Letters from 6400 users that upgraded to Vimage's G3

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Letters from readers on Vimages G3: here are some letters I received from my readers about the new G3 card for the 6400

"Tom: I wrote to the Vimage people and they told me that the card is compatible with OS 8.5.
William T. Russell, Jr" [Looks like good news! Thanks William]

"Tom,
My 6400 with the Vimage upgarde installed has run fine all day, no crashes or freezes. I just ran Norton Utilities System Info on it and it attained an overall score of 544. Prior to installing the vimage bupgrade, it scored 269. As a reference, the iMac has a score of 581 and a 9600/200 scored 408. So basically, for $549, any 6400 user can upgrade their machine to just about the level of the new iMac - not bad!

Let me know when you have your upgrade installed and running and let me know what you think.
Joe" [sounds good, Thanks Joe]

"Just between you and I,
Sorry to say I was not able to get the new card to perform in my Performa 6400/180 with Xclaim VR. Installation was a snap and I was hoping for a much faster Mac. Unfortunately with the Vimage card in place my Mac would not boot up! It would begin to boot, cut out to reboot from the Vimage card, load the Vpower extension and then freeze! Called Vimage's support and they suggested removing the Xclaim PCI card, removing my PCI 10 base T ethernet card, and trying again. No luck, same result. My Mac would still boot fine from the 603e with the X key depressed. Tried running Disc First Aid and repeating the software installation. No luck, same result. Tried removing and reinstalling the Vimage card. No luck, same result. To Vimage's great credit they offered to send me a new card or give me a refund. After much thinking I decided on the refund for present as this has me spooked and I don't know if they would give me a refund a second time. I am hoping you have a better result, and if your system runs fine with OS 8.5 and the Vimage card I think I will order it again. Possibly I had a bad card since my Mac is running fine on its old, slow, 603e. I look forward to hearing from you on your experience and I pray it is better than mine. Vimage tells me I am the only one they have heard having this problem.

Best of luck!" [No name: well I guess there had to be some bad news. From the info given, it sounds as if the G3 card sent was bad. I sent along this info and he may order another card]

UPDATE 11/15/98: He has since gotten a replacment card from Vimage and all is well!

Vimage info from my readers: here are some more letters I got from others who have tried Vimages G3 on their 6400's. One has had bad results with the chip and its believed that he got a bad card. Hopefully a replacement fixes the problem. Also 6500 computers may work with the G3? Thanks for the info guys!

[Hello,
I just received my Vimage PF G3/240 on Friday. I installed it in my 6400/180 with 136 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I started getting random crashing or freezes right from the start. I have been using OS 7.6.1 with VM off and Norton Crash Guard installed. I tried several work arounds includin removing all unnecessary extensions, and checking "more compatable" box in the Vpower control panel. Still, I would get random crashing. I next tried some hardware work arounds. I installed the other heat sink with the fan on the Vpower board (using this config., you need to remove 1 DIMM) - still crashes and freezes. I next took the ATI VR card I had in the 6400 out and used just the internal video on the 6400 - I would still get the same amount of crashing and freezes. Next, I switched to the new OS 8.5. The crashes using the Vpower card were less but the machine but it would still crash and freeze eventually. I was very disappointed, and I will send the card back this week unless I find a solution.

One thing I tried on Sunday was to put the Vpower card in my other computer - the 20th Annversary Mac (TAM). The TAM has the same logic board as the 6500 and the same cache slot as the 6400. Surprisingly I got the Vpower card to install and work. However, if you check the Vpower info. panel you see that card is running at 225 MHz with 112.5 MHz cache speed in the TAM - slower than the clock speed when used in the 6400. The TAM was running OS 7.6.1. With the Vpower card in the TAM it actually ran alot longer without crashing, but still it would eventually crash. While the Vpower card was in the TAM, I had an external fan placed close to the Vpower card cooling the chip. So I think that helped in getting the Vpower to work longer without crashing...but still it would evetually crash.

I'm interested in hearing your experiences, and see if you have any hints in getting the Vpower card to work. I have some Macbench benchmarks on the 6400 and 6500 - but I don't have them with me at the moment. In general it would double the Macbench processor score on the 6400 and the TAM, and maybe triple the FP score. That was impessive - but the crashes were not.

Later, Harry S.]

