WOW, I am speechless, this is absolutely amazing. I had no idea about this project until seeing your video. I have been dreaming of a modern SE accelerator for many years, and it’s finally happening! Once the bugs are worked out and they are available, I will definitely be buying one, maybe two! Super excited for this! So much better than trying to find an old, expensive and rare accelerator that may up and die with no hope of ever repairing it.
@THEtecknight Thanks for doing the sound testing on the Radius Accelerator at 31:22. I've always been curious if that card was like my Levco (SuperMac) SpeedCard, and sure enough it is. Seems like a lot of SE accelerators back in the day had that audio glitching problem. So if Zane can get that issue squared away in WarpSE, it surely will be THE accelerator to have for any Mac SE.
@@THEtechknight Please check our TinkerDifferent thread for the posts made in the last 24 hours (as of Oct. 2, 2024). More specifically, if you can please test Zane's "0.5robust" firmware in the same manner I did (see my video posted in that thread today for all the details), that would be extremely helpful.
@@JeffTiberend Jeff, I have the Levco Supermac SpeedCard with 16MHz 68000 and 68881 FPU and show that at the 50 : 43 timestamp in my SE Reloaded Part IV video. (RUclips has an automated censorship algorithm, so I can't give you the full link. Type in RUclips domain name in your browser's address bar. Then copy/paste this at the end: watch?v=jxFu6Ye8_To&t=3043s ) The problem with the SpeedCard is Bad Audio! It's really bad. WarpSE is great because Zane has worked VERY HARD to get audio sounding just as good as the stock SE. Expand the text description under TechKnight's video and click the TinkerDifferent link to see all the details. We're now pretty close to hammering out the final bugs, which pertain to LocalTalk networking.
@@JeffTiberend Jeff, I have the Levco Supermac SpeedCard with 16MHz 68000 and 68881 FPU and show that at the 50 : 43 timestamp in my SE Reloaded Part IV video - copy/paste the following in the RUclips Search Bar: Macintosh SE Reloaded TESTING [Part 4] The problem with the SpeedCard is Bad Audio! It's really bad. WarpSE is great because Zane has worked VERY HARD to get audio sounding just as good as the stock SE. Expand the text description under TechKnight's video and click the TinkerDifferent link to see all the details. We're now pretty close to hammering out the final bugs, which pertain to LocalTalk networking.
Thanks for the video. Amiga nerd here so a brother in M68k… and I have been considering obtaining an “old world” or PPC Mac to play with. I looked up this accelerator… why did they stick with the 68000 and only 25MHz and not go with a 68040 or even better a 68060 at 50MHz (or better?)? I also understand it only has 4MB RAM, but the 68000 can use a max of 16MB (2GB for the 68040). With the 68040 you also get FPU and independent MMU. It just seems this isn’t much of an accelerator especially when compared to the Terrible Fire and especially compared to the PiStorm.
Because going that far it'd be pointless. These are designed for machines that have no video acceleration, a single 1-bit 512x342 display. There's no capability to 'add' colour on the SE. Nothing really uses the FPU in these machines - by the time software was coming out that used the FPU, they were also apps that required colour. There is no 68060 support in the Macintosh ROM anywhere - you'd have to totally re-write them for minimal performance gains. The BBU chip on the SE logic board only allows for 4MB of addressable RAM as it's just an integration of the previous PAL16 logic from the Macintosh Plus from 1986, which differed very little from the original 1984 Macintosh. The 68000 may have 16MB addressable space, but when this was released in 1987, having 4MB of ram was considered nuts and would have cost almost half of the entire machine. The rest of the address space is mapped to ROM, system overlay, expansion slots etc. Also - cost. A 68HC00020 costs a lot less than an 030 or an 040. When you butt up against the rest of the system restrictions, putting in anything more than an 020 is throwing money away.
I mean, we had not done an accelerator before so we figured we should start off simply. Our goal was a 3.5x speedup and we broke 4x in some tests so we're happy. It makes the SE much more tolerable to use. Our target price for this accelerator is $150 and in the future after the first batch of 250ish are made and sold we would like to update the design and reduce cost even more. 68030 and FPU would take up a significant part of the budget and 68060 would be totally out of the price range. I think the full '060 with FPU goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Even 68040s are kinda rare, but we were able to acquire about 250 of these MC68HC000s with good provenance (i.e. no fake "remanufactured" chips) for a good price. Next we will do an SE/30 accelerator which will obviously require an '030 but first things first.
@@bakkus82 They aren't, at all, but the number one priority of the Amiga nerd is being able to claim superiority because they have the biggest and baddest accelerator (bonus points if it basically just replaces the entire system through the CPU). Dude, you're still using a 68000? That's poverty spec, you should be digging through Motorola VME scrap in hopes of finding 060s for less than $500 a chip. Lame! CPU type and speed is everything!
I appreciate the teasing here, but the deep answer interests me: you can pick up some Mac from pretty much any performance tier except for the recent x86 and ARM Mac's for at or under $200 still with a bit of patience. So there's no pressure to accelerate the heck out of an old Mac, except for niche collectors and niche use cases. It's fun, but except for keeping the lowest end 68000 Macs from tripping over their own feet? It will often be easier and more rewarding to buy another computer if you want more performance.
Soon we will fix these issues and the release the WarpSE!
Your new camera setup is working really well :) Makes it much more pleasant to watch you work on things with CRTs
WOW, I am speechless, this is absolutely amazing. I had no idea about this project until seeing your video. I have been dreaming of a modern SE accelerator for many years, and it’s finally happening! Once the bugs are worked out and they are available, I will definitely be buying one, maybe two! Super excited for this! So much better than trying to find an old, expensive and rare accelerator that may up and die with no hope of ever repairing it.
