This has been an ongoing process, but here is the rundown
I got a mac performa 430 (aka LC2) from a thrift store for 99 cents about 4 years ago, at the time all my 68K mac needs were handled by my basic SE and I have not owned a color 68k mac since my IIcx back in the 90's
the performa sat mostly unused until I recently got my apple IIe card, my retro computer desk is mostly populated with 2 redudant mac's (the SE and the LC2) an apple IIC, a Pentium and either an Atari 65XE or a C64. Needing to thin the herd a bit I thought it would be cool to max out the LC2 replacing the SE and getting an apple IIe card to replace apple IIe functions
the LC2 is a dog of a machine, rom limited to 10 megs max memory, 32 bit cpu on a 16 bit buss and a slow 16mhz cpu, but for 99 cents... lol. I did scavenge an additional 8 megs of ram for it bringing it up to 12 megs (though it only addresses 10 thanks to the wonky rom and 4 megs on board) and a video ram upgrade which allows for 640x480x256 colors.
First order of biz was to wire up a mac to VGA cable which works perfectly with my year 2000 era 20 inch Mitsubishi monitor, this may not sound like a big deal but almost every LCD made will either not display any picture, or present a bitch message in the center of the screen about the not quite perfect vga mode of the mac ... I tried a half dozen LCD screens over many years before my Mitsubishi was retired from my main gaming machine display hehe.
Next thing was a motherboard recap, the machine was fairly unstable under stress and there was a lot of noise form the speaker, little hot air and a raid of the new cap stash quickly solved that.
Of course shortly after the stock 120 meg hard drive started to exhibit stiction on the heads, and the only way I could get it to boot was to remove the cover from the hard disk and physically move the heads from park position every single time on startup. Small size SCSI hard drives are not the most common thing in the world and for a minor price more I got a apple branded 1gb quantum, which is of course totally overkill for a 16mhz 68k machine, but the price lined up with what I was willing to fiddle with so there it is.
so flash forward to October 2015, we have a newborn, its hard to get away let alone isolate myself to the dungeon basement, and im starting to itch for classic mac and my apple IIc, which was at least a once a week all day event. I had been searching for an apple IIe card for quite a while but most ebay prices offended me. I finally came across one for a reasonable price with the elusive Y cable and I snagged it.
Once I bought it I started looking around and seeing the dismal performance of the card, and thinking OMG what have I done, this thing is crap! and frankly it is .. with OS 7.55, it runs terrible!
so to boost performance I added a FPU, the stock solution to this is to add a card, but with one slot I wanted that to house the apple II card. Right next to the CPU is a 68 pin unpopulated spot, sucking out all the solder from that spot I then added a 68 pin plcc to though hole socket.
from there I added a 68882 FPU and gee wilikers it works! After that I removed the stock 31.xxx oscillator and replaced it with a dip 14 socket with mos of the pins removed. At first I bumped it up to 40 mhz which gave me a 20 mhz cpu over the stock 16. Works like a champ, pushing it forward I added on a heatsink and a 50Mhz oscillator giving me 25 mhz, the cpu and serial ports work perfectly but the sound is garbled, so I think I need to drop it down to 48Mhz to restore sound given math n junk.
even with a 4Mhz bump to 20Mhz total the system is much more responsive and games, even though they still run at laughable FPS actually respond to input in near real time. Next thing I did was drop the system OS from 7.5.5 to 7.0.1 and and what do you know the apple IIe card went from less than half speed to just about indistinguishable from the real deal machine
so as of right now
0.99$ mac
1.99$ adb keytronix keyboard with trackball from thrift store
30$ apple branded 1 gig SCSI hard drive - used from ebay
25$ griffen Imate ADB to USB adapter so I can use the same keyboard with the pc on the same bench
15$ worth of 30 pin simm memory
1.59$ PLCC 68 Socket
9.99$ 68882 PLCC FPU
89.99$ Apple IIe card
16.00$ worth of radio shack crap to make a ADB switchbox and a null modem adapter to communicate to the PC
30.00 for a apple II 5.25 inch drive
or another words 220$ on a craptastic mac that replaces the functions of 2 machines I already have ...before postage... and hours worth of piddle farting around...