[Hello Tom,

It looks like somebody in Japan already beat me to the punch on putting the Vpower card in the TAM. Check out the following page (although most of it is in Kanji):

http://www.cup.com/cbox/tamg3.html

(it does have pictures though). I'll be on the phone with Vimage today to try to see if I got a bad card or not.

Later, Harry]

[Hello!
I thought I'd write in and let you know that my Vimage G3 upgrade is running great here as well! I'm running it with my XClaim VR 8MB RagePro with no issues - I haven't noticed any problem with it on startup like the owner's manual mentioned at all. The display is solid on the first part of the boot ... when the extension hits and reboots with the G3 active the display blanks just for an instant, as would be expected, and that's all. The first time I saw it do the reboot it surprised me though ... I thought the card/extension wasn't working and that it might be in an endless boot loop.The manual really didn't mention this.

I'm still running OS 8.1 with it right now, since my local CompUSA sold out of 8.5 within three hours of their putting it out on the shelves on the 17th. I ordered a copy from Bottom Line this evening though. I've been playing Unreal, Quake, MDK and the demos of Future Cop and Tomb Raider II... everything runs perfectly ... the ATI's RAVE is really smooth!

I noticed all of Newer's G3 utilities (the Gauge Series) work well with the Vimage card ... a nice plus. It's like having a whole new computer. I can't wait to see how 8.5's increased level of PowerPC native code will further effect performance!

Just out of curiosity ... I don't understand why 8.5 not having GeoModem support would be an issue ... why on earth would someone be willing to pay $99 for an OS to gain more performance and then hang onto a dreadful software modem that just drags the system down anyway? Seems like a contradiction ... an external 33.6 modem costs less than the OS and offers a huge boost in performance while online. :-)

Pete]

More reader input on the Vpower G3: This letter comes from Jordan. He has done some extensive testing with it. Thanks Jordan!

[Dear Tom,

I just wanted to share my experiences with the new Vimage G3 upgrade card. I recieved mine on 10/14/98 and have been testing it out with my programs. I currently had a Performa 6400/200 with 136 megs of ram. I'm am running on Mac OS 8.1 and am about to upgrade to 8.5. (I'm a college student, so I can get 8.5 for $59.95 at my bookstore. They are also recieving their shipments late.) Well, the first thing that caught my attention when I recieved my Vimage G3 upgrade card, was the manual and the installation card. It apparently says there is a 300 mhz version of the card. I immediately called Vimage to confirm because I would rather have the 300 mhz instead. The salesman assured me that it was a typo. I asked if it was possible that a 300 mhz version was coming out soon, and he said that he could not release that kind of information to me. Sounds kinda fishy to me. If they do start selling a 300 mhz version I hope they offer a trade-in price for the old card. Other than that the Vimage G3 has been a blessing. Everything is so fast. The finder is so responsive and smooth, I can't wait to install 8.5.

The programs that I use are mostly graphics programs like Photoshop, Infini-D, and Lightwave. I don't have any technical comparison results (such as rendering times and filter tests) but I ran one simple test using Bryce 2. With 40 megs of ram allocated to Bryce, I rendered a simple file that I created. With the old 603ev chip it took 9 minutes and 20 seconds to render the image. With the Vimage card it took only 4 four minutes and 24 seconds. It cut the rendering time in more than have. Now you know why I love this card! I want to run more tests but I don't have the time right now.

I only have a few gripes about the Vimage card. First of all, I found out it is incompatible with my video/graphics card. I have a Microconversions 4P-4M-PCI card. It is a video card that has 4 megs of video ram and video out capabilities. It is basically a Microconversions Video Wizard without the TV tuner. (So I assume the Video Wizard card is also incompatible) When I have the video card installed, the computer freezes on startup. It starts up, and when it gets to the Vimage extension, it attempts to reboot, then it shows a floppy disk icon. It's not flashing or blinking, it's just staring at me. When I press a key or click the mouse, it then freezes up. I reported the problem to the Vimage tech support, so hopefully they will make a new list of imcompatiblities. I guess now I need to buy a Ati VR card for the extra video ram and video out. The other problem I noticed is that my computer gets more error messages and needs to be rebooted more often. It usually happens when I have a lot of applications open (5 or more). Usually I check to see if the Finder has enough memory and it usually does. One time it had at least 50 megs available and I quit all of the other applications. I opened my hard drive and it gave me a type 10 error then prompting me to restart. It's not a big problem, but I noticed it happens more than before. I only other thing I have to gripe about is the performance. Its not that it is slow, but the numbers of the card are very deceiving. Here are some Macbench 5.0 scores:

