SUMMARY: A/UX compatible CPU upgrades for Mac IIci
Eric Sisson
About a week-and-a-half ago I asked about CPU upgrades for the IIci
that are compatible with A/UX 3.0. Here is the summary I promised.
Of the five people who replied (thanks, folks), most were very happy
with the DayStar Power Cache series. Incidentally, the most recent
issue of "MacUser" (April. 1993) has an article about CPU upgrades;
however, the article does not address the matter of A/UX.
Here are the replies I received --
---- from Bill Johnston (john...@me.udel.edu)
The only one I know of that works without difficulty is
the Daystar PowerCache. I use a 50/50 PowerCache in a IIx.
You would do better with the IIci as it has faster on-board
serial and (I think) faster SCSI.
--- from Mike Peters (m...@az.stratus.com)
I've been running 3.0 with a 50Mhz '030 Daystar card for quite a while (I'm
anxiously waiting for my '040 card!). The only incompatibility is the
Daystar CDEV which doesn't work under A/UX. As long as you have it set
under the MacOS before booting A/UX, it's fine.
The other BIG performance gain was upgrading to 20MB of RAM. This made
MacOS operations under A/UX much faster. Before the upgrade, my system was
about to page itself silly. If you upgrade RAM, don't forget to use
kconfig to bump up NBUF (I'm currently at 2000). See the FAQ for the
procedure.
--- from Paul Siu (up...@mcs.drexel.edu)
I don't have any experience with running A/UX with an accelerator, but if I
remember correctly, Daystar claim that their 030 PowerCaches will work with
A/UX. Daystar recently came out with their Turbo 040 line, but I am not sure
if they are compatible with A/UX. I know that most 040 accelerators will not
work with A/UX, because most of them don't even work with virtual memory.
--- from Jim Jagielski (j...@jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov)
There are currently _no_ 040 upgrades (except for the Quadra 700 itself :)
that work under A/UX.
Daystar Digital is _very_ compatible with A/UX...
--- from Rob Thieler (rthi...@althea.geo.duke.edu)
Greetings. Saw your posting re: cpu upgrades for A/UX macs. I too have a IIci.
My present configuration includes 16 Mb RAM (8 @ Mb's from MacConnection) and
a 50MHz Daystar PowerCache with math chip. The machine really flies under the
mac-only OS, but is acceptable for most of my work when running A/UX (99.999%
of my time.
I want to upgrade to DayStar's new 33MHZ '040, but in talking with their rep,
I found that it isn't A/UX compatible yet. They say they're working with Apple
on it, and expect a solution soon (the party line since about late january).
I've been very happy with this configuration. One thing that you might consider
in addition to upping the CPU speed is a faster hard drive and a SCSI
accelerator. There may also be some compat. problems there as well,
but I haven't
looked into it lately. PLI, for instance, seems pretty up on most A/UX issues
(we use a lot of their products in our Dept.).
Good luck. I'd appreciate hearing what you find out on this issue.
--------------------
Once again, my thanks to all who responded.
--
Eric M. Sisson Internet: e...@jackalope.mda.uth.tmc.edu
Programmer Analyst III voice: 713-792-6466
Academic and Research Computing - Box 549 fax: 713-794-5072
The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center