The 6400 Newer G3 Compatibility page

This page contains a growing list of issues related to Newers G3 cards.
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• Sound Issues-
• Geo Modem Issues-

I received this letter from Brent who is having some sound issues with his Newer L2 G3.I'm not sure if these are the same as the Sonnet Sound issues as I would hate to see another G3 with major issues!

[Tom,

I just purchased the Newer Tech L2 G3 upgrade (300/200 w/1MB cache) for my Performa 6360 and wanted to report my findings.

After a very unusual situation in which all of my SCSI devices would no longer be recognized, I think I have everything in working order now. (Reinstalled the card and both DIMMS.)

The speed boost is very evident and I love it. BUT I do have a sound problem that I find unacceptable! Some sounds (like audio CDs, game sounds, etc.) appear to be distorted and overdriven. On "DGen 1.1.6" (a Sega Genesis emulator), the actual pitch sounds like it has been lowered half an octave or so. This is very strange and annoying.

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced these problems? I plan on contacting Newer on Tuesday to inquire about these problems. If I find out anything, I will let you know.
Thanks!
Brent
guitarmn@feist.com]

9/17/1999 Sound issues with Newers G3 update: Speaking of issues, here is an update from Claudio who is having sound issues with Newers L2 G3. Looks like both Sonnet and Newer have sound issues :( I really think it has something to do with timing issues due to the faster CPU but Vimages G3 never had this problem? Maybe that double boot isn't so bad after all!

[Tom :
Hi... to make a story short ... I got in touch with Newer's Tech support (very laconic by the way; and not very helpfull ) and they decided to send me a new card... Well the problem still persist , especially with voice recognition.... it seems like the program needs more memory or the whole way the sound works on the computer somehow needs a "push" or something .... I am happy with the speed but not to thrill about the side effect on the sound part .I also saw in your Web site that there is another user ( Brent) reporting the same problem by the way he nails it exactly on the way some of the sounds play trough... in a way I am happy I am not the only one... Something tells me the Newer driver needs a tune up ..... I am pondering sending this card back for a refund an continue using the Vimage card until further development ....also I am hesitant now that Mac Os 9 is bringing mainly voice recognition capabilities as a part of the whole upgrade core. Hopefully the reseller will take it back. Well if you heard anybody else that can share some experience on this issue I will appreciate it.
Thanks again.
Claudio.]

Later Claudio sent another reply stating he returned the Newer G3 and reinstalled his Vimage G3.

[Tom:
I decided to return the card after all and reinstall the Vimage card; now; I did talk to the people that actually sold me the card ( Upgradestuff) and David ( a sales person) told me this, he has heard of other customers ( a few) that had complained about this very same issue and since there is not that many people actually using these cards, perhaps that is why Newer is not completely aware of this problem.He mentioned a person that was working with in the music business and using his Performa for sound editing and had similar problems.He also explained and we both agree , that the 6400 is a very picky machine when it comes to sound issues, so it is possible that the architecture of the card is not totally compatible. In any case I regret to have to return the product, but I am happy that at least I got to try it ,I will probably buying a new G4 next year so for now I will have to do with this one, I already pre-order OS 9 and I am starting to wonder what set of new incompatibilities this new OS will unleash ..Apple always keeps us on our toes. Hey that was a great picture of you on your page and again I am always looking forward to reading it . By the way the other guy that was having the same problem with this never e-mail me back so I don't know what he did. Thanks again.
Claudio.]

9/24/1999 Update on sound issue with Newers G3: Brent has further info on his sound issue. He found that the problem was with his program and not related to the G3.

[Tom,
Sorry it has taken so long to respond about the Newer 300/200 G3 card issue that I wrote you about recently. I also received email from Claudio about his/her issues with the same card and the sound problems.

I haven't had much time to really investigate much further but I did solve the sound problem with the Sega Genesis emultor, "DGen." The lowered pitch and noisy sound quality was due to the game being set to 11.025 Khz. When changed to CD quality (44.1 Khz) everything was just right. I listened to some CDs and determined that if there was some sound quality degradation I sure don't notice it now. I can't account for what changed.

The one thing I haven't tried was Speech Recognition as Claudio had mentioned. I will attempt to test it sometime soon. Speech Recognition isn't that big of an issue with me but I agree that the card shouldn't affect this capability adversely.

