Just Updated 3/31/2000 New Link pane: Well since my frame idea didn't pan out the way I wanted it to I thought I would try the link pane that so many other sites use. I also moved the Hot Topics list in here as many old browsers and a few people with IE 5 said they had trouble with my popup menu. Sigh :( So now they are displayed all the time on the right of my page. I hope to add more links later. this is mainly a test right now. My main page will be much longer now do to all the screen real-estate being used up by the pane but if you have a larger monitor my window should auto size itself to what ever browser window size you pick? It won't get much smaller then barely fitting a 14" monitor though :( I also moved all the text that used to be at the top of this page to the bottom. I call it my site moto text :) I wanted readers to be able to get to the juicy stuff more quickly then having to scroll through the same text over and over everytime you visited. I hope this is for the better :) Hand Crafted CD bezel for the upper bay: I had installed my CDR in the upper bay of my 6400 being used as a file server and got tired of looking at it with no bezel :( I decided to use an old bezel I had collecting dust and cut it up to fit the CDR. I added it to my 6400 Manual. Playing Star Wars Racer without inserting the CD: I just got Pod Racer and the game is very fun to play and my son loves it :) I did a full install and it still required the CD? Well I wasn't going to let this stop me. I found out what it was looking for and created it. It works very similar to playing UT without the CD but even easier. See my 6400 Gaming page and scroll down till you find the UT posting First you must do a full install or it won't work. Than all you have to do is create a ReadOnly disk image with the name Star Wars Racer and then mount it before launching the game. I made my disk image with DiskCopy 6.3.3 at a size of 1.4M. Smaller sizes may work but I thought I would just stick with the floppy size :) No files are needed in the image. Pod Racers security measure is to try and copy a file called mark.dat to the CD. If it can then the game crashes. It if doesn't find a disk named Star Wars Racer then it won't launch. Pretty simple security measure. I found this out by making a read/write disk image and this file mark.dat kept showing up? I did not see it on the Original CD. Not even an invisible file named the same. So I created a new image that was locked and presto it worked :) Have fun! Apple TIL on the COMM II slot of the Beige G3: I clipped part of the TIL to show that the slot on the Beige G3 really is a COMM II slot. But it will not work with ethernet cards. Only the COMM II modem. But that's all we care about anyway right :) [http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n24297 The slot on the personality card uses the same connector as a Comm Slot II connector, and Comm Slot II cards will fit. However, the slot on the personality card is a modem slot, only providing serial support for Comm Slot II-capable modems. This slot does not support Ethernet cards, and should not be regarded as a Comm Slot II slot.] Magicscan software for older UMAX scanner?: Mark writes that he tried Magicscan instead of VistaScan for his Astra1200s scanner and he is loving it. Thanks Mark. [ Dear Tom: Just spent a little time looking at your comments on your Umax 1200S. I was not able to speed up scanning using an Adaptec 2903B PCI/SCSI card, but I thought you might use this information. Vistascan 3.4.1 is the recommended scanning DA from Umax for the 1200S and a series of other models such as the 1220S. I was looking for an update for Vistascan on the British Umax support site and discovered that Magicscan (which is the scanning utility listed for the high end scanners such as the Mirage and Powerlook) could be used on the 1200S series. This little tidbit (ie the undocumented use of Astra scanners is not mentioned on the US Umax site). Umax will not support it (ie tech support), but apparently it works. I downloaded it from the British web site as version 4.40 at the following link. http://support.umax.co.uk/drivers/ms440mac.htm Be prepared for a long download, since the file is 28MB. I was able to use a T1 line at college, and it still took over 30 minutes. I tried downloading