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 crashes to much for me now!: Since updating to OS 8.6 I have had many boot crashes with Sonnets card that I cannot stand it any more! In just the past few days it took 2-3 boots before it made it all the way each time I wanted to use the computer. I had it so I removed Sonnets card and put in Vimges G3 and placed Sonnets card in my backup 6400. So far no crashes with Vimages :) Sonet really needs to find out why their card is so unstable or they are going to loose new customers.

Perhaps a 4th L2 G3 vendor may emerge?: Joey, who has sent me some great info on clocking, may make his own L2 G3 for the 6400 and it sounds rather interesting. He has a company in Germany which is selling G3 upgrades right now for other Macs and is testing versions for the 6400. If his card works the way it sounds like it will then it might just beat the others in stability and compatibility! I asked to test one if he does produce them. Thanks Joey.

[Dear Tom,
indeed, i´m working on a alchemy/gazelle version of my own g3 card (joeCARD/littleJoe). I´m just adopting the Tanzania Design to the specs of the 6400 and clones. The g3 card for tanzania is trivia, you only have to route the ppc750 pinout to the cach dimm slot and do a little fine tuning. Tanzania uses a lot of the the alchemy design, but has some improvements. (like 2 chanel E-IDE, PS/2, faster onboard graphics etc.) Those improvements affect the DMA channels and the generell way a cache is adressed. Even if tanzania and alchemy use the same memory controller PSX, the way the alchemy treats the cache dimm differs. So, if you want to turn a tanzania card (all manufacturers go that way - first tanzania - then alchemy) to be alchemy compatible, you have to change the whole way the card messages itself to the system. the stability problem may occur, cause the little ROM on both, the vimage and the sonnet card, has to readress the psx. that´s not trivia. if timing problems occur in ns steps, the whole psx won´t adress correctly and the system hangs. i don´t know exactly what the rom on vimage and sonnet cards does or how it patches the psx and rom. I will do it my way and the first five prototype suck, but today i´ve got one prototype start and running in umax c600 alchemy clone. In fact my card does start as g3 from the start. even with system extension disabled it´s still a g3. that´s more like a tanzania card. so i will test and develop a little more and than maybe i will have a product up and running like my two joeCARD/littleJoe families. (one for tanzania, one for TNT/NITRO/tsunami)
Yours
J.R.Kuhnen]

Misc 6400 info from Rick: Rick send some info on why the power supply fan may wind up like a turbo jet and info on new drivers for thr TurboTV card. Thanks Rick

[Hi Tom,
Thanks again for almost posting my letter. I saw mention of it but I couldn't find it in the link that it was sent to. Thanks for the help. Anyway FYI, the loud fan problem I was having and others may have had I narrowed down to my new HD. It seems that the 7200 RPM 9.1 gig was too much for the Performa power supply. The thermistors are mounted in the power supply and monitor the temperture of the voltage regulators. The new 9 gig Segate HD was pulling more current then the 2.1 gig Quantum. Since I have both PCI slots filled (constricting airflow and pulling current) I'm just pushing the legal limit of current. So after 45 minutes or so the fan would increase in speed and sound like a Pratt & Whittney Jet engine in afterburn. I placed the 2.1 gig back in and moved everything over slowly by Zip disk (I tried to connect the 2.1 to the 9.1 as a slave drive, but I couldn't get it to work). Things are much more quiet now. So now I have a 9 gig HD for sale. Also as for the Applescript problem, I installed 8.5 on to the old 2.1 gig and went to 8.6 and everthing works fine. It seems 8.5.1 was the culprit. Also, for those with the IXTV or TurboTV, there is a new driver on their homepage that now has stereo, that's the good news, the bad news is it seems to transfer noise through my external speakers after quitting the application. Going into the control panels and selecting a different source input and back again seems to fix the problem. Anyway for what it's worth! Thanks again for the past help!
Rick]

Speaking of Apple Scripts. I noticed that my PB G3 will not set the volume to zero anymore thru a shutdown. The script works fine while the PB is running but I now get a chime at starup or restart where once the set volume zero script silenced it. 6400's can not have a zero volume and will always chime on boot but does anyone have a different Mac where the script used to work and now doesn't with OS 8.6? Please email with the details. Thanks

Letter from 6400 users that upgraded to OS 8.6: Thanks for the letters and keep them coming.

