The 6400 Sonnet G3 Compatibility page

This page contains a growing list of issues related to Sonnets G3 cards.
Return to The 6400 Zone Home page

• Sonnets compatibility Matrix- Sonnets web site
• Sound Apps crash with Sonnets G3 installed-
• Sonnet compatibility issues with USB drivers?-
• Geo modem issue with Sonnets L2 G3's-

1/28/2000 Flash: Sonnet says OS 8.5 fixes the issue! I do have several Sonnet users confirming that updating to OS 8.5 or newer fixes the sound issues. It is a costly fix but the price for OS 8.5 has come down since it was first released so it might be worth trying now.

11/2/2001 - I moved this info to its own page which covers more indepth info on audio and video stuttering related to the 6400/6500

When I first installed OS 8.6 I also had just recently attached my expansion chassi with the USB card inside. Well needless to say I had many boot crashes and removed Sonnets card and placed Vimages back in and have been happy ever since. Joe writes that he had the same issue and found the problem to be with Apples older USB drivers. I did have an older version in at that time then I do now and maybe that was one of my problems? Thanks Joe. Apples latest version is 1.3f4

[Tom,
I just upgraded my 6400/200 w/Sonnet G3/300/1MB to Mac OS 8.6 and I found what I believe to be a possible source for the boot crashes which occur with the Sonnet cards and 8.6. After the upgrade (which was a clean install from the 8.6 CD) I began re-installing my 3rd party extensions and software and (I installed the Crescendo 1.3.6 extension first) every re-boot went fine. That is until I installed the USB extensions that came with my Keyspan USB card. Once I installed the Keyspan USB extensions (which were essentially Apple's USB DDK v1.1), the boot process would halt once the Crescendo extension was reached. In fact, when the Crescendo extension was reached, the startup chime would play as if you hit the power-on button, the system would begin to re-boot, then freeze eventually. This happened on virtually every boot while the v1.1 USB extensions were installed. Remove the USB extensions and it would boot fine. Also, the 603e would boot fine with the USB extensions in place.

Luckily, I found a solution. An on-line friend suggested trying the v1.2 USB DDK extensions. So, I downloaded Apple's USB DDK v1.2f7 (the final version of 1.2), performed the ResEdit modification on the USBSupport extension, installed and everything works fine now. I had the boot crash once since then but that was immediately after a forced restart which was due to a very nasty Quark XPress 3.32 crash (Quark crashes occasionally, regardless of your Machine or OS version, you just learn to live with it!).

I recall your site saying that you have an ADS USB card installed. Perhaps, the USB extensions were the cause of your problems with the Sonnet card and OS 8.6. Were you using USB extensions from the v1.2f7 USB DDK or from an earlier version? If they were from an earlier version, try using the 1.2f7 extensions in conjunction with version 1.3.6 of the Crescendo extension. That could solve your problems as it did for me. If need be, I can e-mail you a Stuffit file containing copies of the USB extension I am currently using. Let me know.
Keep up the good work!
Joe]

8/20/1999 I just moved my USB card to the Sonnet upgraded 6400 along with my Voodoo2 card to see if I would still get the mouse freezes. It appears to be OK on this system so at least version 1.3b4 is compatible with Sonnets G3. I am not using the mouse drivers right now so the extra button features don't work. I am testing one step at a time to see what might have been causing the freezes.

12/16/1999 This is not limited to Sonnets G3 as I have a Vimage user also having the same trouble and upgrading the USB drivers to at least 1.2 fixed it for him also.

Lars writes that he has a modem port cannot be initialized error when using FreePPP and Sonnets L2 G3. Although he writes the problem is not present when running a newer OS without FreePPP. Thanks for the info Lars.

[Regarding the Geoport issues I have had this problem on my 6400, but only when booting from the disk where I have system 7.55 installed with FreePPP. Problem disappears when Crescendo extension is disabled, otherwise "the modem port can not be initialized". When I boot from the external disk with system 8.5.1 (which is my normal startup disk) I have no Geoport problems whatsoever. I don´t have Free PPP on this disk. My Sonnet card is a 300 Mhz 1MB. Otherwise my machine runs very stable most of the time. In 5-6 weeks of heavy use I have experienced 2 short periods of instability; one soon after installation and one three weeks later. (3 weeks without a single crash!) Pruning extensions, zapping PRAM, turning off LibMoto and virtual memory among other things may have helped. The only relapse into instability came soon after installation of a new OKI printer and Painter 3D. I didn´t realy suspect Painter 3D so I turned off desktop printing and desktop printer spooler, rebuilt desktop and everything was back to normal.
Thanks for a most informative site!
Lars]

Christian also has some Geo modem issues with Sonnets L2 G3 and found an interesting TIL from Apple on the subject. Thanks Christian.

