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.

Hot Topics:

• L2 G3 upgrade info for the 6400 -
• Current problems with my system -
• My 6400 Take Apart manual -
• Alternate OS's on a G3 accelerated 6400-
• ATI Rage 128 compatibility?-
• Voodoo3 compatibility?-
• Gaming on the 6400-
• OS 9 info-
• Clocking Sonnets L2 G3!-

Happy Thanksgiving! I thought I would say it now because my relatives are coming out and I might not have an update next week? Should be back to normal the following week :)

6400/6500 Take Apart manuals: I just checked the link I have posted last week and it still works! Infact Apple has PDF manuals for the new iMacs, PB bronze, iBook, and G4's! I just downloaded them all :) The iBook does not have a take apart section in it but it does have some good info. As before look for the largest file and that will contain the entire manual. if all you want is the take apart section then download the one with the ending ".ta.pdf"

ftp://ftphqx.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Misc/Service/servicemanuals/

Sonnet Clocker update: Well since I had posted it only 300Mhz Sonnet G3 users are able to get it to work. Not one 240/250Mhz user said it works :( I am still waiting for a reply from the author on whether he can fix it or not?

Bill was able to get his 300/512k card to clock to 350Mhz! Very impressive!

Jason would like to know if there are any Sonnet 400Mhz owners out there that can try their card on a 6400 and use the Sonnet Clocker utility to fake it to run at 400Mhz in a 6400? I must remind both him and others that the G3 used in that card is only an 8x CPU which means theoretically it can go no faster then 320Mhz in the 6400. I don't think telling the clocker app that you have a 50Mhz system will bypass the hardware limitation? But if any one tries please let me know.

Update on Speculative Addressing and L2 G3's: Anton wrote a lengthy letter to Sonnet about why they do not turn Speculative addressing off for our L2 G3's when all the other G3 vendors have reports stating that it must be turned off on older Macs! Their reply is rather strange in that they say it is off? Not according to PowerLogix's Cache Utility though. Check out my Hack the Crescendo page to find out how to turn it off using software. Not as good as hardware but it might help :) Thanks Anton

Vimage update: I have been getting some info from people on other ways to get Vimage products. I will be trying these routes before I post any info on them to be sure they will work. Thanks guys for all the help.

Newer 300/1M L2 G3 user letter: Craig wrote to let us all know how well his Newer G3 is running. Thanks Craig. Click here to read more Newer User letters.

[Tom -
Thank you for providing us 6400 users with such a thoughtful, well-done site. Each week I look forward to your updated information.

Feel free to add my comments to your Users Letters section on the subject of G3 upgrades:

I’ve enjoyed great speed and stability with my Newer Technology 300/200/1024 which I’ve had nearly 2 months. I bought it only because I’ve recently begun to create 3D images and landscapes using Bryce 4, and needed lots more umph than my 180 could give me. Well, some time back I did a rather complicated BryceScape. Trust me, I’ll never do another Hourglass again. At least not one with a tree growing inside one end and a fire raging in the other! (Hold the comments.) It was a weekend project that I started at 9 PM on a “school night.”

Anyway, I finished setting it up at 1 am, and pressed the “GO” button. I woke up at 3:30 and it had just finished. The spec sheet told me it took exactly 149 minutes. Two and a half freakin’ hours.

Knowing I was getting the G3, I purposely saved the BryceScape structure and texture settings, and re-rendered the image after I installed the Newer Technology 300.

Can you believe this? 32 minutes. Thirty-two! Now, most of my complicated images take 10 minutes or less.
Works for me!
Craig]

OS 9 and Vimage not working for some?: Stephen was unable to get OS 9 to work with his Vimage G3 even though some other were? Any ideas for Stephen? Thanks.

[I tried you idea of installing 8.6 with the Vimage G3 enabled, then upgrading to OS 9 and I had same problem. On second reboot system would hang. The cursor was not frozen but the desktop never appeared. This means I tried a clean install and the upgrade. On my very first clean install it seemed to work. Something is not right. Do you know if the Vimage update for 8.6 is the latest available. It was a beta. I thought I saw somewhere the final version but it is not on the Vimage web site. Of course, Vimage is not supporting this product anymore it seems.]