at home on a 56K and it failed after 19MB was downloaded. I looked on the US Umax site, but they only had version 4.3 of Magiscan listed. Magicscan 4.40 works beautifully on my Performa 6400/180 with the Umax Astra 1200S scanner. I was getting tired of Vistascan where I had a preview window that could not be resized. I liked some of the basic settings (ie Beginner mode), but wanted something a little better. Magicscan is very full featured. I can resize the preview window. There is a proof feature (that Vistascan does not have), and many more things for me to play with. I have also set up a friend who has the Astra 1220S on a Blue&White G3, and Magiscan 4.40 worked just fine. There is one feature in Vistascan that I still use, and that is the Vista Access control strip module, to verify that the Astra 1200S is recognized. You are free to use my text on your website. Mark] Update on using Apples PCI Timing extension: Papa writes that he tried the PCI Timing extension with his Sonnet 300/1M upgrade and it got rid of all his random lockups! Thanks Papa. [BTW, installed the PCI extension as you mentioned on your web site, and my random Finder crashes have disappeared! Also, no more random lockups in Netscape or some of my other more esoteric applications that I had been experiencing.] Farallons Comm II 10/100 Fast Ethernet card not compatible with OS 8.1 and Keyspan USB PCI card installer not compatible with OS 9: Herbert has been exchanging email with me to figure out why he had such poor performance with his Farallon CommII ethernet card in his 6400. He found that their 1.x driver was very suggish and would crash with OS 8.1 and the 2.1 driver did not work at all. He installed OS 9 then the 2.1 driver worked great. But then he had a problem with his Keyspan USB card. The fix was to reboot back to OS 8.1 and run the installer? Man, do we all have to keep several systems installed for situations like this? Possibly? Thanks Herbert. [Thanks, Tom, for all your help! I decided to shell out the $$$ for OS 9, and with Conflict Catcher the System merge was a matter of 3 minutes. Now everything works as advertised :) The Com Slot card feels (subjectively) even faster than its PCI sibling! The Keyspan USB card works fine with the Rio, but the Keyspan USB Card Assistant 1.35 can't find the card. The installer from Keyspan doesn't work with OS9, I kept getting the error "previous corrupt files found" without any files installed yet. So I restarted with OS 8.1, installed the files without problem, moved them over to OS 9 and was able to use the Rio. This is not a problem so far, as I use the port only for the Rio, but later maybe other USB devices might follow ... Did you hear about this issue? Thanks, Herbert] I haven't tried OS 9 on my 6400 yet but I used Apples 1.3.5 drivers which are probably what Keyspan used also and they work great with OS 8.6. Maybe Apples installer will work under OS 9 better? Avid crashing with Sonnets G3 fixed?: Keith was having many issues runing Avid on his 6400 upgraded with Sonnets G3. He found that disabling the backside cache with a Control Strip module called G3 Strip would help but then tried Power Logix's Cache Profiler and he said it fixed all his troubles! Thanks Keith. [Tom, So far the Powerlogix utility works even better than the G3Strip. Something weird happens if the PL utility is used when the G3 is running. I turn off speculative addressing, disable the cache and play an avid movie and it plays fine. After this I can reenable the cache (even run it at 200MHz) and turn on spec. addressing and it still peforms properly. However, when capturing video with Avid cinema, the captured movie is not the same length as the time you capture ie. capture for 10 seconds and the resultant movie is truncated after 4 seconds. Really odd. If I use premiere to capture (using the avid card for digitizing) it works properly. I'll leave it to someone else to figure that one out. Finally, I have changed the Crescendo extension from"INIT" to "scri" to make it load first (just before the PL extension). An avid captured movie will play fine with this setup (cache at 200MHz, spec addressing off at startup)without having to turn things off and on. I have yet to test the capturewith this setup, but I'll try a few things to see if Avid cinema will