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

Sonnet announces 400Mhz L2/G3 card: Here is a press release from Sonnet on their new 400Mhz/1M G3 card for 6500's and other based on the same mother board. it states its for the 50Mhz bus systems but I was wondering if it would work on our 6400's? I read at Accelerate Your Mac that the current line of G3 CPU's can only have a 8x bus/CPU ratio which means on a 6400 it would only run at 320Mhz! Quite a differance and not worth it if true! At just under $1000 it will be competition for Newer's soon to be released 400Mhz card.

Cable modem: I was hoping to make this update from a new cable modem provided by COX cable but I seem to have run into a little problem. The house we bought never had cable connected so they have to order a cable to be dropped in which may take a month to complete! They have to run it under some concrete and 2 walls so it will be quite a bit of work. Needless to say once this is done, I don't expect COX to show up right away so it may be 2 months before I get connected :( so that you don't have the same problem, I suggest you let your provider know if your house has had a cable run to it or not. This will speed up the process because I just wasted 2 weeks waiting to only find out I have to wait another month.

CVGS updated: Connectix has updated their Sony Playstation emulator to 1.2. Click here to down load it from their site.

Letter from a satisfied Sonnet L2/G3 user: Here is a letter Mike sent on his experiences with Sonnets L2/G3 cards. Thanks Mike.

[I resisted as long as I could, but when sonnet released a 300 with that price I had to buy it, especially with all that copper/non-copper talk. My card runs at 23° to 31° never more, even after a couple hours of playing quake. It is awesome, and since the Control Panel upgrade I have had no start-up freezes. My only problem is that in some of my games, quake in particular, the sound is totally trashed. Cracks, pops, stutters it is horrible and only present when the G3 card is active. I noticed more of a speed increase from the 200 to the 240 G3 then from the 240G3 to the 300G3. Yes, I have used both, since Bob over at Maccpu accidently shipped me a 240 G3 first. I have some real world tests that I generated to compare from no card to 240 to 300. If you want I could email my results to you, but the general point will be that my testing follows the following pattern, marginal to fast to faster for all of my test results. The 240 usually ran about 20° hotter then the 300. No other problems, could not imagine using sys 8.5.1 without it. Just today, saw that vimage had some price cuts. I now own the sonnet, but that extra 20 mhz that the vimage card is going to offer for the same price makes me think. Now that I have a taste for some speed, more is good, less is bad. Oh well, 300 is good enough. Mine is the 1meg backside card, do not know how it is better then the 512 meg card. Such an exciting time for us Performa owners, wish someone could figure out how to beef up the on board video memory.
See ya,
Mike Neumann]

Issues with the Sonnet G3 and the Geo modem: By now many of you may have heard about people having issues with their new Sonnet L2/G3 and the internal geo modem. As I stated in my review, my Geo modem does work with both Sonnets and Vimages G3 cards but there might be some combination of things going on in other systems causing it not to work. Until recently most peoples complaints I have read about never stated what exactly was happening and that the 2 just didn't work together. Most of these complaints were from 6500 or TAM users but Jose has emailed to let me know that he has an issue on his 6400's Geo modem with Sonnets G3 card. Thanks for the info Jose. Below is a letter from Jose with a reply from me and then another reply from him.

[Hello Tom,

Yes, I have had to zap the PRAM often. I just installed this G3 upgrade card this past Friday (3/12) evening. The speed increase is astounding. In the past 36 hours, I must have had to do the "zap PRAM-rebuild desktop" combination at least six times.
Actually, I was about to do it again just now before signing on because I had a rough patch of having to do 3 "soft restarts" (Apple-control-power key) due to the MAChine starting up but freezing when it got to my desktop. But I got lazy and just went for it. Bad start-ups could be another little bug rearing its ugly little head. Humph!?!
Regarding the Geoport/Express modem, actually I haven't any real complaints about it since buying the computer. [Although, I might get an even faster web experience with this new G3 upgrade plus a(n) external v.90 56K modem (USB thru USB PCI??). With the upgrade card, websites have almost doubled in loading time!!]
The actual connection problem was a connection warning: "The modem has reported that there is no dial tone." I could hear the modem being initialized but there was no usual dial-out tones. The phone line was double-checked AOK. So the PRAM-rebuild desktop combos began.
I am using AOL 4.0 and OS 8.1. Is there a newer version of Telecom past 3.1.3? I thought I read something about 3.2.x from OS 8.5.1 but that certain functionality had been left out?? What I have now is fully working although there are moments of slight connection grief, but it's manageable.
Once I'm back online, I haven't experienced a crash with the modem (yet, <knocking on wood>).
Thanks for your time.]

<< Version 3.1.3 is the latest to my knowledge. I use AOL 4 also and I get connection problems even with my external 33.6 GV modem so I wonder if your problems and mine are somewhat related to AOL and not the Sonnet G3. Have you tried removing it to see if your connections get better? So its not really crashing but it just doesnt detect a phone line connection, right?