GOD YOU GOTTA LOVE RETRO COMPUTERS LOL
I got a mac performa 430 (aka LC2) from a thrift store for 99 cents about 4 years ago, at the time all my 68K mac needs were handled by my basic SE and I have not owned a color 68k mac since my IIcx back in the 90's
the performa sat mostly unused until I recently got my apple IIe card, my retro computer desk is mostly populated with 2 redudant mac's (the SE and the LC2) an apple IIC, a Pentium and either an Atari 65XE or a C64. Needing to thin the herd a bit I thought it would be cool to max out the LC2 replacing the SE and getting an apple IIe card to replace apple IIe functions
the LC2 is a dog of a machine, rom limited to 10 megs max memory, 32 bit cpu on a 16 bit buss and a slow 16mhz cpu, but for 99 cents... lol. I did scavenge an additional 8 megs of ram for it bringing it up to 12 megs (though it only addresses 10 thanks to the wonky rom and 4 megs on board) and a video ram upgrade which allows for 640x480x256 colors.
First order of biz was to wire up a mac to VGA cable which works perfectly with my year 2000 era 20 inch Mitsubishi monitor, this may not sound like a big deal but almost every LCD made will either not display any picture, or present a bitch message in the center of the screen about the not quite perfect vga mode of the mac ... I tried a half dozen LCD screens over many years before my Mitsubishi was retired from my main gaming machine display hehe.
Next thing was a motherboard recap, the machine was fairly unstable under stress and there was a lot of noise form the speaker, little hot air and a raid of the new cap stash quickly solved that.
Of course shortly after the stock 120 meg hard drive started to exhibit stiction on the heads, and the only way I could get it to boot was to remove the cover from the hard disk and physically move the heads from park position every single time on startup. Small size SCSI hard drives are not the most common thing in the world and for a minor price more I got a apple branded 1gb quantum, which is of course totally overkill for a 16mhz 68k machine, but the price lined up with what I was willing to fiddle with so there it is.
so flash forward to October 2015, we have a newborn, its hard to get away let alone isolate myself to the dungeon basement, and im starting to itch for classic mac and my apple IIc, which was at least a once a week all day event. I had been searching for an apple IIe card for quite a while but most ebay prices offended me. I finally came across one for a reasonable price with the elusive Y cable and I snagged it.
Once I bought it I started looking around and seeing the dismal performance of the card, and thinking OMG what have I done, this thing is crap! and frankly it is .. with OS 7.55, it runs terrible!
so to boost performance I added a FPU, the stock solution to this is to add a card, but with one slot I wanted that to house the apple II card. Right next to the CPU is a 68 pin unpopulated spot, sucking out all the solder from that spot I then added a 68 pin plcc to though hole socket.
from there I added a 68882 FPU and gee wilikers it works! After that I removed the stock 31.xxx oscillator and replaced it with a dip 14 socket with mos of the pins removed. At first I bumped it up to 40 mhz which gave me a 20 mhz cpu over the stock 16. Works like a champ, pushing it forward I added on a heatsink and a 50Mhz oscillator giving me 25 mhz, the cpu and serial ports work perfectly but the sound is garbled, so I think I need to drop it down to 48Mhz to restore sound given math n junk.
even with a 4Mhz bump to 20Mhz total the system is much more responsive and games, even though they still run at laughable FPS actually respond to input in near real time. Next thing I did was drop the system OS from 7.5.5 to 7.0.1 and and what do you know the apple IIe card went from less than half speed to just about indistinguishable from the real deal machine
so as of right now
0.99$ mac
1.99$ adb keytronix keyboard with trackball from thrift store
30$ apple branded 1 gig SCSI hard drive - used from ebay
25$ griffen Imate ADB to USB adapter so I can use the same keyboard with the pc on the same bench
15$ worth of 30 pin simm memory
1.59$ PLCC 68 Socket
9.99$ 68882 PLCC FPU
89.99$ Apple IIe card
16.00$ worth of radio shack crap to make a ADB switchbox and a null modem adapter to communicate to the PC
30.00 for a apple II 5.25 inch drive
or another words 220$ on a craptastic mac that replaces the functions of 2 machines I already have ...before postage... and hours worth of piddle farting around...
GOD YOU GOTTA LOVE RETRO COMPUTERS LOL