behave. Cheers Keith] Voodoo3 2D slowdown related to the HD driver?: Tiong writes that he found out that his Voodoo3 had poor 2D performance until he downgraded his HD'd driver to the Apple Drive Setup that came with OS 8.6! Very interesting. Thanks Tiong. [Hi Tom, I have mananged to solve my RD9/Voodoo3/slow 2D problem. It turns out to be the Disk Driver! What happened was that after I installed the new Maxtor, I installed OS 8.5 from the original CD. Then before I had anything installed, I upgraded it to OS 8.6 with the free download from Apple. During this upgrading process, the installer told me that the disk driver could not be updated because I wasn't using an Apple disk. So, when I installed the Sonnet Crescendo 1.4.2 extension, I used the included Drive Setup to update the Disk Driver. This turns out to be the problem as the Drive Setup with the Sonnet 1.4.2 installer was for OS 9. Good thing I was in the "thinking" mood today and I remembered that installation step. So what I did was to use the Drive Setup that came with the OS 8.6 update installation and updated (downdated?) the disk driver again and my V3's 2D with RD9 is back to normal speed again. Whoohoo!! = )] I wonder if the newer Apple Drive Setup being bundled with Sonnets 1.4.2 installer is all they changed from the 1.4.1 installer? Remember they said all they changed was the installer and not the Crescendo extension. Just Updated 3/24/2000 Crescendo 1.4.2 installer: Thanks to many of my readers I now have the Crescendo 1.4.2 installer for their L2 G3's. Tiong wrote to Sonnet on what was changed with the 1.4.2 driver and here is their reply. [1.4.2 is not posted because there is no change in the extension's code, just in the way the installer works. Christy Sonnet Technical Support] It seems all they changed was the installer? I guess they felt this was not worthy of posting? I don't know exactly what they changed but they did it for a reason so I'm posting it for all of you :) Audio cable for a Pioneer 32x SCSI CDRom: Bill just purchased a Pioneer SCSI CDRom to replace the stock 6400 CDRom but the 6400's audio adaptor will not work? I remember someone sending me info on how to modify the audio cable to allow it to fit non-standard Apple CDRom's but I cannot find this info anymore? If you have info on how to do this could you please email me. Thanks. [Tom: First off- Thanks for a great site with a wealth of info on the 6400. I recently bought a Pioneer 32x SCSI CDRom that I'd like to put in my 6400, replacing the standard 8x Apple unit. The problem, as I'm sure you know, is the hookup for the audio. The funky Apple connector will not work with the Pioneer drive. Do you know of a cable or adapter for the audio connection that I can use? BTW, the drive is bootable, using the hacked AppleCD extension under OS8.1, but only if you select it as the startup drive or use the four finger salute when booting. Holding down "C" doesn't work. Bill] More DVD info: Cyril wrote with some info on the previous DVD info I had posted in mny Just Updated 3/18/2000. Cyril has the Wired 4DVD card and here is the previous info I have on it. Thanks Cyril. [Hello.. I looked at the link your reader posted (DVD + card combo for mac). The card seems to be the Wired 4DVD card (it looks the same..) with a DVD drive... So your reader can buy the card and another dirve if he wants to... I read that one of your readers did not manage to make the Wired card work properly on his 6400... As I said before it works very well on mine ( 6400/Vimage G3 240/ 104 M RAM/IBM 10 Gb HD/ IBM 1Gb SCSI internal/TV card/ix3d MacRocket video card/ Mac OS 8.6 french). I had a little problem two or three times ( a sluggish movie...) but I manage to make it work: you only have to quit the Wired software, eject the disc, insert the disc again, open the player and play the movie... If it does not work (it happened only once), start your mac again, insert the disc and open the player...that's all... Generally speaking the G3 6400 is able to read DVD full screen on a 17" with this card. And the quality of the movie is very good... Cyril] Speaking about DVD/CD Rom drives, I have been getting more requests for info on replacment SCSI CDRom's for the stock 6400 CD drive. I have a page posted with very minimal info as I haven't recieved much info