Merry Christmas from The 6400 Zone! Just Update 12/23/2000 Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I may or may not have another update between now and next year? So enjoy the holidays! WARNING, MacAddict Jan01 DarkRage contains virus: Unfortunately its not all merry :( Ralph just sent me this and I though I would make an emergency update for it. Thanks Ralph! [Hey I just saw this: MacAddict Disc for January has virus infection. The January 2001 MacAddict Disc is infected with a VIR strain (A) virus. It's hidden in the DarkRage Public Beta installer, Although this virus probably will not cause problems on recent Mac models, play it safe and don't run the Installer. This MacAddict page notes the infection and will have results of further testing of potential problems, if any are found. http://www.macfixit.com/archives/december.00.b.shtml#macaddict-12-11 The DarkRage Public Beta is infected - so you shouldn't install that game. Before you ask, yes, we do check for this kind of stuff, but this one snuck on under the cloak of a multiple-installer installer. http://www.macaddict.com/magazine/disc/index.html#ack http://www.macfixit.com/ultimate/Forum2/HTML/009875.html] Just Updated 12/15/2000 3dfx to be sold to Nvidia?: I read on a few web sites that Nvidia is to acquire the core assets of 3dfx. I don't know what this means for 3dfx's Mac driver support but I hope they continue somehow? Nvidia is rumored to have a Mac card in the works as well so maybe we'll be just trading one for another? But competition will be lost :( Voodoo2 drivers removed from 3dfx's website?: A reader informed me that the link I had in my Voodoo2 info to 3dfx's website, for their Voodoo2 beta drivers, was broken. I posted the drivers on my site and also placed a link to them in the Downloads section on the side bar. More info on the Wired4DVD card: Ron owns an 8500 with one of these DVD decoder cards installed and says it works great for him. All the specs of an 8500 are similar to the 6500 except the 8500 has a 10MBps SCSI bus and the 6500 only has a 5MBps SCSI bus. He later told me he also has a 512k L2 cache card installed. This is what most 6500's came with except for the 6500/225 if I remember :) Thanks Ron [I have owned a Wired4DVD decoder for about 6 months. I have an Apple PM8500/180 96MB RAM/MACOS 9.04. I am using a Pioneer 6X SCSI DVD-ROM drive. It plays beautifully! No skips or sync problems what so ever. I have 3 video cards daisy chained. First is a MacTell Vision Pro output to a Voodoo2 to my Wired4DVD to NEC M500 15" multiscan. The Wired4DVD outputs through RCA jacks so you can watch externally on your television. I highly recommend the card! Sincerely, Ron] Here is previous info I have on DVD for the 6400/6500. 6500 mod to quiet the power supply fan: Accelerate Your Mac posted some info on how to quiet the fan of a G3/G4 system. One of his readers sent info on using a similar procedure on a 6500! Here is a link to the article. Basically he just put a little bit of rubber in between the power supply and the mounting points to cushion the supply so it would not rattle the entire case so much. Let me know if any of you try this with success. Thanks 6400 subwoofer wanted: I have a request from a reader for a 6400 subwoofer. If you have one that you removed and would like to sell, please contact him. Thanks [Hi, if it's possible for you to post "wanted"s also on your parts section, I want a subwoofer from a 6400. I have a 6400 myself, I've already removed the subwoofer from that one, but I'd like one more if it's possible to get one :) (no more than $10 including shipping/handling) Thanks, Hanson blufiresw@aol.com] Sonnet G3 upgrade horror story with a happy ending: David installed Sonnets newest 400Mhz upgrade for the 6400 and had a horrible experience but in the end everything is working well! Thanks David. By the way another 6400 owner who just installed a 400Mhz card also crashed on first reboot? Could Sonnets latest driver be a problem again? I have version 1.4.2 posted in my side bar under downloads but I think version 1.4.4 would be better for the latest cards. Could someone with 1.4.4 please send me a copy. Thanks. [Hi Tom. I thought I'd share my story of upgrading to the Sonnet G3. First, my machine is a 6400/200/vee with 132Mb ram. I had already removed the Avid Cinema card and the Geoport modem. I'm running an ixMicro Ultimate Rez video card and an Asante Ethernet card in the PCI slots, and the IDE drive is a 20Gb Maxtor. I also have a 2Gb SCSI in the top bay (which ended up being very important as you'll see.) I had installed the PCI Timing extension and had removed LibMoto, as suggested on your site. System was very stable with OS 8.6 and using ADSL for Internet. I purchased the Sonnet G3/L2 400/1Mb card. Got a pretty good deal on line for $315. The card came with Sonnet extension version 1.4.5 on a floppy. Following Sonnet's recommendations, I first checked and optimized my hard drive using Norton. I installed the Sonnet extension and Metronome, shut down the machine and installed the G3 card, of course remembering to press the motherboard reset button. I also took the time to completely clean out the dust from the inside of the system, since I had it open. The install was very easy, by the way, and if anyone wants the 512K L2 cache card, let me know! Initial turn on with the G3 was smooth. Everything worked and the machine was 5 to 10 times faster. I experimented by going on line, running PhotoShop, etc., and all was great. Then, since I had read some of the comments on your web site, I tried to reboot. The machine took a very long time to restart, and I got an "Address Error" warning box. I clicked restart again, and when the "Mac OS 8.6" screen finally came up, I knew something was wrong. I had installed a backup of my system on the internal SCSI drive, and the machine was booting from this system folder, not the one on the IDE drive. Then I saw the dreaded system dialog box: "Unrecognized disk, do you want to format" and it was my IDE drive. Uh oh. I clicked eject and the IDE drive was gone. I rebuilt the directory on the IDE drive using Disk Warrior (one of the best purchases I have made in years) and it showed up on the desktop. It seemed that all my files were still intact, so I tried to reboot again (after selecting the IDE drive as the startup disk just to make sure.) No go, it started up from the SCSI again. Finally, after