Letters from 6400 users that upgraded to Sonnet's G3

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First report of Sonnets 300/1M G3 card installed in a 6400!: Wes wrote to tell me he just installed this card in his 6400 and it rocks! I'm jealious :) Thanks Wes.

[Just thought that I would let you know that I got my Sonnet G3 300 MHz/1MB,upgrade card to day.

I enclosed my MacBench 5 scores for you to post on your site. I also,included Sonnet's own Metronome program stats.





Installation was easy and the card looks just the picture you have on your,site right now. The only discrepancy so far is that in the documentation it,says that the heat sink should face away from the DIMM slots. It does not,insert this way though. The heat sink faces the DIMM slot. I have two 64,MB DIMMs installed also, and the heat sink rests up against the nearest,DIMM. I will let you know if I run into any problems with heat/crashes. Sorry, no pics of this.

Software installation was a snap.

Just a little info on my system:
CPU - 6400/180 (well now it's 300 MHz with 1 MB backside cache at 150 MHz)
136 MB ram
12 MB Game Wizard
Ultimate Rez Video Card
10 GB HD
Not using Ram Doubler or Virtual Memory, but I am using Speed Doubler.

If you have any questions, email me.
Wes]

As you can see Sonnets utility shows the CPU temp much cooler than PowerLogix's utility shows the Vimage card. This is probably due to the large heat sink. Also I am a little nervious about the heatsink resting on the RAM chips? I will have to see how this goes when I get my card for review.

Sonnets L2/G3 heatsink does face the RAM chips: Wes emailed about the heatsink on the G3 card resting on the RAM chips and that the manual says it should face away from them. Sonnet sent him a reply saying that the manual is wrong and that the heatsink does face the RAM chips. They did not mention about his saying the heasink touches the RAM chips though? I will have to see when I do my tests if this will cause any issues?

Wes keeps on sending the updates: Here is some more info on Sonnets 300/G3 for the 6400 from Wes. Thanks Wes Keep it up :)

[Tom,
I've had some minor problems, but things really seem to be working great and as you know, Sonnet said that the heatsink should face the DIMM slot and that their documentation is wrong.

I have had a couple of startup crashes. First it would crash with BeHierarchic (newest version) installed. I tried moving it around in the load order, to no avail, so I disabled it. It also crashed once starting up during the loading of the Norton Anti-Virus extension, but on the next startup, it loaded fine.

The 300MHz/1MB card shipped with software version 1.2.8. of its extension and Metronome utility. Within the last two days, they have upgraded it 3 times to 1.3, 1.3.1, and 1.3.2. There was no documentation of what was upgraded though, so I don't know if these fixes have helped or not. I would guess they have. And with these fixes it adds an extra window pane to your startup screen that says "Sonnet G3, Simply Fast". So I have re-enabled BeHierarchic and it loads with no problems now.

As to the running temperature, Metronome has reported temps in the range of 30-43 C with probably an average running temp of around 39-43 C. It has never gone any higher. I left my machine on all night and the temp reported this morning was 39 C. The CPU speed reported also fluctuates slightly with the lowest being 299.7 MHz and the highest being 300.2 MHz. I don't know how this compares to the Vimage card, but I assume according to your page that this is cooler.

My sense so far is that this card is awesome. It kicks butt. It has brought new life to my 6400/180, excuse me 6400/300!!! And it works great with my Ultimate Rez and Game Wizard Video cards. Myth II runs fast now. And VPC 2.1.2 is now useable (it was barely so before). My next project is to test VGS (Virtual Game Station) by Connectix. Will let you know.

Later,
Wes]

Wes also tried PowerLogix's new G3 cache utility: Here is more info from Wes about trying to clock up the L2 cache on Sonnets G3 card. I have tried this on Vimags but it keeps locking up as the Finder loads. I think the cache can't handle the speed and from what Wes told me, it seems that Sonnets can't either. Also by looking at the scores I don't know if an extra 4% is worth all the trouble.

[Just another update on the Sonnet G3 card. You are probably tired of hearing from me by now. I saw that PowerLogix released a new control panel utility for their upgrade cards and that got me to wondering. Hmmmmm.....