on this topic. If anyone wishes to send me info on their upgrade experiences with internal CDRoms I would appreciate it :) PCI timing extension may fix L2 G3 audio issues?: I found this on Accelerate Your Mac's web site. [PCI Timing Update Fixes 6500 Audio Issues? One of the weekend's updates to the Rate Your CPU Upgrade database contained an interesting entry from a 6500 owner with L2G3 upgrade noting the PCI Timing update worked wonders: " Mike, model: 6500/225 96mb ram Newertech G3/300/200 1mb Audiomedia III PCI card External zoom modem Matsushita 24x scsi cd int. Yamaha CDR external The Audiomedia III PCI digital audio interface PCI card, has not compatible with Newer's L2 upgrade (with audiomedia/iii drivers etc. OFF) . Playback of internal audio files of any kind had popping if G3 was enabled, and would quickly lock up machine. Also serial problems and scsi issues if G3 enabled. Got an external zoom 56k, took out internal geoport. I am an Apple certified tech did everything I knew of, and Newer' support just suggested usual: Clean installs 8.5.1-8.6 even low level format, remove, reset periphials, G3 card, ATI updates, zap Pram, etc. None worked Well, here's what fixed it: PCI TIMING UPDATE 1.0!, from Apple's site, Apple said it will not work on any other machine, but the powercomputing/7200 based boards. But it has stabilized my machine since installing it .I have been Newer's beta 2.0.2 with cache contol software. (For me diff, cache speeds, and disabling/backside did not help?). BUT, the PCI timing extention, it did. I have tried and tried to crash it, doing all the things that caused it to lock up before, when the G3/ L2 was enabled. I decided another clean install (5th time,same set-up as before), base extentions, software, except G3 upgrade, and still crashed at least once a day as mentioned above for a month, I was gonaa send the upgrade back.Then I threw in this PCI timing update 1.0 out of curiosity, and have no trouble since. Jonathan T. Clark Macintosh Certified Technician/Audio Engineer " Interesting. That update was noted on the PowerCenter Pro review and in the FAQ as far as Audio patches for Catalyst motherboards (not sure exactly what the 64/6500 MB is). ATI also includes a similar patch called Sound Catalyst with their video cards.] 2 readers 6400 upgrade experiences: Both Vu Tien and John sent me their upgrade experiences with their 6400's. They both did what most typical 6400 users want to do so I thought I would post them :) Thanks guys. [Hello Tom, Just for your info, here is the report of my upgrade to a Sonnet L2G3 300/150-512 K, plus the addition of a PCI Orange Micro card with USB/FireWire. ------- In short, it was EXCELLENT. I have a 6400/200 VEE, MacOS F1-8.1 (French version), 104 MB RAM, 6 GB IDE, 4 GB SCSI internal, Geoport software modem, no special other h/w (excepted the generically equipped Avid Cinema card). I got my Sonnet Crescendo L2-G3 from Small Dogs. I ordered a NewerTech but after 2 months wait, I was told that it is now discontinued. I switched to the Sonnet L2-G3; I couldn't wait for the 300/1MB and so got the 300/512KB instead. Very clear instructions. The installer diskette is now 1.4.2 while the latest version on the Sonnet Web site is still 1.4.1 (!!!). The instruction sheet stated clearly that the card is NOT compatible with the Apple Geoport modem, so I made a special extension configuration where I disabled all the corresponding extensions. I installed first the Sonnet software, rebooted and switched to the configuration with the Geoport extensions disabled. Then I powered off the Mac. and installed the card. Very easy to install (5 mn). The Mac booted perfectly and repeatably ran without a crash for one week. IE4 and Outlook Express are still slow to load, but after that they display and refresh INSTANTLY. Flight Sim 98 on Virtual PC 2.1 is now bearable (incredible...). I may even consider now buying Microsoft Office :-). Processor temperature is reported between 55°C and 70°C (we are in Winter and I don't heat much, let's see in Summer). --------------- But wait! Without the Geoport modem, I had to use an old external 14,4 kbps modem. After one week of painly slow surfing, I decided to give the Geoport modem a try. GOOD NEWS. It works perfectly (MacOS 8.1). And the spare processing power masked