Tom >>

[Hello Tom,
Yes, my modem problem lies in it's inability to detect the phone line connection. But it did crash the next time I logged on after writing you. It froze up somewhere between "connecting to the network" and "checking the password." Next time I'd better knock on my windowsill (LOL).
My connections to AOL have rarely been 28.8K on my 28.8 Geoport. Usually, I get connected at 26.4K , but have been on at a dismal 19.2K. About a year ago, I had some miraculous connections at 32.6K, but, of course, AOL had to change that AOLNet number!
But, the Sonnet G3 card is the latest addition to my system and that's when all the troubles began: connecting to AOL , starting up the computer, and doing the PRAM- rebuild desktop combo. I have "reseated" the Sonnet card as suggested in their brief troubleshooting guide, but the problems persist. I have also written to Sonnet support, but they have yet to get back to me.
You have a great site. I read about the 6400 to 6500 motherboard upgrade and am wondering if there's anyway of just swapping VRAM. I would love to have even just thousands of colors (let alone millions) at 832 x 624 with my 6400!!
Maybe my modem problems will fade if I eventually pick up a PCI-USB card (Entrega's 4 USB port upgrade) and Best Data's SmartOne 56K v.90 USB modem. Thankfully, the Mac catalogs supply whatever CompUSA continuously fails to stock & deliver.

Well, take care. I've passed along your website to several others who could benefit from the info you've gathered.

Jose Nacario]

Another letter on a Geo modem issue with Sonnts G3: Ralph replyed to a message of mine giving me some info on what is happening to him. Thanks Ralph.

[Mr Koons,
Just read your response to my post yesterday about Geo/Crescendo incompatibilities.
Glad to hear Im not the only one having trouble! I think you may be rightr in saying that its a 50 MHz bus problem. For a short time, i was actually able to connect with my Crescendo and geoport, but would soon get a bus error. Then eventually I was not able to connect at all. This is a little strange in itself and I have not been able to figure why it would work (very poorly), then stop working. This is a typical symptom of user error I know, but I retraced my steps very thoroughly and was still unable to get the Crescendo to work with the geo.
BTW, on one of the Apple tech pages (search under 'G3' and 'Geoport/Express'), Apple states that they will not support Geoport for their own G3 models. There was no explanation on the site, but I wonder if they ran into similar problems and decided to pitch the geoport idea altogether.

Incidentally, I thought your review was great, I've been struggling with this geoport thing a while now and just wanted to let people know.

Keep me posted on any developments, and let me know if I and/or my system can be of any help.
Cheers!
Ralph]

Issues with Sonnets L2/G3 in general: To date the only complaints I'm getting are either startup crashes or issues with the Geo modem. Sonnet had released an update to their Crescendo extension to fix the startup crash and this may also fix issues with the Geo modem? If you are experiencing either of these issue, it has been found that if you rename the extension with a "Z" or "~" to get it to boot towards the end of the extensions that these problems will be drastically reduced. I have started getting some startup crashes with the 1.3.4 update of their extension that I was not having during the review with v1.3.2 but adding the "Z" to the front of the name has fixed this problem for me. Please let me know if you are having any issues with your Sonnet L2/G2 card so I can find out if there are any more problems.

Letter from MacCPU on why they say the Geo will not work with Sonnets G3's: I just received this today and thought you all might be interested in it. It sems that MacCPU may not have had much issues with the Geo modem themselves but just read about many issues mostly with TAM's and decided to be safe and say the Geo doesn't work with any G3 upgrade! Although I respect there reasoning for probably not wanting to deal with people wanting refunds, but it does seem to give a the wrong impression.

[Tom - Because we (at MacCPU) have never shipped an upgrade to a Geoport person the problems were ones we *read about,* mainly on the TAM page and with TAM people. And it was a freezing/crashing problem. We really didn't give it a second thought because we know how picky the Geoport has always been.

I wish you had a TAM to do tests on.
-Barb :)]

Mac Equipment for sale: I updated the list with some 9500/8500 parts from a reader of mine. Some of these parts will work on 6400's like the HD's and other will not but if any of you know people with these systems then please pass on this info. Thanks.

More VRAM for ATI VR users?: Jeff writes to let us know of a deal he found on getting an extra 4M VRAM for ATI VR card owners that have upgradable VRAM. the RAM looks like it was meant for the PC version of ATI's card but he says it works in the Mac version. Thanks Jeff.

[Tom
I thought you might like to pass this bargain on to your readers:
If you have an upgrade capable Xclaim VR 4MB Card, you might want to pop another 4MB in it so you can play all of those CVGS games or get millions of colors on 19" monitors (I just got a G790 from Viewsonic and its great).
I found the upgrade at Allstar Shop (http://www.allstarshop.com) for only $19.50 plus shipping ($6.79) -- bringing the total to $26.29. I've never seen this upgrade at this price before. Allstar's shipping is rather slow but for this price I can wait.

NOTE: the advertisement on the Allstar Page does not list the Xclaim VR, but the chip will work (I know because I checked the part numbers and I've already installed one.) The chip is in the "Video Adapters" part of the Allstar site and is listed as an ATI upgrade for Xpert@Play chip. If you need installation help, let me know -- bmcc@bmwebdesign.com.
--Jeff]

[Tom
There was an upgradeable 4MB VR card produced for the mac -- it was one of the last ones they made using the Rage Pro -- there's info at: http://www.atitech.com/ca_us/faq/mac/macfaq/macfaq.html

This is the faq for the mac VR -- under the hardware section there is info about which VR models can take 8MB.

Take Care
Jeff]

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

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.