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

Flash, L2 G3's are not compatible with OS 8.6!: I have recieved word from several L2 G3 users that got a copy of OS 8.6 and they all say their system crashes once the G3 extension is reached! Here is a letter from Paul who has tried all three vendors G3's, including Newers soon to be released G3, and none worked. I hope to have more info soon.

[Don't try to run OS 8.6 with any of the L2 G3 cards until the respective vendors have a chance to update their respective extension to be compatible with 8.6. The machine will either stall (Vimage and Sonnet) or just plain ignore it (Maxpower). I do recommend putting pressure on the card manufactures and vendors. They have known 8.6 has been coming and should have at least posted warning on their websites.
Paul]

My 6400 Take Apart manual posted!: I just posted my version of Apples Take Apart manual. No part of my manual was taken from Apples so if there is any wrong info, don't blame them :) I wanted to make my own manual as Apple does not like having their Take Apart manual distributed. I don't have as extensive a manual as they made but I figure what is posted should help most. I still need to work on more mother board related components and hopefully they will be ready soon. Have fun!

Vimage 320/325 not out yet ?: I was sent a letter from a reader who could not find info on this card yet at Vimages web site. I did find some info like the price but thats about it. I also noticed on their ordering web page that they have it listed as available soon. I guess their not ready to sell it yet like I thought. They could be making sure they have a good supply before announcing it as the card I have looks like a final production model.

Fixing Sonnet G3 stability by moving the Crescendo extension to load first: Ron writes that he fixed his stability issues by making the G3 load first. I have been telling everyone to make it load later to fix this. When I tried making it load first I got more problems? Well you never know! Click here to visit my Sonnet Info page for more info on Sonnets G3's

[Tom,
I have the 300/1MB sonnet card. I have no problems with putting my 6360 to sleep. My system seems to have stabalized (hasn't crashed in the last 3 days of booting). The only thing I did was change the load order of the crescendo extension so that it loads before Apple Event Manager. To do this, I had to put two spaces in front of the word "crescendo" in the extensions folder.

I run System 7.5.5 with Speed Doubler and LibMoto. Speed Doubler still loads before the Sonnet extension. We'll see.

Cheers,
-Ron]

Sonnet lowers L2/G3 prices: I just got word from Sonnet that they reduced the prices of their line of G3 upgrades for the 6400/6500 Macs. Great!

Crescendo G3/L2 250/512K $299.95
Crescendo G3/L2 300/512K $399.95
Crescendo G3/L2 300/1M $499.95
Crescendo G3/L2 400/1M $799.95

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memory interleaving and TV/FM system in the 6400: Tom downloaded Apples Take Apart manual and found a topic on interleaving ram. The manual says that the 6400 can benefit from having 2 of the same type RAM chips installed to increase RAM access speed (interleaving) but the 6400 is known to not be able to do this. I had told him that they may be refering to the 6500 as the manual does cover both systems. Also he has a question on the TV/FM system for the 6400. Does anyone know if you can listen to FM radio on the TV/Video system and if so how? The manual mentions it but I never heard of the FM feature for 6400's? Thanks for any responses.

[Tom -
Me again. ;-) I downloaded the full Apple Service Source manual from Apple Europe, and imagine my surprise when I read this on page 39:

"DRAM DIMMs can be installed individually. However, if you wish to take advantage of the computer's interleaving capability, which provides maximum performance, you must install the DIMMs in matching pairs."

Huh? I thought this wasn't possible. GURU says it's not possible, and MacGurus seems to agree with them; on their 6400 specs site, it says:

"No performance benefit whatsoever derives from installing DIMMs in pairs in this machine."

So who's right here? I'm not even sure how you would test such a thing, actually. Still, kind of makes me wish I would have picked up two 64 MB DIMMs back when they were in the $70 range.

I'll let you know if I find any other discrepancies in that service manual. It's an entertaining read so far. I also picked up the service manual for my Mac TV...it's nice to finally find out more about that machine as well!

Oh, I do have one more thing to ask. Do you (or your readers) know of any place that sells the Apple TV/FM System for a good price? Sun Remarketing is the only place I've found that even CARRIES it, and it costs well over $200 there. I know that previous revisions of the TV/Video System work fine (and can be had for ~$50 at MacWorks), but I know a few people who want to have the FM radio to boot. Let me know. Thanks!

D. Lawson]

Quick Change Block for changing CPU multiplier settings: Ed Nye sent me a review on making a simple block that allows you to change the resistor order to get different CPU to bus multipler ratios for fast speed CPU speed changes. Thanks Ed. Remember only try this if your good at soldering and don't card if your MB gets damaged. Click here for more info on changing your bus multiplier.

