Thread

Booting and gray screen...

68kMLA Troubleshooting 73 posts Mar 2, 2009 to Jan 27, 2011

#1 Mon, 2 Mar 2009 - 18:58 68kMLA

Hi,

I'm trying to boot a prototype mac - PowerMac 9700 - and I'm trying both OS X and OS 8/9.

In terms of trying to boot OS 8/9 and the main issue so far is that when I boot using the apple rom (APPL) I only get a gray screen (no happy or sad mac). No cursor or anything else.

In terms of normal macs has anyone seen this behavior before. For example I've seen something similar when SCSI termination was set incorrectly on a PowerMac 8500 with a frozen gray screen but at least this had a cursor on.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

James.

#2 Mon, 2 Mar 2009 - 19:25 68kMLA

Where did you get a "Power Express" ?

#3 Tue, 3 Mar 2009 - 22:59 68kMLA

Ahh, the infamous Power Express. Very few of these actually boot...if you can get yours to run, you'll have an extremely rare, sought after, collectable machine.

#4 Tue, 3 Mar 2009 - 23:13 68kMLA

Captain Z used to have a fair amount of information about the PowerExpress machines on his website. It seems to be down at the moment, but it's on Archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060621035412/http://www.captainz.net/

There is also some information on the DigiBarn website:

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/mac-powerexpress/index.html

#5 Mon, 9 Mar 2009 - 22:02 68kMLA

Hey,

Thanks for your replies guys.

I got the PEX from a guy who had it originally on the applefritter forums.

I solved the gray screen issue (the mouse/keyboard doesn't work) but it was down to having a CPU installed that the Mac OS ROM didn't recognise (a G4).

Putting a 604e CPU in got Mac OS 8.6 booting.

Full past thread here: http://www.applefritter.com/node/23597

Thanks,

James.

#6 Tue, 10 Mar 2009 - 21:01 68kMLA

I'm very interested to hear the strange boot chime of this Mac.

#7 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 - 17:50 68kMLA

Very cool that you got your Power Express working!!

So are you using the digibarn ROMs, or did you make your own SIMM? Do you have ROM dumps somewhere?

#8 Sun, 15 Mar 2009 - 04:24 68kMLA

Do you have ROM dumps somewhere?

YES, good question - because we could then pull the startup sound from the appropriate ROM dump so we could hear it!! I've never found a single recording or extraction of this sound on the internet.

Please share the ROM dumps if you have them!

#9 Mon, 16 Mar 2009 - 22:32 68kMLA

Very cool that you got your Power Express working!!
So are you using the digibarn ROMs, or did you make your own SIMM? Do you have ROM dumps somewhere?

Thanks, I'm using the Digibarn ROM SIMM, which I've borrowed for a while. I've dumped the ROM and will be trying to make my own ROM SIMM.

I've e-mailed 'Denis Nedry' the ROM SIMM dump.

#10 Mon, 16 Mar 2009 - 22:33 68kMLA

Do you have ROM dumps somewhere?

Click to expand...

YES, good question - because we could then pull the startup sound from the appropriate ROM dump so we could hear it!! I've never found a single recording or extraction of this sound on the internet.

Please share the ROM dumps if you have them!

Hi,

I've now dumped the ROM and can e-mail it, if send me a PM with your e-mail address.

James.

#11 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 06:54 68kMLA

This is very cool...now with any luck, the maybe....5 other people who have Power Expresses will be able to get them up and running. People have been trying to get these things to boot for years. Very awesome.

#12 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 09:36 68kMLA

This is very cool...now with any luck, the maybe....5 other people who have Power Expresses will be able to get them up and running. People have been trying to get these things to boot for years. Very awesome.

Yeah - if anyone knows whose the other people are - please make them aware of the latest developments!

