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

JTRetro

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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

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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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Zane Kaminski

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Attached is firmware 0.7e. It's very similar to 0.7d-fastscc but the slowdown period after a VIA access has been increased as I mentioned in my previous post. That fixes Prince of Persia. In addition, in this version, the WarpSE speeds up after a SCSI chip access if slowdown was pending before the SCSI access. This should make the speed consistently fast for SCSI drivers that use blind reads/writes, ensuring they work reliably.
 

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JDW

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I will try to make time to test firmware 0.7e and the Prince of Persia Demo on my lunch break today.

LocalTalk should be still working fine, I assume?

My last tests of LocalTalk involved opening Photoshop 4 on my networked SE/30, with the app being stored on the WarpSE machines drive. It took forever to open, but it did work. That's the closest I could come to the "streaming" test you mentioned here.
 
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JDW

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Lunch Break Test Completed, with GOOD & BAD news. (All testing was done with my SE Reloaded motherboard fitted inside the SE's metal chassis. SWIM chip installed.)

GOOD NEWS​

  • Prince of Persia audio sounds great and the Demo was able to run all the way through with no freezing! Bug fixed! Great!
  • Tetris audio too still sounds great.
  • Speedometer 3.23 scores with my BlueSCSI v1 (slower than v2, mind you) show the same scores I've seen before with the previous firmware....
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BAD NEWS​

I am getting the same error dialog problem in SCSI Director Pro 4.0 that I reported before here. Increasing memory for the app in Get Info only causes the error dialog to ask for yet more RAM the next time I test it.

As I later reported here, my fix at the time was to press INTERRUPT at power-on to disable WarpSE. I then booted and launched SCSI Director Pro 4.0, then successfully ran all tests. After that, I rebooted with WarpSE enabled and repeated the SCSI Director Pro 4.0 test to find the problem gone. Sadly, I tried that again today (while in 8MHz mode), but it DID NOT WORK (using BlueSCSI v1). I tried again with the same SD card in my BlueSCSI v2 but got the same error dialog.

Keep in mind that all 4 SEEK tests must complete. The error dialog only appears after those SEEK tests are done. (NOTE: For some reason, BSv2 takes longer to complete the SEEK tests than BSv1, but that has always been true and has nothing to do with WarpSE.)

I would like to ask my fellow WarpSE beta testers to please flash the newest 0.7e firmware, then boot into System 7.1 with WarpSE enabled, then launch SCSI Director Pro 4.0 and run the tests on your drive to see if you get the same error I do. If you have a BlueSCSI, try that. I lacked time to test using my spinner drive.
 
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JDW

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WarpSE Firmware 0.7e TESTING CONTINUES...

I confirmed the SCSI Director Pro 4.0 problem affects BlueSCSI v1 & v2 only, and not a spinning platter drive:


After that video, I put WarpSE on my stock Apple motherboard with IWM chip and it had the same problem with my BlueSCSI v1. So no one can argue its my motherboard or SWIM chip. Different motherboards, and one with SWIM and the other with IWM.

Fellow beta testers, could you please test WarpSE Firmware 0.7e with SCSI Director Pro 4.0 and also report what drives you are using?
@JTRetro @techknight @ppuskari