Mac Equipment for sale: I updated the list with a few new items for sale. There are even a few PC's for sale. I know this is a Mac site but I thought that maybe someone would want these! We can all get along, can't we :)

USB Overdrive: This is a shareware control panel that allows you to set up virtually any USB mouse or joystick to work on any Mac equiped with USB ports. I used it with Logitechs Wheel Mouse and it works great. Not only does it let me configure all the buttons and wheel but it also allows me to make different setups for all my programs and games! Very nice. Thought you guys might be interested in it :)

Vimage PF 320/325 review done!: This was a fast review. Since its just a speed bump there wasn't really much extra for me to test. Click here to read my review. Since ATI hasn't shipped their Rage 128 cards yet I couldn't try the 2 together. I'm going to ask Vimage if I can hold onto the card a little longer to test these.

Magma 7 PCI slot expansion chassi on a 6400: Its finally been done. Someone bought one of these PCI slot expansion chassi's and hooked it up to a 6400. Well it was me! Yes I bought one last week and just hooked it up today. I am very pleased with the results and will have a review of it soon.

Let me just give you a sneek peek at what I did. I ordered a refurb Magma 7 PCI slot expansion chassi that also has three external 5.25" and two 3.5" drive bays with one 3.5" bay internal. It comes with a 200W power supply. Basically its a tower PC case with a mother board that has nothing but 8 PCI slots (one slot is dedicated for a card that connects the host computer to the chassi). The refurb was $750 which is cheap for a PCI expansion kit but still rather steep for most! I bought it because I wanted more than just 2 PCI slots and it was the cheapest of all. I could have gotten a new 4 slot system for $1400 but I think 7 slots for $750 was a better deal. The ony difference is that this chassi is only PCI 2.0 compliant (as is the 6400) and the latest ones are PCI 2.1 compliant. basically it means that I can't run any PCI cards that require 3.3v. Only 5v cards will work.

Well I had to stuff something inside so I put in my Micropolis 2G drive and a new CD-R from ClubMac. Oh did I forget to mention I got this :) Its an external 4x24 CD-R with a TEAC drive mechanism. It was $329 and comes with Adaptec Toast.

Wait there's more. I had to connect them somehow so I got an Adaptec 2930CU Ultra narrow SCSI card. It can handle 20MB per sec thruput. Well over what I need and was only $99.95 from CompUSA. I also got an ADS USB PCI card with Logitech's USB wheel mouse. Its the 3 button mouse with a wheel in the middle for scrolling. I had to download drivers for both the USB card and the mouse as they do not come with Mac drivers in the box at this time. ADS's card works with Apples USB development kit with a little tweak. Check out this web site on how to tweak it. After this, the drivers should work with any USB card. The ADS card was only $39.99 from CompUSA, less then most other USB cards. Logitechs mouse drivers will enable the wheel and allow other functions to be asigned to the buttons. At this time I have not been able to get a good connection to their site so the mouse buttons all just do single clicks right now.

As you can see I now have 3 PCI cards in my system. the ATI video card, a USB card, and a SCSI card. I have broken the 2 slot limit :) I will be putting more cards in once my wallet recooperates! Like I said expect reviews from all of these to come.

Sonnet reply to question on Mac OS X compatibility: Philip email Sonnet and asked if their G3 upgrade cards would work with Apples newest OS, OS X and here is Sonnets reply. Thanks Philip

[Reply to: RE: G3 Cards and OSX
We are currently testing our cards with the OS X server. Right now it's a very convoluted process to get things to work, but we're working on it. Please include ALL previous emails. I will be able to help you more effectively. Thank you,
Christy
Sonnet Technical Support
support@sonnettech.com]

I don't quite understand if they mean it will work but will be difficult for us to figure it out or their having difficuties getting it to work at all? At least their testing :)

Another letter from a Sonnet user: Anton wirte of his experiences with Sonnets 300/512k card. He also has info on more price reductions. Thanks Anton.

