PowerExpress Revisited

It's not, it's a standard PC floppy port

How does that work with the mac's powered eject? Was a special drive made?

I have seen the connector, it is on the beige G3 mobo, it dosn't have the pins (or controller?) connected, however. The 4400 also has the connector, but again, empty holes and definatly no controller, the 4400 is wiered in every respect.

The copyright never expires on Apple ROM's. If you ask them for that, they will likely ask you to return the stolen prototype.

I'm pretty sure that taking stuff from trashcans is still considered stealing.

one mans trash is another mans treasure.

Aren't some of us being a tad sanctomonious here? Stolen seems a rather harsh way of describing all the ways not-for-release hardware escapes from Apple. And trashpicking is not illegal in most cases.

There must be a zillion ways things escape from Apple's control. Trash, 'enterprising' and thrifty employees, forgotten engineering seed releases, etc. I have 2 EVT PBs, both were probably delivered to 3rd party hardware developers in advance of release. I'm sure those companies signed NDAs which required return of the hardware, but after Apple released the finished model, those EVT pieces became just more computer junk to be disposed of. Stolen? Hardly, just lost and forgotten.

Trash is discarded material, if something hits the rubbish bin intact it is fair game. Trashpickers break no law be fetching something from an unsecured container.

As for duplicating the bloody ROMs, lets get real. Those are Apple's copyrighted code, and duplication transgresses on Apple's legal right to control reproduction of its intellectual property until the copyright expires in 50 years or what ever it is. But in the real world Apple is certainly not going to track down and prosecute ROM pirates who dupe an ancient and rare prototype's ROMs.

dan k

I remember that the last revision of the Beige G3 ROM was a pretty different thing than the others. Maybe that would help?

We should check with JT (Trash80toG4) or TiMacLover... they are the only other two who I know have PowerExpress towers, and see about if they made any progress made with theirs (IIRC, JT has a ROM on his EVT2 PEx board.)

I'm on hold until I get a G4 accelerator for it, the tech folks said I should have about a 90% chance of success.

jt

try using 3.3v EDO. That should work much better

. . . gotta find some of that stuff now! Any minimum speed requirements, I'm assuming 70 ns would probably work?

jt

60ns is probably best, but I don't know for sure.

. . . the new memory (1 SIMM: 32MB EDO 60ns) doesn't seem to have done the trick. I still get the boot chimes every time, and the HDD and CD actually make some encouraging noises now, but no bootup as yet. I'll have to try to find a disk tools floppy, maybe that'll work. One of these days I'll hook up the serial port to another Mac and see if any .txt shows up . . . can't even recall the process name ATM . . . way too tired.

I think I'll just keep saving greenbacks toward a G4 card, the 604e Kansas pro.c card may not be compatable with PEx, dunno . . .

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone booted successfully into OF on a PEx?

dan k

. . . the only PEx I've ever heard of running successfully would be the one Dr. Bob mentioned using at work. I don't recall seeing any screen shots of ASP info on the 'fritter or ComputerBarn sites or any .txt claiming the systems were operable, for that matter.

How about it, z, have you heard of any PEx system booting reliably?

I can't check those sites myself, ATM, my only web access is the local WiFi hotspots with "beater" my (as yet) unaccelerated 1400c/166.

jt ::)

Err, I didn't mean boot successfully, but rather just boot to an OF prompt? And not (necessarily) to onboard video, could be over the serial port as well.

OK then, I'll rephrase my question - Has anyone tried booting a PEx to OpenFirmware using a terminal connection through the serial port?

dan k

. . . unsuccessfully, back when I was using PC133. Gotta give it a try now that I've got EDO on board.

jt

p.s. your question was perfectly clear, I was elaborating about PEx boot blues.

I was just wondering, were there any advantages of using apparently hard to find 3.3v DRAM instead of SDRAM?

Dr. Bob said that the PC series SDRAM DIMMs wouldn't work . . . I'd like to hear a definitive explanation as to why! IIRC, terms like "Fast Page Mode" were bandied about earlier in the thread.

jt

p.s. the DIMM I got wasn't ECC enabled, I assume the missing ICs wouldn't matter to PEx . . . is that true?

SDRAM is faster than EDO which is faster than FPM. On a 66MHz bus FPM is 5-3-3-3 for 60ns, EDO is 5-2-2-2, SDRAM is 5-1-1-1. The chipset has to know how to handle the timings and what features to expect of the RAM.

