Just Updated 6/4/2000 Mac Equipment for Sale policy change: I am implementing the same policy for my equipment list that I have for me Readers Requests page. I will start removing posts older then 6 months as of next week. I will start with postings that have no date posted then the following week I will remove postings dated earlier then Janurary. If you wish me to keep the posting up longer then just let me know and I will reset the clock :) I'm just trying to clean up some old stuff :) User info on Keyspan USB card: Vesp wrote to say he is having no trouble with Keyspans PCI USB card in his 6400. Thanks Vesp. [For your edification, recently I installed a Keyspan USB Card on my Performa 6400 Sonnet Powered G3 Mac OS 8.6. Installation set up was a breeze. Apple USB Adapter Card Support Version 1.4.1 was installed. Epson Stylus Color 740 was connected to USB port. As far as functionality goes the USB card has been flawless.] Utility to tell you what kind of 400Mhz G3 you have: Tiong writes that Newer's Guage Pro utility can tell you if you have an 8x or 10x G3 CPU. Thanks Tiong. Only 10x CPU's can possibly be clocked over 400Mhz with the Sonnet Clocker, that is if we can get it working :) [Hi Tom, I've been reading about the problems Sonnet L2 users have been facing when trying to get their 400MHz G3 to run faster. Sorry I don't have a 400 to test, but I'd like to advise your readers to do a simple test before they overclock their 400MHz G3s. As you have already stated, some of the 400MHz upgrades do not come with 10x multiplier chips, so users must determine if their chips are 10x capable before trying to clock it over the 8x limit of the older versions of G3. One good software for checking if their G3 is 10x capable is Newer's Gauge Pro (http://www.newertech.com/software/index.html) If Gauge Pro reports the CPU version as 3.0, users can overclock it and make run at or below 10x. However, if the CPU version is below 3.0 (most likely 2.2), the G3 will run at 8x max. Hope this info helps. Regards, Tiong] Apple TIL on installing Mac OS on 21G or larger HD partitions: Apple released a TIL stating that although the Mac OS can see and use very large HD's, the OS installers can't! All this means is that if you wish to install OS 8.5 or older on say, a 40G HD, you have to make sure at least one partition is 20G or smaller. Oh the pain! I wish I had one HD that large :) [http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n60448 The installer version accompanying Mac OS 8.5 and AppleShare IP 6.1 does not properly deal with volumes larger than 21 Gigabytes. The version of the installer application that accompanies Mac OS 8.6 corrects this limitation. If the newer version of the installer is not available, partitioning the drive so that a smaller than 21 Gigabyte segment is available will allow the older installer to function.] Info on how to extend the range of Apples Airport system: Here is a link to a site with info on installing an external antenna to Apples Airport base station to increase the distance you can be from it. [http://macsupport.about.com/compute/macsupport/library/column/uc052900a.htm] Free Internet access for Mac users: I know many people have tried free internet access services from ISP's and have mixed results from them but I thought I would tell you of a new one I came across which seems pretty safe to try. Its called Freeinternet.com, and they just released version 2 of their Mac client software. I had always wanted to try one of these but kept putting it off, but I have a trip coming up soon and didn't want to fork over $7 an hour to @Home for dial up service! Yes I do still have AOL but I am paying a reduced rate of $9.95 for using AOL services thru @Home cable. This lets me keep my web site up for a minimal amount of money. But AOL will charge me $2.50 an hour if I dialup! So Free access here I come. I chose Freeinternet because the signup process does not include your name, home phone, home address, or even your current email address! All they required is your state, area code, and zip code which does narrow you down but is not exactly where you live. Then they asked for a screen name to use and a password and that was it for personal stuff, They did ask for current email but I left that blank thinking they would give me an email account anyway so why let them spam my other account. Also a few questions on personal preferances like things you like. This way they can target what ads to place on the banner box which is always present while online. This brings up another interesting tid bit :) The banner box is not bad at 1024x768 but could be a bit bulky on a 640x480 setting. BUT Check this out. At this time for at least my system is crashes after about 5-10 minutes but does not bring my system down. Now you might think what is good about that! Well, I don't get kicked offline when it crashes. I was able to keep surfing for an entire hour before I left for while and it logged me off. I might have been able to go longer if I kept surfing? So for free access and no personal info to give out, I think they rate pretty good :) Procedure to replace Power Supply fan on 6400/6500's: Lance bought and replaced his power supplies fan to try and quiet it down. He wasn't able to find a much quieter fan yet but he wrote an excellent procedure on how to replace it if any of you would like to try? Thanks Lance. I have added it to my 6400 online take apart manual. Help for HP 4MP printer problems: David writes with info on how he fixed his HP 5MP printer problems and thought it might help people with 4MP printers. Thanks David. [I have an HP 5MP, and don't know if the same fix will work for the 4MP, but this is what worked for me under OS 8.5.1 and greater. Remove ALL the driver software provided by HP and print using LaserWriter 8. Under LW8, the 20Mb in my printer is recognized and there is no problem. Good luck. David] Info on using OS 9 under OS X from Apple: Here is a link to some info on Apples web site that might help you