[Hi,
I have a 6400/180 + Millenium2 with motherboard clocked to 50 MHz, with cooling fan glued to the original passive cooler. Everything was fine under 8.5.1, no crashes or freezes. But after the upgrade (and clean installation) of 8.6 sound stutters during mp3 playback and in games with background music. That happens when the virtual memory is on. When I switch it off, everything's fine. I've even tried to fix that with those xtensions from ATI and Apple that take care of sound problems with PCI cards - nada .

So I've downgraded back to 8.5.1 ...
Regards,
Alen]

Not sure if this is an OS issue or clocking issue but it sounds like an OS issue. Anyone else have this problem?

[Since I have updated my Performa 6400/180/88MB/L2Cache512K/XClaim VR4MB from Mac OS 8.5.1 to Mac OS 8.6 my Bootup time has increased, it is 2 Min 52 sec in duration since the upgrade, seems much longer then it was with Mac OS 8.5.1, Do I have a problem??????? I have not installed any additional extensions since the update. Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered. Please advise.]

Does anyone else notice a very long boot? My system hangs just after the Date & Time is displayed in the menu bar. This is the time its trying to get an IP address through my cable modem. Oddly my PB G3 does not have this problem when I connect it to the cable modem? http://www.macfixit.com mentions that many people are having this issue and it all seems to be related to having your TCP/IP control panel set to DHCP. Still others do not have it set like this and still get a hang.

[I have a Performa 6400/180 with 48MB RAM (50MB with VM), no L2 cache, a bunch of extensions and AOL 4.0. System 8.6 has changed my machine. With 8.5.1, I had many crashes and could not stop the type 3 errors. With 8.6, my machine is more stable, feels faster, I get faster downloads. I don't know what will happen if I ever get a G3 card, but I'm very satisfied with 8.6.
Keep up the good work. I Love your site.
Esdras]

[Tom,
Have Sonnet finally fixed it, it seems so. The new extension 1.3.6 final, under its real name in the extensions folder under 8.6 has yet to crash. I have removed my Geoport though. With the Geoport, 1.3.5 named ~/ZCresendo in the Control Panels it's most stable arrangement, under 8.5.1 it was kind of a greyhound, in other words a fast dog. Now its a dream.

At last a fast and stable Mac. Positive feedback, well done, at last, Sonnet.
Regards,
Mark (Your 5400 UK based correspondent)]

Good, 2 happy customers :)

More G3 testing from Anton: He has done some more application testing to see what makes his Sonnet card get lower CPU scores. Also he mentions something interesting about a typ of memory addressing which is bad and Sonnet may use it? check it out. Thanks Anton. To be fair, I find most apps slow any CPU score down after they have been run for awhile. Like other sites that do a lot of benchmarking, I prefer to run the tests just after a boot so no other program has run yet. This is the best way to get numbers that are real with the Mac OS.

[Tom,
Just an additional note about the Sonnet card. I tested it now with Virtual Pc too, which ran very snappy. But after quitting VPC my CPU performance was down 100 pts compared with the score before! It seems that very CPU intensive applications like VPC and the Geoport/Express modem degrade the performance of the Sonnet card. I don't know whether it is normal that it doesn't recover from it after one quits these applications. Maybe these applications leave some after effect which does not clear by itself.
As for Metronome helping to clear these ill after effects, I have had some trouble reproducing my earlier results for this. I did however have consistent good results in restoring the CPU performance of the Sonnet card to near peak performance by using the Cache G3 profiler from Powerlogix (it is free) http://www.powerlogix.com/support/software.html It comes also with an init which can set certain settings (on which more a little later), but I can not make the init work as it always (even after renaming it) loads before the Crescendo init. The Cache G3 profiler works however and has a panel called "Other" which contains two items which seem very beneficial to the CPU performance of the Sonnet card:I quote from their webpage documentation:
>The "Other" panel allows you to control miscellaneous G3 related items.
>Speculative Access is a process new to the G3 processor (as compared to
>earlier PowerPCs like the 604e) which can corrupt data if it is not initialized
>properly. Since the motherboard in 604 based Macintoshes do not correctly
>set this, Speculative Addressing should be disabled on computers that
>originally shipped with 60x processors.
>In general, if you are using a computer that originally shipped with a 60x
>processor, click the Disable Now button and check the box to disable at
>startup. Again, make sure that the Profiler extension is in your extensions folder.

