Update on closeout on 6400/6500 upper bay drive kits: ProLine said is was closing its doors on Feb. 14th and will no longer be selling drive kits for older Macs. If you wanted to get a kit, this link was the place to go. Now I see a message stating that Yahoo has purchased all of ProLines remaining parts and to stay tuned! Could Yahoo possibly continue to sell their products? Looks like it but I have no idea if they will produce more or just continue to sell off what's left over? I guess we will have to "stay tuned" :)

UPDATE 3/12/2003: Walter found a link to where the products are being sold now. They are in a huge yahoo site dedicated to selling Mac parts called We love Macs! Thanks Walter!

[Tom,
I followed the links to the current location of the Proline inventory of stuff for older Macs...

http://www.welovemacs.com/apple-service-parts-apple-bezels-pc-cables-and-old-mac-stuff.html

Interested folks might want to check it out, but should be prepared for a price jump!
Walter]

I was looking around the 6400 section and noticed they list 128MB ram for sale? But when you read the description they do not list the 6400 in the compatible list so why even list it on the memory page? I emailed them to see if they will correct that so they don't confuse anyone.

Great price on older G3 Macs!: Ben sends word that MacResQ is selling old Beige and B&W G3 Macs at great prices. Thanks Ben.

[I don't know if this would interest you or patrons of your web site, but MacResQ is selling beige G3 Desktops for $199, Blue and White 300 Mhz towers for $370, and Blue and white 350 Mhz towers for $419. (limited time only) I check resellers' prices regularly, and it seems to me that these are pretty decent prices. Especially on the beige G3 desktops. I bought one to replace my 6400 and I've been very pleased with it.
-Ben]

These are great prices for people thinking about adding a lot of hardware to their 6400/6500. Personally I would go with the B&W G3 as they have the most upgradeability to stay in touch with the latest hardware offerings. About the only thing you can't get for these are AGP slot video cards.

Website showing CPU benchmark test comparisons: Another reader sent me a link to a web site that has CPU benchmarks comparing Motorola CPU's to Pentium CPU's and other mainframe CPU's. Thanks.

[Thank you again for your help... this is a website with some info on it if
you are interested.

http://macspeedzone.com/archive/4.0/WinvsMacSPECint.html]

6400's SCSI bus is only 5MBps rated per Apple: I know most of you know this already but a few had questioned this info stating that the 6400/6500 actually had 10MBps SCSI-2. I finally found a link to a KB article (#12315) on Apples web site that clearly states the SCSI bus is only 5MBps. Fast SCSI (as well as dual SCSI buses) didn't start until the 7500 came out according to this page and that was for the internal SCSI bus only.

More browsers that use favicons: Eric mentions that Mozilla also displays favicons and works in OS9! Thanks Eric.

[BTW, I noticed the favicon talk on your site today. It should be mentioned that Mozilla has also supported them for quite a long time and works on OS 9. It should also be further mentioned that there are two actual types of icons in use, the Microsoft method and the standard method. The Microsoft one uses its own proprietary format and a "Shortcut Icon" link. The standard one uses PNG and an "Icon" link. You can see both sort-of-in-use at http://www.saugus.org/FOTH/ (I say sort-of because this site actually just uses the standard method but has extra code to divert error log entries from buggy MSIE requests back to MS). The standard method is (of course) a bit more Mac-friendly. It's possible to use both simultaneously; most non-MS browsers will pick the standard one over the MS one -- you can probably guess how MS browsers will behave...
Eric]

Quad port USB cards don't work on the 6400: A.J. wrote to tell me of his problems with a 4 port ADS USB card where only one port would work. I have heard of this issue before and thought I would finally post what is going on.

[Having recently become semi-addicted to the 6400 Zone, I figured I'd share my latest adventure. I don't know if it's been covered yet, but I haven't seen anything about it anywhere.

A couple of months ago I got an ADS USB Turbo Quad 4 (I think that's what it's called; it's the generic CompUSA thing) PCI card. It's got four ports in it and, to date, everything has worked fine and dandy. Er... that is, until I got more than one USB device. When I plugged the second one in, nothing recognized it. Apple System Profiler told me I had four Gravis GamePad Pro's hooked up, of which I only have one, and which is plugged into the first port.

