Month: July 2023

The BlueSCSI hardware I ordered back on the 17th arrived last night, so the evening was spent futzing with the 8100…

The BlueSCSI device itself is pretty interesting. It’s entirely open source so I’ve spent a few days poking around it in its innards code-wise, and might take the time to add a few features I want – like an OLED display of bus traffic…

I have the latest incarnation of the BlueSCSI, which utilizes a Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) microcontroller versus the old ‘blue pill’ STM32 MCU – so it can saturate a late 90’s 10mbit SCSI bus pretty easily. Which is nice to have in an late 90’s computer…

The initial setup was pretty easy. I picked up a couple of high endurance 32G microSD cards at Microcenter for like $7 each, formatted them EXfat on my Mac, and then whipped up a couple of blank 1024MB HFS files to put on the cards with good old DD…

dd if=/dev/zero of="HD10_512 Power Macintosh 8100-80 1024MB.hda" bs=1M count=500

The BlueSCSI uses the filenames of the drive containers to determine how to present the image, so “HD10_512 Power Macintosh 8100-80 1024MB.hda” translates to “Use HD emulation (versus CD, MO, etc) and make it look like SCSI ID1, LUN0 with a 512 byte sector size”, and all of the text between that and the .hda is ignored and is just for identification.

From here it was a simple matter to add the BlueSCSI to the chain in my 8100, boot it, and then format the .hda image HFS when the Mac popped up the Unrecognized Drive dialog…

And presto – a new 1G SCSI drive appears on the desktop.

To test the full implementation, I set up the BlueSCSI as ID1:0, pulled the original 2G HD out of the 8100, and did an install of 8.6 from one of my G3 iMac restore CDs…

The BlueSCSI worked just fine and the 8100 had no idea it was talking to 21st century solid state storage that was the equivalent of 16 of the largest hard drives you could get back in the day.

And has no moving parts.

And is half the size of a postage stamp…

Being as everything was working, I went ahead and installed the SCSI adapter in its 3.5″ adapter and then onto the 8100’s drive adapter… So now the 8100 has RGB lighting, because all computers need RGB lighting here in the future. 🙂

Next up was getting the external BlueSCSI setup and formatted, which was about the same as the internal one save that it’s not clear which way the contacts on the microSD go in the holder – so there was a moment of USB connecter flipping to get it installed… But it was eventually seen on the external SCSI bus and formatted as well.

And with both drives accessible, it was time to get a bunch of OS8 PPC utilities off of macintosh repository, get them unstuffed / unzipped, and copied onto the external drive in preparation for reloading the 8100 again.

As you can see in the above image, I happen to like LaCie’s “SilverLining” SCSI tools, and one of the nicer parts of SilverLining is the updated SCSI drivers it installs on the various drives in the system – but it can’t do this on a running system drive. So I need to set up the external with Silverlining, make it bootable with an OS, put all of the tools I want to install on it for simplicity, and then boot off of it to set up the internal.

And thats about where I ran out of time last evening.

I also ordered a bunch of upgrades for the trashcan from OWC yesterday; 64gigs of ram, a new 1TB SSD, and a slightly upgraded CPU… Those parts should arrive today, so I’ll disassemble the trashcan some time this weekend and get it tuned up.

Oh, and I’ll have to reload it with an older OS… CS6, as it turns out, has a lot of 32-bit code in it and Apple phased out 32-bit support after 10.14 (Mojave). Which is fine really, the trashcan came with 10.9 (Mavericks) and 10.15 (Catalina) was really the last decent MacOS…

I’ve not been overly impressed with the MacOS since the transition to 11, 12, and 13 – since the transition everything has been entirely too iPhone-like for my tastes.

Listening to "Amberina Sun" by mitch murder

The rest of the parts I ordered / had made for the 8100 came in this afternoon – save for the BlueSCSI boxes which haven’t shipped yet – so the evening was spent creating the most upgraded 8100/80 in human history… At least as far as I know.

The first things to do were put the new pram battery in the holder, stick the mainboard back in the case, and then max out the video card…

Once again I was successful in manipulating all of the brittle plastic pieces to snap everything back together, so it was time to press the keyboard’s power button and see if I got a successful boot – or if I would let all of the magic smoke out…

I was apparently successful – go me! Though there was one tiny error:

That line in the photos is the scan line of the monitor being picked up by my iPhone – you can’t see these normally, but the iPhone doesn’t have persistence of vision so there they are… Just ignore them. 🙂

Anyway, the operation was a success – so the next thing to do was set the clock…

Macintoshes back in the day were generally immune to the Y2K bug, but the engineers and programmers working on OS8 in 1997 seemed to be of the mind that no sane person would be using the OS after 2019… So while the actual clock is good until 2040, the date picker rolls over on December 31, 2019 to the mid 1900’s.

This is actually a pretty easy fix though; just get the 8100 onto the internet so it can see an NTP (time) server.

Getting the machine on the Internet was a simple matter of hooking up the Farallon AAUI adapter, stringing cat-5 across my office, and then configuring TCP/IP in a machine and operating system from when TCP-IP was still in diapers… Luckily I did this a lot back in the 90’s – so getting the machine networked was essentially muscle memory.