#13 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 09:37 68kMLA

If people would like to have a play around with the ROM files - I've made available the following:

* PEX ROM SIMM Dump

* Original OF 2.0a9 Flash Chips Dump

* Digibarn OF 2.3 Flash Chips Dump

* OF 2.3 Device Tree listing (from Digibarn's Flash chips)

#14 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 10:10 68kMLA

I'm also borrowing from Digibarn the SCSI HD which were in their prototype - however they both don't work:

1 x Quantum Viking 3.5 series 455 68pin SCSI-2. Drive spins up but never becomes logically ready

1x Seagate Barracuda ST34371W 68pin SCSI-2. Drive spins up with lots of vibration but then cuts out.

Due to the way they were arranged in the case I suspect that the Quantum Viking would have been the boot disk, and the Seagate the additional HD.

I was thinking of getting a HD specialist (www.xytron.co.uk) to try and resurrect the system HD to see if there were any interesting files on this. I've found a reliable place that would charge £195 ($274.238) if data could be recovered.

Would anyone be prepared to chip in to enable this to happen?

#15 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 13:45 68kMLA

I thought I'd heard the unusual second boot sound the PEX makes - it's the same as the one that had been previously uncovered by Applefritter members: http://www.applefritter.com/node/3376

#16 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 14:07 68kMLA

BOTH STARTUP SOUNDS are in the digibarn flash dump. The normal one and the one nobody has ever heard.

The original flash dump contains YET DIFFERENT startup sounds. The first one is the 6300 sound on the left channel with someone saying "I know that I rescued this company" on the right. The second one is someone saying "Kill me!" I'm working on figuring out exactly how to interleave these files together so I can then figure out exactly the attributes of the audio, after which I can extract some good samples for everyone to hear!

#17 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 14:40 68kMLA

I believe you may not have dumped the Digibarn flash chips properly. It appears that in every single byte, bit 8 is stuck on. i.e. if you did "AND 0x10" to each byte.

Please tell me you haven't sent them back yet!

Note: The original flash chips do appear to be dumped properly, just not the Digibarn ones.

#18 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 15:22 68kMLA

Here is an AIFF audio extraction from the original flash chips:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/OF_2.0a9.aif

And here is an extraction from the Digibarn chips:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/Digibarn.aif

NOTE that the sound is problematic due to the stuck bit.

I believe that the interleave is configured as 4 bytes from even, 4 bytes from odd, 4 even, 4 odd, etc.

#19 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 17:08 68kMLA

I thought I'd heard the unusual second boot sound the PEX makes - it's the same as the one that had been previously uncovered by Applefritter members: http://www.applefritter.com/node/3376

Aha - I obviously had not read this post.

It appears that I have chosen an incorrect sample rate for the second PEX startup sound from Digibarn. It still would be interesting to extract the original sound directly from ROM if you are able to re-dump it.

Also of interest, it seems the PEX startup sound is cut short. I'm not sure where the rest of the samples are; maybe they just don't exist in this particular ROM. This is a prototype so it seems feasible that they may have cut it short. The only way to know for sure is to listen to the actual PEX starting up and compare to the sound that I extract.

Perhaps the ROM chips are larger than you calculated and you didn't get a complete dump?

#20 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 18:30 68kMLA

Here is an AIFF audio extraction from the original flash chips:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/OF_2.0a9.aif

And here is an extraction from the Digibarn chips:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/Digibarn.aif

NOTE that the sound is problematic due to the stuck bit.

I believe that the interleave is configured as 4 bytes from even, 4 bytes from odd, 4 even, 4 odd, etc.

Hi - Thanks for extracting the sounds. I've re-extracted the Digibarn chips and uploaded with the same file name - so please re-download.

#21 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 22:30 68kMLA

I've re-extracted the Digibarn chips and uploaded with the same file name - so please re-download.

It appears to still have the same stuck bit. The even dump should start with 0x 4800 0008, and it still starts with 0x 5810 1018.

I suppose it must be your dumper, or the way that you've hooked it up to your dumper, seeing as how the flash chips work when installed in the PEX. It could also be a timing problem with your dumper, which could maybe be fixed by reducing the speed.

Something else that might work - maybe you could swap the data bits around? You could put them in reverse order or something. If you re-dump with a different bit stuck (so the currently missing bit gets through on a different bit), I could easily combine the dumps together into one complete, accurate dump. We can verify because the beginning your original ROM and the digibarn flash ROMs are identical.