Apparently the 6400 can't recognize more than two USB controllers? That's the only explanation I could find; ADS's tech support is practically nonexistent when it comes to the Quad 4, but I read a FAQ on Belkin's 4-port USB card that explained it. So I swapped it for the 2-port ADS card I'd been using in my 5400, and everything is fine and dandy again. Well, until I get a third device, anyway. :)

Odd thing, though... after I swapped cards (and grumbled a lot), Apple System Profiler no longer tells me that I have an ethernet card installed, which I do. It did before then, and it says I have one on the 5400. TattleTech acknowledges it's presence, but crashes when I try to pull up the "Network" information. It's not like I use it anyway, but I like things to tell me when hardware exists, and I'm almost afraid I fried something. Any ideas?
A.J.]

Here was my reply

[First off let me tell you the difference between the 2 and 4 port USB cards which may help you understand why the 4 port card did not work. The 2 port cards came out first and they are really one USB bus with 2 ports. So its like a built in hub to get the second port connected to the first. Then when people realized that some USB devices lost performance because too many devices are sharing the same bus, some manufacturers decided to make multi-bus USB cards and then said why stop at 2, lets make 4 ports. So that 4 port card is also a 4 bus card. The 6400/6500 have issues with multi-bus cards because what they due is actually make the computer think there is 4 PCI cards in the one slot. Each bus is its own PCI card separated by a PCI bridge chip. All of this is on one card. Our Macs where the first consumer Macs to have PCI slots and Apple did not use the same PCI bus controller chips on them as their business line of Macs. So we have bugs :(

The 4 port card recognizes only the first port and the rest show as duplicates of the first which really confuses our Macs. You can however use the 2 port cards just fine and if you need more ports, you will just have to get an external USB hub.

As for the Ethernet card, Is it a PCI card or a COMM II slot card? If its a PCI card then try swapping the USB and ethernet card positions and see if that helps. Sometimes an ethernet card is setup as a bus controller card and wants to be the first card in the PCI bus chain. Asantes Ethernet cards are famous for this. If its a COMM II slot card then try reseating the card and/or zapping the PRAM.
Tom]

I hope this helps you all decide on what type of USB card to buy. Don't get a 4 port card if you ever intend on using it in a 6400/6500. It won't work properly :(

Older ATI cards may have issues with newer ATI extensions!: Albrecht wrote with a problem he was having with his built in ATI video on a 6500 after upgrading to OS 9.2.2. It turns out that ATI's older video (Rage II based) on the 6500 is not completely compatible with newer drivers available in the latest OS? Thanks Albrecht.

[Hello Thomas, first of all: thanks a lot for running such a great and useful site. With help from the 6400zone I turned the 6500/275 from my employers trash into a powerhouse featuring:

sonnet G3/500
128 MB of RAM
maxtor 60 gig hd
farallon 10/100 ethernet
MacOS 9.2.2
Sonnet Tango USB/FireWire
Front USB/FireWire connectors (thru ProLine upper drive bay bezel)

finally I came across a problem I couldn't solve by just getting the information from somewhere inside your zone.

Lately quicktime behaves strange:
some time video would stutter (never had audio stuttering though) another time it would run smoothly but colors would be messed up another time resizing the playback window would result in lots of vertical flickering green noise some time the green stripes show at "normal" size", some times they don't - and they're always there at VCD playback

none of this is reproducible. Every boot up seems to bring its own surprise :-(

there was a time, when all was fine, but I have made so many changes since then (MacOS 9.2.2; QT 6; adding the tango card etc.) and unfortunately I can't recall which one was the bad step.]

I asked him to try older ATI drivers then what OS 9.2.2 installed and that seems to have done the trick!

[Hi tom.
You did it again.
After your kind reply I browsed my backup archives and tried two older sets of ATI extensions on my machine. The ones which came with MacOS 9.0.4 finally cut the mustard. Almost, that is. Extensions manager reported "ATI Video Accelerator" missing, although it was present in the extension folders. "never argue with the extensions manager" is one of my mac-mottos, and so put the MacOS 9.2.2-version of "ATI Video Accelerator" back into the extensions folder, rebooted - and violá:
smooth QT6 playback is here again! small windows, large windows, full screen and VCD (i use FreeVCD), different codecs (sorensen, even Avid Cinema) - no hanging and no more flickering green lines!

