Just Updated 10/20/2000 Update on QT issues with Sonnet L2 G3: In my past just Update I posted some info found on MacfixIt's web site from a user who was told by Sonnet to downgrade from OS 8.6 to 8.5.1 to fix QT issues with their G3 upgrade. Ken just sent the opposite info? He states Sonnet told him that OS 8.0/8.1 had issues with their G3's and to upgrade to OS 8.5. At least they agree OS 8.5.x is good! I don't know if Sonnet is just making excuses or that both people are correct and only OS 8.5.x is recommend for QT compatibility? Very strange. Thanks Ken. [I read you most recent update on the issue of Sonnet G3L2 and Quicktime. I have not had this problem except when I was running MacOS 8.1. At that time, I had been communicating with Sonnet tech support and they told me that QT movies caused crashes with the G3L2 cards and MacOS 8.0/8.1. Since then I have been through MacOS 8.5.1 and currently 8.6 and have not had any QT problems. (Currently using QT 4.1 but had no problems with QT 3). Ken] Update on L2 G3's and ATI cards: Well, just as I post info on removing the ATI Extension to solve audio issues with L2 G3 cards, Accelerate Your Mac does to. Maybe this means it really does fix problems with the ATI card? Avid user needs help: Dave would like to know if there are any Avid users out there with older versions of Avid still? He needs version 1.0 to help trouble shoot some issues he has. If you have it, please email him. Thanks. [Hi I was just reading about your problems with avid and sonnets G3 at 6400 Zone. I just picked up a avid cinema card at ebay. I was going to get a G3 card but I think I'll wait. I emailed you because I am having a problem with the avid software,the card came with avid 1.1.5 upgrade but it won't let me save the movie in and format when I go to send movie out.I emailed avid and they told me to reinstall avid cinema 1.0 and upgrade from there. The problem is I did not get the avid 1.0 CD with the card. There are 6 formats in the format folder in the plugin folder. Can you help me. Or do you know where I can get the software. I have a 6400 powermac performa thank's Dave ] iMovie 1.0.2 not available anymore?: Looks like Apple removed the free download of iMovie 1.0.2 from their servers since they started selling version 2.0. None of my links work and doing a search on Apples web site results in nothing :( If anyone has a secret link to a download of it, please let me know . iMovie may not ever work properly on the 6400?: Here is a letter from Vick who received an email reply to a question he asked Orange Micro on using their firewire card in a PowerBase 180 (which is like a 6400/180). It doesn't sound promising for out Macs :( [From: VickN I've been having DV editing problems (dropped frames, no export to camera, etc..) with my PowerBase180 with PowerLogix G3/350 using OrangeLink card. After all failed, I started to suspect that my system may be too slow for the job even after the upgrades. I have 124 MB RAM, 7200 RPM Hitachi 9.1 GB internal SCSI HD. When I asked OrangeMicro support about the minimum hardware requirement for DV editing using FireWire, this is their answer. I hope this will shed some light to some peoples confusions. "The tests we have done here required a minimum of a G3/233 processor with an ultra-wide drive and ultra-wide scsi card and 80mb of ram to not drop frames. The minimum system bus speed I have gotten good captured video with is a 50mhz bus. On the Windows side, I was able to capture with a 233mhz PII with a 5400 UDMA hard drive and 64mb of ram. TO not drop frames, the system has to keep a sustained transfer rate through the PCI bus to the hard drive of greater than 3.6mb/s. If your 7200 RPM drive is only get a sustained rate of 4mbs, then you are probably running it from the built-in scsi controller. To improve hard drive performance, you would need to add in a scsi card that is meant to support your hard drive at its optimum speed. A separate hard drive or partition is also suggested for capturing video files and preview files to. But, as Adobe states in the manual, even with all of the upgrades you can make to your system, you still are limited by the system bus (your system bus is only 40mhz). Their anology is that it is like putting a race car in rush hour traffic because information with log jam on a slower system bus. I have tried firewire on my 6400/180 at home, and I can captue with dropped frames, and I lock up on export because the hard drive is too slow. Their is too much involved in upgrading to meet the demands of video editing on the machine, so I will pass on editing on my mac until I get a G4. The needed upgrades would be about 65% of the cost of a G4."] TAM HD size limits revisited: Harry read my last post where I had a warning I found on another site about not using large partitions on a TAM system. The person reported that the computer may not even recognize the drive? Harry had no problem with an 18G HD on his TAM. So maybe that other info is false? Thanks Harry. [Hello, I have an 18GB IBM, 4200 rpm HD in my TAM which also