The Sonnet cards leave the Speculative Adressing enabled, while the above seem to suggest that it should be disabled. I disabled it by using Cache G3 profiler. The profiler extension method doesn not work unfortunately (as remarked above, it loads too early).

Also there is a second item you control on this "Other" panel:D(ynamic)P(ower)M(anagement),
>The G3 processor is capable of drawing less power if this feature is enabled.
>Idle units on the processor are turned off when they are not in use.
>601/603/604 based machines do not turn on DPM automatically - with it
>turned on processor temperature may go down and it will be more energy efficient.

Again the Sonnet card does not enable this feature of the G3 chip, and I enable it by using Cache G3 profiler. Combined this seems to make a difference (as far as my testing shows).
Anton]

This update is very long so you might want to get a drink or use the bathroom before you begin :)

Update - Sonnets OS 8.6 driver is out!: Sonnet just posted the final 1.3.6 version on there web site. Go and get it :)

Vimage 320/325 card spotted for sale: Rico saw Vimages Card for sale at Other World Computing. Thanks Rico. They are a good company with Ads in the baclk of MacWorld magazine. I have a link to them on my Magazines page.

[Tom, I found the G3 320 card at Other World Computing for $475.00 and it appears to be in stock. Might be good for your readers to know.

Before I order though, do you have any opinions regarding OWC? Are they a solid, reliable company? I'm always hesitant to buy online from a company I've never heard of before.

Merci!

Rico]

More video cards incompatible with Vimage G3: Joey sent me a letter stating that none of the Mac Picasso cards would work for him with Vimage G3. This does contradict a previous letter I got from Ola stating that the MP850 worked? The MP540 was previously reported as not working.

[Vimage g3 L2 Cards do not work with the picassos. (mp540, mp750, mp850) i´ve just contacted vimage to clear out, why this g3 card has just such problems. i´ve never get a statement back. i think it´s because of the reboot. the initialization progress is disturbed and the rebooted OS doesn´t recognize the cards. i don´t recommend the vimage at all . sonnets design is much smarter. (my own design indeed, will be much more smarter! ha!) if you want a fast card with a vimage enabled alchemy/gazelle you can purchase IX3D cards. they work well with vimage! with sonnets le g3 card the picassos work very well.
bye
joey]

Mac OS 8.6 on the 6400: Well I've been using it for a little bit now and don't really have anything good or bad to say about it! I guess thats good :) I don't notice the improvments and I don't find any incompatibilities with my stuff except for the G3 upgrades. Please email me your experiences if it has improved or gone down hill. Thanks.

Cable Modem update: What can I say, this thing rocks! Its been the bet purchase I made since the G3 upgrades. Even better as it doesn't crash :) The speed is awsome to say the least and not having to log on is a big plus. Even my network connection at work seems slow now because it goes thru so many firewalls.

Review of Promax's TurboMax PCI-IDE card: Here is a link to Accelerate Your Mac's review of this card which allows up to 4 IDE drives to be attched to your Mac. Its not with a 6400 but I thought you might be interested in reading it. It will work on the 6400 as Ryan sends word that it is for him. Thanks Ryan

[Hi Tom,
I have tried to find a workaround for putting a slave drive in the 6500/6400 series computers, but it seems to be impossible. Our computers only support Fast ATA-2, which, AFAIK, does not support slave devices. Furthermore, there there is no cable or space to connect the second drive, unless you use the top drive bay. That can get pretty messy really quick.

What I have done is bought one of Promax's cards (http://www.promax.com/turbo.htm), which offers up to 4 IDE drives on it's two buses. I had to work a bit to get the cables all the way from the PCI card to the top bay and the front HD bay, since the motherboard pulls out and makes everything extremely difficult. You have to be REALLY comfortable with messing around inside the computer and with the motherboard if you want to do this! It is not for the faint of heart. I have a Quantum Fireball EX 6.4 GB and an IBM Deskstar GXP 10 GB hooked up to the Promax card and it's giving me quite decent transfer rates between 10 and 20MB/s! Now, if only I had a G3 upgrade, this thing would really smoke! Mind though, that the card is a bit weird and you have to initialize your IDE drives and install SCSI drivers on them for some reason. I guess they engineered the card to be recognized as a SCSI controller (maybe for compatibility or stability?).
Ryan]

Village Tronics MP850 card reviewed: Joey and Dan sent me a review of the MP850 at a readers requst. Thanks guys. Click here to read them.