I do have a link to Interware of Japan which does have the final drivers for the Vimage cards. Please see my previous Just Updates. Also check out my OS 9 info page for more details.

OS 9 on the 6400, My opinions: A few people have noticed that I have not upgraded my 6400 to OS 9 yet so I thought I would tell you why. I do have 2 6400's but for now only one is running as the other is being readied for sale (I hope). Also the 6400 still running is my big boy system with all our software and peripherals attached. My wife uses it heavily and cannot afford to have it down to long as she needs it for doing MOMs Club work . Shes the president of the local MOMS club out here (A club for stay-at-home-moms to give support). Also RamDoubler and SpeedDoubler are not OS 9 compatible yet and I need at least RD so I can play all my games. 136M is just not enough for games like Unreal that demand 100+M to run normal. Now also top this with the fact that The Version of Nortin I have is not OS 9 compatible either which means no HD utility to fix any problems. And this is no problem for me but Geo modem users have stated the modem works but you cannot access the express modem control panel any more?

All this combined is keeping me from upgrading to OS 9. I am running OS 9 on my personal PB G3 right now though and it is running fine. It has 192M RAM so no need for RD :) Losing SD is not too bad but not being able to use Nortin kind of stinks. I know your all waiting for my personnal experience and I will try it but just not right away.

More mother board swapping: Here is a letter I got from a person that swapped a 5260 mother board with a 5400's. Thanks.

[I have some upgrade reports that I would like to share. I have succesfully upgraded my Performa 5260 with 5400/180 logic board and Sonnet G3/300/512, there is some sound issues (crashes) with the G3, but I'm running OS 8.1, so upgrading to 8.6 will propably fix this.


I´m also using the Farallon 10/100Mbs ethernet CSII card and it works perfect. My old Rev. C Video-in/TV card works perfect for playback, but I don't get any good capture with it (I also posted to the reader request about this).


My old 5260/100 logic board and 1,2 Gb HD got a new life in a friends Performa 630 and it seems to work perfect for him, he was able to use his memory, PDS-ethernetcard and Rev. A video/TV and everything seems to work perfect.
Thanks for a good site!]

Another OS 9 user that has the Geo working: Darcy wrote to let me know her Geo modems basic features are working fine. I asked if she can access the Express modem control panel and should have a reply soon. Thanks Darcy.

[Hi,
I am using os9 now and so far so good with the modem. I have not tried to fax yet. I did not reinstall the modem software, I just transferred the control panels and preferences files over to the new system folder.
If you get any new information on this I would appreciate it if you would let me know.
Thank You,
Darcy]

Reader Requests Updated: Click here to see the recent posts. They are marked new

Gaming Info ---------

Apple has released OpenGL 1.1.2: Click here to download it. I didn't notice any improvments on my systems as most of the ReadMe states it has fixes mostly for G4 AGP systems. Oh Well, one can always hope :)

Quake3 DemoTest is released!: id software just released the Mac Version of the Q3Demotest. This is the next version of the soon to be released Quake III Arena. It does require Apples OpenGL 1.1.2 so get it also. It is much more CPU intensive and Ram hungry then the previous version and barely runs on my PB G3 233 with a RagePro. I have to have most all affects turned off and low texture details but I can play if only a few people are on. I haven't tried it yet on the 6400 with the Voodoo2 but it should run much better. One tip for Voodoo card users is that you might have to remove the OpenGL RendererATI extension as some people have reported that the game will try to force itself onto an ATI card if one is installed unless you remove that extension. Ths was not the case for the previous Q3T versions.

Voodoo3 and G3 Upgraded 6400's: Here is a clip I got from Mikes Accelerate Your Mac web site. Seems he has had only Newer G3 card owners report good news.

[L2 Cache Slot G3 Upgraded Macs: Although Sonnet L2 cache slot G3 card owners reported consistent problems, several Newer Tech cache slot G3 upgrade owners all report running the card fine.]

Here is a letter from Kamen who also states the Voodoo3 and Newer work together. Thanks Kamen

[As an eternal quest to perfect my 6400 I was compelled to put down good money ($110 including EMS shipping all the way from sunny California to Malaysia!) to try out a Voodoo3 2000. This is of course, after much persuasion from reading all the success stories posted on your remarkable website.

I've received the PCI card just today and giddily went through the ROM flashing two-step, which turned out to be a no-brainer. Having done that I restarted the MAChine.