I would be curious what temperature other people are reporting. Mine runs around 60-70 degrees celsius. I did encounter a time when the computer sounded like the fan was cycling at different speeds and the temperature reached into the 80's. I've never heard the fan run at any other speed so I may have a fan or power issue manifesting itself. But that only happened once and that was over a week ago. Since then everything is stable and FAST! Overall I am satisfied but will continue to monitor and test the card and report my findings.

Thanks!
Brent]

and later he writes:

[ In the case of the game (DGen), it was the in the game setup itself, not system wide. Listening to CDs through speakers and headphones appears to be fine. Like I said before, I'm not sure why it originally sounded distorted but doesn't sound that way now. (It may have been that the card wasn't seated correctly the first time I installed it.) By the way, I recorded several voice and music samples with "SimpleSound" and they sounded just fine.]

So maybe Newers G3 is ok after all as far as sound issues go. I won't say its free of sound issue yet though :) if your having trouble with your G3 try what Brent did and reseat the card.

3/24/2000 PCI timing extension may fix L2 G3 audio issues?: I found this on Accelerate Your Mac's web site.

[PCI Timing Update Fixes 6500 Audio Issues? One of the weekend's updates to the Rate Your CPU Upgrade database contained an interesting entry from a 6500 owner with L2G3 upgrade noting the PCI Timing update worked wonders:

" Mike,

model: 6500/225

96mb ram

Newertech G3/300/200 1mb

Audiomedia III PCI card

External zoom modem

Matsushita 24x scsi cd int.

Yamaha CDR external

The Audiomedia III PCI digital audio interface PCI card, was not compatible with Newer's L2 upgrade (with audiomedia/iii drivers etc. OFF) . Playback of internal audio files of any kind had popping if G3 was enabled, and would quickly lock up machine. Also serial problems and scsi issues if G3 enabled. Got an external zoom 56k, took out internal geoport. I am an Apple certified tech did everything I knew of, and Newer' support just suggested usual:

Clean installs 8.5.1-8.6 even low level format, remove, reset periphials, G3 card, ATI updates, zap Pram, etc. None worked

Well, here's what fixed it: PCI TIMING UPDATE 1.0!, from Apple's site, Apple said it will not work on any other machine, but the powercomputing/7200 based boards. But it has stabilized my machine since installing it .I have been Newer's beta 2.0.2 with cache contol software. (For me diff, cache speeds, and disabling/backside did not help?). BUT, the PCI timing extention, it did. I have tried and tried to crash it, doing all the things that caused it to lock up before, when the G3/ L2 was enabled. I decided another clean install (5th time,same set-up as before), base extentions, software, except G3 upgrade, and still crashed at least once a day as mentioned above for a month, I was gonaa send the upgrade back.Then I threw in this PCI timing update 1.0 out of curiosity, and have no trouble since.
Jonathan T. Clark Macintosh Certified Technician/Audio Engineer "

Interesting. That update was noted on the PowerCenter Pro review and in the FAQ as far as Audio patches for Catalyst motherboards (not sure exactly what the 64/6500 MB is). ATI also includes a similar patch called Sound Catalyst with their video cards.]

Newer's L2 G3's and the Geo modem: I got this from Fumiaki who's Geo modem is not recognized after he installed Newers L2 G3. Here is a reply he got from Newer. Thanks Fumiaki.

[We are currently looking into this issue and and sson as we find a resolution we will let you know. Please contact us each week until then so we dont miss you, thanks.]

I guess Newer is having the same issues as Sonnet did? Maybe the Geo modem really isn't G3 compatible? Why sell an upgrade that isn't compatible with the end system it was intended for? Some warning on their part would be nice! These companies could at least make it more clear that there may be a problem with your modem if you use these!

10/30/1999 Newers G3 and the Geo modem update: Tony sends word that he got his Geo modem to work with Newers G3 almost by luck! Read on to find out what he did. Thanks Tony.

[Hi Hi Tom
Well first I must say thank you for such an excellent site. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I still get a kick out communicating with people all over the world. So now I would like to return the favour with my experiences upgrading my 6400

My system is a Performa 6400 / 200 with 32 meg ram , did have 256k L2 cache ( yeh I know a little short on ram) running system 8.1. After looking at this site for a few weeks I decided to go for the Newer G3 L2 upgrade the 300/200 1mb unit, I ordered it ex USA from Outpost.com (oh yes I'm in Perth Australia). All went well except for a little delay getting through our taxes and customs.

