Just Updated 12/2/2000 Sonnet price cuts: Sonnet cuts the price on many of their G3 upgrades. Below are the ones that affect us :) Note the 400Mhz card is for the 6400/6500 family and the other 2 are for the 4400/Starmax family. Crescendo/L2 G3 300/512K $199.95 (was $249.95) for 4400/Starmax family Crescendo/L2 G3 350/1M $299.95 (was $349.95) for 4400/Starmax family Crescendo/L2 G3 400/512K $249.95 (was $299.95) for 6400/6500 family Sonnet offers rebate to Tango card / G3 purchases: Here is some info on rebates Sonnet is giving if you buy both a Tango Firewire/USB card and a G3 upgrade. [Customers who purchase the Tango™ USB/FireWire PCI combo card between December 1 - 31, 2000 are eligible for one of two different rebate options. One option is to receive a $10 mail-in rebate upon complying with the terms and conditions outlined in the rebate form found on Sonnet's website at: http://www.sonnettech.com/rebates. The other option for these Tango customers is to chose a $25 mail-in rebate if they make an additional purchase of a Crescendo G3 or G4 card from the PCI, L2 or 7200 product lines by January 31, 2001. Complete instructions are available at Sonnet's website mentioned above.] More on Yamaha's CDRW drive installation: Roque sent me some info earlier on installing a Yamaha CDRW8428SZ CDRW drive in the stock location. I added his info to my CD/DVD drive info page and also posted a pic of the drive installed on my FrankenMac page. I am really lacking on info about which CD, CDR, CDRW, DVD drives work in a 6400/6500. If anyone has installed one of these drives internally, could you please write up a little review on how well it works and fit? I would greatly appreciate this! Please include drive type and model number, where internally you installed it, was any modification needed to the covers or cables, etc. Possible solution for iMovie reporting your HD is too slow: I found this on MacFixIt. [iMovie error follow-up Following up on Doug Mitchell's previous report of a "disk responded slowly" error with iMovie 2, Doug found that shifting the resolution and color depth from 1024 x 768 and millions to 800 x 600 and thousands eliminated the symptom.] They also noted that a Powerbook (firewire) user noted replacing a 20G IBM drive with another brand fixed his issue. So just having a fast drive might not be the solution for some? TIL on Apples iMovie default export settings. For those of you that have used iMovie, you will appreciate this info. It tells you the compression settings used for each of Apples default export settings. Thanks Apple :) http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n60766 Anyone interested in splitting cost of Subwoofer knobs?: Howard would like to buy a subwoofer knob to replace his broken knob but wants to split the cost with someone else who also needs one. Please email him if your interested. Thanks. [If you know of any extra knobs or know someone who will coordinate an order for several knobs (and have minimal shipping, but can ship knobs after receipt of money for 33/34 cents), let me know. -Howard] Sonnet Tango Firewire/USB combo cards work in a 6400!: Previously it was mentioned that OrangeMicros firewire/USB combo card needed to much current from the PCI bus that the 6400 could not supply it well enough. Shigeki writes that Sonnets new Tango card does not have this problem. Thanks Shigeki. [Hi Tom, Great site. About Firewire/USB combo card. Tango from Sonnet Tech seems to work fine with my 6400 with Booster{Vimage} G3/400MHz. I first bought and tried one from OrangeMicro. It does work on USB side but not on Firewire side. I wrote a letter to Sonnet asking if Tango is working even with low power supply of PCI slots in 6410, with quoting info from MacFixIt. Their answer was as follows, > Shigeki, thank you for your interest in our Tango product. After consulting > with Sonnet engineering department I can confirm that there are no issues with > your 6410 and the power supply concern you bring up. > Regards, > David So I bought Tango and replaced with OrangeMicro. My Tango is working just fine with my Firewire HD (RX-35F FW HD case from Planex http://www.planex.com.tw/product/drive/rx-35f.htm) that did not work with OrangeMicro (especially read mode was not functional at all). My Performa 6410 system is as follows: RAM136M HD40GB, Maxter Farallon Com II 10/100 Ethernet Card ATI Rage128 Orion PCI Card Tango Firewire/USB OS: 904J Firewire 2.4J USB Card Support 1.4.1 Hope this info will help others. Shigeki] The 6410 is a model that was not shipped in the US. It was for export only but is the same as a 6400. More Long PCI cards fit in the 6400: Tony saw Tiongs article on the Voodoo5 install which requires some mod to be made to get the long Voodoo5 to fit. This showed him how to install Oranges PCfx card in his 6400. The PCfx card was sold by OrangeMicro while back as a gaming card which allowed you to play high paced PC 3D games on your Mac. Basically it is a PC card with I think a Voodoo2 video chip? It is a very long card and Tony was able to make it fit. Thanks Tony. [Hello, Thanks for all the great information on installing 3dfx voodoo 4/5 cards in a 64/6500. After taking a look at Tiong's installation I thought I would try to install an Orange Micro PCfx 650 card, that I picked up on the dented rack at Micro Center for $99, in my 6400. It fits! After disassembly you have to install the PCfx card in the PCI slot furthest away from the processor, and remove the extraction clips on the ends of the ram socket at the end of the board for room to clear the remote control/volume control/headphone unit that is on the front of the case. All the other wires clear with some rearranging, as in Tiong's article. Performance while not all that great beats emulation by a mile and it gave me a chance to chase away all the dust inside the case that had built up over 4 years of use. Thanks