The 6400 Zone is created to help you gain access to useful software updates and great shareware programs that add functionality to your system. It is also a one stop road map to other informative sites for answering your questions. Most of the info here is geared towards the 6400, but it is useful for all PCI Performa models and even the 6500 and all-in-one Macs based on the same. It's even useful to other MAC systems. I will be referring to my 6400/200 clocked to 220Mhz as just 6400/220, OK.

I will keep it updated as often as I can but I don't have much free time to work on it, so I suggest you check back at least once a week. That should be sufficient. If you don't see something you would like to see here or have your own software / web site that would benefit the MAC community, please write to me at TMK12v@aol.com and I will check it out.

• Current problems with my system

Vimage has lowered its prices: The 240/225Mhz card has been reduced to $399 and the 320/325Mhz card (not available yet) has been reduced to $599. This keeps them in line with Sonnet and Newer. Actually the 320/325 card is a better buy as it will be 20 to 25Mhz faster for the same price as Sonnets! I do hope they start shipping it soon.

My Sonnet L2/G3 review: I finally finished the review you all have been waiting for! Click here to read my review of these wonderful additions to the G3 upgrade scene.

Latest Sonnet Cresendo update: here is a letter I recieved from Sonnet on anupdate for the Crescendo extension which is supposed to solve a conflict with serial port devices at boot with L2/G3 cards.

[Dear Sonnet Crescendo G3/L2 Reviewer: Please dowload the latest software update to the Crescendo G3/L2 products. It can be found on this web address:
http://www.sonnettech.com/tech/software/default.html#accelerator]

Picture of Vimage G3 with fan: Here is the picture I told you I would get. Tha fan fits nicely on top but may get in the way if you have 2 PCI cards? Its not needed but I wanted to see how it would affect the temps. It did bring down the temps to around 59c from a high of 89c which is nice. Still try this at your own risk. If the fan were to fall off who knows what might happen?

Alternative to CVGS on the 6400: Here is a letter from one of my Canadian readers who uses a different approch to running PlayStation games on his 6400. Thanks Darren.

[As others have also said'thanks for a great site', living here in the UK we often get our hardware upgrades later than you so it is of great help to find a site dedicated to the 6400 which goes into such depth during reviews. Keep it up!

I have the 6400 creative studio with a new 10gb quantum fireball drive and am considering the Sonnet card. On the subject of CVGS I already own a playstation which I run through thr video-in/TV card supplied with my mac, saves buying a new piece of software and I get full speed games (all be it at 640/480 resolution).
Darren English]

Mac Equipment for sale: Paul would like to thank all that inquired about his AVID card and I would like to thank all that inquired about my 256k L2 cache card. Paul is adding a PowerBook DUO 2300c and Eugene is adding an ATI VR Rage Pro card. Click here to get more info on these and other stuff for sale.

Farallon lives up to claim for speed: Carl writes to let me know that he installed Farallons 10/100 fast ethernet COMM II card in his 6400 and it is much faster than his older card. Thanks Carl.

[Hi:
Just discovered your page and found it very informative.

I just put the new Farallon Comm SLot II card in my Performa 6400/180 and found a significant increase in speed. I used the test file that exists on my cable companies FTP site. Before, I was using a Kingston EtherRx PCI 10/100 card and managed a maximum download rate of 75K/sec. When I tried this with the new Farallon comm slot II card, it immediately went up to 100-110K/sec. The new drivers are excellent and did improve download speed to about 135-140K/sec, so their claim of 35% improvement is true.

Regards,
Carl Bachellier]

Rebate for ATI owners: if you own an ATI card and purchase one of the newer Rage 128 cards then you can get a $50 rebate from ATI. Here is the address. This makes the VR Rage128 only $150 plus shipping!

http://www.atitech.com/ca_us/trade_rebate/trade_ups/mac/us_coupon.html

Sonnets 300/1M G3 and ATI's rage Pro on a 6400!: James sent word that this combo is great for CVGS. thanks for the info James. Click here to read more on Sonnets cards or for CVGS on the 6400.

[Sonnets G3/300, a Xclaim VR Rage Pro and the Virtual Game Station make a great combination. I installed the G3 card, and as advertised, works quite well. No problems at all. All benchmarks I have made agree with your published results. My temps run between 25C and 38C depending on cpu load and air temp.

System Config:
VM on
All extensions on
Speed Doubler on
Ram Doubler off
136 Meg Ram
Maxtor 10.0 Gig Drive
Original CD drive (gotta get that fixed soon)
Sonnet G3/300 1M card
ATI Xclaim VR card, 8 megs of memory and the newest 1.3.3 drivers.
The game station will upgrade the existing ATI files as needed.

Using the game station with two test programs ( Soviet Strike and Star Wars Masters of Teras Kasi) presented almost no problems at all. The sound was broken at first, however a note on the Connectix site stated that the BSR sound feature should be turned off. After turning the BSR sound off, the sound was smooth. I am using a Gravis Firebird stick, and really need to get the game pad. Using the stick for most of the games is for me a little awkward. I must say that it was easy to configure thru the game station options panel. Very straight forward and simple setup.

