ric@islenet.UUCP (Frederick Lee) (12/21/87)
Like many of my peers out there in computerland, I'm studying various
products I can use to enhance my Mac 512KE to 2M RAM with SCSI port, and a hard
disk.
I've been archiving your valuable responses and anecdotes since early
November. Two such anecdotes on memory upgrades were as follows:
From: dba@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (David Anderson)
Subject: MacConnection/Rodime 20/MacSnap review
Date: 16 Nov 87 18:23:52 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
...The "snap" part of the installation was VERY DIFFICULT -- I spent
about an hour fussing with it before I got it properly installed. My thumbs
eventually wore out and I got out a wooden dowel and a rubber mallet to gently
tap the board into place. All in all, about a 3 hour job. I wouldn't
recommend it except to those with experience doing this kind of work. ...
Brian Campbell writes about SuperMac's Enhance Upgrade as follows:
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 87 20:52 EST
From: Brian Campbell <EE2Y%CRNLVAX5.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Memory upgrades
... I recently upgraded my 512Ke to a 2Mb Mac with SuperMac's Enhance
upgrade. It has been a reliable upgrade, no problems. It includes a SCSI
port, a quiet fan, and 1 year warranty. Often you get upgrades from SuperMac
cheaper than Dove or Apple. ...
Brian's experience has aroused by interest. But I haven't seen any
Enhance-Upgrade advertisements from SuperMac. Has SuperMac stopped producing
these Mac 512KE upgrades? Is installing the SuperMac's 512KE 2Meg upgrade +
SCSI as difficult as installing Dove's Dove MacSnap 548S as David Anderson
described?
What about MacMemory products? The only memory-enhancement product
for the Mac512KE I have recently seen advertised is Dove MacSnap products.
I shall be browsing through the Dec issue of MacWorld about the various
hard disks on the market while awaiting your responses. I'll also faithfully
monitor all your further anecdotes of your hard disks woes & recommendations.
...Thanks for your patience & your "2-bits worth.
Oh yah, For the Apple Staff out there: I trashed my pre-released (circa 1984)
MacDraw. It was dead weight and taking up floppy space.
Oh...I almost forgot. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
- Ric Lee in Honolulu.planting@colby.WISC.EDU ( W. Harry Plantinga) (12/23/87)
>I'm studying various products I can use to enhance my Mac 512KE to >2M RAM with a SCSI port. Same boat here. I have a further complication, though. I started with a 128k mac and upgraded to 512k myself with the dr dobbs upgrade. The memory chips are in sockets. Will the MacSnap upgrades still work? I also have a supermac scsi port. It attaches between the ROM's and their sockets. Is there any chance of finding a memory upgrade to 2MB or more that will work with it? (If not I've resigned myself to getting rid of it and getting a MacSnap 548S or something, if it will work.) Thanks for any and all help. Harry Plantinga planting@cs.wisc.edu {seismo,allegra,inhp4}!speedy!planting Rejoice, rejoice; Emmanuel shall comfort thee O Israel.
crogers1@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Clyde Rogers) (12/23/87)
To those of you with Dr. Dobb's Journal 512K Macs -- there is hope! Tonight I did get a Dove board onto my Mac that had received its upgrade courtesy of my soldering iron and Dr. Dobb's instructions. I did have to remove two of the sockets and resolder the chips directly onto the motherboard. I also had to take the piggybacked chip and reinstall it without a socket. After these modifications, the Dove board snapped easily into place. BUT--although my computer recognizes that it has 2 megabytes of memory, I do have some sort of interference problem on my monitor. (In fact, you'll probably see my message about this...) I'm assuming (hoping) that this isn't some horrible problem between my 512K upgrade and the 2M upgrade. When I know what the problem is, I'll pass it on to other lovers of (relatively) cheap upgrades so they'll know whether or not to attempt a Dove upgrade of their Dr. Dobb's upgrades. ****************************************************************************** Clyde Rogers crogers1@ub.D.UMN.EDU (this SHOULD work...) University of MN, Duluth ******************************************************************************
stevel@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU (Steve Ligett) (12/29/87)
In article <4936@spool.cs.wisc.edu> planting@colby.WISC.EDU ( W. Harry Plantinga) writes: >>I'm studying various products I can use to enhance my Mac 512KE to >>2M RAM with a SCSI port. >... I started >with a 128k mac and upgraded to 512k myself with the dr dobbs upgrade. >The memory chips are in sockets. Will the MacSnap upgrades still >work? Maybe. You'll have to take out two of the sockets - the ones next to the resistor networks. Also, you might have to redo your 74f253; they often stick up too high, and many folks don't put pullups on the address lines going to pins 5 and 6. When you redo it, you can trim its pins a little first, to make it lower. I think we've got about 50 machines that were origninally 128k that were upgraded with a Dr. Dobbs-like upgrade, and now have macSnap upgrades on them. Some of them are reliable; some ... well, opinions vary. Whether one would work for you depends on several things, such as how much do you carry (bang) your machine around - the upgrade boards tend to "walk" off the board below due to expansion and contraction, and I believe that they "walk" more if jostled, and your luck. Most of our upgrades are just the 1mb MacSnap, and most don't have the scsi port. -- Steve Ligett steve.ligett@dartmouth.edu or (decvax harvard ihnp4 linus)!dartvax!steve.ligett