------------------------------CPU---------FPU
Performa 6400/200-------263----------365
PF G3/240-----------------649----------657
G3/233 Desktop-----------732----------780
iMac/233-------------------719-----------769
8600/300-------------------668---------1061
9500/300-------------------664---------1059

These results are from my tests and the Results folder in the MacBench folder. As you can see the PF G3/240 has a faster processor but performs slower than the G3/233 Desktop and the iMac. The reason is probably because of the bus speed. The other G3's have a 66 mhz bus while the Performa has a 40 mhz bus. But hey, the Vimage card is about equal in speed with a 604e/300 mhz chip.

I also ran BYTEmark tests and got-

Integer index- 7.937626
Floating Point Index- 5.139134

According to the posting you have on your web site the floating point index is about as fast as a 375 mhz Pentiun II. Not too shabby for a computer that was never supposed to get upgraded. Also for fun, I ran BYTEmark tests with Virtual PC 2.0/Win95, 97 megs of ram allocated giving Windows95 80 megs of ram.

Integer index- 1.329576
Floating Point Index- 0.605097

Virtual PC works way better now. I can actually browse the web in Windows 95. I'm guessing Virtual PC is running at about a 66 to 75 mhz Pentium, maybe even 90.

One last thing I wanted to add. I think I know how to be able to install 8.5 or any other OS upgrade with the G3 card and cache installed. It involves a little trickery and a few added peripherals. Here's a clue. I use a Zip disk as a startup disk sometimes, whenever I run SpeedDisk or check for viruses. I installed the Vpower extension and control panel on the Zip's System folder and booted from it. And it worked. The G3 card was stilled installed properly. Now, my idea. You'll need some hard drive space and a CD recorder. I want to try this as soon as I buy 8.5. I'm going to burn a copy of the install disk and add the Vpower extension and control panel to the System Folder. Hopefully when I boot from the CD, the Vpower extension and control panel will be loaded at startup. Hopefully this will work for 8.5 and maybe for OS X.

Well that's my experience so far with the Vimage PF G3/240 upgrade card. It has given new life to my computer. Keep up the good work. I actually have the 6400 Zone page set as my default home page.

Jordan Paraso]

Car now has a working Vpower G3: He had wrote to me before stating that his 6400 didn't work when the G3 was installed. It turns out that he had a bad card. Vimage replaced the card with no problem and now he is fine!

[Greetings,

Just wanted to drop you a note. I previously wrote you about my problem getting the Vimage card to boot on my 6400 and you posted the info on your site. I returned the card and Vimage kindly credited my account. I finally decided to try it again and ordered another card. This time all is fine and my processor scores in Macbench 5 have doubled. The first card must have been defective. Vimage deserves alot of credit for coming up with this product. Hope all is going well for you too. I look forward to reading your review.]

More reader letters on the Vimage G3: Her is a letter from Don who just loves his upgrade on a 6400/200.

[I read your review on the Vimage G3 240 with great interest. I just put their card in my Performa 6400/200 and found an immediate speed increase in just about everything I do. I have no internal cards and I replaced the internal modem with a Teleport 56 external. I also disabled Speedoubler, as I found it useless when the Vimage card was installed. I use my machine strictly for desktop publishing with Pagemaker 6.52 and Photoshop 5.02 my primary programs. Both operate much, much faster. Scanning photos and working on them in Photoshop was exceptionally fast compared to before. Also found web browsing much faster. I would hardily recommend the card for anyone.
Don Duvernoy]

G3 and ATI's Rage Pro cards are fine too: I received this letter from Pete who has ATI's VR Rage PRO and his system doesn't even have the video artifact that my Rage II card has during startup. Thanks for the info Pete.

[Hello!
Just wanted to compliment you on the great G3 review! Really nice to see the card painted in such good light!

Oh, I also thought I'd mention an interesting observation I've made. You mentioned that your XClaim VR shows a 1" square on bootup; this could be a Rage II specific problem. The Rage Pro version of the XClaim VR (which I have) has *no* evidence of video corruption on boot whatsoever. It makes me wonder *why* an XClaim GA would be incompatible since it also runs a Rage Pro ... the main difference is in that it uses WRAM instead of the VR's SGRAM. You wouldn't think a CPU would care what sort of video memory a chipset uses though. I've also used the TV video out with the G3 enabled to play back some MPEG video and it is just incredible. I even videotaped some of them.

