WarpSE: 25 MHz 68HC000-based accelerator for Mac SE

JTRetro

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
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I've been doing some more testing simple testing, such as running my "After Dark" fish screen saver run indefinitely, including an hour so far today-with no problems. Another interesting test, this:

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This is an original 400k disk that my parents gave me back in the late '80's with, of course, the game "Transylvania"! And....it works just fine in my 800k SE with the WarpSE accelerator:

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Zane Kaminski

Administrator
Staff member
Founder
Sep 5, 2021
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Columbus, Ohio, USA
Just bought the overclocking board connectors! The finer-pitch 2.0mm type are quite a bit less common than the standard 0.1inch/2.54mm ones. The finer pitch is required since they're shorter vertically too. With the 2.54mm pitch connector the board stack was too tall and may have collided with the Mac's chassis. Anyway, I think that high-quality connectors are really important for a reliable system, especially on the female socket side. I made sure to get Amphenol brand sockets:
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I was surprised to learn that among different connector vendors (Amphenol, Molex, Sullins, etc.), the lengths of the male pins that go in the socket are slightly different! Well, I mean, they all offer various pin lengths but their closest ones differ by as much as 0.2mm. Not really a big deal but I was surprised. So the pin headers that go in here are also Amphenol brand to ensure optimal compatibility. Of course, a no-name vendor for the male pin side would probably have been fine too as long as it has roughly the right length and the right width for the pins. The socket side is the side that can wear out and is much harder to make reliable than the pins.

Very interesting. Even though the problem is apparently fixed, it seems clear that we beta testers should probably test the Prince of Persia demo on every new firmware version release!
Thanks for all your hard work testing! I think though that with the incremental changes in each version, it's best to try different stuff once a problem is resolved. Then of course right before release or after a major restructuring of the code, it'd be good to retest old bugs to make sure there are no regressions. But usually I try not to mess stuff up once it's fixed haha. Hardest part of all this is just finding the apps that don't work.


By the way, @ppuskari, I have been trying the SCSI Director 4.0 drivers and can't duplicate the shutdown issue although I have only tested with my recent "prince of Persia fix," so maybe that fixed SCSI Director too. Basically the fix just amounted to slowing down for longer after an access to the VIA. Previously the slowdown time after hitting the VIA was 14-28 microseconds (21 avg). That was enough to fix the crash in the sound control panel but not enough for Prince of Persia, which needed it increased to 28-42 microseconds. Anyway, at first I thought SD4.0 was not working, but then I realized that it just didn't like a ~1900 MB disk on my BlueSCSI v2. Downsizing the drive to 200 MB got it working well with the WarpSE and I can't find any issues when using the driver. I have been busy buying parts and tweaking the final WarpSE board design but I'll try to get 0.7e out soon with the Prince of Persia fix and maybe you can let me know if that fixes the issues you were having with the SCSI Director drivers.
 
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