Just Updated 9/1/2002

Jobless in AZ!: I thought I would let you all know that I was just let go from Motorola :( It happened last Wednesday. I had been with Motorola for 7.5 years after they bought out Western Digital, my former employer. I might not be updating this site for awhile because I'll be spending most of my time looking for a new job. If any of you know of some job opening in the semiconductor industry, mainly Equipment Technicians in the Phoenix area, I would appreciate a heads up! I haven't been able to find much but I also haven't looked to hard yet. Hopefully something will turn up soon.

On a side note. Anyone interested in purchasing a 6400 Zone Archive CD :)

Sonnet Crescendo extension updated: Sonnet just released version 2.0 of their Crescendo G3 driver. The only thing that sticks out as being updated is OSX support for their ZIF upgrades. I highly doubt that this will help the few people that have upgraded their 6500's to OSX but maybe its worth a try to get the L2 G3 running?

Turning on Virtual Memory fixed Sonnet L2 G3 issues: Anders tried installing a Sonnet L2 G3 400Mhz card and had nothing but trouble with it until he tried turning on VM! Thanks for the tip Anders.

[Hi there,
I recently bought an old 6400/180 MHz, and have upgraded it with a Sonnet L2/G3 400MHz 512Mb card.

One of the reasons for buying the machine in the first place was actually your excellent web site. If someone put that much trouble in creating a website about one single computer model, it must be brilliant... ;-)

However, to cut a long story short, the first card I got did not work properly. The replacement worked on occasion, but most of the time it crashed at startup. Having had a lengthy email conversation with the support (which is good compared to many other companies I've been in touch with), we could not understand the problem. I found one loose pin on one of the circuits. Having soldered it into place again (nothing to recommend) I found out that it did not make any difference. Finally after several months of torment and despair, I found a way to make it work. Turning on the virtual memory in the OS (8.5) made all the problems vanish. After that it has not failed, not even once. Five months of pure pleasure... Except for the fact that some programs require the virtual memory to be shut off... But I can live with that...

So a word of advice to all (if anyone is interested) L2 G3 users who have startup problems, is to enable the virtual memory.

Best regards
Anders]

OSX install issues from Bill: Bill tried to install OSX on his 6500 as Samy did but he ran into trouble with using his keyboard and mouse. I am not sure how Samy did it but Bill fixed his problem by using a USB card and having the mouse and keyboard plugged into the 2 ports on the USB card. The mouse was not connected to the keyboard as that still did not work. Thanks Bill.

[Did Samy mention what he used for keyboard/mouse during the install process? My ADB keyboard is recognized at the open firmware stage -- I can type the boot command -- but once booted into OS X Installer, they don't work, so I can't actually operate the installer. I also have a USB card, but no joy with that, either. (I've tried with it both in and out.)

Any info appreciated...I'm not interested in running the 6500 on my desktop with X, but it'd make a dandy MP3 server.

Thanks,
-Bill]

Later he posted this to my forums

[I managed to get 10.1 to boot once, and only once. After creating my account and fiddling with some prefs, I shut it down to install a network card. From that point forward, it hung on startup shortly after checking the disk.

I initially had trouble with the install because my ADB mouse wasn't recognized, so I couldn't actually click the controls. I fared no better with a USB keyboard plugged into a card, and a mouse plugged into that keyboard. Plugging the USB mouse directly into the card worked, though.

I'm going to take one more stab today, using OS X 10.0, and see if that works any better.]

CDROM drive works in OSX after boot process?: Samy wrote to say that his CDROM actually works after the system has booted up. Before I noted that the people working on getting OSX to install had issues with SCSI support so you could not install OSX from a SCSI CDROM. Well it seems that those SCSI issues may be only for initial bootup? Thanks Samy.

[Hi, It's me again
It's amazing, but my SCSI CD-ROM drive seems to work in OS X. ( I mean the finder) except on the boot process. Yesterday, I inserted a CD-ROM in my CD ROM drive and I get a CD ROM image mounted on the finder (like in syst 9 and early), so I could copy files by dragging and dropping them from the media to any location in my hard drive. I think the SCSI bug is only related to the boot process. Very good, OS X is more and more suitable for our machines !
more later, if I make progress...bye]

Click here for more info on installing OSX on your 6400/6500.

More user info from using Open Transport 2.7.9 in earlier OS's: I received two user reports on OT 2.7.9 in earlier OS's. Thanks guys. Robert noticed speed improvement while Len did not? I don't know how either of them connect to the internet but its possible that this may only increase the speed of ethernet connections?

[Hi, I tried the open transport extensions you posted on your site on the 18th. They work fine. There is a definite speed increase. I don't want to put a number on it as yet, but it is there. Explorer 5 leaps to the screen, Netscape seems a bit slower, but these may be first impressions only. Tomorrow I'll try it when the web should be busier and see if I was mistaken. I'm using a stock 6400/180, with 80mbs. of ram. I learn something everyday on your site. Robert]

[Hi Thomas:
I just installed the 3 Extensions and 2 Control Panels from 9.2.2 onto my 9.1 System. Everything works as before. I'm not sure I've noticed any speed-up yet.

(Note: the two Control Panels are identical to the 9.1 versions; having the same dates of creation and modification.)
Len]

Click here to read more about this.

Update on fix for sound input switching to none in OS9: Daniel tried the fix, I posted in my last update, of removing the Sound Manager extension to see if that would keep his audio settings to the last place he left them but it only worked for a short time :( Thanks for the info Daniel.

[Well It the fix worked for 5 min. then it reverted back to not working. I never lost any functionality. Sound Manager according to extensions manager is actually a part of QuickTime.

It might be interesting that the fix worked until I tried to play an audio CD in the Mac. After that it switched from CD-TV-VIDEO to Just CD. However, after manually switching it back to CD-TV-VIDEO, launching the video player then quitting it went back to none.

Next, I tried a CD I had to manually switch to CD then after quitting the CD player it went back to none. I have not been able to recreate my success.

I would wager that if I did not insert the audio CD it would still be working now.

As I use that computer just as a TV and server I wish I could get this fixed. I run AppleShare IP6 on it so I need OS 9. If I could run AppleShare IP6 on OS 8 I would.]

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