Cheers,
Pete]

TwinTurbo card is compatible with the G3 upgrade: some good news is that it seems the Vpower G3 is compatible with the IMS TwinTurbo video card. I received this letter from one of my readers. Thanks

[Hey Tom,
Just read your Vimage report, very well done. I've attached a copy of the MacBench 4.0 results I got on my 6400.

6400/200 - 136M RAM, Mac OS 8.1, Quantum Fireball SE 8.4G HD LibMotoSH and IMS TwinTurbo 128M8 card (yes its does work perfectly FYI)

As you can see they are almost identical to yours, except the disk
score.]

More letters from 6400/G3 users: This comes from Mkid who sent along some MacBench 5.0 scores. I will be transitioning to MacBench 5.0 too as this is what the industry standard is now. I used version 4.0 for my review so you could compare the changes from non G3 to G3 speed. Now that the review is posted I can move on to MacBench 5.0. Thanks for the letter Mkid.

[Hey saw your site... excellent job!!!
I also bought the G3 upgrade and it rocks.. here's my benchmarks using MacBench 5.0 I didn't do as much testing as you did but I really could see and feel the difference.



My system config is:
180mhz 603e
104mb RAM
L2 256K cache card(no longer used)
ATI VR 4mb video card (works great)
Started out with MacOS 8.1 when I got the Vimage card, upgrade to 8.5 later(you see the jump in FPU)

Thanks for the great info from your page!
Mkid]

[Hi!
Thanks for your help.....
I finally bought a G3 card for my 6400... It works with my 3dfx card, with the apple TV card...and with a USB PC card...( great...). I also tried it with my ix3D MacRocket... and it seems to work (maybe the Macrocket is not really the same card as the Ultimate Rez). The only problem is that the processor speed boost is not really significant with the ix3d card installed (it is significant without the card).... But i did not experienced crashes and my system did not freeze.....I'll try to make a clean install of Mac OS and of the drivers....and see if the speed issue is resolved. Maybe new drivers would help....

Cyril.]

6400/G3 Compatibility chart updated: I received info from Pete and Ola on more compatible equipment. Thanks.

And speaking of compatibility, Pete sent me a whole list of products that work with his 6400/G3. You might even notice that a lot of this equipment is PC oriented and is working just fine on the Mac. Thanks Pete.

[Hello!
Hey, that's a fantastic idea building a database on compatible cards/peripherals under the Vimage G3. I figured I'd share what I have running under it for reference.

Okay, my basic configuration is as follows:
Main System Hardware
* 6400/200 with Vimage PF 240 installed (of course); 136MB FPM RAM

* ATI XClaim VR Rage Pro with 8MB SGRAM (drives a 19" RIC monitor at 1280x1024, 85Hz) Farallon FastEtherTX 10/100 Comm Slot II (very nice card; just came out recently and it's perfectly compatible)

* Apple Video System (just using the IR remote control nowadays since adding the VR though; the extension's disabled)

Peripherals
* Western Digital AC36400L 6GB hard drive (IDE; sleep/spindown works with 8.5/Apple driver 3.1.4; it wouldn't sleep when I first installed it under 8.1 last spring though)

* Mitsubishi MK-230F Magneto-Optical SCSI cartridge drive (installed in upper bay with matching bezel; running FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0 for driver support -- the new FWB driver even lets me use PC Exchange to mount my old PC formatted/partitioned carts which is just awesome!)

* Creative SCSI CD-R Blaster model 4210 (4x read, 2x write; external case - using Adaptec Toast/Reader 3.5.5; no issues after G3 upgrade on making CDs)

* Iomega SCSI ZIP 100 (external, Iomega driver 6.0.2)

* Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 5p SCSI scanner

* Epson Stylus 1520 (with Ethernet network option; I'm printing through the Farallon board's Ethernet port - saves my serial ports for my tablet and modem. By the way, I got the idea to do this from your page - thanks!!!)

* US Robotics Sportster v.90 56K modem (external serial of course)

* Wacom ArtZ II 12"x12" graphics tablet (serial)

The amazing thing is I still have a free PCI slot! I think Apple really made quite a killer machine with their final Performa (one that's actually worthy of the name IMHO) - it's better than many of the "Pro" models they've released over the years. One reason I have a lot of PC hardware attached to my Mac (Wacom, HP ScanJet, Mitsubishi MO) is because I "forward migrated" from a Pentium 200 system last year and I took my peripherals forward with me. Anyway, all of my components work just as well with/without the VPower, so it's been fantastic. Hope this helps some people who have questions down the road.

