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Fediverse (Mastodon etc): @Sprite_tm@social. spritesmods.com
So, does it all work? I'll let you judge for yourself:
I'm not a native speaker of the English language, so apologies for any errors in the narration.
As usual, all the sources are downloadable. The firmware for both the AVRs in the ADB-to-USB-converter and the LPC1343 in the display controller are licensed under the GNU GPLv3, my hacked copy of minivmac with support for serial ports and compilation on Linux/ARM is licensed under the GPLv2.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. I'm gonna go see if I can finish that room in Dark Castle...
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54 commentsEven though it's an old project by now, it's still pretty awesome - especially the GPU and ADB-conversion. Thank you very much for sharing! I started replicating some of your experiments several years back but never finished. Now I found myself taking up the project and have been tinkering with the GPU again. I'm using a few different components, but basically the same setup: Mac Classic, Raspberry Pi, Olimex LPC1343-devboard. I managed to build the circuit, flash the LPC1343, compile and load the kernel driver. And it works - sort of. When I send something to the framebuffer device the image is inverted (black-on-white) - is it supposed to be that? Also the CRT-image is a bit fuzzy and unstable/wobbly. My experience with the inner workings of CRT screens is very limited, but could that be due to timing (h- or vsync) or is it a sign of hardware malfunction?
Wow, EXCELLENT work! I'm very impressed with your hardware mod and software skills.. Continue to keep us posted about your projects, they're really entertaining to follow.
Great project!
Absolutely amazing. I am most impressed. Would be interesting to see if one could get greyscale working similarly to those old Micron Xceed cards. I'm going to have to go pick my jaw up off the floor now.
This is awesome!!! Congrats on this amazing project. I got a few old Macs and was thinking to put a Raspberry Pi inside one, and using the Mac's CRT. Never thought that would involve building a custom GPU. I know how to solder and know a thing or two about Linux... But I start to fear this is a little bit too much for a beginner. (Groeten van een UT'er uit Enschede ;-) )
Charles: Sorry, you can't fix traces and vias that are completely eaten away with replacement caps.
Your SE/30 main board just needed a set of smt caps. Great ingenuity though. I'm sure you had alot of fun. Charles - MacCaps.com
Amazing. Your frame buffer solution is brilliant! I'm hoping to leverage what you've done on my own project. Do you foresee any issues with your driver on x86?
This is just one of the issues that really should not be an issue. I have 3 Mac SE's (1 slaughtered :-[ for this project), and geting the stupid ROM image off of it is bloody well more of a challenge than a SpaceChem challenge! I even purchased a 'newer' Macintosh with a CD-drive to be able to transfer the ROM image, only to find out that the new one does not support 800k diskettes. Bummer. Plan B: Your customized minivmac does not recognize the ROM I got from redundantrobot, so I was wondering if there perhaps was another source to the ROM image which did not require the actual dumping? (mac@wennerbergs.com)
Dank U wel voor uw snele reatie. I plan to do a similar mod with the HP T5325 (about to bid on one on an auction site) but I'd rather not desolder the graphical chip. Do you remember maybe which Ethernet Phys chip is inside T5325 and which model of USB-Ethernet you bought. I'm afraid I'll not be able to find datasheets on the Internet for the pin-out, If I can check in advance for their availability, I'll be able to decide bidding or not.
George: The first two, I got at a pharmacy (apotheker); the second is basically yer olde oxi-action laundry agent. If it's a powder, way too expensive and had something with oxygen in big letters on the package, you should be good :)
Totally impressed ! I also live in The Netherlands and I would like to know where I can get hydrogen peroxyde, glycerin and oxy-based laundry booster. Can you suggest me some specific brands/shops where I can buy ? I seem to remember I saw in France supermarkets 3% hydrogen peroxyde solution but I don't know if the concentration is okay for Rebright and also I would rather not drive 300km + to France for it.
I'm curious about one thing - why you chose USB as the interface between the Dockstar and the GPU, rather than hooking them up via SPI? Seems from your description that USB is the main bottleneck in terms of video redraws. I'm assuming there would be an SPI line somewhere on the Dockstar to hijack, or a GPIO pin to use the soft-spi driver.
I have a couple of old SE's and have for long been wanting to use the monitor in its original capacity with some cheap moderne processor (my first SE cost me more than 1.5 month salary). What you have documented here is very impressive, somewhat intimidating, but also inspiring ;-) Since you probably already did consider this, I would like to know why you chose not to reuse the ADB interface, the PIC microcontroller from the old motherboard, to interface with the USB controller?
You mention in your video that you used ZTerm to communicate to the Dockstar via SSH. I'm interested in knowing the details of this setup, can you please share this knowledge?