completely the fact that the Geoport modem was stealing CPU cycles. Conclusion, I see no reason why I shouldn't give the Sonnet the maximum score. RECOMMANDED. Caveat: The Geoport still hangs the Mac when it opens a MIDI file while surfing, but this is a known bug that has nothing to do with the Sonnet card. ------------- After 3 weeks running the G3 without any crash, I tried to install the USB/FireWire extension from Orange Micro. For this, I had to upgrade to MacOS 8.6 since it is the first version that supports USB. I proceeded by steps, and upgraded from 8.1 to 8.5, ran the Mac for 3 days to see whether something may be wrong and then upgraded to 8.6. After upgrading, I cleaned carefully the spurious extensions left over since the original 7.5.3. In short: - the Geoport software-emulated modem works well with the Sonnet accelerator on MacOS 8.1 and 8.5. - on MacOS 8.6, it works well when I disable all the USB and Firewire extensions. - when I enable these extensions, the Geoport keeps going on-hook/off-hook non-stop: unusable... - also on MacOS 8.6, the Mac hangs at boot time if I enable the Microsoft Office 4.2 extensions (with and w/o USB support) Solution: I made 3 sets of extensions and switch between them 1- to surf the Internet 2- to use the USB ports for printing 3- (Crescendo disabled) to use Office 4.2. Otherwise, the Sonnet L2G3 accelerator co-exists well with the Orange Micro USB/FireWire PCI card. RECOMMANDED. My 6400 has a new life. I'll use these extensions for some time. When I'm confident enough, I'll start adding more peripherals (CD-RW and mini-DV camcorder, and hopefully a Voodoo-3). Stay posted. Attached is the Claris worksheet listing the basic set of extensions that works well with the L2G3 accelerator. The disabled extensions and control panels are my own old history and stay unused most of the time. I am too lazy to clean them, so they are here for the sake of the truth. Regards, Vu Tien PS: My 2 cents guess: the Firewire/USB card pulls on the power supply, along with the L2-G3 card, and that makes the Geoport modem emulator unhappy. It keeps going on-hook/off-hook non-stop because there is an electric signal from the phone system that it doesn't detect. Can any phone specialist confirm?] [Hi Tom: Here's an upgrade experience for your readers. Feel free to post it if you like. I have two 6400's that I recently put some $$$ into to stretch some more life out of them. Both were stock 6400's, one a 180 and one a 200. The 6400/200 I bought new, the 6400/180 was a re-furb. Both machines have been real workhorses. I've only had to replace one of the CD-ROMs on a machine. That's been the ONLY failure on them both! Both machines served quite well for some time. I had them networked via LocalTalk for about a year or so, along with a couple of HP Deskwriter printers and an HP 6MP Laserwriter. The 6400/200 had received some more RAM and an ATI Xclaim VR video card. It also had a Umax 1200 scanner attached to it, and an Epson Photo 700. The 6400/180 also had a little more RAM and an Xclaim 3D card inside. Both had the internal stock modems and processors. So they were becoming a bit antiquated, especially with the arrival of a 333Mhz iMac last Christmas. Games were running a bit slow, the LocalTalk network was having a hard time keeping up with network needs (games and file sharing). The stock hard drives were filled up pretty good and we were always deleting something to add a new application or game. So it was time to consider purchasing something new (more iMacs?) or do some serious upgrades to both machines. The wallet said, "UPGRADE!" Processor: I chose the Crescendo L2 G3 300/512k upgrade for both machines. Hard Drive: I picked up a Quantum 8.0 GB HD for each machine. Network: With a recent home remodel/addition we did, I took the opportunity to run Cat 5 cable throughout the house (and LocalTalk cabling), so each machine received the Farallon Comm II Slot 10/100 card. Memory: A little boost to get each machine up to 104MB System: 9.0 loaded onto each machine. The upgrade was taken in steps on each machine: First: I installed the 10/100 enet card in each box to allow for backing up files from one machine to the other before installing the hard drive. The cards snapped right in in place of the stock modems in the Comm II slot. I