Have a great Thanksgiving!
Cheers,

Pete]

More reader comments on Vimage's G3: here is a letter from Bob who has the G3 installed and loves it. He does mention that his system volume seems lower and I gave him a few tips to try. This is the first I have heard of this problem and hopefully its not caused by the G3 card. Thanks Bob.

[I have the G3 card installed and it works great. I am using the Apple TV tuner card and video in card Hooked up to my cable and to my vcr. All is OK. I have a Umax 1200S scanner and an Epson 800 also hooked up along with a Syquest EZ 135 drive All is well except My volume control is unable to turn the volume up as high as it was before. I have tried adjusting it in every way and no luck. It works but you can't turn it up loud at all. The only time that it seemed to work OK for a short time was when I tried out the Mac Aaddict CD and turned up the volume of the music from within the CD itself.
Bob Morello]

MacPicasso 540 with 3D Overdrive not compatible with G3 card: Kristof wrote to tell me that these 2 are not a compatible combination. He notes that the screen freezes but the HD keeps on booting. I updated my Compatibility list with this info. Thanks Kristof.

[Hi,
I would like to report to you that the MacPicasso 540 with 3D Overdrive (MP540/3DO from now) from villagetronic does not work with the upgrade. I installed the G3 today in my 6400, and to my surprise, the system hanged while loadig the VPower extention. Well, actually, the screen didn't do anything anymore, just a still picture. You could hear the hard disk continue loading though, but there was allso no mouse/keyboard input. After plugging my monitor in the internal display port, everything went normal, or should i say verry fast. Plugging back into the MP540/3DO made it crash again. Think I'm gonna sell the damn card and get a XClaimVR.

greetings
Kristof Jarzenko]

Game Wizard Voodoo II card is compatible with G3: Steve wrote to say that his New Game Wizard card works with Vimages G3. Thanks for the info Steve.

[Hi,
Just wrote to say that the Game Wizard Voodoo II card works well in my 6400/200 with VImage G3/240 upgrade. Both Glide and RAVE mode work although RAVE is much darker. I used the RAVE library that came with the Dark Vengeance demo rather than the Game Wizard one; it's supposed to be a newer version.

Here's my setup:

Performa 6400/200 w/ 136MB memory
Stock 2.4 GB IDE drive and 8x CD-ROM
VImage G3/240 cache slot card
External SyJet removable 1.5GB drive
External 2GB Seagate drive
Apple TV/FM card
Apple video card
Farallon FastEther TX 10/100 comm slot II card
OrangePC 620 PC compatibility PCI card
Game Wizard Voodoo II PCI card w/ Stealth cooler
VOrb game stick on printer port
Cordless Mouseman 3 button mouse
Firebird joystick

By the way, the VImage card gets very hot, 80C . I took the little fan from the other VImage heat sink and wired it to the top of the card. This dropped the temperature to 72C.

Steve]

Village Tronics Voodoo Banshee card works with the Vimage G3!: I just got this from Ola who has this combination running fine. Thanks for the info Ola.

[Hi,

I just recived my MP 850 (The Banshee card from VillageTronic). I installed it in my Performa 6400 with the G3 upgrade from Vimage, and it worked perfect! And its fast too!!!

If you want I can send you more info.

/best regards
Ola Ekedahl]

Another Vimage compatibility issue: Jordan send s word that the new ATI Xclaim 3D (Rage Pro plus not 128) is not compatible with the Vimage 240 G3. He as well as I hope this does not mean it won't work with the newest Rage128 cards? Thanks Jordan. I have added this to my Vimage Compatibility page.