has a G3/500 MHz L2 Sonnet upgrade card. I am running Mac OS 9.04, but have installed 7.6.1 and 8.6 in other partitions. I have 18 GB HD partitioned with a number of 650 MB partitions, and one large 12 GB partition (all partitions are HFS except for one 650 MB partition which is HFS+). I have had no hard drive problems except with the original 2 GB HD which failed about 6 months ago which prompted me to buy the 18 GB HD. I have also installed an ADS FireWire card on the TAM which allows me to mount FW HDs and capture DV. A sweet set-up so far! Later, Harry] Another Mac help forum: Jennie sent me a link for their new Mac Tech help forums. They are offering free Mac support for anyone that leaves a question on their site. Isn't the Mac community great :) I saw that they may also include PC and Linux support. Kind of a one stop tech shop! Thanks Jennie. [Tom: 16 of us have started techsurvivors.com a help BB. We are focused primarily on Macs. As one of at least three founders with a 6400, I'd like to extend an invitation to you to drop by and see what we are about. You have been a great source for me personally, and I know Kelly suggests your site constantly. Now if I could just afford that Sonnet upgrade..... -- jepinto http://www.techsurvivors.com] By the way, I would like to thank everyone that has participated on my 6400 Forums. It really has taken off quickly! Special thanks to Tiong who seems to have answered just about everyone question :) A real Subwoofer knob fix: I had posted one or two fixes for broken subwoofer knobs recently but they where really just hacks to make it work. Charlie just sent me some info on how to replace the actual knob by getting a replacement board that the knob is a part of. Thanks Charlie [Tom, I read on your site about the user with the broken subwoofer volume control knob. The user said there wasn't a cheap or easy solution but THERE IS! My control knob broke last month and being the perfectionist I am, I was determined to find the original part. It is listed as the "Subwoofer Assembly" and I got it from DT&T Computer Services http://www.dttservice.com/ The part number is 922-2384. It costs only $15.00 and although it comes with a whole assembly which is a daughterboard for the reset button and also connects the original apple video adapter, you just need the knob. Just pull the knob off and put it in your 6400. The knob ships already connected to the assembly but you have remove it anyway if you were replacing the assembly. Hope this helps someone else as I was thrilled it was a cheap and easy part to get. Charlie] Getting faster HD throughput with FWB drivers: A reader sent me some info on his 6400 regarding HD speed. He installed a new HD and found that the access wasn't as fast as he expected. He later switched from Apples driver to FWB and now his HD gets much better results. [This is probably useless information but it might fit in under the Reader Reviews section. I have a Power Macintosh 6400 upgraded with a Sonnet Crescendo G3/L2 400/1MB, 72 MB RAM, 4.3 GB SCSI HD in upper bay, and stock 2.4 GB IDE drive. I needed more hard drive space because I run a dual-boot setup with LinuxPPC. I also burn a lot of CD-Rs and keep many applications and projects on my hard drive. I wanted at least 20 GB but the SCSI drives were beyond what I wanted to pay for one. HD speed really wasn't an issue because I mainly needed storage space. I found a Maxtor 40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra ATA 100 drive for $170 so I went with that. I followed your simple take-apart instructions and replaced the IDE drive in under ten minutes. When I rebooted (my system is installed on my SCSI drive) the system asked me to format the new drive as a 38.16 GB HFS+ partition. That was it. The drive was already set for Master mode so I didn't have to change jumpers. I ran the benchmarks in FWB HDT 4.0 for comparison. My SCSI drive (with FWB drivers) gives me ~4.8 MB/sec. My original IDE drive (with FWB drivers) gives me ~3.8 MB/sec. The new 40 GB drive with Apple drivers was only giving me ~1.8-3.0 MB/sec. - very disappointing for what is supposed to be a high-performance drive on a Fast ATA bus. When I reformated the 40 GB drive with FWB's drivers, it jumped to an impressive ~10 MB/sec. I can now flawlessly digitize video at 30 FPS in high quality mode at 320x240 with my ATI Xclaim VR. Before I could only get about 20 FPS in medium quality mode before it would drop frames. I haven't tried 640x480 but I imagine it will be an improvement as well. I'm eager to move my system and virtual memory swap partitions to the new drive since they should show a slight improvement in speed. Now the SCSI feels so pokey. Thanks for the valuable resource and keep up the great work. Cheers,] Thanks for the info. My Maxtor HD with Apples drivers got around 7MBps second writes so I never even questioned Apple drivers. It was twice as fast as the stock IDE drive and I was happy with that. I don't know why his new drive showed such low performance with Apple drivers? I stayed with Apples drivers back when I did the report because everytime Apple updated their OS they changed their drivers which broke third party drivers. But at this time FWB 4.0 is compatible with OS 9 and since Apple probably won't be making any more radicle changes to the OS since OSX is on its way that its safe to say that FWB won't have to update their drivers for classic OS compatibility anymore. 