More on why an IDE slave drive will not work in the 6400: Joey sent some me more info at the request of another reader on why the 6400 cannot use an IDE drive in a slave setup. Thanks Joey. He mentions that they might be able to fix it so who knows, maybe someday?

[dear tom,
here comes the next message from germany. it´s not possible to run the 6400 in master/slave mode. the problem is the rom. apple has not included master/slave functionality before the introduction of the powermacintosh g3 rev.2 (the ones with rage pro instead of rage II). but with a little bit help and a little bit of time we maybe will be able to change that in the near future. As the 6400 has got open firmware 1.3 in rom, you may can adress the faulty rom and reprogramm it. it´s a project that i will start in juli with a guy from german ct maganzine (www.heise.de/ct) and maybe we will have success. but nowerdays nobody will have the chance to run master/slave on the ide enabled powermacs.
have fun
bye
Joey]

[hi,
of course i´ve tried to look what happens, when master/slave are connected to the interface. only the master is recognized by the firmware. the programm you mean is not suitable. i´ve just express myself a little bit unclear. when working in open firmware - just before the macs rom is initialized - and changing the settings, these setting have to be "burned" in. the problem is that the older IDE enabled powermacintosh have only got one DMA channel for every IDE channel. So the os has to provide the dma channel for the drive that is requesting cpu time. if you will copy from master to slave - you will get big trouble. as i pointed out before - i will investigate how to fix that in the near future.
bye
joey]

LinuxPPC on the 6400: Andrew sends word that he tried it on his 6400 and it works well. He did not try it with a G3 upgrade though but I did and it does work! Linux 4.0 comes with a graphical user interface and I found a utility that shows what the CPU is and it showed a 300Mhz PPC 750 which is a G3 but I don't know if the backside cache was working? It seemed a little slow for all the hype that I've heard so maybe the cache was not enabled. At least you can run it without removing your G3 :)

[Hi,

Just thought you might be interested in the fun I've been having installing LinuxPPC on my 6400/180. It's one way of breathing new life into these old machines once MacOS X and BeOS pass us by. LinuxPPC works extremely well on a 6400. Of course, the big question is whether the L2 G3 upgrades will work. Cannot answer that, I'm afraid.

I've posted my experiences at
http://www.foakes.demon.co.uk/Linux.html if anyone else is interested.

Yours,
Andrew]

ADB switchbox for Macs: Someone had asked me in the past if there was such a device and it looks like there is! I recieved this letter which has a link to Dr Botts web site who is selling the device. It is a solid state switch and not just a mechanical switch so it should not harm the mother board as a regular mechanical switch might.

[Yes there is such a product. Check out this website for more info- http://216.99.196.180/drbott/prod/ms.html
I'm about to get one for myself.]

Letters in reply to Mitch's question on hot to get the FM player application plus other TV/FM system info: I have recieved a few letters about the 6400's TV/FM video system and also found some info my self from Apples web site so sit back and enjoy :) Thanks everyone for replying.

[Hi,
To answer Mitch Roberts question about the TV card for A/V Macs, there are two of these, the Apple TV card and the Apple TV/FM radio card (M4586LL/A). I know of no way to upgrade the TV card.

Steve]

[The 6400 (and all A/V Macs) come with the Apple Video card. This allows you to input audio and video to the Mac. Using the Apple Video Player, you can view and even record it. The connectors for this card are right next to the ADB and serial ports on the back of the 6400.

As far as I know, no A/V Mac came with a TV card standard. This card goes in the top of the case (not on the motherboard assembly) next to the monitor connector. The TV/FM card came out later than the TV only card and was expensive. I could've bought a real TV and radio for what it cost and plugged them into the video card.

Nowadays, you can buy the TV card for around $50, but the TV/FM card is nowhere to be found. It's been discontinued by Apple and people that haves 'em keeps 'em.
Steve]

[Hi,
you will find it on the MacOS 8.5 CD. Start the Installer, choose Custom installation für MacOS 8.5 and at multimedia you will find Radio/FM!
Yours
Joey]

Steve mentioned that the 6400 came with the video card which will also have the Avid Cinema card so you could do video recording and the Avid card allowed for video compression and video out. Not many 6400's did though so don't be fooled and think you should have got one :) The 6500 had some versions which came with the TV/FM tuner card and this is the card that works in the 6400.Which type you can buy right now (TV/FM or TV only) would be a mistery? Make sure to ask whomever your buying it from what type their selling. Here are a few TIL article from Apple that might interest you.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n22141

TIL on FM radio player. Has a trick way to get the OS 8.1 updater to install the latest version needed for OS 8.1 and up.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n30793

TIL says to turn Appearance sounds off in OS 8.5 before launching FM player or you get no sound

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n21138

TIL says that if Apple video player is set to video or S-video then the FM player will not have any sound even if the video player is not active. to fix, open the video player and set it back to TV.