[Hey Tom,
Just wanted to give you some more information about the Vimage Vpower PF 240. There is good news and there is bad news. Good news first. The Sonic CSII ethernet card works fine with the card. So does the Orange Micro Grappler 906F PCI SCSI card. Now the real bummer. The ATI Xclaim 3D Plus is not compatible with the Vimage card. All the card is, is a Xclaim 3D with Rage Pro that supports Flat Panel Displays and video-out. I feel this is bad news for users wanting to upgrade the Rage 128 cards. I have a bad feeling that they will not be compatible. See, I couldn't wait until June(?) for the Rage 128 cards, so I bought the Xclaim3D plus. I needed video-out capabilities and OpenGL acceleration described in the specifications. So I figured the Vimage is compatible with the ATI Xclaim VR and 3D, so the 3D Plus should work too, right? Wrong. I think the problem is because of the double-boot the card goes through. My computer works fine with the card installed, just not with a monitor hooked up. When I do plug a monitor in the card, it begins to boot, then when it starts to do the second boot, the screen freezes but I can still hear the computer continue to boot. It is similar to the guy with the MacPicasso 540. Personally I am fed up with my Vimage card. When I first bought the card, I had a Microconversions 4mb PCI graphics card and that was incompatible too. I really wish Vimage would get rid of the double-boot. Sonnet's card doesn't do it, so what gives? I'm about to give Vimage a piece of my mind and tell them I'm switching to Sonnet. I'm willing to bet the Sonnet card is compatible with the Xclaim3D Plus and the Rage 128 cards. Well until next time, keep up the good work.

Jordan Paraso]

Vimage 320/325 is out: Speaking on this topic, Vimage is shipping but they were filling a lot of backorders so not many made it to the channels. I have recieved word from Bert who just got his from OtherWorld. Thanks Bert

[Tom,
Just read that on your site, everybody's having trouble finding the VPower 320/325 card. I ordered mine from Other World Computing a little over a week ago (they were in stock then), and received it last Monday. Just wanted to let you know...
Sincerely,
Bert]

And another reader sent me info they got it too. Thanks

[I received the Vimage card last Monday and put it in my 6400. It is very fast and more stable than the Sonnet 300/150 card I previously returned due to crashing. The only problem I have had is incompatibility with my Ultimate Rez card, which I would have known had I visited your site before I purchased it . The Vimage site says nothing about the Ultimate Rez and I told them they should update their site more often. Anyway, the card rums at 47 degrees c and gets the following
Macbench 5 scores:
1059 Proc
1350 Flt Pt
1158 Disk
930 Pub Disk
vs. the Sonnet which gave (all things were equal including Libmoto and a 7200 Maxtor HD for both):
832
1269
1223
958
But the main thing is - no crashes at all - once I started using the stock video instead of the Ultimate Rez it has been perhaps more stable than prior to the upgraded processor. I am going to keep it and squeeze another year or so out of the 6400 until the second coming of the G4s say next April. But I probably will keep the 6400 around as I have grown to like it and it is worth far more to me than it would fetch. I like the Vimage 320 card and I can live with the slower startups given the superior stability and to tell you the truth I am sick of waiting for the Newer Tech L2 cards to come out although by the time they do - now they say June - the price will be lower still, no doubt, As far as the video, I took a chance and ordered a Rage Orion in the hope that it will be compatible - 256 colors on my 17 " monitor aint making it - but I'm not taking any bets that it will work. You have a great site and I hope you realize that people like me really do appreciate all the hard work that must go into maintaining it.
Thanks.]

Sound garbled after installing Vimages G3: Steve writes that he is getting some pretty nasty sounds out of his 6400 since he installed Vimages 240G3. I haven't had this problem but I did notice that Marathon Infinity's opening music gets cut off and garbled. I think its a timing issue and maybe trying the Booster beta drivers with the control panel set to NONE will help? Of course this will slow the computer down but should still be OK as long as its only Legacy games that don't really need a G3 boost :) Let me know if any of you are having this issue. Thanks.

[I recently installed a Vimage 240 G3 upgrade card into my Performa 6400/180 and since then the sound quality has gone to hell. I'm using OS 8.1 and no external speakers. The sound is garbled and very heavy on the bass to the point where voices are completely drowned out. Any suggestions? Anyone else report this problem? Thanks
Steve]

6/16/1999 Update: before I mentioned I had a problem with the Game Marathon. It turns ot that it only happened with Sonnets G3. Once I reinstalled Vimages G3 with the OS 8.6 updated driver, the begining intro music was fine. This may be related to something else?

8/14/1999 Another satisfied Vimage L2 G3 user: Mike wrote to tell me how much he enjoys his new found speed :) Thanks Mike.

[Hi Tom
Many thanks for a most excellent site. I have been following it for some months now as I have been considering upgrading my 6500/250.

The upshot of this is that I bought a Vimage G3/325 from Small Dog Electronics notwithstanding that I reside in the UK.

The card runs at full speed, I guess thanks to my 50Mhz bus, and has not crashed once. (fingers crossed).