After it arrived, I installed it as per instructions. No problem ( worked up a bit of sweat over the force required to push the card home in the L2 slot). Sytem started up first time and Newers gauges recognised the 750/G3 processer and guess what my sytem is faster, really speeded up recalculation time between shots in Jack 4 Golf.

However as Fumiaki (10/21/99) noticed, the Geo modem didn't work. Switching off Newer's extension allowed it to work again. So it looked as tho' major conflict between the L2 card and the Geo modem. Using OT/PPP kept getting port is in use/busy message. So I went for the complete reinstall of OT and OT/PPP software from Sys 8.0 thro' 8.1 and Geo upgrade to 3.1.1. Removed old software control panels, extensions ,preferences etc and restarted manually first.

On the way thro this process I was playing with MACPing (control panel?) and got a dial and connect from it by opening and pressing mouse button rapidly before it said no connect. After the connect via this method OT/PPP was in business. Weird eh? Any way this encouraged me and after doing the re install of OT & OT/PPP software fully. On restart the Geo worked!!! It has worked ever since (couple of weeks) and the downloads etc are much faster. Remember this is with 32mb ram and virtual memory on. I get a bit of instability on the modem occasionally on intial connect sometimes connecting / disconnecting rapidly. So I close PPP and go again and there is usually no problem. Sometimes get disonnect after a while but it used to do that before the upgrade. Also tried latest FreePPP but couldn't get the script to connect to compuserve.com - my gateway. So I went back to OT/PPP.

I would also say I have ditched a couple of other bits of sofware such as Libmoto, switching off Remember recent apps and docs in menu options and any other CP's and extensions I didnt need or had doubts about.

So to sum up you can get a Geo and Newers L2 300/1mb card to work. The conflict may be with the PPP software if not installed after the L2 upgrade. I haven't got a 3D card yet but am waiting for the Mactell voodoo 3. I want 2D as well as 3D acceleration.

Well enough said, hope this helps others and thanks again for keeping this site going.

Tony :-)]

Here is another letter from Jonathan who also has his Geo modem working. Sounds like it may be crap shoot just like it was with Sonnets G3. Some work and some don't? Thanks Jonathan.

[ My Geo modem works just fine with a Newer G3 at 300/512k@150 under system 8.1. On a different note, however, Norton Utilities 4.5 doesn't like the Newer Extension. Running the disk doctor yielded a problem and suggested I fix the problem. Doing so breaks the extension. I had to trash it and re-install it to get the system to recognize the G3.]

3/3/2000 Ethernet 2.0.4 needed for Geo modem and Newers L2 G3: And here is some good news for Newer users with Geo modems. Fumiaki writes that using the Apple Ethernet extension 2.0.4 might fix the problems with running the Geo modem? This must be why Sonnet includes it with their drivers also? According to Fumiaki it seems that the Ethernet 2.0.4 extension came with OS 8.0/8.1 but became part of the System file in OS 8.5 and up. I guess the Geo modem is still looking for this extension for some reason and having it installed fixes the port issues with the Geo modem? Thanks Fumiaki

[As to the GeoPort Modem issue, I would like to share with you a cure Newer's engineering team did discover for me last December, and quote below the last email I received from their technical support supervisor for your reference. (I cannot be however 100% certain about the integrity of this solution, as shortly after they found the cure for me, I moved on to a 56K modem and then to ISDN.)
Best regards,
Fumiaki

Have you checked to make sure that you have Ethernet Built in version 2.0.4? We have noticed that you have to have it to work correctly. I just found out that this has caused several problems with this issue and resolved most. Let me know if it works for you, thanks.
Steve

You don't need to go backwards in the OS, just drop the extension into your extension folder and see if it solves your problems. Engineering says the cards don't work without this extension.
If this doesn't resolve your problem please let me know, we have a card that we need tested to see if it solves this issue, engineering believes it does, but we don't have enough machines to be confident without some feedback from end users. But this is only done if the other troubleshooting has been completed to make sure that it isn't an issue that is not related to our product.
Steve]