Great review! Nice to see at Tinker Different the developer is already working on sound fixes. Very cool project!
@THEtecknight Thanks for doing the sound testing on the Radius Accelerator at 31:22. I've always been curious if that card was like my Levco (SuperMac) SpeedCard, and sure enough it is. Seems like a lot of SE accelerators back in the day had that audio glitching problem. So if Zane can get that issue squared away in WarpSE, it surely will be THE accelerator to have for any Mac SE.
He fixed it just the other day. Everything seems to be working properly
@@THEtechknight Please check our TinkerDifferent thread for the posts made in the last 24 hours (as of Oct. 2, 2024). More specifically, if you can please test Zane's "0.5robust" firmware in the same manner I did (see my video posted in that thread today for all the details), that would be extremely helpful.
I’ve seen a video by This Does Not Compute showing the Levco card. I just got a stock Mac SE. Now, I trying to find a good accelerator for it.
@@JeffTiberend Jeff, I have the Levco Supermac SpeedCard with 16MHz 68000 and 68881 FPU and show that at the 50 : 43 timestamp in my SE Reloaded Part IV video. (RUclips has an automated censorship algorithm, so I can't give you the full link. Type in RUclips domain name in your browser's address bar. Then copy/paste this at the end: watch?v=jxFu6Ye8_To&t=3043s ) The problem with the SpeedCard is Bad Audio! It's really bad. WarpSE is great because Zane has worked VERY HARD to get audio sounding just as good as the stock SE. Expand the text description under TechKnight's video and click the TinkerDifferent link to see all the details. We're now pretty close to hammering out the final bugs, which pertain to LocalTalk networking.
@@JeffTiberend Jeff, I have the Levco Supermac SpeedCard with 16MHz 68000 and 68881 FPU and show that at the 50 : 43 timestamp in my SE Reloaded Part IV video - copy/paste the following in the RUclips Search Bar: Macintosh SE Reloaded TESTING [Part 4]
The problem with the SpeedCard is Bad Audio! It's really bad. WarpSE is great because Zane has worked VERY HARD to get audio sounding just as good as the stock SE. Expand the text description under TechKnight's video and click the TinkerDifferent link to see all the details. We're now pretty close to hammering out the final bugs, which pertain to LocalTalk networking.
Wonderful work!
What a cool project! There might be hope for Classics yet :)
Exalent Review Mike when they get it out of the beta and buds fix I will have to get one
I pulled out my SEs and spent some quality time with Speedometer and some accelerators. It definitely wants System 6 to get 1.0 scores on the stock SE
Very cool, I gotta find me one of these at some point for my SE. Thing is slow as hell
Thanks for the video. Amiga nerd here so a brother in M68k… and I have been considering obtaining an “old world” or PPC Mac to play with.
I looked up this accelerator… why did they stick with the 68000 and only 25MHz and not go with a 68040 or even better a 68060 at 50MHz (or better?)? I also understand it only has 4MB RAM, but the 68000 can use a max of 16MB (2GB for the 68040).
With the 68040 you also get FPU and independent MMU.
It just seems this isn’t much of an accelerator especially when compared to the Terrible Fire and especially compared to the PiStorm.
Because going that far it'd be pointless. These are designed for machines that have no video acceleration, a single 1-bit 512x342 display. There's no capability to 'add' colour on the SE. Nothing really uses the FPU in these machines - by the time software was coming out that used the FPU, they were also apps that required colour.
There is no 68060 support in the Macintosh ROM anywhere - you'd have to totally re-write them for minimal performance gains.
The BBU chip on the SE logic board only allows for 4MB of addressable RAM as it's just an integration of the previous PAL16 logic from the Macintosh Plus from 1986, which differed very little from the original 1984 Macintosh.
The 68000 may have 16MB addressable space, but when this was released in 1987, having 4MB of ram was considered nuts and would have cost almost half of the entire machine. The rest of the address space is mapped to ROM, system overlay, expansion slots etc.
Also - cost. A 68HC00020 costs a lot less than an 030 or an 040. When you butt up against the rest of the system restrictions, putting in anything more than an 020 is throwing money away.
Neither the TerribleFire or the PiStorm are even remotely compatible with the Macintosh SE, so I don't understand how those are valid comparisons.
I mean, we had not done an accelerator before so we figured we should start off simply. Our goal was a 3.5x speedup and we broke 4x in some tests so we're happy. It makes the SE much more tolerable to use. Our target price for this accelerator is $150 and in the future after the first batch of 250ish are made and sold we would like to update the design and reduce cost even more. 68030 and FPU would take up a significant part of the budget and 68060 would be totally out of the price range. I think the full '060 with FPU goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Even 68040s are kinda rare, but we were able to acquire about 250 of these MC68HC000s with good provenance (i.e. no fake "remanufactured" chips) for a good price. Next we will do an SE/30 accelerator which will obviously require an '030 but first things first.
@@bakkus82 They aren't, at all, but the number one priority of the Amiga nerd is being able to claim superiority because they have the biggest and baddest accelerator (bonus points if it basically just replaces the entire system through the CPU). Dude, you're still using a 68000? That's poverty spec, you should be digging through Motorola VME scrap in hopes of finding 060s for less than $500 a chip. Lame! CPU type and speed is everything!
I appreciate the teasing here, but the deep answer interests me: you can pick up some Mac from pretty much any performance tier except for the recent x86 and ARM Mac's for at or under $200 still with a bit of patience. So there's no pressure to accelerate the heck out of an old Mac, except for niche collectors and niche use cases. It's fun, but except for keeping the lowest end 68000 Macs from tripping over their own feet? It will often be easier and more rewarding to buy another computer if you want more performance.
I pulled out my SEs and spent some quality time with Speedometer and some accelerators. It definitely wants System 6 to get 1.0 scores on the stock SE