PowerBook 604e "Mainstreet"

[Astal]

Well mad science continues... I've ordered a Mainstreet CPU card and plan on making a 604e card because I am insane.

There's two BGA memory footprints on the card which I'm assuming hook up to the MPC106EC controller (with an L2 cache controller on it), so I will be trying to upgrade cache on the board and install a PowerPC 604e (and some extra cooling) because well, why the hell not! I'll post updates here. Follow the thread for some Mac insanity, and possibly the world's only PowerBook 604e!

CPU card should come in Monday or so

 

[3lectr1c]

Are the pinouts the same?

 

[Astal]

Are the pinouts the same?

Pinout for 603/604/740 are the same, yes

 

[3lectr1c]

You're sure that's true for all 603s? The 603ev on my 3400c looked a lot smaller than the G3 on my Wallstreet. Do the 740 and 750 have different pinouts?

 

[Astal]

You're sure that's true for all 603s? The 603ev on my 3400c looked a lot smaller than the G3 on my Wallstreet. Do the 740 and 750 have different pinouts?

The 740 and the 750 are different footprints, the 750 has its own cache bus and stuff, the 740 is drop in for 60x is my understanding. 740 is definitely a smaller footprint than 750.

 

[3lectr1c]

Thanks for the clarification, it would be interesting to see if anyone could get a 604 running in a PowerBook. Apple never did it, probably because of cooling issues, but I'll bet someone now could figure that out.

 

[Astal]

Thanks for the clarification, it would be interesting to see if anyone could get a 604 running in a PowerBook. Apple never did it, probably because of cooling issues, but I'll bet someone now could figure that out.

That someone will hopefully be me! I also am going to attempt to add cache to the Mainstreet CPU board, interestingly enough there's two unpopulated BGA-119 footprints to the opposite side of the XPC106 PCI/memory controller, which does have an L2 cache controller in it, and I'm going to attempt to install some BGA-119 cache chips on there and see if it works.. I'm curious about that, and then the 604e upgrade. Who knows! Mainstreet boards are cheap and those mystery footprints are fascinating.