So I installed it and the Speedometer application. Their utility allows you to change the backside cache MHz. The standard setting provided by Sonnet is 150 MHz. With the PowerLogix utility you can adjust it to other settings. The settings are no cache, 100, 120, 150, 200, and 300 MHz. I could set the settings for everything except the 300 MHz setting. At 300 MHz my computer froze immediately. I took MacBench readings of all the other settings though. I also took pics of the Speedometer and Metronome windows. Even Sonnet's Metronome reports a 200 MHz cache speed.

The good news is that under MacBench the CPU scores seem to consistently increase with higher cache speeds of about 5% each. FPU scores increase only 1% with each increase. With the cache disabled, the CPU was slower than the original 6400/180 (labelled - 8.5.1 base ext. with 512 cache). At 200 MHz the CPU was as fast as the PowerMac G3/300 standard set by the makers of MacBench. WooHoo!!!

The bad news is that at 200 MHz sometimes applications quit before fully opening. This could be a bit bothersome. There might be other things, but I might not have not run across them yet. We'll see.

Also, my BeHierarchic problem is back. It still causes a startup freeze when loaded, so I have disabled it for the time being.

Later,
Wes]

Letter from a Sonnet L2/G3 user: Keith sent me some info on his experiences with his 300/512k G3 upgrade. Thanks Keith.

[I saw your sonnet G3 6400 page and wanted to share with you my exp with their 300/512k. They advertised macbench 4.0 scores of 930. I could only get 903 out of it with a stripped down startup set. With normal startup set I get an 846. I also tried bumping the cache speed to 200mhz and got a 920 out of it but it was unstable for long term use. I ran macbench 5.0 and got a 761 ? The good news is that my temp is only 27 degrees after running for 48 hours. I removed speedoubler and stability is solid, I was having problems but I was trying to run it at 200mhz at the same time so that may be part to blame.
Keith]

Reader letter on Sonnets G3: Travis sent me this letter to let me know how his 300/512k G3 is running. Thanks, Travis.

[Tom,

I will do some more tests, my keyboard and mouse are shot, and Mac Amp Lite 1.5 crashed my hard drive stone cold, I am busy rectifying the situation. The 2 most important things I have observed is that with Sonnet G3 300/512, are 35 degrees Celcius is as hot as the card gets, frame rates in Nanosaurs opening screen went from 22fps to 52fps and in Encoding mp3's with Mpeckers' encoder the rates went from 25fps to 75-65. A great upgrade for 500 bucks, The Benchmarks all beat the Rev. A Imac as well not bad.
Trav]

By the way, my 300/512k only gets 35c degrees also.

Good news from a Sonnet user: Well here is a letter from Paul who has nothing but pleasure using his Sonnet G3. He did remove the Geo though which is probably a good idea even if you don't have a G3 upgrade. Thanks Paul.

[I've had the Crescendo G3 300Mhz-1Mb cache card in my Performa for a couple of weeks now and have had no problems what so ever. (except that I get my work done alot faster) The card runs at a fairly constant 23 degrees Celsius and seems to have improved stability of 8.5.1.

p.s. I am not using that piece of trash Geoport modem (it must have been a microsoft idea). If your going to spend the money to upgrade the processor in these nice little machines, you really should spend the extra $150.00 and get the Global Village.

OS 8.5.1
10 Gig Maxtor Diamond Max+
136 meg ram
Farallon 10/100 Comm II ethernet card
ATI 3D (4mb)
Global Village external modem (V.90) ]

Sonnet stability issues: Here are a few letters from readers that have solved some of there stability issues. Also bad news with OS 8.6 beta!

[Tom,
I have more info about the Sonnet Crescendo G3/L2 card. You were definately right about the Apple menu options theory. After I trashed the preferences the card worked without a crash. As soon as I chagned the Apple menu setting to turn off all recent items I got a crash within a minute. I kept doing this over and over to see if it was really the problem. I eventually disabled it in the control panels and haven't had a crash since then. I'm not sure if this will work for everyone, but it worked for me.
Jordan]

If you're having this issue but don't want to disable The Apple Menu Options feature then try setting the recent items all to 1. This way the extension will still work but it won't keep track of everything you do. Just the last thing you did :) Actually I have mine turned ON but have the recent items turned off and don't have this crash right away as Jordan does. Another thing to try which I suggested in the last update is to move the Crescendo extension to the Control Panels folder so it loads after the AMO control panel. It will make startup longer but stability is what we're after right now.

[Tom.
Some feedback for you on my new card.
It's superb in my 5400/ex 160. Machine records are attached below (Speedometer and Norton's ) but it just feels much much more lively, SoftWin95 is now a realistic proposition on my machine.