#22 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 - 23:28 68kMLA

I've re-extracted the Digibarn chips and uploaded with the same file name - so please re-download.

Click to expand...

It appears to still have the same stuck bit. The even dump should start with 0x 4800 0008, and it still starts with 0x 5810 1018.

I suppose it must be your dumper, or the way that you've hooked it up to your dumper, seeing as how the flash chips work when installed in the PEX. It could also be a timing problem with your dumper, which could maybe be fixed by reducing the speed.

Something else that might work - maybe you could swap the data bits around? You could put them in reverse order or something. If you re-dump with a different bit stuck (so the currently missing bit gets through on a different bit), I could easily combine the dumps together into one complete, accurate dump. We can verify because the beginning your original ROM and the digibarn flash ROMs are identical.

Hi,

I've re-dumped them using a different PLLC32 adaptor and uploaded them to:

http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/OF2_3_dump2.zip

Please let me know if these files are fixed.

James.

#23 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:31 68kMLA

This is also a bad dump. Your data bits seem fine now, but your address bits are screwed up. 1 means working, 0 means "stuck", x means not used:

MSB <---> LSB

xxxx xxxx xxxx 1000 0000 1111 1111 1111

I believe this is the way that the address bits are stuck now (not certain though!):

xxxx xxxx xxxx x010 1000 xxxx xxxx xxxx

Please be very careful; it is possible that your dumper could damage the flash chips if it isn't set up properly. I would recommend researching the pinout of the flash chips and verifying your adapters and dumper configuration.

#24 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:37 68kMLA

What's the differance between the flash chips and the rom simm?

#25 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:42 68kMLA

What's the differance between the flash chips and the rom simm?

This is a strange Mac. It has one part of the ROM stored in flash chips and a different part of the ROM stored in a ROM SIMM. They aren't redundant; both are apparently necessary to boot the Mac. We're not really sure how they work together but we do know that the startup sounds are stored in flash.

#26 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:43 68kMLA

ahhh... So the 3 meg one is rom, and the two 512k ones are flash?

#27 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:46 68kMLA

Oh, and the "even" and "odd" parts are the same as the "hi" and "lo" parts I've seen on some other roms??

#28 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:49 68kMLA

Do you think it would be possible to install the Flash chips back into the PEX, boot into Mac OS 9, and use a software ROM dumper run right on the Mac? I'm not sure exactly how this would work with 2 separate ROMs like this, but it might be a safer approach. It could potentially work. I can de-interleave the dump back into two 512k dumps that you could then burn to new flash chips if this works.

It's also possible that you'll only get the ROM SIMM to dump this way. There's no telling.

#29 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:50 68kMLA

If someone can get a PM9700 running, it'd be neat to write an emulator for it

#30 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 00:57 68kMLA

ahhh... So the 3 meg one is rom, and the two 512k ones are flash?

They're both ROM. The 3MB one is the ROM SIMM, and the 1MB (2*512k) is flash.

Oh, and the "even" and "odd" parts are the same as the "hi" and "lo" parts I've seen on some other roms??

Could be. The Flash ROM is stored in two separate flash chips, and it is easier in some situations to interleave the data between the 2 chips. With this one, 4 bytes come from "lo", then the next 4 are from "hi", next 4 from "lo", etc. Back and forth like that. It's not always 4 though. I have written a small program for this that de-interleaves the two files back together into one big file so I could pull the sound samples earlier in this thread.

If someone can get a PM9700 running, it'd be neat to write an emulator for it

Once we get a proper dump of this ROM, you may be able to use it in SheepShaver. That would technically be an emulation of a 9700.

#31 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 01:02 68kMLA

Cool!

