XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 28, 2003 4:37 PM |
ltking |
Hi All: One last question for the group (Chibi and Ryan, I hope you'll give me some feedback here) on getting a Sonnet Crescento/PCI 800MHz G4 card to work in my PPC8500. Past hx is: I had been able to get this machine with this Sonnet card to load and run OS 10.2 as long as I had the OS X boot drive connected to the "slow SCSI bus." Was having to use Sonnet's OS X compatibility stuff to do this as XPF would not work for ?? reasons. Following up on a brief thread from back in May of this year I finally got around to connecting the OS X drive to the "fast SCSI bus" and with 'Unit Attention Disabled' and using XPF 3a4 got OS 10.2 to boot the way I wanted it too (had gone back to a NewerTech 500MHZ G3 at this point). I even was able to go back to my 24x Apple CD-ROM! When I switched to the Sonnet card I don't even get the verbose screen output I'd selected! Just nothing for about 3 minutes until the machine boots into OS 9.1. Even this fall back boot is hit and miss; sometimes it will boot to a secondary drive and rarely to the primary OS 9.1 drive (? the beginings of OS X boot "unblessing" the primary drive's OS 9.1 system folder). Any ideas here? Cheers, Lonnie |
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chibi_delenn |
September, 30, 2003 8:14 AM |
jseibyl |
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Wow..... Man, sounds like that whole damn g4 800 thing is still a headache 4 u. Did you verify the voltage issues on the PCI bus you describe?? I would be VERY interested to hear what you say, or if you tested....... The reason I am asking is that I had one 8500 I worked on (45 mhz bus), that WOULD NOT run a g4 700 that I knew was okay on another board I tested. My solution was go to ebay and get another logic board (50 mhz bus). The new board worked with the g4, but I am still scratching my head on that one...... I have that 45 mhz logic board in stock, which runs great with a g3 300 newertech chip in it. Any observations would be appreciated. Jim |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 29, 2003 7:40 PM |
chibi_delenn |
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Lonnie, The Radeon ME == Radeon Mac Edition. It's the original Radeon with 32 MB DDR VRAM. The successor (and rather crappy) card to that is the Radeon 7000. The 7000 has dual monitor support, but is noticeably less powerful, especially for games. As the date on that thread indicates, I gave up on the G4/800 last December, and stuck with my G3/400 (now G4/400). The anemic HS/F combo on the G4/800 isn't a very well designed piece for an 8500 class mac, which is very cramped in that area. It also didn't help that heat rises, and the CPU slot is just under the PSU with nowhere for heat to go. I think the problem that the G4/800 had with 3D apps/games is that it somehow really screwed, or skewed, the voltage along the PCI bus, and that was causing the Radeon to overheat. I think many G4s also have this problem as well. The bottom line is this - That snappy G4/800 you have isn't worth squat if the time it takes you to get it working kills any time you would have saved with its "profound speed" (and yes it was zippy for all of the five days it worked for me, as you can see from my game tests in that thread on XLR8YourMac.com). If it weren't for the horrendous multiplier locking that Powerlogix has done with their 750FX chips (at least the recent ones) or the fact that the Sonnet G4/1GHz ZIF doesn't appear to fit onto a CarrierZIF style card in pre-Beige macs, I'd suggest getting a different manufacturer's CPU/Card. The G4/700s have far less problems than the G4/800, but with regard to Radeon R7200s (The Radeon ME) they still have problems. I lost out on a lot of money from that upgrade. I think I finally have forgiven OWC for the way their tech dept. treated me, although if I ever go through THAT again.... If you can get the G4/800 working right, great. If not, just remember that a slower CPU that works right w/o problems is worth far more than a ultra fast CPU that causes headaches every day. - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 29, 2003 6:30 PM |
ltking |