As Joey mentioned, you can find the FM player on the OS 8.5 install CD. Infact its supposed to be on all the OS 8 series install CD's from OS 8 to OS 8.5. The problem is that it will not install it unless the installer finds a version of it on your HD where it expects to find it! This can be solver by doing a custom install and look for the Multimedia section as Joey said. I also remember reading that it may even be on the original 6400 System CD. DO NOT try a system install from this disk or it will revert you to the original OS 7.5.3 but if you browse thru the folders on the CD you might find it? Other TIL files I found do mention that you need the latest version available at the time of each OS's release for compatibility so I suggest which ever OS CD you have that you look for it in the Custom install section there. I could not locate it anywhere on Apples FTP sites.

If anyone has trouble finding the FM player then let me know as Tom was nice enough to send me the latest version he has. Thanks Tom.

More Sonnet user letters: Here a a few letters I recieved thatmay interest you. Thanks guys.

[I am currently running the Sonnet 300/1mb in a Performa 6400 at a 200 MHz backside cache speed as selected by the MACHspeed G3 cache control panel. It is running VERY stable ( I can't seem to crash it!) I'm not sure if it has to do with 8.6 or the new Sonnet extension. ( I'm a little to busy to bother to reload 8.5.(1) to see if it is the Sonnet extension) I hope Sonnet investigates this and adds a selectable cache speed to its final version of the current 1.3.6 beta driver. I would think that the marketing department at the very least would be thrilled.

Paul]

[Hi Tom,
I corresponded before with you about my experiences with the Sonnet Crescendo 240/120 L2slot G3 upgrade card. After the initial installation problems I was still experiencing strange, seemingly random crashes. This weekend I however pinpointed the culprit and you might want to include some of my findings on your page (if you see so fit to do). I also have tested the Geoport/Express modem in the same way for incompatibilities and have some new info on that too. First my setup: Performa 6400/200 with 48Mb of memory and system 8.5.1 installed. Normally VM is on. I used Norton's utilities (an older version:3.5.1) to test for CPU performance (mainly because it is uses a faster, probably less comprehensive, test than Macbench and shows you the subtest scores, which do not matter for the user much, but might interest Sonnet technical support). Now for the culprit: this weekend I played a demo version of Pinball 3D and noticed that my Mac seemed kind of sluggish afterwards. I ran Norton to compare the CPU and FPU test with a stored score. To my big surprise I noticed that the first two subscores on the blockmove test (aligned and misaligned) were way off: I got 27% and 19% instead of approx. 700% an 575%. This score is in comparison with a PM 6100/60! The overall CPU performance was 95.7% compared to the original 617% score. On three other subtests: memory R/W, Instruction overlap and Search the CPU performance was less than a PM 6100/60. I decided that it was time to reboot. Again to my suprise my Mac would freeze twice in a row after loading all the extensions and control panels. Only the third time it would boot into the Finder normally. I decided to run my tests again. I ran Norton's CPU test first and had a slightly lower score than normal (which is due to the Express modem), but it was not off too much (about 8%). I ran Pinnball 3D again, quit it and repeated the CPU test. They were down to same place as before. I try to reboot and have the same crashes again! Apparently this demo of Pinball 3D does some nasty things to the G3-card. I removed the application quickly from my harddisk (to prevent my kids from playing with it too). I can understand that a G3-card is incompatible with some older piece of software, but I do also think that Sonnet needs to rewrite some code of their init, so that it resets the G3-card properly so that it does not crash twice after rebooting. I find it really strange that the after effects of an offending application
survive a reboot (even after shutting down and coming back hours later).
I decided to check out many of my other applications to see whether they had similar problems. First, as already remarked above, starting up with the Geomodem/Express modem loaded, does affect the CPU performance by about 8%, but which is apparenly not severe enough to make the Mac crash on reboot. Going online with the Expressmodem does more severely affect the Mac: it's overall score dropped to about 350% and the effects are still noticeable after going off-line! Again rebooting restored to its previous score. Then I did the same, but instead of rebooting I used the application "Geoport/Express modem shutdown" after going online, which restored the CPU to its normal performance.
I found two other applications on my hard disk which caused some deteriation: Newertech's Clockometer 2.0.4 and Cache-22 1.5.4 from the Gauge utilities. Of course with Sonnet's Metronome application I don't need these anymore. I discovered however that running Metronome after these offending applications would restore the scores to normal!
Apparently running Metronome has a positive influence on the stability of the G3-card. The same is true for the CPU performance with the Geoport/express modem loaded, but in that case there is a side effect: when trying to go online with the Metronome application running in the background the Mac would not complete the first attempt at dialing out. Quitting OT-PPP and retrying the dial-out was however successful the second time.
My conclusions: if you are not using the Geoport/Express modem (or not going on-line) leave Metronome running all the time. If you use the Geoport/Express modem, just use the Geoport/Express modem shutdown application after going off-line. Otherwise I have not seen any incompatibilities between the Geoport/express modem and the Crescendo G3-card. I will send Sonnet an email with the above information, hopefully they can fix it, so that we don't crash after rebooting, as we might be unaware of having used an offending application.
Anton]