And maybe the flash goes toward the front, the end, or somewhere in the middle of the data in the ROM SIMM; Maybe they could be somehow combined into one ROM image so we could actually run it in sheepsaver; I don't think sheepshaver could/would accept 2/3 files as the ROM

#32 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 01:03 68kMLA

Oh, and could you email me this program

EDIT: I could PM you my email adress

#33 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 01:08 68kMLA

This is also a bad dump. Your data bits seem fine now, but your address bits are screwed up. 1 means working, 0 means "stuck", x means not used:
MSB <---> LSB

xxxx xxxx xxxx 1000 0000 1111 1111 1111

I believe this is the way that the address bits are stuck now (not certain though!):

xxxx xxxx xxxx x010 1000 xxxx xxxx xxxx

Please be very careful; it is possible that your dumper could damage the flash chips if it isn't set up properly. I would recommend researching the pinout of the flash chips and verifying your adapters and dumper configuration.

I have just verified the way that the address bits are stuck. The above info is correct.

#34 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 01:15 68kMLA

Couldn't you just combine the two corrupt ROMs to get a complete one?

#35 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 01:39 68kMLA

Couldn't you just combine the two corrupt ROMs to get a complete one?

No. We have most of the information but we're still missing some.

#36 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 02:41 68kMLA

BOTH STARTUP SOUNDS are in the digibarn flash dump. The normal one and the one nobody has ever heard.
The original flash dump contains YET DIFFERENT startup sounds. The first one is the 6300 sound on the left channel with someone saying "I know that I rescued this company" on the right. The second one is someone saying "Kill me!" I'm working on figuring out exactly how to interleave these files together so I can then figure out exactly the attributes of the audio, after which I can extract some good samples for everyone to hear!

Sounds like a Gil Amalio quote to be, although even Google didn't know.

#37 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 09:18 68kMLA

Do you think it would be possible to install the Flash chips back into the PEX, boot into Mac OS 9, and use a software ROM dumper run right on the Mac? I'm not sure exactly how this would work with 2 separate ROMs like this, but it might be a safer approach. It could potentially work. I can de-interleave the dump back into two 512k dumps that you could then burn to new flash chips if this works.
It's also possible that you'll only get the ROM SIMM to dump this way. There's no telling.

The PEX ROM SIMM dump was generated by booting into OS 9 - apologies for not stating this. Only the 3MB is recognised - the 1mb on the flash chips doesn't seem to be counted,

#38 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 09:32 68kMLA

This is also a bad dump. Your data bits seem fine now, but your address bits are screwed up. 1 means working, 0 means "stuck", x means not used:
MSB <---> LSB

xxxx xxxx xxxx 1000 0000 1111 1111 1111

I believe this is the way that the address bits are stuck now (not certain though!):

xxxx xxxx xxxx x010 1000 xxxx xxxx xxxx

Please be very careful; it is possible that your dumper could damage the flash chips if it isn't set up properly. I would recommend researching the pinout of the flash chips and verifying your adapters and dumper configuration.

Click to expand...

I have just verified the way that the address bits are stuck. The above info is correct.

For reference I'm using this USB-based programmer/dumper: http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4225 with this PLLC32 adaptor http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=3104.

The second alternate dump I did was using this adaptor: http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=3202 but I'm going to stay away from that as I believe the other adaptor is the correct one to use.

I've only set the software to read the chip, so no accidental erasing will occur - although I take your point about the reader corrupting something. I'm going to re-dump the original flash chips that came with the board to check that the dumper can still produce a correct result. I'll then try again with the Digibarn chips.

Of course, if you've got any tips on further configuring the dumper, or processes of verification it would be much appreciated.

#39 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 09:55 68kMLA

What's the differance between the flash chips and the rom simm?

Click to expand...

This is a strange Mac. It has one part of the ROM stored in flash chips and a different part of the ROM stored in a ROM SIMM. They aren't redundant; both are apparently necessary to boot the Mac. We're not really sure how they work together but we do know that the startup sounds are stored in flash.

My theory is that the flash chips contain open firmware (OF) and the very low-level code to get the machine to load up OF. This is why the OF version changes when I've put the Digibarn flash chips into the motherboard. As the ROM SIMM is only 3MB I think this doesn't contain any OF.

On NewWorld ROM machines the startup from is only about 1MB in size (such as the B&W G3). Also on NewWorld machines (which load the Mac OS toolbox ROM from file) the Mac OS ROM file is 3MB. On the Beige G3 (oldworld) the ROM SIMM is 4MB.

