Thread
Holy Grail/Crown Jewel of my collection
I've been after this thing for over a decade. I'm glad to have it but boy am I pissed at UPS!
I'm guessing that finding someone willing to part with the top two bezels is going to be even more hard than finding the tower in the first place. But if any of you have any leads or would be willing to part... I'd pay top dollar!
I'm guessing that finding someone willing to part with the top two bezels is going to be even more hard than finding the tower in the first place. But if any of you have any leads or would be willing to part... I'd pay top dollar!
Daystar Digital Genesis MP. The later ones came with up to four 233MHz 604e processors. Adobe had special plugins that could take advantage of them but otherwise it was a rare app that could take advantage. Still... It was king of the hill during the era of computing that got me started on Macs 
I don't know all the details yet. What I do know is it has a blown PSU. The video card has Apple and vga outputs but the machine arrived shortly before I had to go to work so I got no time with it beyond unboxing. I will definitely update this post once I have more details!
Oh, it does have a NASA property of US Govt tag on the front which is pretty cool!
Oh, it does have a NASA property of US Govt tag on the front which is pretty cool!
Is the video card a Twin Turbo? That would be about right for that era, and IMS's (later iXMicro) version of it had the two video connectors. Apple's version, which they licensed to include with the PM9600 (9500?) just had the Apple connector. The two cards also used different drivers, although, if one trades the EPROM, the other driver version will work with the card. Apple's driver was just called 9600_Graphics, so it must have come in the 9600 rather than the 9500.
If Daystar was trying to hit close to a PM9500 but with MP, then a Twin Turbo would have been very nearly stock.
Regarding the Bezels, looks like a job for 3D printing. But it's not as easy as typing it, unfortunately.
While Daystar implemented multi-processing, it is interesting (at least to me) to note that Apple built in support for multi-processing in the hardware. The CPU card pinout includes lines for Primary Bus Request (PBR, bus request from Primary) Primary Bus Grant (PBG) and Primary Data Bus Grant (PDBG), which are all necessary for the CPU to negotiate control of the CPU bus from the bus arbiter (Hammer Head). But, the CPU slot pinout also includes SBR, SBG and SDBG which are bus arbitration signals for a second CPU to use.
How Daystar managed to get four CPUs onto a card that only has arbitration signals for two is an interesting engineering question...
If Daystar was trying to hit close to a PM9500 but with MP, then a Twin Turbo would have been very nearly stock.
Regarding the Bezels, looks like a job for 3D printing.
But it's not as easy as typing it, unfortunately. While Daystar implemented multi-processing, it is interesting (at least to me) to note that Apple built in support for multi-processing in the hardware. The CPU card pinout includes lines for Primary Bus Request (PBR, bus request from Primary) Primary Bus Grant (PBG) and Primary Data Bus Grant (PDBG), which are all necessary for the CPU to negotiate control of the CPU bus from the bus arbiter (Hammer Head). But, the CPU slot pinout also includes SBR, SBG and SDBG which are bus arbitration signals for a second CPU to use.
How Daystar managed to get four CPUs onto a card that only has arbitration signals for two is an interesting engineering question...
I'm probably going to try superglue and tender loving care... As for specs, I don't have much but after taking the side plate off, there's a sticker on the processor card bracket that says "4x 604e 200" which I'm SUPER EXCITED about! Based on the bezel saying Genisis instead of Genesis+, I was expecting a much lower Alec's machine. Don't know anything about ram or video card yet. 72 hour work weeks leave little time for tinkering 