The stuff works on first bootup! I whispered a few words of gratitude to the ghost in the Performa box and fired up Tomb Raider III demo.

Now I'm considered quite a big guy, but I broke into tears. The game was better than a Back to The Future ride. Next came Unreal, which was exactly what the title implied... times 5. Now I can finally laugh at G3 B/W PowerMac users who paid too much and got just an ATI Rage 128.

My MAChine is a Performa 6400/200, upgraded to G3 300mhz thanks to Newertech. System software is OS9. (Reserve a copy today!)

A few words of advice if you intend to run Video CDs on the 3DFX Voodoo3.There appears to be no speed boost or picture enhancement to MPEG-1 video quality. The only way you can get halfway decent playback is if you set Color Depth to 16-bit and turn on High Quality Enabled from within the Get Info box. Even then, you won't be getting ATI Rage-anything kind of picture quality. Unfortunately I also found QuickTime 4 movie playback to be quite sluggish. That so far is the biggest letdown, next to--

THE BIGASS 747 ENGINE NOISE COMING FROM THE POWER SUPPLY FAN.

Now will somebody please help me shut the {edited - Tom} thing up?
Kamen]

Reply to letter I wrote to ATI about their VR card: I wrote a letter to ATI about the issues I found concerning Vimages G3 and here is their reply. Hopefully they will look into the problem?

[Dear Tom,
Thank you for contacting ATI technical Support.
Regarding the Vimage G3 card and the 128 VR card:

ATI Technical Support does not have any more information about this issue other than what you have now submitted. This information will be escalated for review and the course of action is unknown at this time. The only suggestions would be to periodically check our web site for any updates (as they become available).

Regarding a flash utility for the 128 cards:

There is no specific flash utility. The latest drivers are currently being shipped with the cards and have not been posted on our web site at this time.]

Horror story about Vimage and ATI VR128: I think this is not the norm but Claudio wrote with some about an awful experience trying to instll the VR card. Thanks Claudio. I did try the VR card in my 6400 and got several crashes durin ght process of testing it but di dnot have anything this serious happen.

[Tom:
The ATI Xclaim VR and the Vimage card are just bad company .... the hate each other; after receiving the card a few days ago( thinking that my order was cancelled) I went ahead and installed it thinking it would be just like the older card ...but; to my dismay it caused a "horrendous" crash and wiped modified my system so badly that I had 2 days of hell trying to recover from it . Thanks God for Retrospect and my weekly back up I am now able to have almost everything back to normal .... I am running Mac Os 9 and I like it a lot ... it only have some minor adjustments to be work on .... but on and all is a great system. I've noticed a beneficial increase of speed on the Internet Applications ... but a slight ,very slight slow down in other tasks; the memory consumption is larger than 8.6 and the Multi-user feature and voice password stuff needs some work from part of Apple; is a bit sluggish ... So I am putting this Xclaim Vr card back in the box and send it back!!!! hate it ....never I have had such terrible experience with any type of hardware like this one .. I do not recommend it for folks like me that are using an older machine ( 6400/200) with the Vimage card ... unless somebody finds a work around ... My best to you
Claudio.]

You may not have noticed but I enlarged the standard viewing area of my site from 520 to 580 pixles wide. It should show fine on 14" and larger monitors. I was getting constrained by the size I was using before. I assume most of you have at least a 14" monitor :)

Sonnet clocker update: I have gotten several replies from Sonnet users on how well this utility works. It seems that the Sonnet 240Mhz users are not getting it to work but the 300Mhz users are? I emailed the author and hopefully he can find the problem? Here are a few letters I got. Thanks all.

[Tom,
Thanks for posting the patch from your "mystery" contributor. Yes, it works fine on my (ex) 300/512 Sonnet upgrade. No crashes so far and an imperceptible change in processor temperature. I didn't realize it would improve the cache bus speed now up to 160MHz. Bench marks are all about 8% faster as expected from a boost from 300 to 320Mhz
Well done mystery (wo)man and thank you! Mark]

[Hi, Tom
First let me get this out of the way. Please don't publish my name! Playing with this clocker may void the warranty on my Sonnet card. Now let me tell you, the clocker works great. No start up freeze, no crashes no nothing just more speed. And it's free. I'm attaching two mac bench 5 test files but if you can't open those I also will attach three screen shots you can open with simple text.