So, now I had an IP address and a route to the Internet, the date was now showing 2023, and the machine came with Netscape 3.0.something from ’97… Let’s do this!

…

In short, almost nothing on the modern world wide weird will talk to such an old browser. While there was SSL back in 1997, it was pretty primitive and doesn’t apply to modern TLS encryption, and nothing really does plain old HTTP anymore – and even if something did, Netscape 3 simply doesn’t understand modern HTML, scripts, or even graphic standards.

There is ‘frog find‘ though, which is a modern web to ancient computer search engine translator that one can at least use to verify connectivity. And there are Macintosh software archive sites like macintoshrepository.org where you can get cool old abandonware… Said site even congratulates you for using an actual old Mac when using an actual old Mac – but the site is too new for Netscape 3 to figure out…

What I needed was a newer browser – something like Classilla, the unofficial last-gasp of Mozilla compiled for MacOS 8.6 – 9.2 machines. This was child’s play to download with Safari on my M2 laptop but impossible for Netscape 3 on the 8100, so what I needed was a really basic web server on my laptop that Netscape 3 would understand and be able to use…

Ten minutes later and I had Netscape 3 downloading Classilla_9.3.3.sit from Apache on my laptop – which took about three minutes, and then required another three minutes to unstuff. But once that was done it was possible to get the old 8100 onto the information superhighway! (Albeit really slow, in the breakdown lane, with the hazards on…)

Fortunately I maxed out the ram in the 8100, because Classilla – being ‘new’ code from an era where size doesn’t matter – eats up a lot of system memory…

Anyway, once I got the ability to peruse and download stuff, I spent the evening filling the old SCSI HD with period correct games and apps, and hanging out in late 1995. 🙂

Listening to "Youth" by The Midnight

Some of the parts I ordered for the 8100 came in today, so it was time to take the machine apart…

To get to this part requires some careful fiddling as there are a lot of plastic tabs you need to carefully bend to remove board retainers and brackets. And as I mentioned previously, the plastics in this machine have reached an almost chalk-like consistency and are very fragile… But after some extremely careful bending I got everything disconnected without breaking anything and the board flipped out to do some work.

First up was the judicious use of some canned air to remove the lint buildup on the CPU heatsink, around the rom and L2 cache simm, and the power supply. Otherwise the system was really clean; someone took good care of it.

Next on the agenda was removing the 30 year old thermal paste and redoing it with Arctic Silver MX4… Which is overkill on a CPU that dissipates less than 10 watts worst-case – but I might as well take advantage of 21st century chemistry while I’m in here…

Next up was swapping out the ram… I gingerly pried out the two new(er) sticks of TechWorks FPM 32meg and four sticks of Motorola FPM 8meg ram, and replaced the lot with new (as in made in July of 2023) 32meg 60ns EDO ram.

I then pulled out the old pram battery in preparation for the new one that will arrive tomorrow.

Being as these batteries only last about 5 years and the computer currently forgets what day it is every time I turn it off, it was time for a new one. What was interesting is this is an aftermarket battery made by NewerTech (now owned by OWC), but NewerTech hasn’t made these batteries since mid-2015… At least it wasn’t the battery it came with in 1994 – which would have leaked motherboard destroying goo all over everything by now.

This is an all too common occurrence these days.

And that’s where I have to stop for now as the rest of the parts didn’t come in today, and I want to limit the manhandling the plastics receive… So I’ll install the battery tomorrow and then put the board back in the case.

In theory the vram for the video card will also arrive tomorrow and I’ll be able to install that before putting the card back in the system. Once that is done, the 8100 will be as maxed out as humanly possible system-wise. I still have the two BlueSCSI devices coming as well, but they won’t even ship until Saturday.

Oh, there is one more device that came in today…

Back in ’94 everyone was still working out what the One True Standard would be for computer networking, and each competing standard had a different media type and connector set – so it was kind of a mess… Because of this, Apple in their wisdom decided that the new PowerPC machines would just have an AUI (Attachment Unit Interface) on them, and the user could get a media converter for whatever network flavor they wanted… So Apple only needed one port instead of 2-3.

But! AUI ports used 15-pin D-Sub connectors, which is the exact same connector Apple used for their monitors… So to prevent confusion Apple came up with AAUI – a proprietary connector for proprietary network dongles.

Anyway, that’s the update for today – more tomorrow!

Listening to "The Equalizer (Not Alone)" by The Midnight

Signs you may be taking this whole retro computer thing too seriously: you have a guy in Ohio hand-making custom high-speed VRAM for a very unique PDS video card that only works in one model of computer from thirty years ago…

Yep. That’s me…

The PDS-based HPV (High Performance Video) card that the 8100 came with in 1995 had 2megs of VRAM and would do 832×624 in 24 bit color – which was somewhat crazy for a time when PCs were still 640×480 in 16 colors… But the HPV card was expandable to 4megs using 80ns 68-pin VRAM simms that cost a small fortune back in the day and accordingly weren’t super prevalent – hence needing to have it made here in the 21st century.

