The what I did with my classic today thread™

[RacerX]

Well, I spent quite a bit of today working on both my PowerBook 3400c and my PowerMac 8600 (mainly for rendering the longer movie files) working out aspects of my CG model of the USS Columbia (which I talked about quite a bit in this thread).

I made some updates to the warp engine of my model now that I'm getting better at making shapes in Vision 3D. Shapes that I had used originally as sort of place holders have been replaced with more accurate versions of those parts.

I've been reading up on how to make animation a little bit more. As a test case of what I learned, I've animated the dome of the warp nacelle.

Click to view clip
Duration: 17 sec.​

And a slightly different version...

Click to view clip
Duration: 8 sec.​

Additionally I've done a longer animation with both the ship moving in space (relative to the camera) and the warp engine animated.

Click to view clip
Duration: 23 sec.​

All and all, I'm pretty happy with what I've accomplished in a little more than 3 weeks work.



And what I've been able to do on my old classic Macs!

 

[RacerX]

I've been playing with Vision 3D a little more... this time I've made some progress on an Enterprise style starship, the USS Constellation.

Click to enlarge​

I also finally got around to trying out my idea for a phaser effect. I finished up some elements of the Constellation and paired it up with the Columbia.

Click to view clip
Duration: 41 sec.​

As a first experiment I think this actually worked out okay (though I need to work on getting the sound better). And I decided against venturing into battle for my first test.

In addition to using Vision 3D, I did the bridge elements in Adobe LiveMotion and the phaser effects with the ships in Flash 5. It's great what all this old stuff can do.

 

[SkyBell]

Very nice, RacerX!

Played some Shufflepuck with my old Mac Classic running 6.0.3.

 

[madmax_2069]

just bought a Performa 475. it was to replace my lc475 that fried a wile ago. now im buying upgrades for it. a full 68040 40mhz cpu, 128mb simm (known to work in the LC475 or equivlent mac's) both for $48 USD, 1mb vram (looking for where to buy 2 512 vram sticks), and a external scsi with a cdrw drive in it for $10 USD.

there is diffrent way's for me to chip it to get it to run at 40mhz, moving the resistors is one way but not very sucessful, another way is to replace the oscolator (or buy a snap on replacement), or replce the PLL clock driver (which is going to be a PITA) one of the methods will only allow me 640x480 screen resalution. but i dont know what meathod will cause it.

i will prolly just move the resistors to set it for 33mhz and run it there for a few. and do some research on what method i will take to get it running at 40mhz that will work best for me that wil alow me to switch screen resalutions.

oh the specs on it right now is 36mb ram, 512k vram, 60LC040 25mhz and OS 7.6. It runs quite will for its age. ive ran Duke Nukem 3d on it runs a bit choppy but thats due to the 68LC040 (lack of FPU) and the 512K VRAM is a limiting factor. the PC's minimum requirements for that game is a 486DX2 66mhz 8mb ram perferably a Pentium class CPU. i would love to see a 386 or 486 25mhz PC play it as well as this old mac does at 640x480

 

[aquajet]

I managed to overclock a Quadra 605 (equivalent to the 475) by de-soldering a resistor on the logic board and it didn't result in any screen resolution limitation. The only issue was the installer programs for system software always reported that my machine wasn't supported. I assume this is because of a change in the gestalt ID, one which isn't recognized by the OS installer.

 

[madmax_2069]

I managed to overclock a Quadra 605 (equivalent to the 475) by de-soldering a resistor on the logic board and it didn't result in any screen resolution limitation. The only issue was the installer programs for system software always reported that my machine wasn't supported. I assume this is because of a change in the gestalt ID, one which isn't recognized by the OS installer.

yea then you have to use a app to change the gestalt ID back to what it should be . sorry im half asleep cant remember the name of the app. so what speed did you get it running at. im getting a full 68040 40mhz cpu and hope i can get there. cause allot of the sites say it will not work at 40mhz cause its cant sync with the video or cpu's speed . cant remember which. but at 33mhz it works great. i think what limits the video to one rez is if you use a oscolator to make it run faster.

 

[aquajet]

I overclocked it to 33mhz, with the original processor, without any instability. Didn't try going any faster than that.

IIRC, the name of the app was "Wish I Were".