MY SYSTEM WITHOUT SONNET CLOCKER EXT.
6400/200 With a Sonnet L2 G3/300/1M@200MHz using G3 Cache Control 1.5.3, 136M of memory, both PCI slots are filled a SCSI card and a graphics card. the tested hard drive is a Quantum Fireball Plus KA

MY SYSTEM WITH SONNET CLOCKER EXT. The same as above but without the G3 Cache Control 1.5.3, I could not get it to load so I just trashed it and it's preference file.

You should also know that I do not have all the start up freeze and system instability that so many other people seem to have. My card (Mac) has always been very stable]

[Tom:
Just a little note to advise you of my "plunge" of upgrading our Performa 6400/180 with the Sonnet Banker L2G3 300/150 upgrade card. Bought it from OWC after their price discounting ($280) and am very pleased.


Your page has been extremely helpful by allowing me to try various configurations. I even "bumped" it up to 320hz but had to reduce it for stability. Read the notes about extension loading order and have found that if Crescendo is first, and running Virtual Memory instead of Ram Doubler 8, I experience no freezes. My main concern is the processor temp of 63° C. I've ordered a slot cooling fan in hopes of reducing the temp. Your thoughts on this?
Thanks again for the great page.
Al


Ref.: Performa 6400/300; MacOS 8.6; 88MB; Apple Video Card; upgraded to Maxtor 10.2GB HD@ 7200rpm; Stylus Color 600; external Zip Drive; external 700MB Quantum Hard Drive; Nikon Coolscan 10E slide scanner and AGFA Snapscan]

[Hi Tom,
I tried the Sonnet clocker on my Performa 200 with the Sonnet Crescendo 240 card and tried setting the speed to 260 (the lowest speed offered above 240). While the clocker acted that it did something, restarting had no effect at all on my speed as reported by utilities as Metronome. Do you know whether it matters that I put the extension in my Contol Pnels folder to make it load last? As the author of the software hides in anomity I can't email him directly.
Anton]

[Tom
I am trying get the overclock app to work on my 6400/180 and have been unsuccessful. I have the Sonnet G3 240 card. I follow the instructions and the metronome still indicates a "G3 240 " Is it possible that the metronome isn't indicating the correct speed?
Randall]

Note as of this posting all 300Mhz cards seem to work and 240Mhz cards don't? Also the backside cache on the G3 will speed up as it is a direct ratio of the G3 CPU's speed so its probably a good idea to turn off any G3 cache utilities that might speed it up even more! I know the author of this utility is keeping himself secret AS he is the one that broke the code so to speak. There is no way Sonnet can track any user of this utility and all you have to do is replace the modified Crescendo extension with an original version and the mod is gone. No way to tell it was ever used.

Please keep the info coming in, specially the 240Mhz card owners. we need to find out why they aren't working?

Update on ROAM and the Sonnet G3: Ken writes that this is the first fix I posted that actually fixed his startup crashes! Cool, Glad it worked :) Thanks for the info Ken. Click here for more details.

[I am using a Sonnet G3/L2 300/512 on a Performa 6360 with Crescendo 1.3.7 extension. I have tried all the fixes previously suggested on your site and from others (libmoto, changing extension loading order, ROM Fixer, and others).

None of these improved my intermittent startup freezes. ROAM has solved it for me! Not one freeze since I installed it about 3 weeks ago (knock on wood). I am having it load first and then the Crescendo extension and then all my others thereafter.

My only complaint is that it uses 8MB of RAM, but it's worth it.
Ken]

Using the sharware control strip G3 Throttle to fix issues caused by a L2 G3 upgrade: Kees writes that using G3 Throttle, a control strip utility that lets you slow your G3 down by creating wait states for the CPU, actually made his Geo modem work again. Thanks for the info Kees.

[Hi Tom,
just wanted to let you know that I was greatly helped by your advise to use G3 throttle in order to get my geo modem to work after upgrading my 6400 with Sonnets's G3 card. The modem refused to work after upgrading, but installing the throttle did the trick for me. (Soon after, I was lucky enough to get a cable modem, but that's another story).

System: performa 6400/200, 104 mb ram, sonnet G3/300 1mb, ati rage 128, macos 8.5.1 (dutch version).