I suggest to boot into the classic Mac OS on the PEX the following process occurs:

1) OF loads from the flash chips,

2) Boots to the default device of OF APPL,ROM

3) In this case the start memory location of APPL,ROM is within the flash chips.

4) This then plays the second startup sound and then points to a memory location which is the start of the Mac OS toolbox ROM from the SIMM.

In comparison the oldworld boot process is:

1) OF loads from the onboard ROM / ROM SIMM (in Beige G3s)

2) Boots to the default device of OF APPL,ROM, which then loads the Mac OS toolbox ROM (stored on the onboard ROM/ROM SIMM)

The newworld boot process is:

1) OF loads from the flash chips on the motherboard

2) OF locates the Mac OS ROM file on the chosen boot device

3) This is stitched into the OF memory and APPL,ROM is defined in memory as the boot device.

4) Boots to the default device of OF APPL,ROM, which then loads the Mac OS toolbox ROM

Normally a ROM SIMM added into a board would complete disable an existing onboard ROM, but as people have noted they seems to coexist. It's almost a half-way house between the oldworld and newworld ROM architectures.

I found the documents below useful reading in understanding the classic Mac OS boot process. Mac OS X simply uses OF to load BootX and the Kernel, and does not use the Mac OS toolbox ROM at all.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/pci_srvcs/pci_cards_drivers/PCI_BOOK.26.html#pgfId=3296

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA29027?viewlocale=en_US

#40 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 10:37 68kMLA

A couple of things I'll try tonight are the tips in this forum about seating the device, as one of the problems with the Digibarn chips is getting the Device ID recognised:

http://www.mcumall.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1568&SearchTerms=am29f040

The forum post also confirms that the PLCC32-DIP32 is the correct adapter to use (http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=3104)

I've checked the the software has the correct device id for the chip, which it does:

http://www.ourchip.com/NZILIAO/chips/memory/AM29F040.pdf states that the manufacturer id is 01 and the device id is A4.

The software has this entry for the chip (applies to 29F040 and 29F040B):

Name="AM29F040B",ID="01A4",Class="29F040B",Category="FLASH",MFG="AMD";

#41 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 14:56 68kMLA

Your setup is a good one; I don't think you have to worry about damaging the chips.

Interesting that your original flash ROMs dumped properly but not the Digibarn ones.

I would try to reduce the speed of the dumping process if you can. I would think that's the most likely to make it work. RAM/ROM can be very picky about timing.

Next, if that doesn't work, I would dig out a 32-pin DIP socket with long leads, similar to this:

You can see the pinout here of the ROM with and without your PLCC <-> DIP adapter:

Insert your flash ROM into the adapter, and now the pinout of the adapter is the same as the left, DIP pinout in the image above. Insert the adapter (containing the ROM) into the DIP socket (top image), and simply bend DQ3 out of the way, and then DQ4 into its place.

If this works, the dump will still be screwed up, but it should now contain the missing bit, making it possible to mathematically derive a good dump from it, combined with your previous dumps.

There are some other experienced people here that could verify that swapping data bits like this is not a dangerous thing to do if you feel uneasy about it.

#42 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 18:39 68kMLA

Right, I think I've got a proper dump this time - selected the slowest speed and it worked fine for the even ROM chip and was a bit more flakey on the odd ROM chip - but eventually got a successful ID check, read and verify.

The latest dump is here: http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3.zip

The even dump now starts with 0x 4800 0008

James.

#43 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 19:07 68kMLA

Right, I think I've got a proper dump this time - selected the slowest speed and it worked fine for the even ROM chip and was a bit more flakey on the odd ROM chip - but eventually got a successful ID check, read and verify.
The latest dump is here: http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3.zip

The even dump now starts with 0x 4800 0008

James.

Dump 3 was successful!