Is there any chance the things require the of ECC or MAYBE use BEDO (Burst EDO)?

. . . I get startup chimes with the Kansas proc card (high performance or some such) and with my 9500 proc card, but neither ejects a non-system floppy disk. The system just sits there . . . eventually I'll get the recommended G4 card/carrier to test in it.

Gotta love those 30 day money back guarantees!

jt

Is there any chance the things require the of ECC or MAYBE use BEDO (Burst EDO)?

From memory, non-ECC and unbuffered EDO or FPM 168 pin 3.3v

Hawaii Cruiser,

You noted on the forum that by the RAM slots is printed "NB DRAM 3.3 VOLTS". I believe this means Non-Buffered (unbuffered) DRAM 3.3 Volts, which some PCs used before PC66 SDRAM was adopted. This RAM has access times of 50-60ns, while PC66 has access times of 10ns. Here is a link to Micron's page for EDO/FPM Modules: 168-Pin Nonbuffered DIMMs.
http://www.micron.com/products/modules/edofpm/partlist.aspx?pincount=100-Pin&version=Nonbuffered&package=DIMM

You definately should not put 5V DIMMs in any slots and probably should not put PC66/100/133 SDRAM in any slot either.

The motherboard bus speed is likely 50MHz, since on the AppleFritter prototype page about the PowerExpress (http://applefritter.com/prototypes/pex/index.html) the anonymous contributor stated the PowerExpress had a 275MHz processor. That would be a 5.5 multiplier. No other bus speed would allow for 275MHz. It seems silly that Apple didn't go to 66MHz, since that is what most comparable new PCs would have been using in 1996-1997 when the PowerExpress was being developed.

The SCSI-3 that is on the board was originally used in the Apple Network Server 500/700. The other SCSI bus is likely Fast SCSI-2, which uses Apple's "Mesh" controller.

Since your PowerExpress motherboard makes boot sounds, that indicates it has ROM. The two chips in the lower-left corner are the developer flash ROMs, which would have been soldered to the motherboard in those blank spots when it came to final production. Apple has always included a ROM slot in every Power Mac 7300 to 9600, but has never put the ROM on a card. Perhaps some Mac clones based of these machines may have had their ROMs on cards.

Putting a G3 ROM or any other ROM into the ROM slot is unlikely to help. Since your PowerExpress already has ROM, putting a ROM card into the slot is likely to confuse the system. An example of this is that when I put a G3 ROM into the ROM slot on a Power Mac 9500, this system will not boot. It makes a startup sound, but will do nothing else. When there is already ROM on the board additional ROM creates trouble.

To determine if the PowerExpress motherboard is working at all, you really should see if you can get into Open Firmware. If the PowerExpress is like a Power Mac 9600 or any other PowerSurge Mac, it likely outputs Open Firmware to the Modem Port, which is the lower serial port of the two. You need to connect your PowerExpress to another Mac with a Mac serial cable. The other Mac needs to be running a Terminal application like ZTerm. When you startup the PowerExpress, hold down Apple(Command)+Option+O+F. If the computer is functioning, it should display the output on the other Mac running the Terminal program.

When PCI based Macs boot, they first complete a hardware check. If that is successful, you will hear the normal boot noise. If not, you will hear the crash noise. Upon completing a successful hardware test, the computer then loads Open Firmware, which is also stored in the ROM. Open Firmware examines all the hardware installed in your computer and generates a Device Tree, among other things. From there, Open Firmware can do two things. It can boot the computer from the "Default device", which is the Mac OS ROM partition, or it can boot into OS X directly if installed.

When booting into Mac OS 9, Open Firmware loads another partition of the ROM, which is the Mac OS ROM, and passes to it the Device Tree it generated. When the Mac OS ROM loads, it displays the familiar grey screen with the Happy Mac Face upon finding a System Folder. From there Mac OS 9 is loaded. In "NewWorld" Macs, Open Firmware loads the Mac OS ROM from a file stored in the System Folder on the hard drive.

Open Firmware can also boot directly into Mac OS X. If OS X is installed, Open Firmware can load a file stored on the hard drive called BootX, which then loads the Mac OS X kernel.