Thanks for an absolutely great site, by the way. You helped me every step in upgrading my mac! I recently even took to dismantling my machine in order to clean that irritating fan, and it seems to have worked: no more annoying rattling noises, and sonnet's metronome tells me average temperature went from 47C to 43C.

Keep up the good work,
Kees]

Vimage L2 G3 not dead in Japan: Well Vimage may not be selling L2 G3 upgardes anymore but their parent company Interware is. Interware is the Japanese company that actually makes the G3 card and Vimage was the US distributor. I found a link to a final release of the 1.1.0 driver for both the 240/320Mhz G3's. The link is below.

http://www.interware.co.jp/update/Booster6454_Final.html

Also Jordan sent me a link to a page on their site for a 400Mhz L2 G3 for all configurations of 6400/6500! Thanks Jordan. It is all in Japanese but you can make out most of the links as they are in english as displayed at the bottom of most browsers. Below is the link.

http://www.interware.co.jp/products/Booster64_54_400.html

If anyon can read Japanese and get me a mailing address or an email address I would really appreciate it. Maybe we can buy direct from Japan? It will probably be more expensive but worth a shot!

Power Logix stops production on L2 G3 cards?: I heard from several users that PL will not be making their L2 G3 cards now so I emailed them and here is the reply I got.

[Yes, I was told yesterday that we have cancelled further development on this card. Unfortunately, I was given no further information.

Sincerely,
Robin


I just got anemail from a 6400 user that got an email from Power Logix that says you are stopping the L2 G3 production? is this true?
Tom]

I asked if he ever got an answer to let me know. I guess we're back to Sonnet and Newer only again :( OUt of these my choice is Newer as it is much more stable and hasn't had as many complaints but it does have a more serious Geo modem issue as many people get a port busy or some other port error.

Update ATI VR 128 and the Vimage G3: Well I tried my VR card last week as I mentioned before and well it just doesn't work. Below is a letter I wrote to ATI asking if they can find a fix. I know its not their problem but they might just help?

[Thought I would add my 2 cents in this. I just got my VR card today after waiting about a year but sad to say it does not run on my 6400 with a Vimage G3. BUT it does run without the G3 just fine. First the specs.

6400/200 with Vimages 320/1M G3 running OS 8.6
136M ram with Ram Doubler 8.0.1 set to 204M and Speed Doubler 8.1.2
QT 4.0.3, QD3D 1.6, didn't try OpenGL but I have 1.1.1 from OS 9

PCI cards consist of
Voodoo2, ADS USB, Adaptec 2930u, and of course the ATI Rage128 VR card

The Voodoo2, USB, and 2930u cards are in a 7 slot PCI expansion chassi. The ATI card was in the 6400 with the second slot being used for the PCI-PCI bridge card to the chassi. The ATI card attaches to the Voodoo2 card and then to the montior

I have a 17" Sony monitor on the ATI/Voodoo2 cards and a 15" monitor on the 6400's stock video (non-accelerated on the 6400)

I installed ATI's 4.2 universal installer which came with the VR card. Nothing else. All extensions enabled fine and the TV tuner worked with no issues at all. I did toss out the Xclaim Video Player prefs like it says to to make sure everything would go smooth and it did. I even resized the video window (using the resize feature not dragging it) and it worked to. The Mic passthru port works great also. I'm glad they added that! But without my G3 running performance is no better then a Rage Pro as the stock CPU cannot feed it good enough to make it worth the money.

With the Vimage G3 enabled it would ge to the Vpower extension and then when it does its soft reboot the screen on the ATI card would freeze its image and then my 6400 would boot using the stock video as the main monitor and the ATI card is not seen at this point by my system yet the image is still frozen on the screen. Kind of weird to look at it like this :)

I think the problem is that the new VR card does not recalibrate itself during the softreboot by Vimage and it just locks up. ATIs older VR RageII card used to blink off and then back on during this reboot and then continue fine just like the stock video does.

I did want to get rid of that menu bar item ATI put there and I found that if you disable the ATI Extension that it is removed but then I did get the ATI Desktop video extension crossed out so I had to reenable it. Maybe other users are missing this file?