for a great site! Tony My 6400 specs are: OS 8.6 136mb 10gb Maxtor Sonnet L2/G3/300 V3 2000 Orange Micro PCfx/Windows 98] Sonnet Upgraded Powerbase minitower: Frank did some research in trying to upgrade his Powerbase minitower and noted that none of Sonnets ads ever mention the minitower version as being compatible. They do note the desktop version several times which might lead some to think the cards won't fit in the minitower? Well He bought a 400Mhz L2 G3 and it fit perfectly and he is now a happy camper :) Thanks for the info Frank. Also note his attempt at running a 45Mhz bus speed! [Hi, Tom - I just wanted to update you on my Sonnet upgrade to my PowerBase 180. I finally got the 400Mhz/1MB unit and have had a week or so to play around with it. My system is configured as follows: PowerBase 180 Minitower, MacOS 8.6, 96MB RAM (RAM Doubler installed), 9G IDE HD, ATI Xclaim VR video card with XclaimTV, Asante Ethernet card, Xircom USB card. The processor card fit in the tower case perfectly. I had clocked the bus with a 45 Mhz crystal, so the processor was running at 202 Mhz before the upgrade, but I wanted to start off with the original bus speed to make sure everything ran smoothly and go from there. The system booted fine (at first) but then when I tried to run MacBench and the system rebooted itself, it wouldn1t boot due to a DragLib error. This error persisted even after I removed the Sonnet and Crescendo extension. A quick search of your website revealed others had the same problem and I removed the DragLib extension and was on my merry way! Next issue - Xclaim TV wouldn1t produce any sound! System sounds as well as other application sounds were fine, however. Once again, your website had a note from a user who had a similar problem, the solution was to remove the Xclaim VP Preferences file and the problem was solved. The only downside was having to re-enter all my channel info ;) - small price to pay! Last problem (so far) - whenever I tried to transfer pictures from my digital camera via SanDisk USB reader, the data was corrupted. This worked fine before the upgrade, so back to the 6400 Zone to see if anyone had similar problems. I had been using Apple1s USB Card Support 1.2 and Sonnet 1.4.5, which I thought were the latest versions, but I went to Apple1s support site and found there is a newer version of USB Card Support (1.4.1). This version seemed to fix the problem and now I have no known issues. I then put the 45Mhz crystal back in the machine and the processor did indeed run at 450Mhz, and the cache bus speed jumped to 225Mhz, as expected. According to Metronome, the processor runs at about 39 degrees idle, 44 degrees when busy. With the 45Mhz bus, it runs about 4-5 degrees hotter. I did experience several random crashes at the higher bus speed, though, so I think I1ll leave the slower bus crystal in for a few weeks to make sure all the kinks are ironed out, then maybe try speeding things up again. My MacBench 5.0 info is included as an attachment. I did all the original install/troubleshooting with RAM Doubler removed, then re-installed it after things had settled down. I haven1t noticed any problems with it on, so I wouldn1t think it1s a conflicting bit of software, but everyone1s system is different - your mileage may vary! I haven1t tried much in the way of games yet, but that will be my next test. I certainly have noticed a tremendous increase in speed all around, especially with graphics and scrolling through large documents. It1s like having a new computer! While I was troubleshooting the USB problem, I booted with the Sonnet extension off and what a difference! The machine was so sluggish I thought something was really wrong until I realized I was running off the 603ev chip! Thank you again for all the help you (and your website) have provided - you1ve proved to be a valuable resource! I1ll keep you posted if I decide to up my bus speed and see what happens. Regards, Frank] Is a G3 needed when using Wireds 4DVD card on our 6400's?: Alex asks if it is really necessary to buy a G3 upgrade to play DVDs on a 6400? Wireds 4DVD card is a hardware MPEG2 decoder card so the CPU is not used to much for played a movie. The card is daisy chained with your video out cable so it does not pass video data back through the bus to display it. But is the 6400's bus speed fast enough to get the data from the DVD drive to the MPEG card? A G3 might help but is it still good enough on our 6400's? A 6500 won't have as much trouble since it has a 50Mhz bus. Could anyone with Wireds 4DVD card please send some info on this topic? Thanks.

The 6400 Zone Forums L2 G3 Upgrades PCI Timing Extension My 6400 TA manual Sonnet Clocking Gaming News ATI Rage128 Voodoo3 Voodoo 4/5 OS 9 info OT 2.6 for older OS's iTools info iMovie info Run Alternate OS's ATI_Radeon Spec Comparison Page Vimage compatibility user letters install review Sonnet Tech compatiblity user letters install review hack for stability Sonnet clocking Mac OSX support Crescendo 1.4.2 installer Newer Tech compatibility user letters Power Logix 6400 Clocking Info 6400 TA manual Alternate OS's Archives: 6400 Zone ATI Rage128 ATI_Radeon Avid Cinema Backup Battery (UPS) Cable/DSL Modems CD/DVD Drives Cooling The 6400 Digital video help Firewire and USB cards FrankenMacs Geo Modem Gaming News Help Links iMovie info iTools MacOS 7.5.x - 9.0 info Mac Equipment for Sale Magazines Magma PCI Chassis Misc Mac Info Reader Reqests Readers Reviews Software Links TV/Video System USB and Firewire cards Voodoo 2 Voodoo 3 Voodoo 4/5 6400 Icons ColorStyleWriter4000 OS 9 Crescendo 1.4.2 Geomodem Shutdown OT 2.6 and OT 2.6.1 SetVolume to 1 script Sonnet Clocker Sonnet Clocker II UK Telecom software Vimage drivers, latest The 6400 Zone- 6400 Zone Forums Apple- Discussion Forums Legacy Hardware Accelerate Your Mac- Mac Forums MacSpeed Zone- 6400 Forums TechSurvivors.com- Help Forums