modelrail.otenko Trains, computers, vintage, retro, model railways… the lot…

Power Mac 7200: PC Compatibility

The 7200 was marketed as PC Compatible out of the box and came stock with an 820-0728-A Apple PC Compatibility Card. Getting one of these to work without the original disks was quite a challenge! Let's start by checking it out...

Once in the case, there's ribbon cables and audio cables running everywhere.

The External Cable (is not required)

It turns out that if you boot the machine up without the cable patched in then it isn't needed; the PC display is routed internally through to your monitor.

I'm going to guess that the internal ribbon cable, as seen in the last picture above, is the reason for this. It must route the video output through to the standard Macintosh video. I don't know if this causes a performance hit.

Upgrading it

My initial understanding was that the CPU is fixed and so is the on-board 16mb of RAM, but there is an extra slot that you can slap up to 64mb into. See Oliver Schubert's notes here. I therefore purchased an additional 64mb on eBay to get my card to 80mb. Make sure it is 5v NON-EDO FPM 4x64!

The RAM arrived from eBay (new DIMM is above old in the picture above) and I plugged it in and turned it on. Windows still reported 30mb of RAM (2mb to video, I imagine) and so did the BIOS. I initially thought I'd bought a dud... after a few reboots and poweroffs I still couldn't get the total amount to register. I powered the machine down completely and inspected the card. It seems that the DIMM had around 0.5 of a millimetre more to be pushed into the slot!

Rebooting with a properly seated DIMM showed 64mb in the BIOS. I had actually expected 80mb if it was working properly, as the on-board 16mb should've totalled to that. Nothing I did further remedied this. 64mb worked for me though.

For fun, I removed the DIMM altogether and rebooted. Trying to start the PC got a loud beep. Nothing. It wouldn't start... I then read the actual manual:

Your PC Compatibility Card has one socket available for RAM (random access memory). Some versions of the card come with a DIMM (dual inline memory module) already installed. On these cards, you can increase memory by replacing the installed DIMM with a greater-capacity DIMM.

Some versions of the PC Compatibility Card do not come with an installed DIMM. On these cards, you must install a DIMM in the socket prior to installing the card in your computer. Otherwise, the card will not work.

Hah... so... my card had 32mb in there.. I removed it and added 64mb. When it was partially inserted it somehow appeared as 32mb. When correctly inserted the 64mb was visible.

I then checked out PC Setup and saw that, when no RAM was in, it told me NO RAM.

Duh...

Mac OS 8.1-8.6

The card just works. The PC Setup Control Panel is installed with the OS and command-return switches you to the PC. I hadn't tried networking from Windows... but I had found that it didn't seem to be configured.

As that the machine came with this OS and had Win95B installed on the PC side, I didn't have to go through anything to get it working. It wasn't until I installed 9.2.2 fresh that I was at the whim of 90's vintage technology.

Mac OS 9.2.2

Nothing. No control panel, no command-return. Mac OS 9 Cross-Platform Issues reports that you can get it to work under 9.0.4... and so I tried for myself on 9.2.2.

Note: This turns into a rant very quickly. If you just want the required files, then jump down to here.

Tips for Running Windows on Mac has a FAQ for getting it to work. They state that networking hadn't worked since 8.5 (probably why it didn't work when I tried.) Their link to PC Setup 2.1.7f failed me, but I found it over here at the PC Card FAQ. It is also available on alksoft's site labelled 'Stuff that might be useful'. Of course... that 'Mac Drivers' link didn't work... so grab it from the PC Card FAQ.

Did that work for you? It didn't for me... the zip from PC Card FAQ had a __MACOSX folder in it and a file that was unrecognised by my 9.2.2 installation. If it still works when you read this, go to the official site here and download the actual driver itself from them.

It worked! And then asked for registration details... enter the following:

• Licensee Name: FREE
• Site Number: 469
• Authorization Key: UEV-EVZ-7TU

...and I then it tells me that I need PC Setup 1.6.4 installed first. Yey! You'll find the first file you need here. Extracting the BIN will give you a disk image. Simply double-click it and Disk Copy will mount it onto your desktop. Run the installer and reboot.

Once rebooted, I thought I'd try and muck around with PC Setup 1.6.4. It seemed to work, but I had no HDD. I had a 1gb disk in there that I wanted to use natively. Don't even bother trying to use real PC Partitions... go with a Drive Container on a spare disk/folder.