loaded the drivers from the Farallon disk and rebooted. Once ethernet was selected in the AppleTalk control panel, the network connectivity was up! Second: Hard drive was next. I first copied over what few files I needed to save from one machine to the other (very fast on the 100Mbs network connection!). Then I booted the machine off the OS9 CD. I erased the existing data on the stock drive and powered down the machine. Replacingthe drive was a snap following the instructions you provided on your website. Once the new drive was in, I booted the system from the OS9 CD again. When the startup was complete the system brought up an alert that it did not recognize the new drive and did I want to initialize it. Of course! ZIP! It was done. Third: OS9 Now that the machine was booted from the CD with the new hard drive installed, I went ahead and installed the new OS9 system software. Once that was completed, I needed to re-install the enet drivers from the Farallon disk. But you can't remove the system disk, so I had to restartfrom the HD first. Fourth: G3 Upgrade. After getting the Farallon extensions onto the hard drive, and before powering down, I next installed the Crescendo extensions necessary for the processor upgrade. I then powered down the machine. I pulled out the motherboard, pulled out the cache card, popped in the G3 card in the L2 cache slot, and closed it all up. I fired up the machine and the "Sonnet: Simply Fast" logo came right up as the extensions loaded. I ran the Apple System Profiler in OS9 and the Metronome extension from Sonnet and there was the G3 card humming along at a cool 41 degrees C. Fifth: I then copied back over the files I had backed up before starting the whole process, loaded on the applications that used to be there, and was done. Everything went off without a hitch! The second machine I did in the same order. The only glitch there was I didn't install the G3 card fully into the cache slot so it wasn't being recognized. I pulled it out and re-seated it and that did the trick. Both machines are GREAT! They keep right up with the new iMac, at a fraction of the cost. Each machine took no more than 1 hour to do everything on. Plenty of horsepower, plenty of storage, great networking speed! Next month I'm having a DSL modem and router installed. It will come with up to 5 IP addresses that will be dynamically issued to each Mac in the house through DHCP. It will go into the wiring closet and connect to the 10/100 hub so every system in the house will have an instant internet connection when they power up. There's also an AsanteTalk bridge and LocalTalk network to each room to get those LocalTalk printers on the network. What is also great is that the Epson Photo 700 hangs on the printer port of the 6400/200 and we can print to it locally. I don't even have to turn off AppleTalk to do it. I still have to get the Axis 1400 printer server I purchased working with the Epson printer via enet so everyone can share it. Love my 6400s! Keep up the great work on your web site! I visit at least once a week to see what's new! -jt] Info on the naming of Apples mother boards and computers!: John sent me a link to a site that has posted an artical on the naming scheme (or lack there of?) for Apples line of computers. Its very interesting reading. Thanks John. Dual video sources with just one monitor?: I found this info on Accelerate Your Mac's web site Voodoo3 forums. It seems you can use a VGA switch box to run 2 video cards to 1 monitor. Very interesting! [I have this setup you refer to, and it works perfectly fine, without restarting to switch monitors. The A/B box provides a signal to both cards at all times. G4/350 AGP w/ Rage 128 pro Voodoo 3 2k Belkin 2-way monitor switch (~$99) I started off using the Ati card for my "main" screen and putting the voodoo screen in the upper right corner so I wouldn't "lose" my cursor by accident. When I wanted to play a Voodoo-based game, I would press the monitor switch and move my cursor to the upper right screen. The voodoo game knew which monitor to go to. However, it seems some games, including Myth & Myth II, base their cursor movements on the main screen (menubar screen), which in my case, was not the Voodoo screen. Therefore, although I was seeing the game on my voodoo screen, the cursor's