Upgrading a Mac 128
Upgrading a Mac 128
As you've already realised, the board in your Mac is an accelerator. The silver object you describe is the 'clock' crystal which determined the
processor speed (25Mhz in this case though theoretically it could also be 12.5Mhz (25 / 2) although the latter would be extremely
unlikely). The Motorola chip on the card is a new processor which over-rides the Plus' 8Mhz 68000. On it you will see a string of letters and numbers which will contain the string 680x0 where x is a letter from 0-3.
Most likely this will be 68030 - this is the processor type. If there is a FPU installed it will also be from Motorola and will
be labeled 68881, 68882 or something similar. Try to glean as much of this type of info as possible as it will help in your efforts to track down the manufacturer - a program like Speedometer may be helpful.
At this point of time I have a book borrowed from the library called 'The Macintosh Do-It-Yourself Upgrade Guide' which contains a table of various Mac accelerators. Your card may be one of the following:
Also in the book is an illustration of a card which looks like the one you describe. To start, it's shaped like an L. The four
RAM slots run along one side of the L while the other side contains the processor, FPU, crystal and various other chips. At the end of this side of the L is a 64-pin connector (2 rows of 32 pins) which you mention. The only difference between this one and your is the fact that it sports a 33Mhz crystal (though this particular card was sold with various crystal speeds) and the fact that an FPU is fitted (Your card may have this) and there's no empty socket. This board is the Novy Quick30Plus and though this may not be the one in you Plus you may have one from the samemanufacturer (Novy). If you have no luck with Novy or the other two companies listed above, I can give you a more complete list. Most accelerators use the following software: Compact Virtual (allows you to access the acclerator's memory and use the origional RAM as a RAM disk as well as run Virtual memory) SANE patch (Enables your accelerator's FPU if one is present) Some (all?) accelerators also require custom software from the manufacturer.
Mac Pluses heat up at the best of times and an accelerator only makes things worse hence the add on fan.
Hoping that you find this helpful...
Adam.
I am definitely out of my league on this one and I need your help. I picked up a beige 4MB Mac Plus a year ago and have had a blast with it. I finally got a T15 screwdriver and decided to open her up and see just how dusty she was when I discovered a couple of things I did not think existed in a Plus. The first was a fan. It is mounted above the power supply on a sheetmetal frame. It was so quiet I knew it was there. I had always assumed that the Plus never came with one.
The second thing was a board "piggybacked" onto the 68000 chip. It is about 5X6 inches and in the shape of a fat "L" There are 4 RAM slots and all are occupied with a total of either 4 or 16MB RAM. The board has no manufacturer's name on it whatsoever. There is a Motorola chip at position U12 and an empty 10X10 socket (FPU perhaps?) in position U8.
There is also a small silver-colored device that says "Fox" on it and "25.0000Mhz". At one end of the board is a 64-pin extension for God-only-knows-what. What I DO know is that the board is NOT the MicroMac MultiSpeed board as I just looked at the website.
Someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to modify this Plus but apparently some driver software is missing, the power supply to the board is not functioning or both. Does anyone on the list have any clue as to what this thing is and how I can get it to function?
Thanks!!
Hal
©1996-04 JagWerks Media