[Hi Tom,
I thought I'd send the following, I hope some info of use to reader somewhere. Love your site. Long live the 6400!
Regards
Ian Sharp


Sonnet 300/1Mb Review
The installation was a breeze. Software installed, shutdown, remove L2 cache, plug in card, restart. 300Mhz.. COOL!! Startup seemed a bit quicker, once the Crescendo extension loaded. Open a few windows, run an application or two. Major increase in speed everywhere I turned!


As reported by others, my trouble began on the next startup. The startup process hung repeatedly (at random points) over the next few hours, as I changed loading orders, trimmed extensions etc. After a bit of tweaking (Sonnet loading early...but not first), things settled down, and with the latest drivers from Sonnet, the system has been very stable.


The results I got using benchmark software reflected what’s posted elsewhere, but in terms of actual use...here’s a few things that might be of interest to others contemplating the leap to G3:


Geo Modem
Talk about a HUGE improvement...and I was expecting this (even considered not ordering the GV 56K external that arrived with the card for this reason) - keep in mind the processor intensive nature of Geoport). Anyway, no more bogging down and stalling with Communicator - I was getting very tired of my whole system getting hung up while the next window takes 2 minutes to load!! After removing the Geo, and switching to 56K, I don’t know if there was a large gain. The 56K is faster, but I reckon the Geo would be quite adequate after adding the G3. AND...I really had no troubles with the Geo vs. the Sonnet for the few days before I took out the Geo.


EMULATION (sorry - I don’t use VPC or Real PC for much gaming)


VPC 1.01
Running Win 95 - I am pretty happy with...I’d say around a 70-80% increase in performance...it actually feels like a PC!! 44 seconds to start Win 95. MS Office and Explorer run good, very responsive and much more usable than previously.


Real PC 1.05
Running Win 98 - very happy here too! I use this mainly for my dial-in banking (Windows only..typical). Dial in process pre-G3 took around 13 minutes, with the total session of booting 95, dialling and shutting down taking about 20 minutes. Dial in now takes 6 minutes, and the whole session around 9 minutes. (Win 98 startup = just under a minute. Chasing decent emulation speed was the main reason for the upgrade card. although one of these days I hope I’ll bite the bullet and buy an actual PC...if you need to run the platform you really need the ‘real thing’. (probably cheaper, too!)


Connectix VGS
Talk about a chameleon! The 6400 emulation station! I was quite surprised with this one...I didn’t think the old VR would be adequate to allow this to run. The 40 Mhz bus worried me until I saw something on the 6400 zone about the 1Mb cache helping things along (vs. the 512k being inadequate). Anyway, another success....even playing PlayStation games on my Mac with the 33” TV hooked up to the VR. Most impressed, needless to say.


CONCLUSIONS
All other applications run well, and there I have had no incompatabilities of note. My Mac usage covers a bit of everything...internet, word processing, some CAD work (incl. a bit of 3D), DTP, remote access, database work (do we Mac users do anything without our Mac?).


Without hesitation, I’d recommend this card to any fellow 6400 owner. The speed may be a bit off the pace of the biege or B&W’s, but I reckon it’s up there close to the iMac (especially with PCI graphics acceleration). And I think it’s a worthwhile halfway step until G4 and Firewire, USB, AGP etc.

