Just Updated 3/2/2002

ATI driver update allows for millions of colors on 20th Anniversary Macs: Here is a letter I got from Steve, who says he can now run in millions of colors on his TAM system when before it would not. Thanks Steve.

[Hi there.

It's probably mentioned somewhere on your (quite expansive) site, but I thought I'd tell you anyway.

Having just installed ATI's Jan. 2002 retail driver update on my TAM, I can for the first time run at truecolour / millions. I tried this a few months back with an older retail driver release, but the system behaved oddly until I removed the driver. All is good with this one and I am happier than I was yesterday!

I am currently just using the on board ATI Rage II display controller on the TAM. Other details - OS 9.1, 128MB, 6GB IBM HD, Sonnet Crescendo 350.

As you will probably be aware the TAM only supports 640x480 and 800x600, and the standard Mac OS drivers allow color depths of 8bit/256 and 16bit/thousands - which is why I was so happy to see the 24(32?)bit/millions option after installation of the new driver.

There weren't any real video issues before updating.

A short while ago I fitted an ATI Rage Orion PCI card to the TAM. While 3d performance was great there were serious audio problems. Unfortunately none of the suggested cures worked (PCI Timing Update etc.). I haven't refitted the Orion card since installing the new driver - it will be interesting to see if the update driver fixes any of the sound issues...

I can recommend this driver update to anyone with a 5500/6500/TAM.

Best regards, Steve]

Belkin F5U008-MAC Firewire/USB card in a 6400: Tom writes that he is running the Belkin combo card in his 6400 and it seems to be working fine. Thanks Tom. Now we have another card that works on the 6400. Not sure if it comes with a PRAM patch for the 6500 though? Also I am not sure if he needed to connect a power cable to the card as has been mentioned was needed on some other combo cards? Click here for more info on Firewire/USB cards.

[Thanks for running your website. I find it to be a valuable resource for working with my elder Mac. My Mac is a Performa 640o/200. I just wanted to let you know that I have recently bought the Belkin F5U008-MAC Firewire/USB card and have been able to work with a USB Zip drive and a Maxtor Firewire external hard drive. The Maxtor drive did require the use of the Maxtor drivers which thankfully I still had as I could not locate them on the Maxtor website. I couldn't get my Canon digital video camera to connect via firewire but I didn't work on that too hard as I was only trying out various configurations and will not be doing editing on that machine. Thanks again for the site.

Tom]

Update on Sonnet Tango card causing freezes with 5500's (may not be just 5500's ?): Brad sent me an email stating he had the exact same issue as Konstantin had but on his 6500! Thanks Brad.

[I'm having the same problem with the card. I have a 6500 with l2 g3/500 and with the USB extensions turned on the computer freezes when using external firewire CDRW.]

If you are having this problem, I suggest you email Sonnet to let them know so they can work on fixing it. The 5500/6500 Macs are not to happy with any combo card as they have an issue in their ROM that prevents them from working with the on board PCI bridge chip on these combo cards. A few companies, such as Sonnet, have a patch to fix this but maybe the patch needs some more work?

Sonnet clocker 1.3.2 user report and fix for issues with Asante Ethernet cards: Justin writes that he used the new Sonnet clocker and it works as advertised on his system. He also notes some comments from Asante on issues and a fix for their ethernet cards and electrical interference causing them to fail. Thanks Justin.

[I recently downloaded the updated Sonnet clocker from your site and just wanted to let you know it's been running very smooth so far(2 days). I have a PMac 6500 with the Sonnet 400MHz/512kb card running @ 500MHz. It's run very stable so far with temps getting up to about 39C when I tried to overwork the CPU, otherwise it sits around 35C(it was @ 30C before the Overclock). I also have a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 video card and an Asante 10/100 Ethernet card in the PCI slots. No crashes yet, although I had my ethernet card in the A1 slot and the machine would crash when copying files with a crossover cable connected to my QS 733. Asante tech support told me the crashing was caused by the processor card/motherboard giving signal interference to the ethernet card. And sure enough, when I switched it to the B1 slot, I got smooth transfer speeds and no crashing. Just an FYI. Thanks for the great site. Keep up the good work! Justin]

Internal SCSI HD's may fail to mount if they are very high RPM rated? Howard was having issues with his internal 9gb SCSI Seagate 7200rpm drive mounting at boot time on his 6400. I was able to help him solve it but the fix is not the best for everyone?