[Hi,
I thought I let your readers know that the prices of L2-Cache G3 upgrade cards have dropped enormously. I just got the Sonnet 240Mhz card for $ 285 from OWC (www.macsales.com). They have the 300 Mhz/512 card for $385. My experience with card is as follows (PF 6400/200 with 48MB memory and system 8.5.1 plus Geomodem and Exclaim VR Rage Pro). After installing I first got tremendous crashes as soon as the extension loaded. After only starting with basic extensions and the Crescendo extension it would start but the extension did not load. I decided that I had not properly installed the card. Reinstalled the card ( you have to make sure you push it down hard enough) and everything started up fine. This was last night. This morning I tried Virtual PC and had some major problems. I don't know whether this was due to the L2-card or to the recent upgrade to VPC 2.1.3. Windows 95 crashed several times. It did finally start-up after I gave VPC more memory and felt defintely much faster. Alas most of my windows program would not lauuch and give some error message. I have not yet figured out why they stopped working. I have not had any other incompatibilities and can defintely recommend the card.
Anton]

Questions on running a DVD drive internally on a 6400: I have asked this question myself to vendors making DVD solutions for Macs and here you will find my findings. Cyril has some more technical questions with a link to a software MPEG2 decoder so the PCI cards would not be needed! This is great if it works. I read the site and for now the author says only video works until he can raise enough money to buy the audio MPEG specs to incorporate them. Thanks Cyril!

[Hello!
I want to buy a SCSI Pioneer DVD drive and install it in my 6400 (upper bay). Do you know if somebody tried it? How can I connect it in order to have sound with DVD titles? My 6400 is upgraded with a Vimage card and there is a software DVD decoder (check http://fred.elma.fr/Soft_DVD/Soft_DVD.html). The problem is: is it physically possible to connect it and to have sound?

my config: 6400/G3/240 104 M RAM/10 Go/TV/3dfx/Ix3d
Thanks for your answer!
Cyril Borgomano]

I have heard from a few readers that there is another audio connection comming off of the same cable that goes to your stock CD-ROM which fits up in the top bay. This can be used to get the audio when it works. I have asked Cyril to let me know if it works. Not having to get the MPEG2 decoder PCi card would be great but I suspect that only 6400's upgraded with a G3 could even thing of handling the decoding in software!

Getting other video editing apps to work with Avids cards: Ryan wrote me in response to Davids issue with trying to get other apps besides Avids own app to work using the Avid video input card. Thanks Ryan. Click here for more Avid info.

[Hi Tom,
In regards to the email David Yohn sent to you about Avid Cinema hardware not working with Premiere, I would like to make a few suggestions that may help, because I have been able to use the card with a bit of software tinkering. I don't think that there is a difference between the hardware of the 6500 and 6400 that would cause it to work on one machine and not the other, since they both use the same video system. I'm using Premiere 5.0, so it could be a bit different for people with older versions.

Here are the preferences that I am using to capture video and output it:

Gen. Settings
Timebase-29.97
Time Display-30fps Drop Frame Timecode

Video Settings
Compressor-Video ('Avid Cinema - JPEG' doesn't seem to work when trying
to render, so other settings may work instead)
Frame Size-640x480
Frame Rate-29.97

Capture Settings
Capture Format-Quicktime Capture
Capture Video
Size-640x480
Constrain
Capture Audio

Hit the 'Video...' button and make sure the following is selected in each tab:
In "compression", Video or Component Video seems to do the trick, but Avid Cinema - JPEG doesn't work. You can experiment with the other settings to see what works well with your computer. Use 29.97 for the frame rate
Also,
In the "source" tab, the digitizer should be "built in". The "Avid
Cinema Digitizer" makes captured video choppy.

I've gotten perfectly fine results from this--I did everything from input to output without any trouble using these settings. Hopefully it will work for others.

=Ryan=]

Apples Take Apart manuals!: Apple Europe has the Take Apart manuals that a lot of you have been waiting for! I don't know how long they will be at this link so get them while you can. The Performa 6400/6500 manual is named "powermac.perf_6400..." and it's towards the end of the list. Don't download the smaller Performa 6400 items as the big manual includes them all! It is a 5.7M download. They also have the Take Apart manuals for most all other Macs. I got one for the B&W G3, iMac, and PB G3 series. All these big manuals are towards the end. Look for the largest size file and that will be it. For instance the iMac and B&W G3 are 10M downloads. HAVE FUN :)

AOL HomeTown? maybe not!: I have been pondering on whether I should stay with AOL's HomeTown service or cancel it? When I signed up I had the impression that I would be given an extra 10MB of space for my web site which was the deal they had going. I never got it! I have been emailing then back and forth many times and it seems I may never get it. I have received the most generic email responses from them that I can ever think of. Each person that emailed me practically told me the same thing and we kept going in circles! The funny thing is that I copied the text from all te previous messages to each new message as THEY wanted me to but I could tell they never read it. Oh well this service is slowing the display of my web pages with all their junky ads anyways and if I don't get thsi resolved soon I'm going to dump them.

What does this mean for you? please start visiting my site with this address http://members.aol.com/tmk12v This is what my address used to be and AOL's home town just reroutes all requests for this address to their site so if and when I cancel, you'll still be able to get to my site with this original address.

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.