Sorry for the long delay in posting this update. I hope I won't let so much time pass again?

So are all of you impressed with those new G5's! I know I am :) I really can't wait to go see one which I should be able to any day now since Apple has announced that they are staring to ship.

TW Computing, my web hosting business, has been running for a year now and is doing well. It's paying for itself now which is all I really wanted it to do. Anything more is just icing on the cake!

For those that remember I am taking classes to get an MS Networking Technology Certificate, I just passed the CompTIA A+ Core Hardware test. Once I take the OS Technology test, I will be A+ certified. That's the first step on my way to changing careers from being an Equipment Technician to an IT Admin. This semester I will take Win 2000 Server, UNIX, and customer support. I should do good in that one :)

My son is also back in school. He's a first grader now! Boy how time flies. He was born around the same time the Zone 6400 started. My wife is doing better now since her mothers passing. She recently finished dog grooming school and is doing her 100 dog internship. I guess you can call it that? After that she'll be a full fledged dog groomer. I might be changing positions in my job from data entry to working in the warehouse. It will be more hours and a bit more pay. Not a glamorous job like being an equipment technician but its got to be better then data entry? That's a quick rundown on what's going on in my world. Now on to the 6400 world :)

New Maxtor HD's may not work on older Macs?: I found this on MacInTouch the other day and hope it only has to do with their extra large HD's which aren't compatible with older IDE buses anyways?

[A reader reports that the latest Maxtor drives are no longer recognized by Apple's Drive Setup in System 9:
The newest IDE hard drives which are manufactured by Maxtor (And perhaps others?) are no longer recognized by Apple's Drive Setup in System 9. These hard disks are of course recognized by System 10's Disk Utility. Because of this, System 9 customers will not be able to buy a new replacement hard disk for older computers that are not capable of running System 10.]

I'm not sure which HD's they are referring to but if anyone has more info on this then please email me your info. Thanks.

Wireless networking on the 6400: Tom wants to know if anyone has tried a Macwireless USB adaptor on the 6400? Also please send me any info you have on any wireless device that works on a 6400. Thanks.

[Hi -- I have enjoyed your site for some time. I have a fairly stock 6400 -- it has 80mb ram, a comm-slotII Ethernet-card, Keyspan USB card and an ATI video card.

I wonder if any of your readers has successfully been able to use the Macwireless USB adapter with a 6400. Basically, Macwireless makes a small USB device that communicates 802.11b signals compatible with Apple's airport. Macwireless (macwireless.com) claims that it will allow any USB Mac to connect to an Airport network.

I am now working at home on a G4 Powermac. My wife would like to share our cable modem with the 6400. Her desk is on the first floor, the G4 is on the upper floor, and running a cable would be a lot of work. I could get an airport PCI card for the 6400, but I would have to sacrifice either the ATI video card or the USB card. After reading the Macwireless website and reading good reviews of their USB adapter by independent sources (MacAddict for one) I ordered one of the units and tried to install it on the 6400.

Macwireless says that should work with the Keyspan USB card. Unfortunately I experienced nothing but trouble. The 6400 won't boot with the adapter plugged in. I did get it to boot one time -- the rest of the time it would freeze up right after the usual icon display and before displaying anything on the desktop. If I unplugged the unit the Mac would boot up fine but it would lockup within two minutes of plugging the adapter in.

I thought it might be an extension conflict. Since I had a partition with no system folder, I installed a brand new copy of OS 9.1 on the unused partition and made that my start up disk. This brand new install has no init files other than what is installed by Apple's 9.1 installer and the required Macwireless drivers. This new install made no improvement. Once again, I experienced constant lockups and freezes. Only one time did I see the access point -- and of course the machine locked up before I could connect.

Macwireless tech-support wasn't as helpful as I would have hoped. They claim it should work and that the adapter that I received might be defective. I have returned it and they are sending me a new one, but I'm concerned that this thing just doesn't like the 6400. I know the USB card works because I use it to drive my USB scanner that doesn't like OSX 10.2.6 which I am running on the G4. Other then being dog-slow, the 6400 perfectly when the Macwireless adapter is unplugged.

Has anyone found success with one of these adapters on a 6400? How about one of the PCI Airport devices? Macwireless also makes one of these and I have heard that Proxim also makes a Mac-compatible PCI 802.11b card. I hate to lose either the USB card or the ATI video card, but I really would like to get this beast networked to the G4.

Thanks for an interesting site -- long live the 6400!
-- Tom]

Here's a link to Belkins wireless USB solution. And here is a link to the drivers for that device. It says it requires OS 9.2 so you would need to use OS9Helper to upgrade from OS 9.1 to 9.2.2 on our Macs.

Here is some info sent in by another reader who says to try the Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge. Thanks. This may be the best solution.

[While not a PCI card (it's an external box), we use a Linksys WET11 Wireless Ethernet Bridge as it doesn't need any drivers and it fits *anything* with an ethernet port (we use it on a RevB iMac) so it has none of the USB bridge problems. Now a days it's superceded by the WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge.
Cheers,]

Basically you just plug in your ethernet cable from your computer into this device and then you become wireless for the rest of the connection to your network. This still requires the installation of an ethernet card though but this will work without worries of USB drivers. So this should work with any Mac OS that can access a TCP/IP network. Do I dare say that I bet even OS 7.5.3 will work with this device!

D-Link DFE-530TX network card sold in Europe will not work on our Macs!: A reader sent word that the European version of this card does not have the "+" in the name and does not work on his 6400. Thanks for the info.