I have not managed to get it to more than 40c which I think is pretty good.

Boy is it purple!!

On the Geoport TA front I have yet to have any problems (touch wood) however, I did resedit the Geo modem, Express Modem control Panel as detailed in http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/library/fact_sheet/libmoto_geofix.html . {link no longer works - Tom} If others haven't done this I wonder if this causing the reported problems??

All in all a cracking piece of kit and MacCPU are a pretty good reseller US to UK in 48 hours, I'm impressed.

regards,
Mark]

I totally forgot about this issue! Motorola stated that their LibMoto extension and the Geo modem may try to occupy the same Ram space which causes crashes. Their fix is to increase the RAM allocation of the Express modem software to prevent it but I have a better suggestion. Disable LibMoto! Yes LibMoto drastically increases FPU scores in benchmarks but does it really make FPU faster? Many swear by it and just as many say its fluff to make benchmarks look good? Try disabling it if your having problems and see what happens.

[greetings,
first, kudos on a very helpful site.

i purchased the sonnet card mentioned in the subject about a month ago. the system specs are
6400/200
88M RAM
ATI Xclaim/3D
sonic type-II comm slot ethernet card
after installing the G3 upgrade, i was experiencing problems on my 6400 running 8.5.1

startup freezes---either right after the sonnet extension icon showed or right as the cursor appeared in the not-yet-menu'd finder.

the time & date control panel would not be able to contact an ntp server

a condition which i had noticed prior to installation was worse: shutdowns took a couple minutes and sometimes required manual intervention

i had noticed the sonnet installer had installed an ``ethernet (built-in)'' extension. well, the macos 8.5 cd won't boot on my machine unless the extensions are disabled---apparenty due to the ethernet card---so i was suspicious of an arbitrary ethernet extension for a cpu card. sonnet's tech support said the extension was required for the cpu upgrade but didn't say it couldn't be disabled. around the same time, i figured out that the an older version of the worldclock control strip was at least partly responsible for the shutdown problems i had experienced since upgrading to 8.5. since getting rid of the control strip module and the `ethernet (built-in)' extension, my system has been nothing but stable.

thanks again for a 6400-centric resource.
michael]

He later emailed to say that the Ethernet 2.0.4 extension that Sonnet installed was not the cause of his crashes but it was lowering his data rate with his Sonic ethernet card. If you don't have an Ethernet card or you have a third party card then trash it. You don't need it. Third party cards have their own software and if you don't have it then why install it. If you happen to have an Apple branded ethernet card then you may need it. I don't remember any Performa 6400's having one but maybe the PowerMac 6400 did? Also cloners may need the extension if they have a stock ethernet card that used the Apple drivers.

[Tom,

FYI
I just installed beta 9 of MacOS 8.6 (latest build) on a Peforma 6400/180 with the Crescendo L2/G3 300/1 MB. I have tried almost everything but the computer stalls right when it is about to load the Crescendo extension. I hope Sonnet fixes this problem before the final 8.6 comes out.
-Ben N.]

This issue is bad. I do hope Sonnet can fix this by the time 8.6 is released. I haven't heard from Vimage on this yet.

More Sonnet user letters: Here a 2 more letters from satisifed Sonnet users. Thanks.

[Hi!
Thanks for all of the information you've made available in your 6400 Zone! It's been extremely helpful, and I can credit it with helping me hold onto my Performa 6400 for a bit longer!

I was getting ready to purchase a new G3 Mac, one of the B&W models. In the course of my investigation, I discovered: no SCSI ports (goodbye scanner, goodbye Zip drive, goodbye extra Seagate ST15230N internal drive); no traditional serial ports (goodbye digital camera, 3Com 56K voice modem, 3Com ISDN modem, and the LocalTalk LaserWriter II [10 years old] and DeskWriter 660C [five years old]). To be honest, I could have kept a couple of these in the B&W with my MegaWolf Remus/2 serial card.

Certainly I could have bought all the adapters, cards, and whatnot to make the B&W work with my 6400, but that added a couple of hundred bucks to the price. So, using your web-site, I eventually decided on the Sonnet 300/1MB L2 upgrade, and I couldn't be happier. At 1/3 the price of a new B&W G3, I have no complaints.