Color presentation was a little lacking with the ATI VR card. I expect better and crisper color and detail with the new ATI 128 VR card, which should come in next week. However, the color saturation and detail was good with the old VR card and would be acceptable under most applications.

I was present at an Apple Business Presentation in Dallas Texas last month. They demonstrated the Game Station on a blue and white G3, quite impressive. After the presentation, I was able to talk to one of the techs who when asked about the upgrade cards stated, "I would not run Game Station with anything less than 300 MHz. Anything less will be to jerky."

Hope this information is helpful, and as always may God Bless!
DrJIM]

Here's an update he just sent me on a question I asked him. Thanks

[> I will post this. Thank you very much. I knew with a Rage Pro it would be
> acceptable. Was there any wierd graphics at all like random lines printing on
> the screen? I think the Rage Pro's speed keeps this from happening. And the
> tech is probably right about the 300Mhz speed. I don't think anything slower
> is going to play properly. Even having just the 512k cache might slow it too
> much?
>
> Tom

No lines or weird graphics noted with the two games I tried. The tech also agreed with the statement that 512 cache would not work. I checked out the Mac's Only web page, and found a better list of games that had been tested. Most on "real" G3's and iMacs. However there were several upgrade macs, but no 6400's. It is probably safe to assume that the 6400 is the very lowest platform that can support the game station effectively. I will send you an update when the ATI 128 VR card is installed. BTW ATI is posting a rebate of $50.00 to owners of the older cards. The price drops below 200.00 !!!! :-)

Later,
DrJIM]

Another review of Sonnets cards but not so good:( John sent me this link to MacSpeedZones review of Sonnets cards and they found somthing quite disturbing! Thanks for the link John.

[Here's another review of the Sonnet cards I found:

http://www.macspeedzone.com/5.0/upgrades/CrescendoL2.html

This review concerns me a bit - they seemed to have a lot of problems with crashes on bootup with the Sonnet cards, and an update to their review says that Sonnet has confirmed the problem - the update recommends holding off on purchasing these cards.
John]

It seems that Sonnet is aware of a problem were the card may crash during boot and might be connected to having serial devices? I will admit that I had some boot crashes during the 1st boot after the install of each but none after that, and I boot my 6400 a few times each day. Although I don't keep my Epson printer turned on until I need it, I do have a GV modem on all the time. On a side note, I did try loading the Cresendo extension 1st and this caused all sorts of crashes during boot? I don't think their theory of compatibilty with the Geo is correct as mine worked flawlessly once I removed RamDoubler (which is known to cause problems with the Geo modem)

Review of CVGS found on Accelerate Your Mac: I found this review and thought it might be informative to any of you thinking of buying it.

Info from Apple on using multiple monitors on the 6400: Duane sent me these TIL articles on the affects of using multiple monitors on the 6400. I think I posted similar info before but never the actual TIL articles. Thanks Duane.

[Apple's TIL 20230
(http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n20230) outlines why it is impossible to have 3 monitors (using 2 PCI video cards and built-in video).

Apple's TIL 20691
(http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n20691) describes what happens when you use a PCI video card and Apple's video capture. In essence, to get the video digitizer to work at all you must have a monitor connected to the built-in video. To get any real performance (smooth, real time) you must use the monitor connected to the built-in video. Video redirected to the PCI card has very low frame rates, is very jerky, and reminds me of watching QuickTime on some of my early Macs.

Keep up the good work,
Duane]

A message from a reader just thanking all of us! I get messages from readers who thank me for this site often and I would like to thank all of you for visiting and helping out too. This one imparticular really stood out because Josué would like to thank everyone of you that contribute to this site. Thank you Josué from all of us :)

[Hello,
I have a Performa 6400/180 and I have had it for two years now. I just recently discovered your web site and was very happy to find it. It has been hard for me to find any information up until now on how to improve the performance of my machine. It seems as if the Performa has been forgotten by Apple. I love my Mac and will probably use it until it dies on me. I have followed some of the tips you have mentioned ( I removed the Geoport, bought a 56k, use Speed Doubler) others just seem too hard for me to take on. Nonetheless, my machine is running much better. I just wanted to thank you for creating such an informative page. Your support is greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the other Performa users who have contributed their tips and tricks as well.


Josué Menjivar
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada]

More on cooling the Vimage G3: I tried placing the fan on my Vimage G3 and after several hours of use the CPU is only at 59C degrees. Not bad! I didn't use tape though and wrapped it with wire around the heatsink. Use thin insulated wire to do this so you don't short anything. I will have a picture when it gets developed.

Also Sonnet has commented on its use of LibMoto to get faster FPU scores then Vimage's G3. Well LibMoto is a free download from Motorola so for all you Vimage users that don't have it yet can now get it :)

Sleep issue on my 6400's: I removed the G3 cards and tried sleeping it again with no luck. Even with the L2 slot empty it won't work :( Click here for more info

On a side note, running OS 8.5.1 sure is slow on a stock 6400/180 with no L2 cache! I had forgotten what is was like before all my speeding up.

