[Tom:
I was starting to think that it was time to buy another desktop, but the combination of the Tango Firewire/USB card (which I bought based on your page), and the ATI Radeon, have given new life to my 6400.

I did a framerate test using Unreal Tournament, and only got 16 fps on the intro flyby. This is a bit deceptive. The game, running at 1024*768 with 32 bit color, runs very,very fast. Very fluid. Driver(the game) is a bit choppy and I can't figure that one out, since it really isn't that complex a game. Even when you reduce the screen to very small. So that deserves some more investigation. Falcon 4, which is very intense graphically is useable if you turn down some of the texture complexity. It can have problems on my Powerbook Pismo 400. My results aren't the most reliable though, since I left all my extensions running. Anyway, I prefer Hornet Korea and A10 attack, and they run fantastic. The big deal for me is sound. Carmageddon would run without sound before, and FA18 Korea/Hornet was intermittent and the voices were garbled. All of these problems have disappeared. Which is what we wanted!

I’m sure some of your power users will do more in depth testing and find some useful tricks for these games. The news is, that they can go and buy it now and not worry about it failing.

You should tell them though that it runs only in the PCI slot next to the L2 slot, not the PCI slot farthest away from the cables (outside). I don't know why. Perhaps it was a factor with the Tango card specifically? Before I installed it, I downloaded the latest driver from ATI. It seemed to be a good plan, since the CD came with the older driver. Tell your users to prepare for that before installing so it is in the hard drive.

Hope that is helpful to you.

My setup: Performa 6400 w Sonnet L2 G3 300/512, Sonnet Tango USB/Firewire, 20 Gig maxtor HD,Apple TV/Video, Farallon 10/100 Comm slot II card, Viewsonic 17” PT 770 Professional series monitor, ATI Radeon 32 M PCI card.
Regards,
Carl]

[I have tried Unreal, UnReal Tourn,Quake 3,FA/18 Hornet, A10 Attack, Driver, Carmageddon (2),Falcon 4, and SoundJam. The "Big" games I ran at resolutions much higher than I have ever played, and in 32 bit color as opposed to 16. There are no sound issues at all, and the graphics are very good. Also, Bryce, Poser, Carrara, Canoma, Strata Studio Pro 3, and Vectorworks run very fast. rendering time is much better than my old 4 MB ATI Xclaim. I'm not one to measure this stuff, but I just thought I would let you know it works great.
The machine stays at 43 deg Celsius, a bit cooler than it did before, but then I had two video cards. Now only one, and it has a fan.
The USB Firewire card runs well, but has a problem with the Radiologic driver and my USB external 30 Gig. If I leave it unplugged, then plug in the USB after the boot, all is well. All the joysticks,a scanner,my printer,mouse,hub, have no problem with this card.

Carl]

[Well, it came today. I also ordered a Sonnet Tango Firewire/USB card.
My config>> Performa 6400/136 MB Ram with a Sonnet G3 L2 upgrade (300Mhz/512cache)+20Gig internal.
I was removing an ATI Xclaim VR (4mb) and a Macmagic Voodoo card (8mb). I decided to put the Radeon in the same slot as the ATI VR (the outside one,farthest from the motherboard). I installed the tango on the inside (up against the G3 L2 card.
I restarted.....and nothing. Machine started, monitor started,but then black monitor, boot stopped.
I had read somewhere that changing the order of the PCI cards may make a difference. It did.
Put the Radeon next to the G3. By the way, you hear the little fan purring away, and I guess it is strategically located to move heat from this area. Boot with shift key down (no extensions). I had downloaded the latest Radeon driver installer yesterday, thinking the provided CD would be older. It was. The latest fixes a few things with Quake, and some other things.
I am testing a few key things as I type.....
Two particular programs that I found had choppy/broken or absent sound sometimes were Carmageddon and FA/18 Hornet. UnReal and Quake seemed to be OK.
Well,Carmageddon 2 passes and so does FA/18 Hornet. Well, almost. Every once in awhile there is a short break in the engine sound (Hornet), but then I have alot of extensions running, and I have not restarted after trying three games in a row. Oops, I also have file sharing on. That is probably it!
I tried UnReal Tournament in 32 bit color, and the highest res on my Viewsonic PT770 professional Series 17" monitor. Wow. Very fast. Actually, Hornet looks good at the 1024 res. I have never seen that before.
So the sound problems (at least the way they affected me) seem to be gone. I just tried the USB mouse and it works, so that's all have for now.
Apple System profiler identifies Video memory as 32 MB. Wow. Metronome says 43 deg Celsius after about an hour. That could be the little fan, and the fact that I took the opportunity to use a can of air on the inside and cleared the crap out.

MacMaui's]

ATI Radeon and 6500 with Sonnets G3 are a no go?: Rick got a Radeon card for his 6500 and is having trouble with it! Thanks for the info Rick. Seems this ATI card has the same problem on the 6500 as other recent ATI cards do and that they conflict with the stock ATI chips on the mother board when a Sonnet G3 upgrade is installed.

[If I turned off the Sonnet extension it would work. I have the Voodoo 2000 with the pass through that is great for 3D but does not accelerate 2D. This actually works well since the G3 cache card speeds up my stock 2D ATI hardware and still allows me to use my Apple Video system. It also works well with the Sonnet accelerator. I was disappointed also that the Radeon didn't work. In fact, in the past I could not get a single ATI board to work with the Sonnet accelerator. Let me know is some one else does in a 6500. I don't know about the 6400.

The Radeon PCI is not compatible with the Sonnet G3/400 and a 6500. Mine crashed each and every time. When it did work, it was slow. I sent it back.]

3/23/2001 ATI's Radeon and the 6500, may work together after all: Chris has a 6500 and says it works fine with his Radeon card. He did have to install it in the 1st slot (closest to the mother board) in order for it to work though. The other 6500 owner may have had it in the 2nd slot which is why it did not work for him? Click here for more ATI Radeon info and the 6400/6500.