I also purchased CVGS out of curiosity, and rented a couple of games - aside from having to trick CVGS into thinking I had an ATI card, the application worked pretty well with the Sonnet and my 4 meg Video Wizard card. I imagine I could replace the video card for even better performance.

Finally, VirtualPC runs faster than my Acer laptop at 133MHz. Okay, I didn't do any benchmarking, but the feeling is definitely there.

Well, thanks again for maintaining your archive of information!

Sincerely,
Jim]

[Hi, it's 3 weeks ago I received my G3 300/ card from sonnet, and I am fully satisfied with this. Installation is very simple and the acceleration is impressive: 971 with Mac Bench 5. I didn't want to throw away my old 6400 to have one of these new G3 with all there incompatibilities and all the adaptators. So here I am: VPC 2 is rushing, I can now play in Performer 6 midi, audio (up to 4 tracks) and my software synth (Retro AS1) at the same time. Games are also great and fluids. I solve the startup freeze with the renaming of extension in z-crescendo and my OS 8.5.1 is stable. I didn't test the Goemodem issue because I throw it away and buy an Olitec Speedcom modem, which is going well.

My system: 6400/200 with 104 mb, OS 8.5.1 (French version), Speed Doubler, Startup doubler and Lib-moto, Formac Vision 3D Pro (8 Mb of Ram)= in Us it's MacTell cards) Stock drive 2.5 Gb I just plan to buy another drive, maybe internal SCSI to make music, or Maxtor 10 Gb, and a farallon 10/100 internel card.

The price is good, because with direct buy in US, with transport and VAT taxes, it was 20 % less than in France.

Warmest regards and thanks for your site.
Regis]

Another Letter and question from a Sonnet user: Brian writes about his experiences with Sonnets G3 upgrade. He is having a strange problem where the computer crashes and then on the next boot it will reboot once the Crescendo extension is reached. Anyone have this issue?

[hello
just thought that you might want some more feedback on sonnet's g3 upgrade...
i recently purchased a sonnet crescendo g3/300/512k card for my performa 6400/180. basically, i'm glad i purchased this card as it has sped up my computer noticeably, although there are a couple weird things that happen to my computer every now and then.

i first installed all the necessary software onto my compter, installed the card, and restarted. everything started up fine, with no problems. then i ran the metronome app that came with the card and experienced my first problem. for some reason, when i tried to close the window, it crashed my computer. restarted, the startup got to the crescendo extension, and my computer (i still don't know why) restarted itself again, this time with no problems. ran norton, rebuilt my desktop, and metronome didn't crash anymore.

every now and then i get a periodic crash for no reason (like when i'm running netscape or word), and that strange thing with the computer restarting itself when it gets to the crescendo extension has happened one other time (anyone else have this problem?), but other than that, the card seems to be working fine. the temperatures i run at range from 45 to 55 degrees celsius.

as for speed...well, i was reading many responses to this card at various sites around the net before i purchased the card, and (i don't know if it's just me), but i don't necessarily feel as impressed with the speed increase as others do. granted, this card does speed up my computer considerably (although i don't notice in all places), but i guess i felt a little disappointed with my results (i read a couple letters saying that people felt like they had a brand new computer after the upgrade, which i didn't necessarily agree with). this is only my humble opinion, though...and don't get me wrong, i would definitely recommend this card to anyone.

i'm not sure how people send you their macbench files, but i'm sending you files that i hope you'll be able to read. if you have problems with them, feel free to email me back and tell me what type of files i should send you.

...so, that's what i have to say about my g3 upgrade card...
brian]

More Sonnet user letters: Here a a few letters I recieved thatmay interest you. Thanks guys.

[I am currently running the Sonnet 300/1mb in a Performa 6400 at a 200 MHz backside cache speed as selected by the MACHspeed G3 cache control panel. It is running VERY stable ( I can't seem to crash it!) I'm not sure if it has to do with 8.6 or the new Sonnet extension. ( I'm a little to busy to bother to reload 8.5.(1) to see if it is the Sonnet extension) I hope Sonnet investigates this and adds a selectable cache speed to its final version of the current 1.3.6 beta driver. I would think that the marketing department at the very least would be thrilled.