PC Setup will take years to build the drive file, so go make a coffee. Once it's done, start the PC. You'll need a boot disk. There seems to be one at the PC Card FAQ with CD-ROM drivers and the like.

Note: You must insert the floppy only once you are on the PC side. A floppy inserted on the Macintosh side will be mounted onto the desktop and be invisible to the PC. Switch to the PC using command-return and then insert the disk. Use command-E at any time to eject the disk.

Anyway, back to the floppy disk image... the files you've downloaded will prove problematic. It'll be next to impossible to create the disk images as the metadata from the zip files seem to be missing and the files wont be openable in Disk Copy or any such program. Your best bet from here is to load up another machine, say Linux or Windows, and create a floppy. Here's someone else who had the same trouble. Their answer was to get another person to write a physical floppy and mail it to them!

I tried this, booting up my old windows PC with floppy drive, but it didn't work! I'm thinking the zip format was the issue... so I started searching deeper. Googling for more information got me to Oliver Schubert's DOS Card FAQ which had pointers to Apple's download site. This was full of dead FTP links, but gave me the real file names in BIN and HQX. I slapped these into google and came across this directory listing. I don't know who you are yahozna, but I love you. The files were there!.. sitting, waiting to be downloaded. And shite, sometimes things just work: they extracted and mounted perfectly via Disk Copy! I took a copy of the second disk for safe-keeping also.

Turns out this disk isn't bootable. Go figure. You're actually meant to have installed DOS 6.22 from the disks that were originally included with the DOS Compatibility Card. I don't really want to do that, so we'll try trick it. We really just want the drivers for our Win98 install.

Grab the Windows98_SE boot image from here and burn it to a floppy. Once created, grab CDROM.SYS from the PC_Compatibility_1.6.4-2of2 and copy it onto the Windows 98 disk. Either delete an existing driver (like BTCDROM.SYS) and rename it to that, or edit CONFIG.SYS and add in a line for CDROM.SYS.

Or, you can just download the boot disk here that I created which will work fine! It also has all the required networking files.

Boot this floppy and crawl to a DOS Prompt. You'll get a warning that C:\ is no good, as expected when no partitions exist. Run FDISK and create a new logical partition. Reboot, booting off the floppy again and we should be set... you should now have a CD-ROM drive and usable C: Drive.

Usually from here, you'd run setup off the CD. Fortunately, we know in advance that the CD will be inaccessible on the second reboot into Windows setup. So, format your disk here and then copy the win98 folder to C:\. You can then run SETUP.EXE from C:\WIN98SE\. This will save a lot of headaches!

That last screen... Windows will sit there 'updating settings' for a very long time! Prepare to wait for around 30 minutes.

Now you're at the desktop, slap the PC_Compatibility_1.6.4-2of2 disk back in and run setup.exe. Keep all the boxes checked, install the drivers and hit restart.

After a reboot you should then have your CD-ROM drive in My Computer! Command-Click on My Computer and then choose properties. Go to the Devices tab and you'll see three items that need drivers. With the Windows 98 SE CD in there, you can choose properties and then Reinstall Driver. Let Windows choose the driver off the CD and you'll be set.

At this point, audio still didn't work. Looking at all of the manuals for the cards, you'll note that they all output audio through the CD Audio cable. It's actually patched in... instead of the audio from the CD drive going straight to the motherboard, it is fed into the cd audio input on the PC card, mixed (I assume) and then another cd audio cable connects the cd audio output of the pc card to the motherboard.

The big hint here was that, after installing Mac OS 9.2.2, had I correctly set up the Mac for CD Audio input? Switching back to the Mac and checking the sound panel, I noticed that I was mute to the world. There was no input specified! An easy fix: set this to CD Audio and switch back to Windows. Tada! All the nasty sounds of Windows 98 SE. Actually... I never did mind that guitar solo on the Welcome screen.

Networking wasn't too difficult. Following the 'How do I network the Mac and PC side at the same time?' instructions at the bottom of the pc card faq, I downloaded the DOS NetWare Client file from FreeDOS, copied it to a CD and then transferred it over to Windows on the Mac.

Note: You cannot use multi-session 'USB Style' CDs in the Macintosh. If you're copying files onto a CD in Windows and want it to work in the Macintosh then you have to do it the old way. Select 'With a CD/DVD Player' rather than 'Like a USB Flash Drive'.