actual movement was offset to the main screen (in my case, when I would select a unit in the upper right of the screen, I was actually trying to select a unit in the lower left) Annoying problem, simple solution...make your voodoo monitor your main (menubar) monitor. Now, I find myself hardly using my ati screen anymore, since I got a console DVD player. Quake 3 and Pod Racer are the only games I play in RAVE, and I could probably play these two games reliably on the Voodoo card now anyway. I figure if I run out of PCI slots down the line, I'll replace the ati card with a AGP version of the voodoo card, that is if they make the v4/5 versions in an AGP flavor. One caveat, make sure the monitor extension cables you get to go with the switchbox are of high quality and the shortest length you can find. I had problems with ghosting and loss of sharpness at high resolutions with cheaper video cables. Good Luck SoS ] The switch box idea does work! I tried it on my B&W G3 with a Voodoo3 and ATI VR RagePRO cards but ghosting is a real problem :( I just got a cheapy $19 VGA switch box with 2 extender cables and then I placed a PC to Mac adaptor then a Mac to PC adaptor together to keep the second monitor active so both would be on all the time. The $19 switch box did not make both monitors active on its own as it supplies no signal to the "B" monitor if "A" is selected so the video card on the "B" switch will be off. The problem is that I could only find 6 foot cables and my screen is now majorly ghosted. It is horrible! I will try to find either better cables or perhaps the box is causing the problem? Since SoS also mentioned he had ghosting even with a $100 box I will hope just better cables will fix it? I don't see why this couldn't work for those of you that have the 6400's built in video in/out cards and want to add another PCI video card. If you can get this setup to work without ghosting then you can have both your stock video in/out for TV or video recording and also have a better video card for 3D games and such. Let me know if anyone gets this to work and look nice :) Just Updated 3/18/2000 Reader Request for DVD info: Brent would like to know if anyone has info on DVD's with the 6400/6500? I have little info posted on this topic mostly because not many 6400/6500 owners tried DVD drives but if you could shed some light on this topic I would appreciate it :) Also please copy me any info you send Brent. Thanks. [The CD-ROM in my 6500 is a gonner. As I looked around for what might be a better replacement than a stock Apple CD drive, I began to wonder about a DVD drive, as they also read CD, RW, etc. I'm not too sure what kind of PCI card I would need to make DVD's run on my 6500, but I was intregued by the simpleness of ESQuest's ad. It lists the DVD drive and a PCI card that "doesn't tax the processor...?" http://www.ezq.com/dvd0020.html - {I did not see info on a DVD drive but just the PCI card on this site? Tom} Anyway, I could not find anything on your site about this setup. Not that your are not spending an exorbatent amount of time providing your services to us--YOU ARE! :-) --but it doesn't appear that your DVD upgrade info is current? DVD RAM, of course is pretty big too. I have found ads for Mac-compatible, SCSI DVD-RAM and DVD-ROM's, internal and external. But I am having a heck of a time sifting through them, making sense or each's total capabilities, and what additional hardware is needed. I only started off by mentioning the EZQuest DVD-ROM Plus drive, because they have the "simplest" writie-up for us tech-deficient guys. Bottom-Line sells it for 259.00 http://www2.blol.com/bld_desc.t?method=&edp=23378&sid=4e01b9&level=l&af=&ecm= If you could shed some light on more recent hardware developments in DVD and how they would apply to the 6400 and 6500 (I do have both), or post this question to your readers on your site, I would be greatful. As always, thanks for all your work on your great site, Brent]

L2 G3 Upgrades Apple Service Manuals My 6400 TA manual Sonnet Clocking 6400 Gaming ATI Rage128 Voodoo3 OS 9 info OT 2.6 for old OS's iTools info Run Alternate OS's Vimage compatibility user letters install review Sonnet Tech compatiblity user letters install review hack for stability Sonnet clocking Newer Tech compatibility user letters Power Logix