understand how far along the integration is between OS 9 and OS X. Remember they still have 6 more months before its supposed to be released but I just wanted to let you know how far along they are. Also don't be surprised if a lot of the features in OS 9 are not in OS X when its released. Its pretty hard to make a new OS as functional as a 15 year old OS in just a few years time :) Interesting fix to get Sonnets G3 card and ATI's Rage128 running smooth together?: Marcus wrote me with this very interesting fix. Before this he had to ZAP the PRAM to get them to work on every boot! Thanks Marcus. [Heureka! I removed my non-Apple SCSI-harddrive and now my G3-card works with my ATI Rage Orion. I guess 60% of Performa 6400 owners have a non-apple hard-drive installed in the upper 5,25"-bay. -- Marcus] I don't know if his non-Apple SCSI HD was formatted with Apples Drive Setup or some thirdparty driver but if you have this setup and removing a non-Apple drive helps your situation, please write me. Just Updated 5/27/2000 Update on revised Sonnet Clocker: The author just sent me a copy of a Crescendo extension clocked to 500Mhz. If anyone with a 400Mhz card could try this and see if it either works or crashes the computer then at least we know the changes are affecting somthing. It should not hurt your computer and just replace it with your original extension to get thinks working correct again. But The 6400 Zone cannot be held responsible for anything that happens. Another thing pointed out to me was the fact that Sonnet had sold 400Mhz upgrades before the 10X CPUs were out. If you have one of these then it will not be clockable over 400Mhz because it is at its max speed already. Kingston does not recommend their KNE100TX (E) 10/100 ethernet card for the 6400?: Andrew tried one of these in his 6400 and it would not connect over 10Mbps? He got a reply from Kingston saying that they don't recommed it for us? I wonder if they meant their card is buggy or the 6400? Thanks Andrew. [We are using a farallon 10/100 auto sensing hub. All cabeling is up to spec. Kingston have just sent me an e-mail saying that the card we have is the cause. You may weant to note that Kingston do not recommend the installation of their card KNE100TX (E) in the 6400, they descibe it as buggy. They tell me that a KNE 110 will be fine but I am getting a Farallon card since people seem happier with this make. regards Andrew] Update on using a Belkin switch box to use 2 video cards with one monitor: Michael wrote that he tried a Belkin 2 port OmniCube for using his one 19" monitor with the stock video port and a PCI video card in his 6400. He says it works great. Thanks Michael! I had tried this before but with 6' cables and a cheap VGA switch box and it was horrible. Much ghosting of the images. Belkins box not only switches but also amplifies the signals so it works much better. Maybe I will have to give it a try soon? [Hey Tom, Michael here. I just thought I'd write and let you know that I got ahold of a Belkin switchbox, the OmniCube 2-port. It's sitting on top of my 6400 tower now with no VGA cables. I located an online store via Ask Jeeves (I asked where I could find SHORT VGA extension cables) and came up with a place that had "Super VGA" cables which were only three feet. They were only $4.90 a piece so I ordered both, and a Mac video adaptor. They should be here Friday, assuming they ship them out today. My TV is broken and I'm unwilling to fix it (this is the fourth time the same problem has occurred with this TV in 12 or 13 years now, $50 to $70 to fix it each time and the problem comes back--I think every person who's tried his hand at fixing it has remedied the problem without ever fixing the cause) so I'm pretty anxious to just be able to watch TV again. It would also be nice to get back to playing with the AVS/TV Tuner capture features since I've had the Orion installed, so you better believe as soon as I get things running I will let you know how it looks. I was wondering (because I forgot, and I deleted your last emails) how long the cables you used were? I really hope 3 feet is short enough to keep the ghosting from happening as I like to use 1024x768 at 85Hz on my 19" monitor. See ya. Michael] [I got the cables today along with the Mac/VGA converter. It took some fiddling with the switches for the right setting, which seemed to work well on the 6500's video at 640x480 and 67Hz. However, after playing the TV for a time, Apple Video Player glitched out with a bus error restart. I switched the 6500's built-in video to 640x480 at 60Hz and everything has been smooth since. Both the ATI Orion's video and the 6500's video are extremely sharp so it looks like the 3" cables are the way to go. I have a 19" KDS VS-195 monitor and routinely run it in 1024x768 and 85Hz, this suits all my purposes including gaming. Its resolution is plenty crisp, as is the 6500's at its lower resolution.(It just takes a little getting used to working with.) In order to view Apple Video Player at fullscreen, I've found it's very necessary for me to switch the menubar from the 1024 screen over to the 640. I'm only just learning Applescript, but I am planning on writing a script to automate this switch, and vice versa, so I can go back and forth without dealing with the control panel. This was a great idea. However, I don't recommend everybody spend the $100 that I did on a Belkin switchbox, the only reason I did this is because my 19" TV is broken (for the fourth time) and I refuse to fix it. I didn't realise just how much I really missed the Apple Video Player and its hardware though, because a lot of MPEGs I have on my hard disk, CDs and elsewhere really seem to play much faster with more frames with this than in Quicktime 4!