Paul]

[Hi Tom,
I corresponded before with you about my experiences with the Sonnet Crescendo 240/120 L2slot G3 upgrade card. After the initial installation problems I was still experiencing strange, seemingly random crashes. This weekend I however pinpointed the culprit and you might want to include some of my findings on your page (if you see so fit to do). I also have tested the Geoport/Express modem in the same way for incompatibilities and have some new info on that too. First my setup: Performa 6400/200 with 48Mb of memory and system 8.5.1 installed. Normally VM is on. I used Norton's utilities (an older version:3.5.1) to test for CPU performance (mainly because it is uses a faster, probably less comprehensive, test than Macbench and shows you the subtest scores, which do not matter for the user much, but might interest Sonnet technical support). Now for the culprit: this weekend I played a demo version of Pinball 3D and noticed that my Mac seemed kind of sluggish afterwards. I ran Norton to compare the CPU and FPU test with a stored score. To my big surprise I noticed that the first two subscores on the blockmove test (aligned and misaligned) were way off: I got 27% and 19% instead of approx. 700% an 575%. This score is in comparison with a PM 6100/60! The overall CPU performance was 95.7% compared to the original 617% score. On three other subtests: memory R/W, Instruction overlap and Search the CPU performance was less than a PM 6100/60. I decided that it was time to reboot. Again to my suprise my Mac would freeze twice in a row after loading all the extensions and control panels. Only the third time it would boot into the Finder normally. I decided to run my tests again. I ran Norton's CPU test first and had a slightly lower score than normal (which is due to the Express modem), but it was not off too much (about 8%). I ran Pinnball 3D again, quit it and repeated the CPU test. They were down to same place as before. I try to reboot and have the same crashes again! Apparently this demo of Pinball 3D does some nasty things to the G3-card. I removed the application quickly from my harddisk (to prevent my kids from playing with it too). I can understand that a G3-card is incompatible with some older piece of software, but I do also think that Sonnet needs to rewrite some code of their init, so that it resets the G3-card properly so that it does not crash twice after rebooting. I find it really strange that the after effects of an offending application
survive a reboot (even after shutting down and coming back hours later).
I decided to check out many of my other applications to see whether they had similar problems. First, as already remarked above, starting up with the Geomodem/Express modem loaded, does affect the CPU performance by about 8%, but which is apparenly not severe enough to make the Mac crash on reboot. Going online with the Expressmodem does more severely affect the Mac: it's overall score dropped to about 350% and the effects are still noticeable after going off-line! Again rebooting restored to its previous score. Then I did the same, but instead of rebooting I used the application "Geoport/Express modem shutdown" after going online, which restored the CPU to its normal performance.
I found two other applications on my hard disk which caused some deteriation: Newertech's Clockometer 2.0.4 and Cache-22 1.5.4 from the Gauge utilities. Of course with Sonnet's Metronome application I don't need these anymore. I discovered however that running Metronome after these offending applications would restore the scores to normal!
Apparently running Metronome has a positive influence on the stability of the G3-card. The same is true for the CPU performance with the Geoport/express modem loaded, but in that case there is a side effect: when trying to go online with the Metronome application running in the background the Mac would not complete the first attempt at dialing out. Quitting OT-PPP and retrying the dial-out was however successful the second time.
My conclusions: if you are not using the Geoport/Express modem (or not going on-line) leave Metronome running all the time. If you use the Geoport/Express modem, just use the Geoport/Express modem shutdown application after going off-line. Otherwise I have not seen any incompatibilities between the Geoport/express modem and the Crescendo G3-card. I will send Sonnet an email with the above information, hopefully they can fix it, so that we don't crash after rebooting, as we might be unaware of having used an offending application.
Anton]

[Hi Tom,
I thought I'd send the following, I hope some info of use to reader somewhere. Love your site. Long live the 6400!
Regards
Ian Sharp


Sonnet 300/1Mb Review
The installation was a breeze. Software installed, shutdown, remove L2 cache, plug in card, restart. 300Mhz.. COOL!! Startup seemed a bit quicker, once the Crescendo extension loaded. Open a few windows, run an application or two. Major increase in speed everywhere I turned!


As reported by others, my trouble began on the next startup. The startup process hung repeatedly (at random points) over the next few hours, as I changed loading orders, trimmed extensions etc. After a bit of tweaking (Sonnet loading early...but not first), things settled down, and with the latest drivers from Sonnet, the system has been very stable.