4 IDE drives in a 6400!: This time a 6400 owner took his Mac too far! Rodney was able to install 4 more IDE drives by removing the internal subwoofer speaker box and connecting them with Sonnets Tempo IDE PCI card. When will this madness end :) Thanks for the info Rodney. I asked him for pictures or instructions on how to do this so all of you can to. [Tom, Just wanted to pass along to you that I have now equipped my Performa 6400 with 4 internal Maxtor IDE drives. The 6400 has enough power to supply them juice and still not overheat. The temp ranges between 34 degrees (first starting up early in the morning) to at the most 59 degrees Celsius (after running all day long and having the room the 6400 is in be fairly warm). The Tempo card is great. I've gone from having a 6400 that 4 years ago had only a 2.4GB IDE drive in it, to now I have a 45GB, 40GB, 30GB and 10GB internally installed for a total of 125GBs of internal disk storage. In addition, I still have 7 external SCSI devices at my disposal. So, I can still use my external SCSI UMAX scanner, my external 9GB SCSI LaCie drive, external SCSI LaCie CD-R writer, Nomai 540MB external SCSI removable cartridge drive. This machine just keeps ROCKING man!!! Done a little bit at a time, the upgrades have been VERY cost effective and yet, I have all that I really need in a home computer and then some. It currently has a Sonnet G3 L2 upgrade card in it (a 300/200 with 1MB backside cache), I have a ATI XCLaim 3D Plus card installed in one of the PCI slots. The Sonnet Tempo card is in the other PCI slot. So, I did have to get rid of my USB card, but that isn't too bad since I can use the USB on my Powerbook and through my local home network's LAN, use the USB on the Powerbook and transfer over to my 6400. I still get the use of a floppy drive. I still have an internal CD-ROM drive (albeit the slow by today's standards 8X one). I already had external speakers and a subwoofer. So, taking the built-in subwoofer out of my 6400 was no great loss (as I never really used it anyway). I have an Epson Stylus 740 connected to my 6400 via ethernet (the AXIS printserver and my 5-port ethernet hub). I can connect my S-VHS VCR to the TV tuner and record videos on the 6400 or export my iMovie videos back out to tape. My 6400 was the Video Editing Edition model with the Avid Cinema card (long since removed once iMovie came out). Thanks to the Sony Media Converter box (DVMC-DA2) I don't need Firewire on my 6400. I can take digital video into and out of my 6400. I have a cable modem connected to my 6400 and still have a dial-up modem connected to it too. I have a Quickcam black and white video camera connected to my 6400 and a color 8mm Sony Handycam. My 6400, via IPNetRouter serves two other Apple Macintoshes on my LAN. I have my monitor and CPU connected to an APC UPS. I have a CommSlot II ethernet card. Built-in AM/FM stereo. 136MBs of RAM is still enough for most things I need to do, and that is what I have in my 6400. I'm seriously considering connecting a second monitor to my 6400 now. :-) Anyway, I've rambled enough. Just let people know that there is room for 4 internal IDE drives in our 6400s. :-) You just need to remove the subwoofer and buy two power Y-adapters to split the power to the extra two drives.] I should have picture by next update. Also he noted to be careful of the IDE cable placement as they are long and can get in the way of the power supplies fan. This is not a good thing! Also he noted using iMovie but not exporting over firewire but rather through the Sony DVMC-DA2 unit. I don't know how this attaches to the 6400 but he does not seem to be getting the errors reported by firewire card users? I'll ask for more info on this as well. Voodoo5 drivers updated with better V3 support: I found this on Accelerate Your Macs web site. 3dfx has updated their V5 drivers to 1.1.0a and they do give better support for the V3. The V3 in my B&W G3 no longer crashes with the V5 drivers and GoMac installed. Great! [Voodoo5 Drivers v1.10 Feedback: - Several readers sent comments on the Voodoo5 1.10 driver update noted in Friday's news. The 1.10 update is primarily a bug fix release, not a performance optimization. 3dfx wrote that the 1.1.0 update fixes include: Voodoo3 2D fix Lock up issues in some games while playing videos 32bit Bugdom/RAVE fix] Here is a direct download link for those of you that don't have a previous version of the V5 drivers. The normal way to upgrade is through the new V5 control panel. Remember that you will need the V3 beta12 drivers to first flash the V3 ROM to run on a Mac before the V5 drivers will work.

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