Thread
Mac SE with a weird PDS card
Wel, I went to my favorite place for old electronics once again, Astro Too, and found a Mac SE just sittin on the floor! So I managed to get it for free! There was also an LC II, should I go back and get it, even tho it didnt power up?
EDITL Pics of the card will soon follow, i just need to get the machine in my house, past my dad first!
EDITL Pics of the card will soon follow, i just need to get the machine in my house, past my dad first!
It's debatable about getting the LC. For free you can afford to take your chances with it, but you take a big risk if they want money for it. Those old LC's suffer from leaky capacitors the same as the SE/30's so if it's been sitting for while with leaks the motherboard could be rotted away in places. So basically if it's free, go for it, you have nothing to lose as it could be repairable or at the very least you might get some usable parts out of it.
At least pop the lid and check for obvious signs of goo around the caps. It may not power up because the PRAM battery is dead. If you have a good battery, take it in with you. If not, try the on for a while, quick off-on trick.
NO MAC LEFT BEHIND. Save them all!
i went back today and found out why it was not powering up. the ps is clicking so i left it. and also ran into a fellow mla'er sawtoothdude
My LC stopped powering up a while ago due to the clicking PSU. I was in a hurry to test some things and was a bit annoyed 'cuz I didn't have another LC to use.
So, I ripped open the PSU to see what I could see. Lo, and behold: the caps in the PSU had leaked goo all over inside it. I gave it the kitchen-sink treatment and my LC is working fine again. Someday I'll have to recap the PSU but I bet that won't be for a few years at least.
So, I ripped open the PSU to see what I could see. Lo, and behold: the caps in the PSU had leaked goo all over inside it. I gave it the kitchen-sink treatment and my LC is working fine again. Someday I'll have to recap the PSU but I bet that won't be for a few years at least.
well, i just cracked the SE open, and lo and behold, the card inside is none other that an AST Mac86!!!!!!! Any idea where i can find some drivers, im not sure that I can get the drivers off the internal hd, because its having severe stiction problems
Congrats on an awesome find! I hope you have good luck getting it running. System 6 / Minix anyone?
Good Lord! Is that an x86 in an SE??
http://lowendmac.com/ii/mac286.htmlGood Lord! Is that an x86 in an SE??
looks like. pretty frickin cool.
Holy crap that was sweet find. There's not many SE's out there that can run DOS anymore. I have a similar thing for the Atari ST called the Supercharger that has an 8086 and came with MSDOS 4.01.
i just cant find the drivers for it! i am trying to get the hard drive to spin, but i think its dead, already tried hitting it and freezing it.
Try holding it in your hands and spinning, sometimes it will make the stiction lose it's grip.
awesome find!
Never heard of that board, nice find. AST sold off their designs to Orange Micro, I like their 386 and 486 Nubus cards.
Whatever you do don't junk that SE HD, I would think the rare drivers are on that disk. Could be the heads are stuck to the platters.
Whatever you do don't junk that SE HD, I would think the rare drivers are on that disk. Could be the heads are stuck to the platters.
What make/model hard drive is it? Several older drives, from IBM, MiniScribe, Quantum, Sony, and a few others had the bottom of the spindle motor exposed thru the lower case.
Sometimes, on some of these older drives, removing the drive's PCB and giving the spindle motor a LIGHT spin will be enough to break the stiction.
Sometimes, on some of these older drives, removing the drive's PCB and giving the spindle motor a LIGHT spin will be enough to break the stiction.
i really wanted one of the Orange Micro Athlon-based cards back in the day. of course, there are none on ebay because nobody bought them in the first place :-/
Driver?
A quick visit to http://hotline.tracker-tracker.com and search for Mac86 turns up a 28.65MB file titled: TB2Mac86CD.dmg on the Hotline server Merlin at 91.16.65.134:5500
Cheers...
A quick visit to http://hotline.tracker-tracker.com and search for Mac86 turns up a 28.65MB file titled: TB2Mac86CD.dmg on the Hotline server Merlin at 91.16.65.134:5500
Cheers...
A .dmg is a file that no SE on earth could ever read. Secondly, a driver for a computer that operates off a 1.4MB floppy or a 40MB hard drive is hardly going to be 26MB in size.
Hummm...
Dear Dr B.
The question mark after the word driver was meant to indicate some doubt as to whether or not this file is the driver in question. The file, of course, may have nothing to do with the AST Mac86.
When I have a interesting hardware device that lacks only the driver software I check out everything that looks even close. Most of the time it turns out to be just as useless as you predict but sometimes...
Cheers
Dear Dr B.
The question mark after the word driver was meant to indicate some doubt as to whether or not this file is the driver in question. The file, of course, may have nothing to do with the AST Mac86.
When I have a interesting hardware device that lacks only the driver software I check out everything that looks even close. Most of the time it turns out to be just as useless as you predict but sometimes...
Cheers
Well, the 'driver' used a 20 MB disk image for use with the Mac286, so it's possible that the 'driver' was shipped with a 20 MB disk image. Just as how many of the questionably-legal OSx86 'Hackintosh' Torrent files aren't just for the couple-hundred-kilobyte hack-files, but are for a full disk image. Technically, that isn't *needed*, but it makes it easier to use. Likewise, I would imagine that the large file found on Torrent is the drivers PLUS the hard disk image.
Of course, after typing the above, I have determined that TB2Mac86CD.dmg is really "Timbuktu for Mac, version 8.6, CD image"
Of course, after typing the above, I have determined that TB2Mac86CD.dmg is really "Timbuktu for Mac, version 8.6, CD image"