One other thing for PCI chassi users. The ATI card did not work when I put it in that. It will run without 2d or 3d but as soon as you try to run with the extensions enabled you get a very garbled screen. At first it was just the menu bar but after moving windows around a bit the entire screen got garbled and it locked up. If I disable the 2d then it will work again so I tried 3d (Nanosaur) and my monitor went to sleep :( So out of the chassi it went.

ATI did have a file in the extension folder that was to flash the BIOS and I was wondering if they could make a flasher to make the card recalibrate on a softreboot for us Vimage owners? I think it was called the ATI 128 driver or somthing like that? It had a generic icon.

Sorry this was so long, Tom]

Update ATI VR 128 and the Sonnet G3: Well this combo seems to work much better. At least it boots :) Looks like thVr card has some issue ATI has to deal with. They even had almost another year to iron out the bugs! Thanks for the info Henry.

[Thomas,
After an almost 6 month wait, I finally recieved my Xclaim VR 128 from buy.com. Here is some info I have on my experiences so far.
Here goes:

First, My System:
Performa 6400 w/Sonnet G3 240
136MB Ram
ATI Rage 128 Xclaim VR
Maxtor 8.4 gig 5400 RPM drive
OS 8.6(with opengl 1.1.1 extracted from OS 9)

I first installed the Xclaim VR card in the lower slot, but could never get it seated correctly(I guess). It is very tight with the Sonnet Card. I was getting vertical black lines all through the screen on startup, and then it would go blank when it hit the ATI extension. Once I changed slots, it came up fine.

Game Performance:

I too noticed some sound popping, and video stuttering when playing opengl and rave games.

Tombraider III demo - at 1024 x 768, video stuttering and audio pops. I reduced the rez to 800 x 600 and the problems went away, very smooth now. And it looks fantastic!

Tombraider II - Plays smoothly at 1024 x 768 with no pops or stutters in 32 bit mode.

Q3test - I didn't hook up to a server, just ran around by myself. It looks incredible. Again, though, I had to use 800 x 600. At 1024 x 768 , it stuttered and popped.

Unreal - Now here's where I was really disappointed. The card just couldn't cut it. Very noticeable stuttering when downsampling to 16 bit color. I got chewed to bits. At 800 x 600 in RAVE mode, too. My Voodoo I card still beats it hands down, here. Even if it is fuzzy, at least it is smooth. I'll fiddle with the settings more tonight to see if I can make it better.

TV In:

It came up right away and was easy to figure out. Unfortunately, if you change the resolution to "double" or "full screen" modes, it locks out the screen. The TV portion will keep playing but the mouse freezes. The only way I could bail out was the pull the power cord. I haven't tried doing a "custom" resolution on the TV function, yet. Maybe that would work.

Video in:

Hooked up my Sony Hi-8 cam and captured some stills at 640 x 480 and video at 320 x 240(30 fps). Overall, I am pretty pleased. I wish it would allow capture of video at 640 x 480, even if it was at 15 fps. I didn't notice any dropped frames, even going to my 5400 rpm drive, so that was a plus.

Tonight I will try out your Sonnet Clocker to see if it helps with the frame rate stutter at 1024 x 768, but I fear it is more to do with the 33Mhz bus(66Mhz/2). I'll let you know. If you know of a safe speed to clock the G3 240, let me know, otherwise it will be trial and error( or error, error, error)
Thats all for now.
Hope this is useful,
Henry]

Update from Henry on getting 640x480 video capture to work.

[ You were right. I did a custom frame size on the TV Tuner at exactly 640 x 480 and it works like a charm. This is strange since it is the same size as the "double" setting, which will crash my machine.]

Update Voodoo3 and the Sonnet G3: Here is a letter from one 6400 user that has the Voodoo3 running and with a Sonnet G3. Also note fix he has for the boot hangs. Interesting! These video cards sure don't play nice. I can't tel lwhat systems they will or will not work on?