Original, de-interleaved into one file:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/original_interleaved.bin.zip

Dump 3, de-interleaved into one file:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/dump3_interleaved.bin.zip

Dump 3 sound 1:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/digibarn1.aif

Dump 3 sound 2 (PEX sound):

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/digibarn2.aif

Original sounds (same as before):

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/OF_2.0a9.aif

The PEX sound is cut short, but it also has a subtle fade-out at the end which clearly indicates to me that this was on purpose. I believe these dumps are all good now.

#44 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 19:43 68kMLA

Cool!

So... Any way to combinr the SIMM dump and the Flash dump so I can run it in sheepshaver?

#45 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 20:53 68kMLA

Cool!
So... Any way to combinr the SIMM dump and the Flash dump so I can run it in sheepshaver?

I don't know. Maybe but it's probably not worth the trouble. I don't see how it would work any different than, say, a 9600 ROM. You would probably have to tweak SheepShaver. Notice that SS doesn't have a startup sound when you first launch it. So it isn't probably using the whole ROM anyway.

#46 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 - 22:01 68kMLA

...Or sound emulation hasn't started yet?

#47 Fri, 20 Mar 2009 - 13:49 68kMLA

Duplicating the Flash chips should be easy now, but do you have any plans to duplicate the ROM SIMM?

#48 Sun, 22 Mar 2009 - 18:47 68kMLA

Duplicating the Flash chips should be easy now, but do you have any plans to duplicate the ROM SIMM?

Yes - I bought a tape of 10 same model AMD FLash chips to ue to duplicate the flash dumps on - will be doing this and testing them soon.

I will try to duplicate the rom simm - or design one which has removal flash chips for the rom simm socket.

Somone on the applefritter forums already has pcb layout schematics and pinouts for rom chips that he helped design/manufacture for powersurge/beige g3s and clones.

If you know anyone that knows anyhting about this that would be good to know.

#49 Tue, 7 Apr 2009 - 23:49 68kMLA

The guy saying " I know that I rescued this company" is Gil Amelio. That voice matches up with his in an apple press release.

#50 Wed, 8 Apr 2009 - 08:20 68kMLA

The guy saying " I know that I rescued this company" is Gil Amelio. That voice matches up with his in an apple press release.

Fascinating - my other half doesn't like this startup tone - says it creeps her out!

Do you happen to have a link to an audio press release of Gil Amelio - I've tried Google but to no avail.

#51 Wed, 8 Apr 2009 - 16:09 68kMLA

If you have your own custom sound that is the same length of time, we could insert that into the flash dumps and reburn them. Wouldn't THAT be cool - a Mac that you could customize the startup sound.

I don't know of another Mac with such easily-modified ROM.

#52 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 - 22:29 68kMLA

Right, I think I've got a proper dump this time - selected the slowest speed and it worked fine for the even ROM chip and was a bit more flakey on the odd ROM chip - but eventually got a successful ID check, read and verify.
The latest dump is here: http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/OF_2_3_dump3.zip

The even dump now starts with 0x 4800 0008

James.

Click to expand...

Dump 3 was successful!

Original, de-interleaved into one file:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/original_interleaved.bin.zip

Dump 3, de-interleaved into one file:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/dump3_interleaved.bin.zip

Dump 3 sound 1:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/digibarn1.aif

Dump 3 sound 2 (PEX sound):

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/digibarn2.aif

Original sounds (same as before):

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/temporary/OF_2.0a9.aif

The PEX sound is cut short, but it also has a subtle fade-out at the end which clearly indicates to me that this was on purpose. I believe these dumps are all good now.

For some reason I can't get these files to play under OS X.5.6.

What gives? I really want to hear them.

Thanks.

#53 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 - 03:12 68kMLA

Option-click the links to download, then open the files in QuickTime player. These are ordinary AIFF files.

#54 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 - 04:27 68kMLA

The movie file could not be opened.

The end of the file was reached.

I re-downloaded them and had the same problem.

They originally d/l with .AIF, i changed them to .AIFF and still no go with quicktime.

10.5.6, everything up to date.

EDIT:

Massive FAIL!

Not really.

The file digibarn.aif is 263 bytes.

The others files are fine.

#55 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 - 05:50 68kMLA

The file digibarn.aif is 263 bytes.
The others files are fine.

