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Apple Macintosh Centris 650 "SuperMac Edition"

T

Timo W.

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Nov 25, 2014
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Location
Germany
After having found all the drivers needed, I finished my Apple Macintosh Centris 650 "SuperMac Edition" today. This Centris 650 was one of the very first items of my collection, got it about 18 years ago! I made two attempts to restore it in the past but never found the time to finish it - until now. It was completely disassembled and cleaned, the CPU was replaced (not really needed, but I thought it was an LC040 :rolleyes: ), the case was improved to suppress clang from vibration when accessing CD-ROMs, and some formerly missing parts were added. It is now the most perfect Macintosh in my collection.

As for the hardware:
* 68040 @ 25 MHz (with MMU/FPU)
* 84 MB RAM
* 1,44 MB FDD
* 1 GB IBM SCSI HDD
* Apple CD300i CD-ROM
* SuperMac Thunder/24 graphics accelerator card with 3 MB VRAM (won't get any better with NuBus)
* SuperMac ThunderStorm DSP card with twin AT&T DSP16A chips for PhotoShop acceleration
* SuperMac VideoSpigot

Guess why I call it "SuperMac Edition" ;)

The system is running MacOS 7.6.1. Despite people saying neither the VideoSpigot nor the DSP card are compatible with it, both are fully working. :mrgreen:

The DSP card makes PhotoShop fast as hell, the VideoSpigot allows live video, still-frame grabbing, and video capture, and the CPU is even fast enough for MP3 playback - as long as the MP3 is mono, which is ok since the internal speaker is mono anyway.

web_P1221242.jpg web_P1231245.jpg

web_P2121247.jpg web_P2121249.jpg

More pictures to follow.
 
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Nice one indeed!.

You can try to replace the old SCSI drive with the newer SCSI2SD, I'm using it with a Performa 475 and it works great. Of course is slower (when talking about burst speed); but its access speed beats the old drives, is totally silent and drains less power from the PSU.
 
I have a SCSI2SD in my PowerBook 540c. It's a nice replacement for 2,5" SCSI hard disks, but I wouldn't use it to replace a 3,5" SCSI hard disk as long as these are still available. Especially since neither MacOS nor SD cards know the TRIM command and video capture isn't something you'd like to do on media with limited write cycles.

Anyway, the IBM hard disk is still in good shape and quite silence. :)
 
After I have reassembled the front panel and the top cover, I'll post some more pictures. The CD-ROM bezel has some light yellowing, but apart from that, it looks fantastic.

//edit:
Added two pictures from an earlier state of restoration.
 
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Hey @Timo W. ,

I realize this is an ancient thread and I apologize for bringing it back from the dead.

I’m just wondering if you have the software disks or the software itself for the SuperMac ThunderStorm DSP card. If you do and can image and upload them, that would be great.
 
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