[Tom -
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I have to admit, I couldn't wait so I bought the Voodoo3 at CompUSA last night. I was pleasantly surprised at the $99 price tag, since I thought it was $30-40 more, and figured there was minimal risk since products are usually returnable at CompUSA. I downloaded the beta drivers from 2 days ago, flashed the ROM, looked for ATI drivers to remove but there were none installed with my Mac OS 9. I then shutdown the system, found an adapter in my Mac parts that probably came with one of my Mac monitors, so I used it to attach the AppleVision 1705 to the V3. I then followed your excellent take apart instructions looking to remove the stock video board, and determined as you confirmed today that I wasn't going to be successful. I then put everything back together, crossed my fingers and said my prayers, and couldn't believe it when it came up. The 2D capabilities seem very good to me as a neophyte, but I really started all this because I wanted more than the sock 256 colors. The refreshes under Virtual PC 3.0 are much quicker, and of course I have the higher color definitions under Windows95 now as well. I've not tried any 3D activity, so I'll have to shop around for a game to try out (I'm not really a gamer, but I do have F18 Hornet, Myst, and Raven).

One thought I do have for your readers on the Sonnet Crescendo L2 300/1M. I was starting to get a lot of boot hangs, and have suspected it was related to tightening the two screws that hold the motherboard in. I think the fit is such that it torques the Crescendo if one does a normal tightening of these screws. I've pushed my board in without any additional force, and have tightened the screws just to the point that they start to grab the plastic. You could turn them with the force of a finger to take them out now, but I now am back to solid on the boots. And this is with the addition of the Voodoo3. For now this is my theory on the Sonnet board, and I'll let you know if it starts hanging again.
Regards,
- Frank]

Simple Launcher: This utility lets you assign the Function keys on your keyboar to launch apps and do some other thinkgs. Good for OS 9 users that can't use SpeedDoubler for this anymore. Click here to go get it.

Apples 6400 Take Apart Manual found!: Paul found a link to where Apple is hiding these manuals for me. Thanks! Remember to scan down till you find the largest file for the particular Mac you have and this will be the one with the full manual in it. most are very large like 5M or more. The littler ones are only part of the bigger manuals and they usually don't have the Take Apart section in them :( Here is the link for the 6400/6500 manual. Just delete "powermac.perf_6400.6500.pdf" to see the entire list.

ftp://ftphqx.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Misc/Service/servicemanuals/powermac.perf_6400.6500.pdf

Request: Yann, who owns a 6400 with Sonnets G3 and has a Voodoo3 card, could you please email me. Thanks

The 6400 Zone's new Home Address: Well I haven't actually moved my web site but I did make a new home address thanks to all the replys I recieved on how to make a redirect page. My new home address is:

Its not much different from the previous home address but it is much nicer on older Macs with slower connections. AOL has been placing ads at the top of my home page for some time now and I have always hated it! One of my readers found away around it so the ads would not appear but typing the long address (or even remembering it) was a tough job. Now thanks to you out their who helped me, I have made a page with a similar and easy to remember address that when called on just redirects you to my real home page but with out the AOL ads :) This only takes but a few seconds longer on the first link but now visiting all of my other pages will be much more enjoyable without having to wait for those ads to appear. And as a benefit, I can have my sites name in the address :)

Don't worry though if you forget this address, the old address works just fine but with the ads showing :(

My Vimage Info page on Vimage's G3 upgrade for the 6400

My Vimage Compatibility page

My Vimage User Letters page

My Vimage install reviews

My Sonnet Tech Info page on Sonnet's G3 upgrade for the 6400

Hack to make Sonnets G3's more stable

My Sonnet Compatibility page

My Sonnet User Letters page

My Sonnet install review

My Newer Tech Info page on Newer's G3 upgrade for the 6400

My Newer Compatibility page

My Newer User Letters page

My PowerLogix Info page on PowerLogix's G3 upgrade for the 6400

L2/G3 comparison page

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in purchasing a CD with my entire up-to-date site as well as my 6400 Take Apart manual plus many of the past Just Updates included? I think this would be a great idea for anyone who hasn't been able to keep up or never saw my site until recently. Also for those of you with Sherlock the CD is even better cause you can tell Sherlock to index the CD and then you can do a search on any topic and if I ever talked about it, you'll find it! I have info as far back as mid 1997. I'm asking $15 which includes shipping for US residents (not sure what the price for international shipments would be yet?) and I will even include a few surprises! To make this offer even juicier I can add some download that you've been trying to get but just couldn't for some reason. Lets put my cable modem to work :)

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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 use a Performa 6400/180 OS 8.6, Performa 6400/200 OS 8.6, PowerBook G3/233 OS 9, 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.