Semi-OT: PMac 6100 DOS

From: Chris <mythtech_at_mac.com>
Date: Wed Mar 13 14:41:53 2002

>Question: There is a three-row, 26-pin port on the PC card, for some
>external device to plug in to. What is this?

Looking over the fact that it always hangs at the same place... I think
what is happening is, it IS booted into the PC... only that 26pin
connector is for the video dongle, and without it, you just aren't seeing
the PC screen.

There should be a cable that plugs into that port. That cable will then
have an RGB video connector to go to a monitor, an RGB video connector to
go to the Mac's video out port, and a PC Joy stick port.

It looks like the card you have is just like all the others... without
that dongle, the card is useless. FINDING a dongle is next to impossible
without getting a whole new card. Some day I will have to sit down and
pinout one of my Dongles, so that I can at least make available a wiring
diagram for others to make new ones.

>Awesome, thanks for the link! Why is the corresponding Apple FTP site's
>folder empty then? Grrr. Made me think they'd pulled their whole software
>archive except for patches.

Apple reorganized their software archives a while back... and they made a
total mess of things. Some stuff is located in odd places, some stuff was
moved but links not updated... ugh... its a mess for anything in the old
discontinued software.

>One thing I noticed, dunno if it's at all relevant, but when I try to
>click the popup menu for "Sharing" (this is in the PC Setup panel) it
>gives me the following error message: "No PC drive letters available. Make
>sure that "MACSHARE" has been started on the PC and "LASTDRIVE" is set to
>an appropriate value in your "CONFIG.SYS"." I assume this is for file
>sharing Mac data to the PC side, so at the moment I don't need to care
>about that problem...right?

Yeah, this is only for hosting a shared folder between the Mac and PC. It
is a VERY nice feature. Basically, you assign a folder on the Mac side,
and that becomes a drive letter on the PC side... so anything in that
folder is read/write accessable from both worlds. But it needs a driver
installed on the PC before you can configure it. That driver is part of
the PC half of the installer software (I'm not sure it is available on
Apple's web site... if not, let me know, I'll send you an image of one of
my disks... although, you SHOULD be able to use the PC drivers that come
with the 1.6.4 version of the PC Setup software, and those I believe are
on Apple's site).

I would expect you to see the error you are seeing right now, as you
can't assign a drive letter until AFTER the PC is up and running
properly, and the driver is installed.


I would check with the person that gave you the mac, see if they still
have the video dongle. If they kept the old monitor, they may have left
it connected to the monitor (I have seen that done a few times... people
don't realize the dongle goes to the computer, they figure it is part of
the monitor and try to keep it). If you can't find one, let me know...
maybe I can pinout one of mine so you can build a new one (anyone have a
suggestion on the best way to pinout an odd cable? Or am I just stuck
using a continuity tester and going from pin to pin looking to see what
connects where?)

-chris

<http://www.mythtech.net>
Received on Wed Mar 13 2002 - 14:41:53 GMT

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