If you'd like, DM me an address to ship to and I'll send some spare floppies your way.

 

[wottle]

So, I was able to find enough functioning floppies from my box of estate sale bargain bin floppies to cover the 3 disks needed for DOS 6.2.2, one for the Apple utilities, and 6 for Windows 3.1, and now I officially have a working dual boot System 8 / Win 3.1 machine! Pics of the floppy disaster hunt and Windows 3.1 on my 21" Studio CRT.

Appreciate the offer on the Floppies. I have floppyEMU for most of my Mac floppy needs, and will be setting up AppleTalk with a bridge machine for moving files around, so hopefully I'll be able to manage with the ones I have.

Speaking of floppies, not sure if I've just been extremely unlucky with my disks / drives, but I'd say I'm having about a 90-95% failure rate with the 3.5" floppies in my collection. Meanwhile, I've got a decent collection of 5.25" disks that came with a pair of Apple IIe computers I picked up, and those disks were almost all working. And when I did come up with one that was corrupted, I was still able to load new software on it using the asciiexpress.net disks functionality. Is it me or are the 5.25" floppies much more durable?

 

[eric]

As a kid with a 6115/CD and going to my friends house to play DOS games, I always looked at a DOS card with envy (even if it would have been pretty slow compared to the Pentium 133mhz at my friends house) - Glad you got it working!

 

[warmech]

Speaking of floppies, not sure if I've just been extremely unlucky with my disks / drives, but I'd say I'm having about a 90-95% failure rate with the 3.5" floppies in my collection. Meanwhile, I've got a decent collection of 5.25" disks that came with a pair of Apple IIe computers I picked up, and those disks were almost all working. And when I did come up with one that was corrupted, I was still able to load new software on it using the asciiexpress.net disks functionality. Is it me or are the 5.25" floppies much more durable?

Depends on a handful of factors, but, one of the bigger reasons folks will encounter bad 3.5" floppies is that as they were waning in popularity they began to be manufactured at lower and lower qualities. I have a set of floppies for MacDraw that were kept in a craptacular environment for years that still read fine. On the other side of the coin, I have NIB floppies from the late 90s/early 00s that are just a step above trash and have never been stored in anything but a climate-controlled environment. I went through them all last year and ended up throwing away at least half of them - dozens of disks, just trash. Your best bet is to kinda do what it sounds like you've done before - find older floppies that can be erased and reused.

As far as 5.25" floppies and their aire of indestructability - and this is just a guess - I would imagine that their relatively low data density made them hard to screw up.

 

[KennyPowers]

I'm so jealous...my first computer when I was a kid was a 6100/66 DOS-compatible with that Houdini II card. I kept it all through college, but then stupidly got rid of it about 16 years ago. I remember also attempting to replace the 486 with one of those 133Mhz processor upgrades. I remember it booting into DOS, but not Windows. I would kill to have that machine back

 

[wottle]

I'm so jealous...my first computer when I was a kid was a 6100/66 DOS-compatible with that Houdini II card. I kept it all through college, but then stupidly got rid of it about 16 years ago. I remember also attempting to replace the 486 with one of those 133Mhz processor upgrades. I remember it booting into DOS, but not Windows. I would kill to have that machine back

Yeah, I always thought it would be cool to have a machine that ran both, but never realized at the time how impressive the integration Apple created was, with the ability to copy and paste across the two environments. I considered buying a new CPU, when it originally didn't work, but think I'm going to leave this one stock...

 

[KennyPowers]

I've finally joined the club



6100/66 DOS Compatible just like when I was a kid...the nostalgia is hitting me pretty hard at the moment

Well...not *just* like my original one. I've recapped both the PSU and logic board on this one, new thermal paste on both CPUs, installed 264MB of RAM on the Mac side and 32MB on the DOS card, and a 4GB BlueSCSI image containing a 2GB DOS partition along with a smaller image for file transfers from an emulator on a modern machine (probably won't be necessary once I set up an FTP client on the 6100). I also put 8.6 on this one...my childhood machine ran 7.6.1.

I do want to try to improve the airflow on the left half of the system where both CPUs are currently having a heat orgy. I did put a 40mm fan inside the PowerPC processor's heatsink that kept it cool to the touch...until I installed the DOS card. Now that whole half of the chassis is roasty-toasty. There are ventilation slots cut into the bottom of the case under where the HD used to be. I wonder if I could slide a low-profile exhaust fan under there since heat doesn't tend to go downwards by itself. I'm sure those vents are intended as inlet, but the PSU fan doesn't create enough pressure to pull any meaningful amount of air through there IMO. Or maybe using that fan to pull air into the case would work better...not sure if it would overwhelm the exhaust capabilities of the PSU fan though...