This is the winning extensions set:
ATI 3D Accelerator 4.9.7 (MacOS 9.0.4)
ATI Driver Update 1.5.3 (MacOS 9.0.4)
ATI Graphics Accelerator 4.9.4 (MacOS 9.0.4)
ATI Rage 128 3D Accelerator 5.8.1 (MacOS 9.0.4)
ATI Resource Manager 2.4.8 (MacOS 9.0.4)
ATI Video Accelerator (MacOS 9.2.2)

albrecht]

Old Apple software updates and utilities available here: I found a link recently to Apples archives and though some of you might be interested in it :) There are all kinds of old goodies to be found there!

http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html

iPod issues with Evergreen Firewire/USB combo card in a 6400?: John writes that he is unable to get his iPod to work with his 6400 by connecting it to an Evergreen combo card. He says it works fine on his G4 system so its not the iPod. Here is what he wrote.

[I'm the one having problems hooking an iPod up to my 6400. Looking on your site, I see that "Gerry" presumably can connect his iPod to his 6500. Could you ask Gerry (assuming you still have his email address) what Firewire card he is using? I'm very suspicious that my Evergreen Firewire card is the culprit here. I have had some occasional problems with copies to my external Firewire drive hanging, which I originally assumed was an issue with OS 8.6 having immature Firewire support. But, I saw this same problem under OS 9, so I suspect it is either the card or the 6400 architecture. But, it does seem others have had success with Firewire cards, and so I'm considering a different card (perhaps a Sonnet Tango or OrangeMicro).
Thanks,
John]

Later he wrote,

[On my OS X G4, I do have iTunes 3 running. I also previously thought
that perhaps there might have been some sort of backward compatibility
issue, but after one of many restores of my iPod, I plugged it only into
the OS 9 environment of my G4 to reload all my MP3s before trying again
to connect to my 6400.
John]

Earlier I had posted that another user (Gerry) was able to get an iPod to work on a 6500 running OS 8.6 but he didn't say which firewire card was used? If Gerry is reading this can you please email me with what firewire card you used. Thanks :)

UPDATE 3/12/2003: John wrote back to let me know he found a fix. He needed to revert to an older Firewire driver, version 2.3.3. Thanks John.

[SUCCESS!! My 6400 and iPod now play nice together!! (Evergreen Firewire Card Users Take Note

Well, I don't quite believe it, but it appears that I've solved the problem. A question from our leader Thomas regarding what versions of Firewire made me think a bit. I had tried nearly every version of Firewire Extensions available to OS 9 and nothing worked. However, I previously was using OS 8.6 with my Evergreen Firewire card and I had recalled that Firewire v2.3.3 was mentioned somewhere as the only version (or the highest version) that works with 8.6. Of course, when I installed OS 9, a newer version of the Firewire extensions was installed.

It occurred to me to try using the v2.3.3 Firewire extensions with OS 9, effectively "downgrading" my Firewire extensions. IT WORKED!!! For whatever reason, it appears that my 6400 w/Newertech G3 and Evergreen Firewire/USB card needs to continue to use the v2.3.3 Firewire extensions, even under OS 9.0.4! I don't know why this should be, but I know that I can now plug in my iPod, which is immediately recognized under iTunes, and play songs off my iPod through my 6400! Now, I'm going to try upgrading back to OS 9.1 (with the v2.3.3 Firewire extensions) and see how that goes.

The only real downside to this is that I've just taken away one of my major reasons for getting a new machine to run OS X at home.
John]

If anyone else is having issues with the firewire ports on the Evergreen combo card, I suggest trying this version of the drivers and please email me your results. Thanks.

Booting to a SCSI HD and using an IDE CDROM: Awhile back I had posted info on whether it was possible to replace the IDE HD with a SCSI HD and then place an IDE CDROM on the stock IDE bus. Originally one person had trouble with this setup but then one or two others wrote in to say it does work. Here is a letter from Goran who also states it works. Thanks Goran.

[Hi,
I just installed this LG CDRW in my Performa 6400. To do this, I pulled out original IDE HD that died and put in 2GB SCSI drive. After that, I replaced original Apple SCSI 8x CD-ROM with LG CDRW. The IDE cable is just long enough to reach CD bay.

The drive IS BOOTABLE and works OK with original apple CD-ROM extension. Burning speed is limited to 12-16x due to other HW components (mainly HD) and burn-proof technology is helping a lot. There is error -9356 (command on IDE bus timed out) sometimes when ejecting CDs from the Finder but CD ejects normally and I just have to click on OK.
Best regards,
--
Goran]

If you visit this link and scroll down to a posting on 7/14/2002 you will find the previous info I have on this topic.