A point worth passing on is that if anyone has Speed Doubler 8.1.2 and is installing this card then it is a good idea to insert a space before the Vpower extension immediately after installing the software and before inserting the card. This will prevent the need for rebooting minus the extensions to do this.

I find the double boot of no consequence and if this is the only price to pay for stability and compatibility with the modem then so be it.

I am running OS 8.1, (48Mb RAM) Free PPP and Soft Windows. (Boy does it make a difference to Soft Windows)

CPU Temp runs at between 28 and 36 degrees C.

MacBench 5 scores against Power Macintosh G3/33 at 1000.

CPU 990
Floating Point 852
Disc 748

Regards
Mike]

He mentions renaming the Vpower extension with a space because SpeedDoubler will boot before the Vpower extension if you do not do this and sometimes it may conflict. I had this issue once or twice but reinstalling SpeedDoubler fixed it. Its just a luck of the draw if you'll have this problem or not?

8/27/1999 TurboMax IDE card with Vimages G3: Ryan writes that Vimages G3 may cause problems with ProMax's TurboMax IDE/PCI card. Thanks Ryan. If anyone else is having this problem then please email me. Click here to read more on the TurboMax card.

[Actually, I had a few reasons:
The card is incompatible with Avid Cinema (well, it actually isn't if you switch it to more compatible mode, but the speed tradeoff of almost half makes it kinda pointless) and it still causes some strange audio popping problems that i don't have with the G3 turned off. The double boot messes with the computer starting up since I have the TurboMax card hooked up, and sometimes it takes 5 or 6 tries to get a successful reboot with the G3 enabled. *sigh* not that there is anything I can do about it since the TurboMax is unsupported in the 6500 anyway...
I emailed Vimage about my issue, got a reply promising a fix in a few days, and then I haven't heard a single thing from them since, even after emailing two more times. I am getting a 400MHz card and I hope that this upgrade will suit somebody with a less exotic setup. I wonder how well Newer's cards will do? They a pricey, but maybe that is what I will have to pay for a card that works well.]

[I have a pretty good idea of how the G3 affects the Turbomax. It seems that even without the upgrade, say, 1 in 12 boots the hard disk will not spin up and load extensions. I can live with that, because it doesn't happen very often. With the Vimage upgrade, the double boot causes this to happen A LOT more than it used to. I mean, I now the computer doesn't boot 1 in every 3 startups on average. Sometimes I can go for a week without it happening and then I'll have 5 consecutive bad boots, and sometimes it happens sporadically. I don't know whether it is the double boot or not that is the culprit, but it is the most obvious reason I can think of.

I will look into the Newer cards. They have some promise.
Ryan]

[I have a 6.4 GB 5400RPM Quantum Fireball EX drive hooked up that I boot off of. I have also booted up off of the 10 GB IBM Deskstar GXP as well, and I think there was a problem with that too. It could just be the TurboMax card, although I doubt that it is likely. When I was talking to tech support not too long ago they were a bit surprised to find that I was using the TurboMax with my startup disk.]

I am puzzled why the tech people where surprised that he was using it as a startup drive? I thought I read that many people used it successfully with a startup drive? I wonder if its more of an issue with the 6400/6500 and the G3 just makes it worse? If anyone else has had this issue then please email me.

1/29/2000 Vimage Final driver version info: Bob wrote to let me know that he was having some trouble with his Vimage G3 and the final release verion on Interwares site fixed it. Thanks Bob. I also have a link to this driver on my Vimage Info page.

[In reference to the L2 cache card accelerator made by Vimage, I used to think that I was an unlucky customer in purchasing it a year ago in Jan. 1999. I immediately noticed that after a while, during regular use, it would always crash when my 6400 Performa was idle. I got lots of support and suggestions from Vimage's Customer Support, but nothing worked. I felt my update was even more useless when the Vimage company became liquidated last August. But then I was given the URL of the final release of the Vpower extension on this Japanese website:

Booster for the Vimage Card
http://www.interware.co.jp/update/Booster6454_Final.html

I noticed that the version, date and size of the software was different than what I was using. And after installing and trying it out, it is a whole lot stable, too! I ran the accelerator for a whole day without a single crash!

So it turns out, in my opinion, that anyone who is experiencing crashes or freezes may need to install the final version of the Vpower "booster" extension. It really helped me.
Bob]

UPDATE: I have been getting reports that the Interware link is not working. I can't get any of my links to Interware to work right now? So here is a link to the drivers on my site :)