Digibarn1.aif is 256k

Digibarn2.aif is 256k

OF_2.0a9.aif is 512k

These are the only 3 files. I just downloaded each of them and they play fine for me. There was another audio file from a bad dump earlier in this thread which was the same as Digibarn2.aif, but it sounded bad. I may have deleted this file from my web space, you may actually be downloading a small 404 HTML file which QuickTime Player can't play.

#56 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 - 07:27 68kMLA

Weirdness than.

I must have done something to d/l a 263 byte file, what it is I don't know.

I have all 3 working files now.

Must say that new startup sound is awesome.

Wonder if I could hard code it into my PBG4.

That'd piss Steve off good.

#57 Wed, 15 Apr 2009 - 15:47 68kMLA

Weirdness than.
I must have done something to d/l a 263 byte file, what it is I don't know.

That's probably because of the minimum block size on your hard drive. Often times files will show up a few kilobytes bigger than they actually are.

Wonder if I could hard code it into my PBG4.
That'd piss Steve off good.

If you can edit the ROM you can.

Beware that the normal startup sound is 22kHz stereo and I think this PEX one is 44kHz stereo so you may either have to downsample the audio to 22kHz or hack the actual playback sample rate somehow.

#58 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 - 12:55 68kMLA

I'm going to dig up this thread. I can't honestly believe that I missed it during the original post cycle, being such an avid Macintosh PowerExpress fan myself. I still have copies of CaptainZ's MP3 audio dumps from years ago:

Macintosh PowerExpress (9700) Boot Chime (60kb)

Macintosh PowerExpress "Manhattan" Death Chime "Kill Me!" (116kb)

Macintosh PowerExpress "Manhattan" Boot Chime "Gil Amelio" (128kb)

Unfortunately that's all I can offer since the rest of my knowledge is all up there in the ol' brain. Interesting thread though, and congratulations on getting the mythical beast to boot.

#59 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 - 00:04 68kMLA

If you have your own custom sound that is the same length of time, we could insert that into the flash dumps and reburn them. Wouldn't THAT be cool - a Mac that you could customize the startup sound.
I don't know of another Mac with such easily-modified ROM.

Well, I wish I hadn't missed this thread before.

Now that James has found sockets for the PSOP-44 chips, it would actually be pretty easy to modify the ROMs on the entire x500 and x200 family--oh, and probably the x100 family as well.

Remove the existing ROMs, install the sockets, then program/reprogram PSOP-44 8 Mbit Flash chips with ROM code.

I've done some work where I've desoldered and replaced the ROM chips with Flash chips with the Kansas ROM. My Umax S900 which is my main machine at home has Kansas ROMs installed.

The original soldering job might be a little challenging (routine for me), but after that you just need a programmer which will handle the 44 pin PSOP flash.

If you have a Power Computing ROM SIMM it can be a little more interesting. Replace the ROM chips with PSOP-44 sockets again. Find the 1Kohm resistor which ties pin 116 of the ROM module to GND. Remove the resistor and connect the pad which connects to pin 116 to 5V.

In the x500 (and 7200) family of Macintoshes, pin 116 of the ROM DIMM socket is connected to the CE_ (chip enable) pins of the logic board ROM chips. These pins are active low and they are weakly (~4Kohms) tied to ground. If you tie pin 116 of a ROM module to 5V and then plug in the ROM module, it will tie all the CE_ pins to 5V and disable the logic board ROM chips, allowing the chips on the ROM module to take over.

So, once you have such a module, you can plug it into an x500/x600/x200 family machine and reprogram the socketed chips as desired.

Here is the pinout for the ROM module. The PS stands for Power Surge which is the x500/x600 family. The Beige, PowerSurge and NuBus Power Macs all use the same pinout. The Beige uses the 3.3V pins for power supply, while the others use the 5V pins.

http://www.io.com/~trag/Apple_pinouts/Firmware_Module_Pinout.txt

I've had the hardware ability to modify the ROMs for about seven years, but I'm not much of a programmer/hacker.

