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[vectrex]

@UnexpectedBomb,

Excellent. thanks so much for doing this! As @LarsG5 has indicated, if you need any other cards in the slot to test, let us know. I have a SeriTek/1SM2, RME Cardbus card for multiface..etc, so if any of that is relevant to the reports, happy to try those out.

[UnexpectedBomb]

Regarding me lending you my Al - I live in Europe, so concidering the shipping cost and, especially, time it would take to get to you, we might actually be better off solving the Cardbus issue here, or perhaps you might even be able to find one faster locally.

Ah yeah, in that case I think the back-and-forth on this forum actually is better

@LarsG5 @vectrex I now have a patched ROM (MacOSROM.albook-cb1.hqx.sit) for you to try booting, as well as a new v2.0 compatibility checker (CardBusCompat.bin.sit) to help me diagnose if anything goes wrong. Here's the sequence I'd ask for:

1) Run the v2.0 compatibility checker app FIRST, on your "stock" ROM with a card inserted, to give us a baseline
2) Back-up your current Mac OS ROM somewhere safe
3) Boot from another volume and install the patched ROM, reboot
4) Run v2.0 compatibility checker again to generate a second log
5) Send me both logs

It should boot fine, but make sure you have a recovery plan just in case it doesn't and you need to swap it back out. Try out your CardBus cards once booted and see what happens. As a bonus, NEC-chipset USB cards should now operate at USB 2.0 speeds; SCSI cards should hopefully do their thing as well (I assume your SCSI card is specifically the PowerDomain APD-1480 which would be a key test subject).

Good luck! I am optimistic that we have a solution here. Getting working confirmations from both of you would be huge. If it doesn't work, send me a copy of your current stock ROM and I'll investigate.

EDIT: I forgot... for USB 2.0 speeds on a CardBus card, you will ALSO need to install the EHCI system extension (CardBus_EHCI_Ext.bin) from my repo here:

https://github.com/UnexpectedBomb/MacOS9-USB2-EHCI/releases#release-cbrel

CardBus USB will still work without it, but at the old 1.1 speed. To me, the SCSI card is the much more interesting test here, and I'd want to know specifically how the compatibility checker reads with one inserted on the new ROM.

[UnexpectedBomb]

👋powerbook 12” 1.5 ghz

If only the 12" had CardBus 

I noticed your mention of iSight in your signature... a very interesting piece of hardware for its era. Adding it to my (growing) OS 9 to-do list!

[vectrex]

hopefully got it right. tested with the scsi 1480 in the slot, i dont have a usb card yet.

[UnexpectedBomb]

hopefully got it right. tested with the scsi 1480 in the slot, i dont have a usb card yet.

Yep, you did everything right. The ROM boots, and Mac OS 9 now correctly recognizes the AlBook's PCI1510 CardBus controller for the first time ever... this was proven in the logs when:

driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC = ABSENT    changed to   PRESENT

...so we're already deep in uncharted OS 9 territory, my favorite place to be  That's the first two hurdles cleared.

What didn't happen is Card Services being registered, which caused OS 9 to publish nothing for your inserted SCSI card. I've updated the checker to v2.4 and am attaching it here; please run it on the same new ROM, this time with the SeriTek inserted. The question is whether anything appears under the CardBus bridge, which will tell me where to go next.

Edit: @LarsG5, if you can jump in with a similar test running v2.4 on the new ROM with your USB card inserted, that would be awesome.

[vectrex]

revised, here is the new seritek report. should the seritek drivers be loaded?

[UnexpectedBomb]

revised, here is the new seritek report. should the seritek drivers be loaded?

No need to load the drivers, you ran it just fine. The latest log was helpful. Unfortunately I'm still running into a wall with Card Services, but I might have a lead. There is a single bit that Apple's PC card software checks before proceeding with CardBus bring-up:

- If that bit reads "clear", I have another candidate ROM for you to try that could potentially solve this.
- If that bit reads "set", the lead is dead because the problem is further downstream. At that point I'd realistically have to punt on this until I can get my hands on a real 17" AlBook to test. (I'd also have to punt if it reads "clear" but the candidate ROM still fails).