reinstalling the OS onto the IDE drive (OS 8.5 CD and 8.6 upgrade) zapping the PRAM using Tech Tool, rebuilding the desktop on all disks, and trashing all the prefs files on the IDE drive, I tried to restart and machine booted from the IDE drive. But, no Sonnet extension loaded, and no G3 speed. I was back to the start, it seemed. I removed the Sonnet extension and reinstalled it. I renamed it with a "Z" as the first character. Just to be safe, I remembered the reports from your readers and also removed the SOMObjects extension. One more time, and if it doesn't work, I think, it's back to the vendor for this chip. Restart, and everything works like magic. OK, let's try to restart again. No problems. The machine has been blazing along at 400Mhz now for five days with no crashes, no hang-ups, and no more booting problems. I have pushed it by having PhotoShop, Word 98 and Netscape 4.7 all running at the same time. No problem. Metronome reports the CPU temperature never got above 37 degrees C, even after several hours of hard use. So, I am now a happy camper. The old 6400 feels like a brand new machine, and while I am still full of dual-G4 envy, I am happy and can wait for prices to come down even further on the monster machines! Thanks for keeping your site alive and full of great info. Without it, I don't think I could have gotten the Sonnet to run. David] David also has the Asante ethernet card which if I remember was rumored to have issues with L2 G3 cards since both where bus mastering cards? Anyway he says the latest drivers from Asantes web site are working fine for him. Great! SIIG USB card in a 6400: Last week I installed one of these cards in my other 6400 so both have USB support now. It was very easy to do. I just installed the USB card and then downloaded and installed Apple USB card support drivers and rebooted. It is working great! The main reason why I am mentioning this is because SIIG has 2 cards on the market. One labled for PC's and one labled for Macs? The Mac box is a greyish color and the PC box is a yellowish color. They both have almost identical writing on them but the Mac version was about $10 more!!! That's outrageous in these days to still charge more for Mac products that are identical. I bought the PC version because it, as well as the Mac version, listed as being OHCI compliant which is what Apples drivers need to run the card. Well it is working perfectly so far and I hope they change their minds on the 2 pricings in the future :( 6400 humor: Warren sent me a link to what appears to be an old article about the 6400 not taking to kindly to the sales of IBM PC's :) It is rather funny :) Thanks Warren. [Dear sir, Since you are the proprietor of a Web site called the 6400 Zone, I thought you might find the following page amusing: http://www.theonion.com/onion3013/chess.html Despite the fact that the page is rather old (they still have Gil Amelio as Apple prez) and they don't have the right picture for a 6400, I still think the page is hilarious. By the way, thanks for all the help your site has given me since I bought my 6400. Warren] Another subwoofer volume knob fix: Momo sent me some info stating that you could use an Allen Wrench to turn adjust the volume if your knob broke. Thanks Momo [I thought you might like to post this on your site, as I frequently see readers with broken subwoofer knobs. I, too, have a 6500 with a broken subwoofer knob. I originally superglued it back on sucessfully, but it eventually popped off again, leaving a piece glued into the opening. I was planning on buying a new knob from Sun Remarketing (which sells them as a pair for @ $15.00), but I had to find a way to get that broken piece out first. I removed the monitor/audio board from inside the case. I have a drill press in my garage - so I attached a drill bit (smaller than the knob opening) to the drill, turned it on, and carefully drilled out most of the broken piece. (the plastic is easily drilled out, so go slowly if you do this) I used a precision screwdriver to chisel out the rest. Once I did that, I noticed that the opening was hexagonal. So I got this idea that if I could find an Allen wrench (some call them Allen keys) to fit that opening, then I'd save a few bucks. I grabbed my multi-key set, tried them out, and found one that fit almost perfectly! There was a tiny bit of slip with each turn, but it worked! The size is 5/64". Since I almost never adjust the subwoofer volume, I set it where I wanted it, and left the key in just in case. This fix has worked fine for me, and I saved some money in the process. *I'd recommend this fix for those who don't need to adjust their subwoofer volume often, as it is possible that excessive turning could cause the metal key to wear out the plastic, hexagonal opening. That's just my opinion, though. Good luck to anyone who tries this. momo] He mentions that there is a bit of "slip" using the 5/64" size. I wonder if its metric? Possibly a 1.5-2.5 metric allen would work better? Apple has posted TakeApart movies for their latest Macs: Apple has started to post movies containing instructions on how to replace certain parts of their latest Mac offerings. To bad they didn't do this with their older equipment :( For those of you with the latest stuff I suggest checking these links out. iMac (Slot Loading): #50033 iMac (Original): #50032 iBook: TIL article #50031 PowerBook G3 (Bronze): #50030 PowerBook G3 Series: #50029 PowerBook-Firewire: #50028 Power Mac G4 Cube: #50027 Power Macintosh G4: #50026 Re-Mac Apple authorized reseller: Re-Mac is a little store I found the other day that sells and services Mac equipment in the AZ area. I am posting Re-Mac's info because they are the only little Mac shop left in my home town I can find! They are located in Mesa, AZ just one block north of the 60fwy behind the Fiesta Mall. Right next to TJ Maxx for those of you that know the area :). Their web site has a map and other contact info. Like I said they sell and service Mac equipment and will even buy your old equipment. I think they're only taking 604CPU (640e?) and faster Macs so us 6400/6500 owners are out of luck :( Also they only take walk-in systems (no mailing it to them!) Just Updated 12/2/2000 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.

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Thomas Koons
941 West Elliot, Suite 10, PMB #4
Chandler, AZ. 85225
ATTN: The 6400 Zone