#60 Thu, 16 Jul 2009 - 18:37 68kMLA

I have had one of the PowerExpress prototypes for 4 or 5 years, so I thought I would provide a link to my page about it:

http://www.isellmacs.com/macsystems.htm

#61 Wed, 22 Jul 2009 - 08:51 68kMLA

Oh man this machine I had forgotten about.

I have an ES 275mhz G3 card sitting around somewhere that I got off of eBay a while back. All it said was G3 275mhz on the side but the stupid card wouldn't work in my 9600. I'll have to find that card now and see if it's anything special or just a dud G3 card.

#62 Wed, 22 Jul 2009 - 17:25 68kMLA

That woulkd make sense for a development prototype. Presumably the flash was used for the part of the ROM which was not considered finalized.

#63 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 - 20:49 68kMLA

Sorry to bump this topic, but did someone made the rom work in SheepShaver?

#64 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 - 04:39 68kMLA

Does anyone still have the files linked in this thread? The links are all dead.

#65 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 - 05:10 68kMLA

Do you want the startup sounds, ROM dumps or both? I don't have them handy at the moment but I will next monday.

#66 Fri, 2 Apr 2010 - 11:23 68kMLA

Hi 'Dennis Nedry',

Hope you're well.

I was wondering if you could post/e-mail me the de-interleaved rom file for the Power Express 9700 as the old link isn't working at the moment.

Many thanks,

James.

#67 Sat, 3 Apr 2010 - 00:37 68kMLA

Here is a link to all the files from this thread. I have removed the bad dumps, so everything is good.

http://rapidshare.com/files/371319320/PEX__Power_Mac_9700__ROMs.zip.html

#68 Sat, 10 Jul 2010 - 05:29 68kMLA

yea, i really like that startupsound. going to have to start hacking ROMs now. hehe.

#69 Thu, 16 Sep 2010 - 21:39 68kMLA

None of these dumps seem have valid checksums. Could they possibly be redumped?

When dumping, always take multiple dumps and verify that they match. If you've done this and they do match, then something weird is going on.

Thanks!

#70 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 - 00:41 68kMLA

None of these dumps seem have valid checksums.

Where are you getting the correct checksum with which to compare? Are you using the first group of bytes of the file or something? I do not believe that the first bytes of the flash dump are a checksum because a startup sound is located there.

If you haven't already, have a look here for Mac ROM checksum verification:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/projects/checksum/

Being that this is from a prototype, they may not have bothered with checksumming, or it may be done a different way.

#71 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 - 00:52 68kMLA

Also, the ROM SIMM dump was done with a software dumper running on an actual PEX Mac, so it's highly unlikely for it to have an error.

#72 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 - 05:58 68kMLA

The structure of this ROM is as follows:

3 MB on ROM SIMM

1 MB on flash chips

The ROM SIMM is not supposed to change, but the Flash chip can and did during development. This was the reason for only 3MB being checksummed: the last 1MB, which resided on the Flash chips, could easily be changed.

Therefore, the fact that only 3MB was checksummed was NOT a bug, and was completely deliberate!

What utility was used to dump? We usually recommend CopyROM from http://www.emulators.com/freefile/MACUTILS.ZIP because many other dumpers only grab the first 3MB or otherwise scramble the dump. Would it be possible for a re-dump to be taken with this version of CopyROM, as well as a screenshot of the CopyROM window? This would establish whether the ROMs actually are weird, or that the dump was bad.

Thank you!

#73 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 - 21:52 68kMLA

Hi,

I've done a comprehensive dump of the ROM SIMM using 3 different utiltiies and 3 times per utility. I tried copy rom, but this didn't launch properly. I've also included a report from TattleTech about the ROM SIMM and the Apple System Profiler report.

Interestingly, the Tattletech report shows the full rom as being just over 3MB - i.e. the 1MB on the flash chips doesn't show up at all to the OS.

In this zip file are further zip files for each set of ROM SIMM dumps, which contains the program used and the dumps themselves. Dumps from the Flash chips are also included (which were done via a USB chip programmer)

http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/digibarn.zip

James.