So here's one final shot at pinpointing the issue: run the new v2.5 compatibility checker. It will tell us on the AlBook if that bit is clear or not. Then we'll make a decision from there.

[vectrex]

Here is v2.5 log

[LarsG5]

Hi, sorry for the delay, it's been a crazy week.

Sooo... Attached down below you will find 5 logs: 4 with my Nec USB Cardbus card and one with my Linksys WPC54G Cardbus card, which is basically a plug n play alternative for the 802.11g Airport Card (at least under Tiger).

Idk whether those made with the v.2.0 tool are still relevant, but I'm attaching those nonetheless.

BUT, no matter what I did, the Cardbus still appeared dead on my machine, even with the new rom installed. Idk whether I did something wrong, but just letting you know I wasn't able to make it work

[UnexpectedBomb]

@vectrex and @LarsG5 thanks to both of you! Getting logs independently from each of you helped big time. Comparing the results of the stock ROM as a control vs the new ROM was critical.

I also compared your logs against my Titanium PowerBook where the slot works as expected. Out of everything the machine reports about its own capabilities, exactly one item differs, and it is the "bit" that I referenced earlier that the PC Card software checks before it will start. Everything else matches the Titanium exactly, and your two machines match each other exactly. So with all of that confirmed, I am confident that the problem is this one bit currently reads "clear" and never gets set on the AlBook (almost certainly because Apple never shipped OS 9 for them).

The attached ROM sets this bit and keeps the card slot fix from the earlier build, since both are needed. I built the same change for my own Titanium PowerBook, booted it, and confirmed the bit actually changes, so the mechanism is tested and should work for you as well. The testing sequence is the same drill as before:

1) Run the v2.6 compatibility checker app FIRST (attached here)
2) Boot from another volume and install the new patched ROM (albook-cb2), reboot
3) Run v2.6 compatibility checker on the new ROM to generate a second log
4) Send me both logs and see if any of your cards respond.

The key thing we are looking for now is for the the stack to actually start, meaning the CardBus slot is alive for the first time. I'm hoping this is the ROM that does it.

[vectrex]

here are the logs, 'new' denotes new rom.

when i had the seritek card in with new rom, prior to installing driver, it showed up on the desktop as a grey card, no name attached. I installed the driver, it disappeared. Screenshots indicate the cards appear with the same vendor ID

[UnexpectedBomb]

It worked!! The CardBus slot is alive on the AlBook under OS 9! That's a first.

The SeriTek showing up as a blank card icon and then vanishing once you installed its driver is the next thing to troubleshoot, and this should be much more straightforward. Could you run the v2.6 checker again with the SeriTek driver installed and the card in the slot? The log lists what the system has attached to the card, so comparing that against the run you already sent should show what the driver changed when it took over. The cards aren't working quite yet, but we are closer than ever. Just the fact that the card appeared on the desktop at all is huge.

Regarding the ASP screenshots, the vendor ID showing in both is 104C, which is Texas Instruments, and that is the slot controller itself rather than either card. ASP is showing the slot and not looking past it at what is plugged in. Your two cards do have different IDs but this can only be seen in the logs, they may never show in ASP (which I think is normal).

Edit: On second thought, I think it's possible that the SeriTek card is actually working as intended... the card may have disappeared from the desktop because the driver claimed it. Did you try connecting a drive to that card?

Edit II: I have a new v2.8 compatibility checker (attached); run that one instead, but with the extension and card installed prior to booting. Then run it a second time with the SeriTek card inserted and extension disabled, and send both logs. The difference between runs will isolate what the driver does, so we can figure out how to make it cooperate.

[joevt]

Regarding getting info for PCI devices, I have a "lspci for Open Firmware" script that you can use in Open Firmware to get info about connected PCI devices. Latest version is from June 15, 2026 and has support for CardBus bridges.
 https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/erics-apple-network-server-700-tinker-log.3987/post-41227
You'll need to be able to connect to Open Firmware using serial or telnet.