[Hi Tom:
It seemed that perhaps I had missed something about the SCSI not booting up fast enough to be recognized by the ide/ata internal Hard drive. So I reenabled the system folder on the internal hard drive, and disabled the system folder on the SCSI and the same thing happened, the SCSI did not mount. This confirms your idea that it cannot get up to speed in time for the ata/ide to recognize it. This all seems strange because at my office I have a G3 beige mini-tower with a SCSI 10,000 rpm internal 9 gb hard drive, and an ata 6 gb internal 5400 rpm both with active system folders, but without the problems I have on the 6400. Anyway by disabling the system folder on the internal ide/ata hard drive on the 6400 the SCSI mounts on the desktop without any problems.

I hope that this clarifies the situation. I am not sure I understand it, but at least I now have both drives on the desktop.
Howard]

The issue comes about do to the high RPM of some SCSI HD's. 7200 RPM and specially 10000 RPM HD's can be affected. The reason this happens is because the drive just takes to long to spin up and send a ready signal to the bus. Therefore, the OS does not know the drive is ready and does not mount it. Just running any drive mounting software can mount the drive but what happens when you try to boot to a drive that is to slow? Well, the mother board rom looks for the system folder you selected in the Startup Disk control panel first. If it does not find that, it then looks for the next system folder it can find. If you select to boot to the SCSI HD and it does not send a ready signal in time when the rom is looking for a system folder, the rom will give up and search for the first ready drive with an active system folder. This will most likely be your IDE HD.

There are 2 fixes. The one mentioned above where you must physically remove the System file from the system folder on the IDE drive so it is forced to wait for the SCSI HD, or move the SCSI HD to an external case so it may be powered up before you turn on the Mac.

UltraTek66 PCI IDE card issues in a 6400: Andreas found a fix for issues with UltraTek66 IDE cards in our Macs. It seems there is an issue with the PCI clock? Thanks Andreas.

[Hi,
I got the same Problem using an Ultratek66 in a Umax Aegis or PM4400.

The controller shows up in ASP but trying to format the HD attached to it, formatting fails. So what to do? Buy a {...} Sonnet card?
No way.

I took a closer look on both the Ultratek66 and the Promise Ultra66. The difference that jumps in the eye is the missing 66 MHz Oscillator on the Ultratek.
So, why not?
The Ultratek (better the Promise chip) can get the clock from the PCI Bus,too. But the PCI Clock is not as stable as it might be. Maybe, the PSX Controller on all 4400,5XX0 and 6XX0 is a little bit buggy.

In short:
I removed the R27 {resistor} and soldered in a 66 MHz Oscillator.

After formatting the HD it shows up on the Desktop, yeah. And a CD-ROM is working well on the 2nd IDE channel.

I hope, this can help anyone.
Andreas]

Could this be the timing issue that Apple has told us about in the past and released that PCI Timing patch for? Could there be a real problem with the PCI clock circuitry on the mother board? This sure seems to suggest it. I asked for more info on where to get the oscillator and maybe some pictures of the procedure to install it.

Update on OS 9.2.1 and OS 9.2.2 patches posted with more install info: I added updated files to the OS 9.2.1 install patches and OS 9.2.2 install patches. I also added some great install instructions from Bleck who tells you how to make it work on non-US installs and what can happen during the install and how to fix it. Thanks Bleck. I suggest downloading his text file instead of viewing it online as it may not appear properly in some web browsers? Click here to read more on installing OS 9.2.x.

Price of The 6400 Zone CD Archive has been reduced: I just reduced the price of my CD archive from $15 US to $10 US. See below for more details.

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