So you see, trying to get your PowerExpress into Open Firmware should be your first goal, since Open Firmware loads everything else. Because your PowerExpress motherboard is a developer prototype, it may stop at Open Firmware by default for debugging purposes. That may be why you never get any video signal. Connect it to another Mac via the Modem Port and see what happens.

I hope this helps.

So you see, trying to get your PowerExpress into Open Firmware should be your first goal, since Open Firmware loads everything else. Because your PowerExpress motherboard is a developer prototype, it may stop at Open Firmware by default for debugging purposes. That may be why you never get any video signal. Connect it to another Mac via the Modem Port and see what happens.

powersurge9600, nicely written, very well informed summary.

dan k

Thank you for the positive comment Dan.

I would really like to see someone finally get one of these PowerExpress prototypes working. If someone could boot a PowerExpress into Open Firmware, much could be learned about these machines.

Once in Open Firmware, the user can type boot /AAPL,ROM and the computer should attempt to boot the Mac OS ROM.

It seems Apple was not far from releasing the Power Macintosh 9700 before it was cancelled. I think it likely that the computer will boot OS 8 or 9 just as easily as any other Mac. From the looks of DigiBarn's PowerExpress, their machine seems to be fully functional. The inside of the case is filled with dust, indicating that the machine was on a lot. It also has a video card and SCSI card with hard drive installed. Whoever previously owned it appears to have used it.

I also believe PowerExpress Macs are capable of booting OS X. Apple wrote the necessary drivers for PowerExpress Macs to boot OS X. In the System Disk control panel included with OS X Public Beta there is the necessary Open Firmware NVRAM patches to boot OS X on PEx machines. Ryan Remple has included these NVRAM patches in XPostFacto along with a kernel extension for PowerExpress Macs. If someone could boot OS X 10.3 that would be neat to see.

I don't think sticking different ROMs into the ROM slot is going to get you anywhere. Your board has its ROM. The ROM contains code that is specific to your hardware. Sticking older ROM cards from Power Macs 7300-9600, 4400s, or clones is very unlikely to help.

Focus on outputting Open Firmware through the Modem port to another Mac! Since your PowerExpress motherboard makes a proper boot sound and then sits doing nothing else, it is very possible it may be stopping at Open Firmware by default because it is a development board. Open Firmware loads the Mac OS. If you can get into Open Firmware it will be a major step forward.

Hey Hawaii Cruiser! Maybe I'm crazy, but am I sensing a reluctance to go much further with this board? If by any chance you decide you want to bail on this project, I'm hereby making an offer to buy it from you. Or trade you for it a working normal 9600 MLB . . . or whatever.

Just wanted to get my offer in, just in case.

If I'm mistaken, I apologize.

And now, back to the usual errrrm, stuff.

dan k

(that's -}macdan at comcast dot net{-, just in case . . .)

Hawaii Cruiser,

I don’t think sticking a ROM card from any Mac Clone is going to work. Your PowerExpress motherboard likely has its ROM in the form of those two flash chips at the lower left corner. Since the motherboard is a development prototype, Apple likely used removable flash chips for debugging purposes. If you stick another ROM into the ROM-slot, the machine definitely won’t boot.

Besides, any ROM card you stick into the PowerExpress will have incorrect versions of Open Firmware and the Mac OS ToolBox. Hard-coded Open Firmware aliases and addresses would be incorrect for the PowerExpress motherboard and the Mac OS Toolbox would lack drivers for that type of motherboard.

If you would attempt to enter Open Firmware that could potentially tell you much about the motherboard. Because your PowerExpress is a development motherboard, auto-boot? may be set to False in Open Firmware instead of the normal default of True. What this means is that the computer may stop at the Open Firmware command prompt, which is likely being outputted to the Modem Port.

Testing this hypothesis would be quite simple. First, plug a serial cable into the Modem Port on your PowerExpress. It is the lower serial port of the two. Second, connect the other end of the serial cable into the serial port of another Mac. Third, use a program such as ZTerm on the second Mac to see the Open Firmware output from the PowerExpress. Fourth, start up the PowerExpress hold down Apple+Option+O+F. If all goes well, the Open Firmware output should display in ZTerm.

I created a webpage with you in mind that explains all about Open Firmware, how to access it, and how to use it.