Anyway, back to the networking... There's no need to do much here, I've put all that is required on the floppy image I've created. Slap it in and drag the NWCLIENT folder to C:\.

Edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and make sure the following lines are at the end of the file, in the following order:

C:\NWCLIENT\LSL
C:\APPLE\MACODI

I'm assuming you would've done all of this from a Command Prompt window inside Windows 98. So reboot your machine once this is done. Hit ESC when you see the pretty Windows 98 loading screen to see what DOS is doing underneath.

Once back in Windows, go to control panel, networks and then add a new adapter. Select the ODI adapter under the 'detected' category. It'll take a really long time... and won't really tell you that it's doing anything... but it is busy! Just leave Windows at the desktop at this point. It shouldn't ask you for a Novell Disk at this point; if it does, then you need to restart the windows side and check your errors on boot up.

Once installed, reboot as Windows asks. When Windows loads, you should be prompted with a login for Client for Microsoft Networks. You can just hit enter here to set your password as blank.

Once booted, I got to Windows, jumped into a command prompt and typed in IPCONFIG. Oh goody! I had a 169 'internal' IP. This wasn't going to work. There had been no errors, everything seemed to be fine... but PC Setup 1.6.4 on Mac OS 9.2.2 wouldn't let my packets flow. Trying a renew_all on ipconfig reported that my DHCP server wasn't available.

I thought I'd try the patch that was meant for Mac OS 8.5, but that didn't work... it installed, I got my newly patched extension, but on a reboot I still couldn't contact the outside world. Based on the post from Phil Beezley on the FAQ from Oliver Schubert:

...On some Macs, it is also necessary to replace the extension called Apple Enet with the Ethernet (Built-In) extension provided with Mac OS 8.5.
The more official solution to the network problems when using Mac OS 8.5 onwards is to use PC Setup 2.x.

Prior to trying 2.1.7f, I thought I'd try replace this extension. I inserted the Mac OS 8.5 CD, located Ethernet (Built-In) and copied it into the System Folder. It complained that there was an older version in there... how does that happen in 9.2.2? Anyway, You then need to delete/disable/move Apple Enet. Reboot the Macintosh.

It came back up... no errors. Chooser still worked, so did browsing the internet on the Macintosh side... so... I booted into Windows. Command Prompt reported a perfectly defined IP address from DHCP. Internet Explorer even tried to render a page!

After rebooting, I was on the internet! Windows 98 SE is working beautifully! I quickly tried MOD4WIN... nostalgic much? I do wish I could find a copy of Vibe, the MP3 Player that turned into Sonique.

For those who didn't read the fine print

Here are all the files mentioned and how to use them.

Files	Comments
Apple Macintosh PC Setup 1.6.4 Disks PC_Compatibility_1.6.4-1of2.img.bin PC_Compatibility_1.6.4-2of2.img.bin	The first disk contains the Macintosh side and will get 1.6.4 installed on any Mac OS up to 9.2.2. The second disk contains the PC drivers. This is NOT a boot disk. The original expectation is that you have already installed MS-DOS!
Macintosh PC Setup 2.1.7f pcSetup217Mac_22Aug2000.sea.bin Windows Drivers for PC Setup 2.1.7f pcsetup217.exe PC Setup 2.1.7f Setup/Installation Manual 217finalpcsetupinstall.pdf	These files were all secured from the Wayback machine. I have no idea if they work or not!
My Windows 98 SE Boot Disk BOOT98SE.img.sit.hqx	This disk is bootable and contains the CD driver. It is originally the 98 SE Boot Disk. So it'll drop you to a command prompt where you can use FDISK, FORMAT.COM and then run SETUP from the CD. I actually recommend that you copy the WIN98 folder to your C drive first! (call it WIN98SE) and run SETUP.EXE from there... that way you wont have to practice magic when it can't find the CD drive during installation. This also contains the Network Drivers. Copy the NWCLIENT folder to C:\ and edit AUTOEXEC.BAT as specified above.
50mb Hard Disk Image of above boot disk TinyBootDisk.sit	As mentioned, this is a bootable harddisk image that should work for people having issues booting from floppy disks. It contains everything you need for CD and network. The Win98SE Boot Disk RAM DRIVE is also loaded as D:\ (CD as E:\)
PC Compatibility Card Manuals 7" Card Manual12" Card Manual	The original Macintosh manuals for each card.

It's been a pleasure...