When this new VRAM gets here and I max out the HPV card, the 8100 will support 1152×870 in 24-bit color – which back in ’95 would have essentially been alien technology. I mean, the “web” didn’t make the transition to 1024×768 until 2002 – 7 years later.

I should also mention that the Apple “Multiple Scan” 17-inch monitor I have on the 8100 was released at the same time in 1994 for a bit over $1000, supports up to 1024×768 at 75Hz, and was just as far ahead of its time as the computer…

Anyway – I’ve also ordered both an internal 50-pin and an external 25-pin BlueSCSI v.2 adapter. The latter will be used to make a backup of the existing 640meg HD which will eventually be replaced by the former. Once this is done, the original drive will be archived and the system will operate off of the internal adapter as it’s faster and pulls less power from the 30 year old power supply.

I also ordered eight 32meg EDO 72-pin SIMMs to max out the ram in the 8100. The new ram is 60ns instead of the stock 80ns because I might pick up a Sonnet 500Mhz G3 upgrade card for it, and that will require faster ram.

Oh, and I have a Farallon AAUI to 10baseT adapter coming – so I can put the 8100 on the LAN at the house, mostly for the giggles.

Listening to "Be Good to Yourself" by Journey

Back in early 1995 my living room / computer lab looked a bit like this:

In the above photo you can see my IBM Model 330-P75 on the left, which had a Pentium 75 in it. It was my BBS / MUCK dialup box… That’s probably FurryMUCK on the screen.

In the middle (sitting on top of the monitor) is an HP Vectra VL series 3 5/90. This had a hotrod Pentium 90 in it and was the server for my Major BBS setup – “Silicon Psychosis”.

And on the right side of the desk is my Apple Power Macintosh 8100/100AV, which was the machine I was using for all of my web stuff and graphic work.

That Mac is the first computer I ever purchased for myself with the intention of using it for actual work, and accordingly it’s the first machine I owned that I actually made money with… I can attribute that old Mac with getting me really going in internet technology, graphic design, and all of the other things I still do to this day.

And since the mid 2000’s I’ve been looking for another 8100 to complete my collection of all the old Macs I’ve owned.

But they are rarer than hen’s teeth because they were like $4500 in 1995 – or about $9000 in 2023 money – for the 100Mhz model, they were only around for six months before the PowerPC 604-based machines came on the scene, and they were insanely fragile… So there weren’t many of them to begin with and most of them have self-destructed or simply fallen apart over the years.

These are also Apple’s first PowerPC machine, so they are a collection of weirdness internally… The 100 and 110Mhz machines used a Peltier Junction cooling system that was generally more trouble than it was worth, they used “NuBus” for expansion cards, and the video card is interfaced on the processor bus using a PDS (processor direct slot). PDS was problematic because if someone removed the card and didn’t install a terminator board bad things happened – and being as every other computer on the planet that had cards didn’t have such a setup, there were a lot of blown machines.

But for all the hassles of this new RISC platform you got some bonuses: MacOS was lightyears ahead of Windows, the PPC 601 ran circles around Pentium-based machines, it was all SCSI inside which left old ATA in the dust, the new PPC machines came with 2-meg video which offered 1152 x 870 resolutions and thousands of colors at the same time, and the machine would address 264megs of ram in a time where most people were running 32megs or so.

Anyway, roll the clock forward almost 30 years and I finally found an 8100 that met my specifications: fully functional and as close to ‘new’ as possible…

So this is my new 8100/80, which while not exactly the same as my circa ’94 8100/100AV, it’s close enough to the original that I spent the afternoon back in 1995.

Overall the 8100/80 is pretty much exactly the same as the 8100/100 performance wise, mostly because the 80 is a clock-doubled CPU on a 40Mhz bus while the 100 is a clock-tripled CPU on a 33Mhz bus – so it essentially runs all of my old OS8 software just like the original.

Those who know these machines will probably be agog at the fact all of the faceplates are intact, and while the plastics are a little yellow they’re still in amazingly good shape… The face plates and the front of the machine are held on with plastic tabs, and the plastics on these machines after 30 years has essentially turned into powder. So if you look at the bezels the wrong way they break off…

I also have the original Apple Multiple Scan 17″ monitor and the keyboard and mouse the system came with – also in pristine condition… Save for the control door on the monitor – the little plastic tab that holds the door closed snapped off – but I think I can use the baking soda and superglue trick to fix it.

Like I said, the plastics are really brittle now.

I picked this all up from Tammy over at Apple Rescue of Denver for a song… It’s got 112megs of RAM in it (72-pin 80ns simms) and a 640meg SCSI HD – and now has its original PDS video card in it.

Everything runs great and I’ve been loading old software on it all day.

I think, like the rest of my functional Apple time-capsules, I’ll max it out as much as possible and get it running on an SSD. This means I’ll need to order a BlueSCSI, more ram, more video ram, an AAUI to ethernet adapter, and other sundry items – all of which are available online for relatively cheap.

Should keep me entertained for good long while. 🙂

Listening to "As the Days Go By" by Marvel83'