You can see the page at my Yahoo site here.
http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/index2.html

If you can’t access Open Firmware then your PowerExpress really doesn’t work. Open Firmware is the first thing to load after the hardware initialization checks. Without Open Firmware, you can’t load any operating system.

I hope this helps.

As far as I have been able to determine in both this PowerExpress thread and the previous one on AppleFritter, ( http://www.applefritter.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl?board=apple;action=display;num=1070916360 ), CaptainZ has been able to get the boot chimes on his PowerExpress Manhattan and the EVT2 PowerExpress tower. Both of these motherboards have their PLCC ROMs installed in the lower-left corner sockets. The EVT2 PowerExpress motherboard is actually owned by JT (Trash80toG4). In addition to his PowerExpress Manhattan motherboard, CaptainZ also has an EVT4 PowerExpress motherboard, which does not have its PLCC ROM installed. I have read through both AppleFritter forum threads and can find nowhere that he has gotten the EVT4 motherboard to make a boot chime without its PLCC ROM chips. Additionally, on the first page of this thread, a person going by the username kwikdeth, said he was the other person to purchase one of the two PowerExpress motherboards that you also purchased. According to him, his motherboard does not have its ROM chips and therefore doesn’t boot or make any sounds. He says it just quietly sits there.

I would be really surprised if CaptainZ’s EVT4 PowerExpress motherboard could make any boot sounds without those two ROM chips. If suprisingly it could, then that would mean the hardware diagnostic routines and boot sounds are stored in one of the other many chips on the motherboard. I highly doubt that though.

If your PowerExpress has its ROM stored in those two flash chips, which I suspect, putting another ROM card into the ROM slot will likely not work. Having different ROMs on one motherboard seems to always cause trouble. In the original AppleFritter PowerExpress thread, CaptainZ noted that sticking another ROM into the ROM slot caused the system to produce no startup sound. I have seen this too, when I once put a G3 ROM card into a 9500 just to see what would happen. Doing so causes the system to completely not work.

However, if anything you try brings some progress that would be excellent. I hope to see screen shots one day of your PowerExpress running either OS 9 or OS X. If you can get your PowerExpress into Open Firmware, it will tell you information about the motherboard and take you a step closer to booting an operating system.

On another note, I was recently researching any information I could find about the VCI bus present on PowerSurge Macs and the PowerExpress. From what little Apple documentation there is, it appears the VCI bus is a 64-bit PCI bus that runs at the main system bus speed. The VCI slot connector on your PowerExpress is indeed a 64-bit PCI connector. Because the VCI slot on the PowerExpress does not have access to the back of the computer, I suspect Apple intended the slot purely for a TriMedia DSP card that would accelerate video compression and decompression.

I hope you have success with Open Firmware this weekend.

Looking at a side-by-side comparison of Hawaii Cruiser's PowerExpress, which does have its ROM, and TiMacLover's PowerExpress, it seems pretty clear that TiMacLover's PowerExpress is missing its two ROM chips.

Here is a side-by-side comparison

The PowerExpress images TiMacLover provided at ( http://photobucket.com/albums/v212/truthstar/pex/ ) are actually from CaptainZ.net ( http://www.captainz.net/site_revision_081604/EVT4_proto.html ). I do not believe they are pictures of the actual PowerExpress motherboard he is selling. So it remains uncertain whether or not his PowerExpress motherboard has its ROM.

Now to read some of the OF docs at Apple. Good starting points include:
Fundamentals of Open Firmware, Part I: The User Interface
Fundamentals of Open Firmware, Part II: The Device Tree
Fundamentals of Open Firmware, Part III: Understanding PCI ...
Invoking the User Interface Via Remote Connection
Open Firmware User Interface Commands and Examples

I'd start by viewing the basic device tree:
0 > dev / ls

then, get a printout of the current OF config:
0 > printenv

finally do complete device tree dump:
0 > dump-device-tree

That last one will duplicate the other two, but it will have so much more stuff you won't know what's important.

Not sure what to do next, but at least that will give you some idea of what you're dealing with.

dan k

At last someone has finally gotten his PowerExpress into Open Firmware! This is a major step forward. It proves your machine has its ROM in those two chips. It also will make it possible to finally boot either Mac OS 9 or X.

First, in order to get Zterm to display the port selection window, you need to hold Shift down once it already begins to load.

