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Yo Dawg, I heard you like Macs...

O

olePigeon

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 14, 2009
Messages
1,266
Location
Silicon Valley
... so I put a Mac, Mac, & Mac in your Mac so you can Mac, Mac, & Mac while you Mac!

I got my ATX conversion working with my IIci, and can now actually enjoy running some highend hardware... all at once. With the normal IIci PSU, you'd be lucky if even one would run. Mine sure wouldn't, even with a PowerMac 7100 PSU installed. So I broke out my soldering iron and wire nuts, then went to town. Shoehorned an old 200w Dell PowerSupply into the IIci's PSU enclosure and wired it up. Doesn't support softboot, so you have to switch it on manually ala LC.

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Not yet. I just got them working for the first time ever. :) Took me a while to drum up the courage to take apart my IIci's power supply. I'm not very good at soldering or electronics, so it was a shot in the dark for me.

Next step is to have some fun. Gonna dig up a copy of Photoshop 3 and try out the DSP. I figure I can use the first one to scan, and the second one to process the images from the first. :) I'd imagine that's what the ideal setup would have been, leaving the host Mac free for other tasks.
 
The PSU hack is a bit rad but wouldn't it of been easier to just buy and use a Quadra 900 series system? Is there something special with the IIci? Seeing that you have an 040 accelerator installed there really isn't anything left of the stock IIci besides glue logic.
 
Shipping a 900/950 can get very pricey, so I can see why people mod IIci's with 040 upgrades (I have mine upgraded). While I think the Rockets are cool, I never realy found a use for mine (2 x Rocket 25's) so they sit in a drawer or I mess with them in a IIx.
 
Well, for me it was the challenge. I own a Quadra 950, but I wanted to get my IIci working. It was technically supported by Radius, but I don't think anyone could have reasonably gotten a Radius Rocket to work in it. Not enough power. I wanted to make it work, though. :)

My IIci with my Daystar beats the pants off a stock Quadra 950, and it's 1/3 the size. I guess it's basically a Quadra 700 now.

Plus -- and this is the most important part for me -- my IIci has a custom Pirate ROM. Perhaps the coolest thing on the planet that I've stuck in there. When I start my IIci, instead of the Mac chime, it goes "Arrr!" then boots with a Pirate IIci Happy Mac. My account avatar is the System Disk icon. When it looks for a bootable disk, it's a laughing skull and crossbones.

I did some preliminary benchmarking of my Radius Rocket. Despite being 7Mhz slower than my Daystar, it benchmarked the at the same CPU score. It also accelerates my Radius video card significantly. So if I boot directly off the Radius Rocket, it approaches Quadra 840av performance.
 
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