CVGS on the 6400: I just tried Grand Turismo on my 6400 with Vimages 240/G3 and with all my extra extensions disabled and VM OFF and its not very playable. It skips many frames and during game play the sound is horrible. I only have ATI's Rage II card and maybe a faster card will do better with a slower G3? It did however play OK with Sonnets 300Mhz/1M G3 card. Its still not as smooth as my PowerBook 233 with onboard Rage Pro but it is playable. I have ordered ATI's new VR Rage 128 and will test the game again once I get it.

6500 users may get better performance due to thier ATI Rage II chips being on the 50Mhz MB bus. Mine is on a PCI card which has a 33Mhz speed so its much slower and Connectix has said over and over that it has highly utilized the 66Mhz MB bus speed of Apples G3's. I still think that a Rage Pro or better is needed as the graphics on my Rage II have many artifacts in certain scenes which do not appear on my Power Books Rage Pro.

Click here for more info.

BYTEmark results of Sonnets L2/G3: I added results to my list of BYTEmarks for Sonnets 300/1M L2/G3. As you can see its not quite as fast as a real Apple G3 but very close!

Monitor Info page: Duane sent me this link to Griffin Technologies page on Monitor info. They say it has a list of 2000 monitors and what needs to be done to connect them to your Mac. Thanks Duane.

[Tom;
Just a bit more info that could be of benefit to readers of your site. There is a web site www.griffintechnology.com which has a data base of over 2000 monitors and how they have to hook up as well as a list of adapters that work with each. They are manufacturers of the adapters and cables which can be purchased through their web site. This might be of some future value.
Duane]

EveryMac.com: This site has specs on just about every Mac ever made. Its a great referance if your in the shopping mood :)

Email address request: Jeff, I have recieved a request from Eric who would like your email address. I have deleted it already and no longer have it, Thanks

[I'm wondering if you have Jeff's email address so I can find out more
about fixing the sound problem on my 6500?

"6400's volume not as loud as it used to be?-"

Thanks,
Eric]

I found a great way to earn some money while getting great deals to you on Macintosh books and software plus they have all kinds of other books, music, and more. Please click on the amazon.com link on the top of this page whenever you feel like purchasing something to help sponsor this site. If you're unsure of what you want and wish to get a list of Mac related items, just type Macintosh in the search field on their home page and you will be presented with many choices to select.

Jeff did some digging in to the new code that displays the frames on my site with AOL ads and found a link that can be used which will not show those annoying ads. Here is the address. http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/TMK12v/home.html
Thanks Jeff, for sending this info. PS don't let AOL find out :)

I don't know if Sonnets L2/G3 cards are causing this problem but neither of my 6400's will sleep now. The monitors will sleep but the HD just spins down and then right back up and the fan never slows at all. I'm using OS 8.5.1 and have a 300/512k and 300/1M G3 card installed. I know the sleep function used to work but I haven't tried it in awhile. If any of you have this problem or if your system will sleep with Sonnets cards then please email me the details. Thanks.

Update 3/2/1999 Its not Sonnets G3 cards causing the problem. I just removed the G3 and left the L2 slot empty and the 6400/180 will still not sleep? Hmmmmmmm!

I just tried to print a gif file from AOL 3.0 and AOL crashes with a type 10. I have the Epson stylus 600, background printing turned on, OS 8.0, and I was not logged on at the time. If any of you have had this problem and fixed it, please email me the details.

Update 10/31/97: I have been in contact with another person having a similar problem but he was not running OS 8.0. This tells me the problem is more likely AOL's and not Apples.

Update 6/9/98: Thought I forgot about this did ya? Well I just tried it again and even with Epsons newest printer drivers I still got a type 10 error. This definitely leads me to believe that AOL 3.0.x is the problem as my entire system has pretty much been changed since my last update. I have not had a problem printing when online.

Update 1/1/1999: Since I have the newer Epson 700 printer and no longer use the 600 I may never know if ths problem was fixed? I will attempt to test the 700 for this problem and will note it here.

Final Answer!: I finally found what sounds to be an answer to this problem. I found this on MacFixIt

[Explorer and Epson 600 conflict? We have received several reports of system crashes/freezes when printing from Internet Explorer 4.5 to an Epson Stylus Color 600 printer, especially so if you use any options beyond the Print button. (Thanks, Andrew Sorensen, Mike Beshara and others.)]

Since AOL has started using IE for its browser, I think this issue holds true for me as well. Now who knows when it will get fixed?

I use a Performa 6400/180 OS 8.5.1, Performa 6400/200 OS 8.5.1, PowerBook G3/233 OS 8.5.1, and a PowerBook DUO 270c OS 7.5.5. All of the software updates posted here are currently running on one or the other with minimal problems. If I do encounter a problem, I will post it for all to read and respond to. If you are having any problems and would like help just email me and if I can answer it I will, or I will post it here for others to read and respond to.