The results I got using benchmark software reflected what’s posted elsewhere, but in terms of actual use...here’s a few things that might be of interest to others contemplating the leap to G3:


Geo Modem
Talk about a HUGE improvement...and I was expecting this (even considered not ordering the GV 56K external that arrived with the card for this reason) - keep in mind the processor intensive nature of Geoport). Anyway, no more bogging down and stalling with Communicator - I was getting very tired of my whole system getting hung up while the next window takes 2 minutes to load!! After removing the Geo, and switching to 56K, I don’t know if there was a large gain. The 56K is faster, but I reckon the Geo would be quite adequate after adding the G3. AND...I really had no troubles with the Geo vs. the Sonnet for the few days before I took out the Geo.


EMULATION (sorry - I don’t use VPC or Real PC for much gaming)


VPC 1.01
Running Win 95 - I am pretty happy with...I’d say around a 70-80% increase in performance...it actually feels like a PC!! 44 seconds to start Win 95. MS Office and Explorer run good, very responsive and much more usable than previously.


Real PC 1.05
Running Win 98 - very happy here too! I use this mainly for my dial-in banking (Windows only..typical). Dial in process pre-G3 took around 13 minutes, with the total session of booting 95, dialling and shutting down taking about 20 minutes. Dial in now takes 6 minutes, and the whole session around 9 minutes. (Win 98 startup = just under a minute. Chasing decent emulation speed was the main reason for the upgrade card. although one of these days I hope I’ll bite the bullet and buy an actual PC...if you need to run the platform you really need the ‘real thing’. (probably cheaper, too!)


Connectix VGS
Talk about a chameleon! The 6400 emulation station! I was quite surprised with this one...I didn’t think the old VR would be adequate to allow this to run. The 40 Mhz bus worried me until I saw something on the 6400 zone about the 1Mb cache helping things along (vs. the 512k being inadequate). Anyway, another success....even playing PlayStation games on my Mac with the 33” TV hooked up to the VR. Most impressed, needless to say.


CONCLUSIONS
All other applications run well, and there I have had no incompatabilities of note. My Mac usage covers a bit of everything...internet, word processing, some CAD work (incl. a bit of 3D), DTP, remote access, database work (do we Mac users do anything without our Mac?).


Without hesitation, I’d recommend this card to any fellow 6400 owner. The speed may be a bit off the pace of the biege or B&W’s, but I reckon it’s up there close to the iMac (especially with PCI graphics acceleration). And I think it’s a worthwhile halfway step until G4 and Firewire, USB, AGP etc.

If someone has the Geo modem - try the upgrade before you purchase a new modem..you may find the speed is now a lot more acceptable. (although personally, I will use this slot for an ethernet card - swapping out the Avid Cinema card for my PCI network card each time I want to connect to ethernet is a real pain!)

System MakeUp

6400/200 Video Edition G3 300/150 1Mb
88Mb Ram 6.4Gb internal HD , 4.3 Gb upper bay , stock 8 x CD
Apple Video System / Apple TV Tuner
Original ATI Xclaim VR
System 8.5.1

Peripherals

Quicktake 150
QuickCam
Epson Stylus Pro
Zip 100 external]

Short review from some Sonnet users: Fernando and Buddy sent me their info just to let you all know how things are going for them. Thanks guys.

[Hi Tom. Thanks for the great site and advice concerning G3 upgrades.I ultimately chose the Sonnet 240MHz because 1) I was somewhat concerned about the long-term effects of the high temperature of the Vimage 240MHz, and 2) from the reviews on your site and the xlr8yourmac site, it seems as if the 300Mhz Sonnet is more problematic than its lower speed sibling. I've had my upgrade now for almost 3 weeks and so far (knock on wood), it has been fantastic! Installation was a snap. It's very stable: out of at least 20-30 startups/reboots, there has been only one startup crash and I've had no other troubles whatsoever. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the speed of the upgrade. VirtualPC is much more responsive and now I can really tell just how zippy my cable modem is. I know that the 300MHz upgrade would be even faster but I'm not sure if the speed gained is worth the risk of the problems others have had with it. Here are my specs, in case someone out there is looking to get a G3 upgrade and has a similar setup to mine:

OS 8.1, 104 MB RAM, XClaim VR (Rage Pro), Farallon 10BaseT Ethernet card, GV Platinum 28.8 modem (original), Epson Stylus Color 500 printer
Sincerely,
Fernando]