If you can boot Mac OS X, then there's my pciutils fork on GitHub.

[LarsG5]

Down below you'll find my logs.

Sooo... After installing the new rom, an icon shaped like a Cardbus card popped up on my desktop, so that's a good sign.

BUT, I still wasn't able to actually make the USB card work - it's almost as if there was some kind of a fail safe built into OS 9 that doesn't let the card work. 

I have tested the card with a receiver for a wireless mouse and with a regular thumb drive. Mouse was working on a boot screen just fine, but as soon as OS 9 finished booting, it became dead. When it comes to the thumb stick, as soon as the system booted, I got a message as if I yanked it out of the slot without properly ejecting it within the system, even though it was plugged in all the time.

[vectrex]

Thanks @joevt, I will let someone more qualified jump in with respect to Open Firmware and serial.

That seems like progress @LarsG5! Will see what @UnexpectedBomb says about your results but that is promising that you have activity like that.

Here is my latest test which seemed to go quite far as well:

So essentially, the drive is identified in Drive Setup as something to initialize (which i didnt, bc i didnt want to lose the data) AND Silverlining also was able to detect the drive and provide hardware credentials/spec..etc so thats pretty wild! I was able to click mount in silverlining though the drive did not appear and i didnt get the blue led indicator on the seritek card to validate the mount.

That being said, there is a possibility that the drive I was testing needs a reformat to OS 9 spec, so i will run another test with a known Mac OS Extended structure to see if it was actually an issue with the drive itself.

Having to manually mount a drive via silverlining or scsiprobe is typical behavior for this seritek card as it behaves like a SCSI disk via the E-Sata connection (as tested on my TiBook). Will report back on the other drive test when i have time, but here are the current results to mull over.

Thanks!

[LarsG5]

That seems like progress @LarsG5! Will see what @UnexpectedBomb says about your results but that is promising that you have activity like that.

Definitely! It looks like there is no hardware issue, so that's a huuuuge deal!

[UnexpectedBomb]

That seems like progress @LarsG5! Will see what @UnexpectedBomb says about your results but that is promising that you have activity like that.

Definitely! It looks like there is no hardware issue, so that's a huuuuge deal!

This is awesome. Both of you got farther than I expected on this last go-around!

@LarsG5, your AlBook now looks identical to a TiBook where these cards work. Same entries, same names, same drivers attached, right down to matching sizes. Your USB card is fully recognized and its own internal hub came up. So the CardBus slot has done its job! Now we just gotta figure out what killed the devices during boot, and I already have a suspect. Three questions for you:

1) Do you have my CardBus USB 2.0 extension installed? If so, remove it, reboot, and try again. It could be that your card already works perfectly fine at 1.1 speeds as-is, and I would just need to troubleshoot my 2.0 extension to get it working with the AlBook.
2) What did the message about the thumb drive actually say, did it name the card or the disk?
3) Does a mouse work if you plug it in after the desktop has loaded? (with or without the extension)

@vectrex, very exciting results on your end as well. Silverlining read its make, model, capacity and exact sector count off it; that is real conversation with a real disk through CardBus. Huge progress. I do believe the MS-DOS format is the top suspect for why it didn't mount. Also makes sense why Drive Setup wanted to initialize it. Definitely try a Mac formatted drive and see if it works!

Regarding SeriTek, running the checker once with the SeriTek extension on and once with it off was the perfect test. With it on, the card slot entry gains notes that the extension wrote there itself, including the drive being large address capable, which matches the sector count Silverlining reported. With it off, those notes are gone. So the extension is finding your card, talking to your drive, and writing down what it found. That chain seems completely functional end-to-end.

I've attached a new checker, version 2.9 (are you tired of this yet? haha). It can now tell the difference between a card that a driver has formally taken over and one a driver is quietly working with anyway, which is what the SeriTek does. Run it and send me the log once again. I think we are in the home stretch now.