[A word of warning to European readers; the D-Link DFE-530TX+ is sold in the USA. In Europe we get the D-Link DFE-530TX. Exactly the same product name, but without the "+". A slight but important difference, not helped by the fact that retailers, at least in the UK, often use the "+" literature in their product descriptions. Encouraged by Jeff's post, I forked out £9 for the plusless version. To be frank, I never even noticed the missing plus when I ordered. I stuck it in my wife's 6400/200, hooked it up to my spanking new adsl router.. and nothing. I downloaded drivers and spent happy hours tinkering about in them with a binary editor. After much fun and games I only succeeded in moving from no recognition whatsoever of ethernet, to the system recognizing it had ethernet but being unable to use it. For those who relish a little Mac schadenfreude I'll add a little more context:
In order to use the card drivers I had to upgrade the 6400 from 8.0 to 8.6. Tinkering with the delicate ecology of an elderly Mac is fraught with perils, especially if your friendly local pre-enjoyed vendor sends you the install disks for a G3 powerbook. Then there's the little problem of the 6400 having no native connection to my whizzy Ti550 powerbook. To get a driver onto the 6400 I have to download it via my old AOL connection, which has been upset by the OS upgrade. When it does connect, the old Stuffit version on the 6400 won't unzip the drivers. I can't install a new Stuffit version 'cause it won't run on 8.6. I have to hunt about in the loft to find old Mac magazine covermount CD ROMs to get an older but not so old Stuffit. In the end I download and reformat drivers on the powerbook and e-mail them to myself at AOL, then back down to the 6400. Then there are the long, low hours of restarts, extension manager reconfigurations and more, many more restarts. You get the picture. Anyway.. it doesn't work. Tomorrow I have an Asante FreindlyNet 696 card arriving. Price - £18. If that doesn't work, I may shoot myself. The standard delivery cost will be more than the price of the DFE530TX but life is too short. I did pinpoint one distinct possibility for European cheapskates like myself - the Sitecom 10/100 fast PCI card. It costs a tenner and Sitecom lists a Mac driver. But as I say, life's too short. Wish me luck.]

Low cost PC ethernet card for Macs: Phil sent some info on the NexNIC card from UNEX. It is a PC ethernet card but they also have Mac drivers. I have the drivers posted on the page at the link above. Thanks Phil.

Good prices on parts for older Macs!: I found this site, http://www.microdocusa.com/parts.html, that had some good prices on old Macs parts including stuff for our Macs.

• 2210 - CPU fan for 5500/6500 series PowerMac $17
• 1518 - 5500/6500 225MHZ logic board 661-1505 $99
• 1519 - 5400 200MHZ logic board 661-1330 $99

Testing the Radeon 7000 in a 6500: JJ ran some tests using CineBench to test a Radeon 7000 in his 6500. Thanks JJ. Note in the past I've posted that the Radeon 7000 has issues in a 6500, specially when Sonnets G3 is install. But a reader may have found the cause? More on this in the next topic.

[I have completed CineBench 3D testing of the Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI video/graphics card in my 6500/250.

There were several false starts with the testing until I downloaded and installed the proper versions of related software.
=-=
Results:

OS 8.1 and 8.5 failed to start-up the computer due to Operating System incompatibility with the installed October 2002 ATI drivers downloaded from ATI.com. Older drivers are available from ATI.com, Older drivers were not downloaded and not tested.

OS 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2.2 passed the tests.

Testing was done with software installed on an 810 meg SCSI hard drive installed in the forehead of the 6500, the Zip drive provision.

The configuration of the software is as follows:
Step 1.: Reformat the hard drive.
Step 2.: Install the OS from the retail OS CD, also known as the Universal Installer CD. Easy/default installation: no options. OS 9.2.2 via OS 9 Helper.
Step 3.: Install Sonnet Crescendo driver version 1.4.7.
Step 4.: Install OpenGL version 1.2.1.
Step 5.: Install QuickTime 6.0.3.
Step 6.: Install ATI October 2002 drivers.
Step 7.: Install the CineBench test software.
Step 8.: Set Energy Saver to "Never".
Step 9.: Set Virtual Memory to 640 meg assigned to the ATA (main) hard drive.
Step 10.: Reboot to Norton CD: Disk Doctor and Speed Disk defrag/optimize both of the hard drives.
Step 11.: Reboot to the SCSI hard drive, and rebuild desktops.
Step 12.: Run Cinebench.

Actual test result numbers varied only 002, or 0.2, or 0.02, depending on statistic category, between all OS numbers. Repeat testing on the same OS number also yields the same slight differences. Comparing the VGA port to the DVI port also yields the same slight differences.

Testing time is substantially longer when conducting the tests with the 250 mhz processor, instead of the G3-400 mhz processor.

Worst case scenario: Mirrored desktop on two VGA monitors set at different resolutions. Testing was not interrupted, it took 2 and a half hours to complete with the G3 enabled. One test cycle, only. Mirrored testing in 250 mhz: not attempted.
=-=
Conclusion: Thumbs up. The Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI video/graphics card works in a 6500. And it works in OS 8.6, 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2.2.

You must install OpenGL 1.2.1 before QuickTime 6.0.3, and then lastly the ATI drivers. Because QT updates OpenGL, and ATI updates QuickTime.
=-=
Disclaimer:
As with anything, your mileage may vary...
-
JJ]

Radeon info for 6500 owners: Yoshihide sent me a lot of info on what he thinks is the problem with running an ATI Radeon card in a 6500. As noted above, many 6500 owners have had issues with the Radeon cards in their Macs and this may be do to the stock video module according to Yoshihide. Click here to read more. Thanks Yoshihide.