[Hello,
Sonnet G3 240/ 512 "Banker" L2 card in my 6400 works great-nice speed boost. Temps running at 39-43C. Cresendo extension v. 1.3.6 installed. Had the same double start problem as Brian, when ever I had a freeze. I added a "z" to the beginning of the Cresendo extension and have been trouble free for last day and half. By the way I'm running OS 8.6 with plenty of non-vanilla extensions. Hope this is of some use/Wes recommmended in previous post. Great page.Keep the posts coming!
Buddy]

More Sonnet user letters: Here are 2 more letters from satisfied users with one being a 400Mhz card! Thanks guys

[Tom,
Thanks for the PowerLogix fix you posted. I installed it on Tuesday and no crashes since. My card (300/512), like yours, does crash if I try to run the cache at 200MHz - Shame!
Mark]

[Tom,
I haven't seen anyone post results yet with the 400 MHz upgrade cards. I just picked up the Sonnet Crescendo G3/400 directly from Sonnet, who delivered it on the second day after I placed my order. The cost was $699.

CONFIGURATION

- 6500/300 / OS 8.5.1
- 128 MB of Physcial RAM, VM turned ON to 196 MB
- Adaptec 2930U Ultra SCSI card used on internal SCSI boot drive
- Apple 10bT Ethernet card in Comm II slot running Appletalk to my HP 850C printer
- External Diamond SupraExpress 56K modem
- Apple Video System
- Apple TV/FM Radio Card
- Agfa ePhoto 300 digital camera using the printer port
- HP ScanJet 4c Scanner
- Maxtor IDE internal drive
- 8x Apple internal CDROM (my machine used to be a 6400/180)
- Microsoft ADB Sidewinder joystick

MACBENCH 4.0 / PEFORMANCE

Before the upgrade, with ALL extensions ON, my MacBench 4.0 processor score was 361 (I've gotten it up to 412 by turning everything off). After the upgrade, my MacBench 4.0 processor score is 1322, again with ALL extensions ON. Not bad!

Everything is very snappy, but VPC Windows 98 is still sluggish. I was hoping windows would just snap open, but that is still not the case. It is definitely 200% better than before, but I don't have the latest VPC version (1.1.3) installed yet, so maybe that will help.

TEMPERATURE

The Metronone utility reports that the Sonnet card is running at 31 degrees C when I'm not doing much, but after I did some heavy emulation tasks by running VPC and a few MacMAME games (which are now TONS smoother) the temperature went up to 36 degrees C. NOT BAD! I also have two 64 MB DIMMs, and the heatsink does NOT touch them. It almost does, but there is a little more than a millimeter to spare.

STABILITY

I just performed the default install of the Sonnet drivers included (v1.3.6) and I haven't had a single crash. I even tried making the machine crash by doing lots of things at once, and if anything it seems more stable. The Adaptec folks were not happy when I told them I was getting a Sonnet upgrade in my machine along with their card... they told me to expect lots of flukes and that Newer had the timing issues worked out better with their G3 upgrades. However, so far my system is just as stable or even more stable than it was before.

Some of the add-on extensions I am running are Default Folder, ColorSwitch Pro, the OMS Music System (i.e. Midi extensions), and Input Sprockets for my Microsoft Sidewinder joystick. Obviously no problems with any of them so far.

Overall... I'm happy with my purchase!
Tom]

11/12/1999 Update on ROAM and the Sonnet G3: Ken writes that this is the first fix I posted that actually fixed his startup crashes! Cool, Glad it worked :) Thanks for the info Ken. Click here for more details.

[I am using a Sonnet G3/L2 300/512 on a Performa 6360 with Crescendo 1.3.7 extension. I have tried all the fixes previously suggested on your site and from others (libmoto, changing extension loading order, ROM Fixer, and others).

None of these improved my intermittent startup freezes. ROAM has solved it for me! Not one freeze since I installed it about 3 weeks ago (knock on wood). I am having it load first and then the Crescendo extension and then all my others thereafter.

My only complaint is that it uses 8MB of RAM, but it's worth it.
Ken]

12/3/1999 6500 user with Sonnets 500Mhz L2 G3!: Toshiaki is the first to tell me of his experience with Sonnets fastest L2 G3 on the planet! It is based on the 10x bus ratio G3 and makes his 6500 scream at 500Mhz. Thanks for the info Toshiaki. It will probably run at 400Mhz in the 6400 so if you want the fastest 6400 and want to pay the price go try it.

