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Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

biosrhythm.com

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Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#11

Post by pbnjeh »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

That's the electronics equivalent of sticking a jet engine in a Cessna, very nice! I really love this kind of hack, instead of ending up in the landfill someone has a ton of fun, learns a lot and breathes new life into a bunch of old hardware. Obviously it's not going to be able to hold its own against modern hardware but who cares, as long as itches get scratched it's all in the game. If you look at crate upon crate…

Not a Cessna, but...

https://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/

(Actually, I suspect you've probably seen this -- a while back. But, like me, it may be a pleasant little memory, along with the one of that fellow with one in his shed for cooling beers.)

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#12

Post by greenbit »

mgiampapa wrote: post #9

While impressive, it would have been a lot easier to just use a SCSI connected Ethernet adapter. Correct SCSI termination would have required sacrificing a chicken and drawing a pentagram in blood, but still easier than this project.

Yeah, but when you get that termination working, you get to turn to the 4th wall and shout, "It's alive! Alive! Oh, now I know what it feels like to be Woz!"

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#13

Post by scarface74 »

mgiampapa wrote: post #9

While impressive, it would have been a lot easier to just use a SCSI connected Ethernet adapter. Correct SCSI termination would have required sacrificing a chicken and drawing a pentagram in blood, but still easier than this project.

I never had those issues with SCSI. By 1996 I had a Zip drive, a Jaz drive, an external CDROM drive and two external hard drives connected to my PPC 6100 without issues.

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#14

Post by NoGravitas »

moloch-hai wrote: post #8

Need to get A/UX running on it now. I only found out decades later that I could, eventually, have crammed 32MB into the 8 slots of my SE/30 I bought "maxed out" at 8M.

One of my hallmates in college ran A/UX on her SE/30. It was rad.

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#15

Post by jacquesm »

pbnjeh wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #2

That's the electronics equivalent of sticking a jet engine in a Cessna, very nice! I really love this kind of hack, instead of ending up in the landfill someone has a ton of fun, learns a lot and breathes new life into a bunch of old hardware. Obviously it's not going to be able to hold its own against modern hardware but who cares, as long as itches get scratched it's all in the game. If you look at crate upon crate…

Not a Cessna, but... https://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/ (Actually, I suspect you've probably seen this -- a while back. But, like me, it may be a pleasant little memory, along with the one of that fellow with one in his shed for cooling beers.)

Yes, I have, that guy is amazing, the engineering and machining abilities are pretty awesome. I wished I had 10% of that talent.

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#16

Post by NoGravitas »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #10

Sometimes I think that if it weren't for heavy cryptography and graphical interfaces, I could do so many things online even with a computer as old as this one. I could browse a textual version of HN, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and even post and comment things! Sending HTTP packets to an open API has been a kids game for decades, unfortunately companies just don't want you to hack together your own solution

I've been reading Gopher under MacOS 8.1 (emulated) over the holidays, and it's been nice. Light WWW sites work in Netscape 3 on it, but you have to offload https to a proxy because it's not compatible with modern TLS.

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#17

Post by bodyfour »

mgiampapa wrote: post #9

While impressive, it would have been a lot easier to just use a SCSI connected Ethernet adapter. Correct SCSI termination would have required sacrificing a chicken and drawing a pentagram in blood, but still easier than this project.

Eh... I had many, many battles with parallel SCSI. However, once active terminators became widely available and affordable (late 90s-ish) it was practically plug&play (just mind the ID switches)

The trickier bit would be to find one of those old SCSI-attached ethernet devices (Asanté, DaynaPort, EtherMac, ...) since they're coveted items in the retro scene. Although it looks like at least PiSCSI can emulate a DaynaPort https://github.com/PiSCSI/piscsi/wiki/Dayna-Port-SCSI-Link

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#19

Post by jacquesm »

scarface74 wrote: post #13
mgiampapa wrote: post #9

While impressive, it would have been a lot easier to just use a SCSI connected Ethernet adapter. Correct SCSI termination would have required sacrificing a chicken and drawing a pentagram in blood, but still easier than this project.

I never had those issues with SCSI. By 1996 I had a Zip drive, a Jaz drive, an external CDROM drive and two external hard drives connected to my PPC 6100 without issues.

Pure luck. Seriously. I wished I could get back all the hours I spent tracking down termination issues. And don't get me started on 10base-T.

Re: Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30

#20

Post by jacquesm »

NoGravitas wrote: post #16
AstixAndBelix wrote: post #10

Sometimes I think that if it weren't for heavy cryptography and graphical interfaces, I could do so many things online even with a computer as old as this one. I could browse a textual version of HN, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and even post and comment things! Sending HTTP packets to an open API has been a kids game for decades, unfortunately companies just don't want you to hack together your own solution

I've been reading Gopher under MacOS 8.1 (emulated) over the holidays, and it's been nice. Light WWW sites work in Netscape 3 on it, but you have to offload https to a proxy because it's not compatible with modern TLS.

Whatever you end up using for a proxy likely has 10x the horsepower of this Mac though.
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