Second, when typing Open Firmware commands you must type everything exactly correct or Open Firmware won’t know what you mean. When typing boot /AAPL,ROM there must be a space between boot and the device you are directing it to, in this case /AAPL,ROM.

As dankephoto has suggested, you should type printenv to see the current Open Firmware environment settings. Typing dev / ls will display the device tree so you can see all the devices present on your motherboard (be sure to have all the correct spaces in between the words). Typing dump-device-tree will display all devices one-by-one along with their properties and Forth methods. This will be an extensive listing. Please copy all this information from ZTerm and email it to me in a SimpleText file so I can view it and try to figure out some boot options you might try. Trying to post all the Open Firmware output into this forum will likely result in formatting problems because of various characters that this forum will try to interpret as coding tags.

You may want to review the Open Firmware section of my webpage I created for you titled Working Within Open Firmware to become more familiar with different commands in Open Firmware. It shows how to maneuver through the Device Tree, view device properties, see code behind each word, and numerous other commands.

Hopefully this will help.

Hawaii Cruiser,

Applying the proper Open Firmware patches into your PowerExpress’s NVRAM may help to correct some bugs. I tried postings these patches into my previous forum post, but not all of the code was being displayed. I believe the forum was interpreting some the characters as formatting tags. I tried to correct this, but could not successfully. Therefore, I have created another webpage for you that has all the necessary information you need to apply the proper NVRAM patches to your PowerExpress.

You can access it at the following link.
http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/index3.html

Thank you for sending me your PowerExpress's Open Firmware output. It’s rather interesting.

First, I wanted to note that when you type boot /AAPL,ROM, there should be no space between the backslash and AAPL,ROM.
It should look like this:
0 > boot /AAPL,ROM
Not like this:
0 > boot / AAPL,ROM DEFAULT CATCH!

See if this makes a difference when trying to boot the Mac OS ROM.

Second, type devalias (no space in between) to see all the Open Firmware device aliases.

Third, I recommend inputting the NVRAM script into your PowerExpress, which may help correct some bugs. Instructions for that are located here:
http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/index3.html

Fourth, the motherboard bus speed is indeed 50MHz.
clock-frequency 02FAF080 \\50,000,000Hz or 50MHz

Lastly, if you would, please dump the entire device tree with the command dump-device-tree. When it displays the message More [<space>,<cr>,q] ? press the space bar to continue displaying more. Please send me the entire output, which will be very long.

Thanks.

After studying the PowerExpress’s Device Tree and comparing it to the Device Trees of my 9600 and G3 AIO (Open Firmware 2.5, Revision C ROM), I have made some interesting observations.

It appears that the PowerExpress does not use the SWIM floppy controller, but instead uses one identified as /fdc@15000. All other PCI-Macs including Beige G3s use the SWIM floppy controller.

It also appears that the PowerExpress does not use the MACE 10bt ethernet controller, but instead uses one identified as /bmac@11000. It seems likely that this is a 100bt ethernet controller, unlike Beige G3s, which still used the MACE ethernet controller.

The 68-pin SCSI that is onboard the PowerExpress shows up as /53c860@11 [pci1000,f] on the Device Tree and is a PCI device. I looked up the chipset and it is a Symbios Ultra SCSI, 8-bit, single channel chipset that has speeds up to 20MB/s. It is not as fast as I originally had speculated.

Unlike other PCI-Macs, the ADB is not a child of Via-Cuda on the Device Tree. Ultimately what this means I am not sure.

Also, the PRAM strangely does not show up at all on the Device Tee. On all other PCI-Macs, the PRAM and NVRAM show up as two distinct devices. The PRAM would normally appear as a child of Via-Cuda.

Lastly, the PowerExpress has two packages not present on Macs up through the Beige G3s. One is /pe-loader@0,0, which is a CHRP compliant package necessary to open a PE boot-loader. This would be needed to boot Windows NT 4.0 for PowerPC. The second new package is /elf-loader@0,0, which is a CHRP compliant package that is necessary to open boot-loaders in the more common ELF format. Unlike other PCI-Macs, the PowerExpress does not have the aix-boot package.

I have made a second PowerExpress page that displays the Device Tree properly, with comments next to certain devices. You can access it at the bottom of the following page:
http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/index3.html

Please supply me with more PowerExpress Open Firmware output!