 

[madmax_2069]

the full 68040 40mhz cpu and the 128mb stick of ram came in this morning. installed them and they are running great. system shows 132mb ram and shows the system having a full 040 (just i dont have the proper resistors to try making the system 33mhz or trying 40mhz) so its running at 25mhz right now. but it does show a nice little speedup over the LC040 running the same speed. files unstuff allot faster now. and the few 68k games i have play faster.

now im on to get a PDS III ethernet card, and going to upgrade to 1mb vram (has 512k vram now) that should speed up the games a bit more at a higher screen rez.

BTW RacerX those startrek images and video look awesome, great job.
i would love to do somthing like that

 

[RacerX]

I've put together a handful of shots of my Constellation as she stands so far. I figured this was a good point to benchmark my progress.

Click to enlarge​

 

[madmax_2069]

i bought and installed a Apple Ethernet PDS card in my Performa 475. it works great and i can share my dialup connection on my Beige G3 AIO use 10.4.8 and 9.2.2 (with the help of IPnetrouter) since OS 9.2.2 dont have that capability. and i can share files useing apple talk in OS 9.2.2 insted of useing a floppy disk.

i will be buying a external scsi cd burner drive for my Performa 475

also i was finaly able to buy the rest of the ram to max out my Beige G3 AIO to 768mb ram.

all i need to do now is buy a replacement case fan for my Beige G3 AIO cause its going out. i was wanting to replace it anyway cause of how loud the stock fan is. but my problem is that i dont know the size of the fan and where i can buy a real quiet and good performing fan.

ah i almost forgot that i bought a Belkin wireless G+ PCI card (model F5D7001) for my Beige G3 and it works great in 10.4.8. it detected it as soon as the OS loaded with no addintional drivers added. but the bad thing is that the card dont work in OS 9.2.2 cause the airport software dont support it. only if there was a 3rd party driver to support this card in OS 9.2.2. even if it only used the wireless b part of the card would be fine by me. i tryed the IOxperts drivers for OS 9 but they dont support it yet. but be warned tho they made this card with diffrent chipsets in them. i found the same model of the card in wal marts with diffrent pic's on the box some showed a card with the broadcom chipset and some showed a diffrent card with a diffrent chipset. im leading to beleave this is how to tell from the one with the broadcom chipset in it so that is what i did and it works great in OS X only.

also bought a Belkin wireless G+ router to go with the wifi card i bought. the router also supports OS X to set it up and i was shocked to learn it fully supported appletalk.

 

[Old Mac Geezer]

I yanked an old hard drive from a pile of Performa 6200 parts and put in a 6500/250 and fiddled around with MacOS 9.1 for a little bit.

I also had my 7500 on the internet recently.

Been busy playing with my Digital Audio Powermac mostly. I just bought a Radeon 9700 video card off of ebay last night because the stock Rage 128 isn't cutting it.

 

[madmax_2069]

i finally got my final piece of hardware for my Performa 475 to make it fully upgraded..

Spec's
Full 040 40mhz CPU (still runs at the stock 25mhz) but will soon change to 33mhz or try for 40mhz.

132mb ram

1mb vram (which was the final piece of hardware i just got)

1.2 GB HDD (plan on trying to get a 4gb or a 8gb HDD for it some time)

External LaCie SCSI CDRW drive (reads great and burns great with toast deluxe 4.x)

Apple Ethernet PDS card

and has OS 7.6.1 and runs great. play's Duke nukem 3d (a bit slow but playable) wolfinstine 3D (play's good but at higher screen rez runs a bit slow) and A-10 Cuba (play's good) the speed of the games will get better once i clock up the CPU.

so far im very satisfied with the system on what it can do

 

[840quadra]

Wow I forgot all about this thread!

I am typing this on my Performa 575 with Star Trek VI playing in iTunes on my G4 Dual 533 sitting next to it. I still want to start playing in 3d and still haven't taken the plunge.. For some reason it appears that this would be something really complicated to do!

Anyway, I am tasked with finding some classic screen savers fro a friends old Powermac, and I figured that since this system (the 575) is in the prime spot next to my G4, that I could use it for the search.

Bah, well I better get back to work, it takes quite some time for pages to load on this thing, but it is great to be posting and working online with a 68k based mac again, now it's time to find a 40MHz 68040 for this thing!