If someone has the Geo modem - try the upgrade before you purchase a new modem..you may find the speed is now a lot more acceptable. (although personally, I will use this slot for an ethernet card - swapping out the Avid Cinema card for my PCI network card each time I want to connect to ethernet is a real pain!)

System MakeUp

6400/200 Video Edition G3 300/150 1Mb
88Mb Ram 6.4Gb internal HD , 4.3 Gb upper bay , stock 8 x CD
Apple Video System / Apple TV Tuner
Original ATI Xclaim VR
System 8.5.1

Peripherals

Quicktake 150
QuickCam
Epson Stylus Pro
Zip 100 external]

Some MacBench5 scores comparing a Quantum Fireball 7200 rpm IDE drive with the stock IDE drive: Charles sends some test scores he did on his system with a new Quantum Fireball IDE HD. Thanks Charles.

[Hello,
I recently installed a new hard drive in my Performa 6400/200 and thought that I would pass along some benchmark results. The MacBench 5.0 tests where done on the stock 603e@200MHz processor, 256KB L2 Cache, 104MB RAM, Virtual Memory: off, Disk Cache 512KB, Extended HFS formatted drives, using the latest 3.2.1f driver (from Drive Setup 1.7.2,) and Mac OS 8.6.


Western Digital Caviar 22500, 2.5GB, 5400RPM ... Disk: 480, Pub: 467

<http://www.westerndigital.com/products/drives/specs/oldspecs/AC22500.html>

Quantum Fireball Plus KA, 6.4GB, 7200RPM ....... Disk: 731, Pub: 601

<http://www.quantum.com/products/hdd/fireball_plus_ka/>

These numbers are averages of two tests each. The variation between tests was 1% or less.
Later,
Charles]

Sound garbled after installing Vimages G3: Steve writes that he is getting some pretty nasty sounds out of his 6400 since he installed Vimages 240G3. I haven't had this problem but I did notice that Marathon Infinity's opening music gets cut off and garbled. I thnk its a timing issue and maybe trying the Booster beta drivers with the control panel set to NONE will help? Of course this will slow the computer down but should still be OK as long as its only Legacy games that don't really need a G3 boost :) Let me know if any of you are having this issue. Thanks.

[I recently installed a Vimage 240 G3 upgrade card into my Performa 6400/180 and since then the sound quality has gone to hell. I'm using OS 8.1 and no external speakers. The sound is garbled and very heavy on the bass to the point where voices are completely drowned out. Any suggestions? Anyone else report this problem? Thanks
Steve]

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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!

FIX 5/27/1999 Gary sent me a fix which seems to work. One thing though is that the power supply fan will always spin. Even PC's do this to keep the mother board cool. I guess the CPU does not sleep but all the peripherals do? By the way I was able to reset up different sleep times for displays and System and it still worked for me. Maybe my pref files was just corrupted? Thanks Gary.

[Hi,
I have a Sonnet 300/1MB L2 G3 installed on my 6400 running OS 8.5.1 and I too could not get the sleep function to work after the installation, so I started playing around with it and came up with this fix witch is working for me......

First drag the energy saver control panel preference to the trash and restart your computer. After the restart you will see a dialog box prompting you to set your energy saver preferences, open the panel..... NOW THIS IS IMPORTANT! Do not set separate times for hard disk or monitors. Now click on preferences then click on notification, a dialog box will open. Now uncheck all three check boxes, (you can no longer use these notification features). then click OK. Close the energy saver panel and go directly to the control panel folder by way of the apple menu. (DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 DOLLARS DO NOT GO ANY WHERE BUT TO THE CONTROL PANEL FOLDER). Find the energy saver Icon click on it once to highlight it, then click on file in the finder, now click on get info to open the get info box and in the lower left conner check the check box marked locked. Close every thing up, empty the trash and your done.

Repeat above steps for all other disks, volumes, or removable media (zip jazz etc.) that have their on OS.

Why this works? I haven't a clue... And its not a perfect fix but you can put it to sleep any time you want and it will stay asleep until you wake it up, or wait 30 minutes and it'll go into sleep mode on its on.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Sincerely, Gary Brooks]

I use a Performa 6400/180 OS 8.6, Performa 6400/200 OS 8.6, PowerBook G3/233 OS 8.6, 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.