[Hi,Tom.
This is Toshiaki,long time no see !
Finally I bought Sonnet Crescend L2 G3 500/250 Card !($739 with shipping 2 Japan) New G3 with TurboMAX(IBM DJNA370910) is well working on my 6500 so far. Sometimes it crashes during startup,but stability is not bad at all. Remarkable thing is that the driver's version is 1.3.7a. And driver's version 1.3.7 couldn't recognize the card.

G3 chip is IBM PPC750LF BGA500(Cupper *10) and two L2 chips are SEC KOREA RM736V799T-50 TV B013DA. I'll send my system info(DiskCache:4096K). G3's internal thermometer registered 48 degrees centigrade now. Good night.

Toshiaki]

2/11/2000 More good news on Sonnets G3's: Greg sends word that everything is just fine for him. Thanks Greg.

[Hi again. Just letting you no that all is going well with the card. MY only concern is the Temp Rating. It is usually around 51c , getting as high as 59c (intense gaming), and as low as 41c. Seems very stable though.

I played unreal last night . Now I've played Unreal with my stock 6400/200 and the Voodoo 2 card and the game played great, but with theG3 300 the play was unbelievable. Everything was better. Cleaner graphics and monsters, just a big difference. Again to all who are looking to update or thinking about , go for it. For the price it is the best way to go.
Greg]

3/18/2000 Info from a Sonnet 500Mhz L2 G3 owner: Tiong just recieved a 500Mhz G3 for his 6500 and wrote with some nice things to say about it. Thanks Tiong.

[Hi Tom,
Just got my Sonnet 500 L2G3 this morning. Some things I have noticed so far:

Crescendo 1.4.2 was shipped with my upgrade, but it's not released by Sonnet on its site yet.

Physically, the 500 is the same "newer" design as my 300, so fit is good; no more hot RAM as heatsink doesn't touch RAM.

Runs warmer than my 300 but less than when my 300 is at 375. Normal operating temperature is 39 degrees C but I have gone as high as 47 degrees C when playing games (I have taken all the extra fans, except the V3's Stealth cooler, out for this test). With fans installed (but down to one fan blowing at Sonnet's heatsink instead of two), normal operating temperature is 31 degrees C and can get as hot as 39 degrees C. All tests conducted with room temperature of 72-75 degrees F.

Newer's Gauge Pro indicates that this is a Copper chip with stepping of 3.0 (IBM's site indicates that only 3.x chips support 10x multiplier) versus my 300's 2.2 stepping. Also, with the 300, there's no "copper" word, so I am assuming that those are aluminum chips (but it runs cooler? Must be because its slower?)

Also with Newer's Gauge Pro, memory performance seems to have hit a wall! With my 300, memory performance (mp) is at 31.5MB/s. At 350MHz, mp is 32.5MB/s. At 375, mp is 33MB/s. Now at 500, mp is still at 33MB/s.

Installation woes: unstable system with first two startups. Will crash without warning (with L2G3 bug-like symptoms). Read Sonnet's manual and it says it may have extension conflicts if installed in a system with RD already installed. Uninstalled RD9, uninstalled Sonnet software, re-installed Sonnet software, reboot, re-installed RD9, and everything works again!

Game performance: Unreal 224b7, everything on and at high setting (Vsync off), 1024*768 gets 33-34fps. 1280*1024 gets 28-29 fps.

So far, I am very pleased with the Sonnet 500. If anyone e-mails you with instability after installing a Sonnet L2G3, ask them to read the manual regarding potential software conflicts. An uninstall/re-install may be all they need to bring back stability. : )

Let me know if you need more info.
Regards,
Tiong]

6/10/2000 Here's some more Sonnet upgrade success stories: Just thought I would post some more upgrade success stories. Thanks guys and to everyone who has ever sent me upgrade stories. I like to read them all and shows me just how long the 6400/6500 can last :)

[Processor Test:

PowerBase 180/256K L2 cache (actually 202Mhz/45Mhz bus): 28%
PowerMac G3/300: 100%
PowerBase with Sonnet 400/1M cache/40Mhz bus: 128%
PowerBase with Sonnet 450/1M cache/45Mhz bus: 145%

Floating Point Test:

PowerBase 180/256K L2 cache: 43%
PowerMac G3/300: 100%
PowerBase with Sonnet 400/1M cache/40Mhz bus: 131%
PowerBase with Sonnet 450/1M cache/45Mhz bus: 148%]