(Even in fullscreen mode!) I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner, and I'm also kicking myself for not looking around more than I had, because the same place I found these 3" Super VGA cables at happened to have a simple VGA switchbox (I don't remember the brand name) for only $50. It's great to be able to watch TV again. :) Michael] PCI Wattage limit on the 6400: Thomas writes that he had some serious problems using both a OrangeMicro Firewire/USB card and their OrangePCI 530 Windows card in his 6400. It turned out that the Wattage requirment of the 2 was higher then the specs for the 6400. I just looked them up and Apple says not to exceed 15W per PCI slot. What this means is not only the 2 cards together over the limit but so is just the one OrangePC card! Thanks Thomas. [I would like to inform you and your readers that the Orange Micro USB/Firewire card does NOT work inconjunction with and OrangePCi (PC compatibility card). When I called up Orange Micro I was told that they are aware of the problem, but don't anticipate any fix. First I was told that it's not a power consumption issue....then after the tech consulted with a higher being...he came back on and confirmed that it is a power consumption issue. Apparently the OrangePCi 530 card has a 25 Watts consumption and the USB/Firewire 15 Watts. Both of these card in a PowerPC 6500 draws too much power...resulting in the system not being able to power-on. This really is unfortunate because I don't have anymore PCI slots. If you have any advice I would much appreciate it. I also would like to ask you a question about DVD-ROM.....I've been reading your postings....but I'm still puzzled as to whether or not DVD player will work with the PowerPC 6500/6400? Is it possible to view movies with software decoder instead of a PCI decoder card? Thank you very much for your help. Thomas] I could not find info on the Voodoo3 requirements but the Voodoo2 requires 15W at 5V so it is at the max the 6400 can handle which is probably why the power supply fan spins up when the card is in use. It is driving the power supply much harder then normal. Specially if you have 2 video cards like I do (ATI VR and Voodoo2) Geoport modem fix for use with G3 upgrades: Steve started having problems with his Geo modem just after upgrading to a Sonnet G3 as many others have and he found a fix for him. He says that you can use G3Strip 1.9.1 to not only slow the L2 cache down but also reduce the size of the cache and it allows the Geo to function fine. Also Power Logix's cache profiler can be used to disable the cache but I think that would slow the computer down more then just reducing the speed and size? I think I reported similar uses of these products before but I never new that reducing the size address of the cache would make a difference? Thanks Steve. [Hi Tom: I recently upgraded my Performa 6360 with a Sonnet G3 300 mhz upgrade card with 1 meg backside cache. I was thoroughly amazed by the instant performance boost in my old Performa. The best news was that all my existing software and hardware seemed to be working with the upgrade too. But I got the bad news when I tried to connect to the internet with my old GeoPort Modem. The GeoPort wouldn't work. Well after doing some digging, it turns out that according to Apple Tech Information and Sonnets own compatibility matrix that the GeoPort Modem is not supported on G3 based machines. Well I wasn't ready to scrap my old GeoPort just yet. So I scoured the internet message boards and Performa discussion groups, such as yours, only to find out that many users had already discovered the same sad news. The GeoPort wouldn't work with the G3 processor. Or would it? I usually don't give up easy. My intuition told me that it had something to do with either the clocking speeds of the G3, the cache settings, or the GeoPort hardware/software and extensions. So I played around for couple of days with different utilities and software modifications. The result is an easy fix that I wanted to share with your readers. First make sure you have the latest version of the GeoPort 3.1 Modem drivers and software installed. These are availble from Apple and are also included on the OS 8.0 and 8.1 CD. Next install a copy of the shareware utility G3Strip 1.9.1. This utility is availble from http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014067/en.html . The utility consist of a system extension and a control strip module. Place the two files in the appropriate folders and restart your system. The control strip module allows you to control the G3 processor's back-side cache settings. On system restart, you will notice that the G3Strip control strip module is present. Open the G3Strip and change the three cache settings to: Cache-size 256, Cache-ratio 1:3, and Cache-mode Write-through by toggling the settings. Also turn off Default at Startup to save these new settings. That's it, your GeoPort Modem will work again. Maybe even better than before. It seems that file transfer rates improve after making the change. Could be the G3 is boosting the performance of the GeoPort Modem too. To make turning these setting on/off easier, I created an extension set with Extension Manager that turns off the G3StripLib Extension. I use this extrension set when I don't plan to use my GeoPort. As another option to the G3Strip utility, I also had success using PowerLogix's free G3 Cache Profiler utility to turn off the G3's back-side cache settings to get the GeoPort to works again. Regards, Steve ps. I tried the G3 Throttle Utility and it didn't work for me.] PowerSupplies for 6400's and other Macs: Mark sent me a link to MacResQ which has many power supplies listed for Macs as well as the 6400/6500. Thanks Mark. I also added a link to their site on my Magazines page as there is really a lot of old and new stuff on their site. [I just thought that I would pass this along in case you hadn't seen it. http://www.macresq.com/product/power.html Mark] He also sent me a PDF file from MacResQ on how to take covers off the 6400 to replace the power supply. Looks like they took a lot of the pics from Apples manuals :) Thanks again Mark. I will add a link to this in my 6400 Take Apart Manual :)

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