In just one word: FANTASTIC! I've just bought a Mac SE on ebay. It'll do a long jorney until my home at Brazil. I'll save your fantastic project on my documents and maybe buy a dockstar for the future... or could be a RaspberryPI... anyway, Congratulations for this incredible project! The "GPU" beat them all!!!!!!
Wow... Just Wow! Most impressive! Amazing how much you\'ve developed along the way.
My friend, you make me feel inferior. I am currently modding an old Macintosh LC II (google it if you are interested), but all I am really doing is replacing hardware. Yours is so much more interesting! Thanks also for the idea of cleaning up the exterior colour of the case. I might just try that.
brasileiro e vou escrever em português: Muito legal!!! gostei muito, parabéns! como faço para ter um desses?! ;^) hudymoreira@gmail.com
wow, that is a nice build! Just wanted to let you know that an ADB to USB adapter does exist (remember the iMac introduced USB ports and people still had lots of ADB peripherals), it\'s called the iMate. But I love your AVR implementation.
Highly impressive. Thanks for sharing your retro-related antics! :)
I am **so** impressed with the make-your-own GPU. you truly play down the coding nightmares you tackle in the projects.... Any tech company should make you chief engineer. Also, if you ever want to make a second and sell it.....
Your English is spot-on. Super SE/30 BTW.
A truly neat hack. I bow to your superior skillz.
You are the superhero of nerds, EE\'s, and programmers everywhere. I would pay a ton of money for this.
COOOOOL dude! :)
I did it according to http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/187115#1872210 : Xtal direct over the 2 cpu pins, a 10M resistor in parallel to it, 2 caps from both xtal pins to the ground.
Hello, I would like to ask you about the adding RTC, can you tell me if the schematic layout on this site http://gsg-elektronik.de/?id=92 is correct? Because I think it\'s wrong, it\'s not working for me and if I correctly understood to your pictures, you placed caps between cpu pins and ground. Am I right? thanks for answer
Simply - Wow :-O Very nice.
You sir, are a genius. Need to find my Plus!
Engineering awesomeness. I congratulate you.
That\'s amazing, huge props to you!
The most impressive mod for Mac Classic...
Holy crap. That\'s the best, and most respectful, SE/30 \"casemod\" I\'ve ever seen. Your floppy mod is sheer genius. Massive, massive amounts of respect from an old mac-head here.
nice ! ich will ein kind von dir! ;-)
This is exactly what I want to be able to do, and things like this is what inspires me to study :) Amazingly well done!
Macgyver! Awesome Job!
Holy hell! THIS IS AWESOME! that\'s one hell of a come back for your sir.
Very nice, I was hoping it was something the average hacker could do. Not so much.
Xanthan gum and/or Arrow root are easily available here in the UK at the local supermarket- would gladly have sent it over. Good to see you managed without though! Awesome hack! Marc
Epic. Win. This is a legendary masterful hack that even the Woz would be awestruck by. Dank u zeer!!!!!
Amazing work. Very well done. I hope to one day make a thin all-in-one desktop computer based on an old Powerbook.
awesome. so, so jealous :D
Beautifully done mod! The only tip I have to give is that most of the old rainbow Apple logs could be popped out from the back of the case. They are just painted metal cutouts. You should be able to take some of the proper sizes from other Apple equipment and replace the damaged ones on your mod. Again, beautiful!
Don\'t worry about being a native speaker. From the quality of your post I can tell you can speak English better than most native speakers.
The garbled boot sound is probably just the ghost of the old broken mainboard ;)
Very well done. If I saw that in passing, I would never think it had a home server crammed inside it... wait, when was the last time you saw a mac this old on someone\'s desk that didn\'t have a mini itx or something hacked into it? :D
That is the coolest mod I think I\'ve ever seen. Props on just how well finished it is. The only thing I saw was that you somewhat damaged the apple logos, do you think you could have prevented that with nail varnish or some other clear coat? Got to try and make one of these myself!
This is so awesome. All I can say is DAMN, and congratulations on getting all of this together!
Teh Killerbee: The Dockstar is booting Debian off the two HDs. The little machine is big enough for a full-blown Debian install, so I didn\'t bother looking at the smaller distros.
Very, VERY well done!! What kind of OS is that Dock Star running? Gumstix or something similar?
Really nice. I especially like your frame buffer device.
Damn, the finished version of your MacSE/arm looks so cool. :)
@Aladinsane maybe you can try this project. it's quite similar to this one without needing anything else aside from a RPI4 https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/mac-classic-with-a-pi-usb-c.42164/