[ Hi,
I had a 6400 and a Geoport modem with OS 8.5.1. I installed a Sonnet 300/150 card a few months ago and had from then on many problems with the modem no matter which Crescendo extension I installed. I have the latest one right now. I was also using ARA control pannel and then moved back to PPP from OS 8 as I had read somewhere ARA is picky and it could help with some Geoport issues (not linked to accelerating cards) but this didn't help either. While I have no real problems trying to connect, the modem tends to disconnect afterwards at random, sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after tens of minutes. I recently contacted Sonnet tech support as I had other problems (pls see below) and mentioned the Geo issues at the same time. They told me the Geoport is actually not compatible with G3 processors as stated on Apple Web site, which is apparently true, see http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n24205. I copy our emails below. I hope this helps. I guess the solution is to buy a new external modem but I am not sure though as I believe some people could make their Geoport work with the card. Puzzling.

While these modem problems are annoying, I have to admit I have other ones with the card that are much more a pain in the neck. I have often freezes that imply reboot. This is the especially the case when I play Age of Empires 1.0 I bought recently. This happen more seldom with other software (well at least since I have the Crescendo 1.3.7 as before that time I had many crashes with most software). Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am a regular reader of your excellent site -wish I had known it earlier, sincere congratulations- and I think I tried approximately everything you have published (removed Apple menu options, Crescendo extension hack, make it load sooner or later, etc.). Perhaps I should remove the Geo and the numerous extensions associated to it once and for all.

As you can read below, when I look at the preferences that have changed just at the time of the freeze, there's Date and Time prefs (I removed this control panel though) and possibly TSM and ASLM prefs. I don't really know what they are, TSM is something linked to text display I think but ASLM ??. Could that be a clue?

Congratulations for your site once more, really love it. Thanks in advance for your possible comments and keep up the good work.
Christian]

It looks like FreePPP may not compatible with Sonnets G3, at least with older OS's? I wonder if anyone has it working and could help in this matter? Also does anyone know if Apples OT/PPP works with the Sonnet G3? Please email me any info you might have.

10/14/1999 Update on Geo modem issues and L2 G3's: Marty writes with some tips on getting things working again. He does not have a L2 G3 but these tips might help. Thanks Marty. Note I have menitioned in the past to remove LibMoto as it is known to cause problems with the Geo modem.

[Although I don't have a G3 upgrade card in my 6400/200, (wish I could afford one!) here is a thought: when I used to have the Lib Motosh extension installed I recalled a problem related to the Geoport Modems. Motorola still has a web page concerning this. They show how to use Resedit to increase the memory allocation in the Express Modem Control Panel to avoid a crash. Could this possibly cure the problem. I know the page still exists because I visited it a few weeks ago.


when I first upgraded from OS 8.1 to OS 8.5-OS 8.6, it was very slow and I had frequent pauses when trying to drag windows, bring down menus, etc. Here is how I finally solved the problem: I read somewhere, such as the Mac Fixit forums that increasing the memory allocation in background apps by about 30% (usually in the form of an extension) may help may help for this and other problems. I opened all Extensions and Control Panels in Resedit to find which ones had a size resource in them and used the mac's calculator to calculate the 30% increase and performed this operation on many of them of them. Here is a list: Application Switcher, ATI Graphics Accelerator, Apple Menu Options, Express Modem, FBC Indexing Scheduler, Speed Doubler 8 Extension, Speed Doubler 8 Control Panel, and maybe others. In addition, I read that tomany fonts in the System Folder could cause problems. When I installed I did a custom install and chose some of the foreign language options. Several fonts were installed with names like Beijing, Osaka, etc. Most of them were 3-5 megs each! Wow! this may be over kill, but it definitely most, if not all of my slowdown problems. Maybe some one with more knowledge can enlighten us all on this.
Marty]

10/14/1999 Using FreePPP with Sonnets G3 and the Geo modem: In my last update I mentioned that some people are having modem port errors trying to connect online with their Geo modem via FreePPP and have a Sonnet G3 installed. One person mentioned that his trouble went away when he used somthing other then FreePPP and here is a report from Tiong that says Apples remote access in OS 8.6 works for him (he does not have the Geo modem though). Thanks Tiong.

[Hi Tom,
Read that you needed some info about Apple OT/Sonnet G3. I'm not exactly sure what info you want but I am using ARA 3.1.3 and Apple OT 2.0.3 with my Diamond Supra Express Modem with out any problems. My ISP is Earthlink and I am using OS 8.6 with my 6500/Sonnet 250/512k/125 and Crescendo 1.3.7. Hope this info helps! : )
Regards,
Tiong]