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Hi All: Many Thanks for the feedback! Chibi, that was some thread! Did you ever, and do you now have a Sonnet 800MHz G4 running in anything? The way this thing is behaving reminds me of the early days of even trying to get it to boot on the slow SCSI bus. Sonnet Tech support had me switching the monitor back and forth between the built in video port and the Radeon 7000 card. Chibi, what was the Radeon ME card? I will try the other tips everyone has offered when I get the chance. Thanks again, Lonnie King |
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Itking |
September, 29, 2003 9:51 AM |
lyonsdj88 |
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Do you know how to get an Open Firmware boot promt? Set your Output device in XPF to the device your monitor is connected to and reboot if you get a white screen and it say's "Can't open SCSI INT 4:3@-----"or some thing like that over and over until you boot OS 9 insted of X then your trouble is Open FirmWare can't open your HD. This can be fixed. IF you do know how to get into OF(Open Firmware) but it won't give you the white OF screen then you have a conflict with some of your Hardware Chibi will atest to your Radeon 7200 and Sonnet G4 800 conflicting so remove the Radeon and chose built-in for your output in OF menu in XPF(OS 9) see if you get a white OF Screen at boot. If so write down what it say's and post back. Don't uncheck AutoBoot? If you Don't know how to get the OF screen post back. |
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Itking |
September, 29, 2003 9:49 AM |
lyonsdj88 |
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Do you know how to get an Open Firmware boot promt? Set your Output device in XPF to the device your monitor is connected to and reboot if you get a white screen and it say's "Can't open SCSI INT 4:3@-----"or some thing like that over and over until you boot OS 9 insted of X then your trouble is Open FirmWare can't open your HD. This can be fixed. IF you do know how to get into OF(Open Firmware) but it won't give you the white OF screen then you have a conflict with some of your Hardware |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 29, 2003 8:06 AM |
jseibyl |
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Ah the PRAM zap..... Itking... The zap of the PRAM will flush out the NV RAM that holds data on the system, including an updated proc. It might help if you do it and reinstall the Sonnet software w/ the upgrade. Some people have had problems with doing this, so BE CAREFUL! In my own experience, I ALWAYS do it BEFORE I do an upgrade, just as a matter of procedure, since I upgrade machines as a hobby/sideline. I was lucky with my g4 800, never had the difficulty others have had. I started out with an 8500 with the g4 700 chip, and just migrated all the hardware over to a 9500 w/800 chip as I wanted more space. I have had one issue with a 700 chip, but Sonnet sent me another one and it was okay. |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 29, 2003 7:18 AM |
chibi_delenn |
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Lonnie, Instead of having to format the text for this forum, I'm going to redirect you to the XLR8YourMac BBS Forums post that I did regarding my frustration with the Sonnet G4/800 card, and hope you can glean something from that. Beware, it's a rather long thread. http://bbs.xlr8yourmac.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000339.html I am (I hope) obviously "Chibi Delenn" there. Two notes: 1) I never did fix the performance issue regarding the Tempo Trio. DVD still sucks in Jag, and I can't test in 10.1.x because 10.1.x can't see drives on a 3.5 or 4.5 firmware updated Trio. Mine is 4.5, needed for my WD 200 GB HD. 2) OWC's tech dept. used a Radeon 7000 in their tests. I have a Radeon ME (R7200), the higher powered version. This makes a BIG difference in testing. Stupid tech dept... - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 29, 2003 6:37 AM |
ltking |
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Hi Chibi: Many thanks for the note; I was hoping you'd add to this since I figured you'd probably experimented with something similar. With the exception of the HD setup and the Macally FW/USB card we're congigured similarly: Power Macintosh 8500, Rev B 512 MB RAM, Interleaved ATI Radeon Mac Edition (R7200) Seagate 39 GB SCSI HD on the "high speed" SCSI bus IBM Ultrastar 3Gb SCSI HD on the "high speed" SCSI bus IBM Ultrastar 4.5Gb SCSI HD on the "high speed" SCSI bus - OS 10.2 boot drive with Unit Atten. disabled Apple 24x CD-ROM on the "high speed" SCSI bus Mac OS 9.1 Mac OS X 10.2 Will boot nicely using XPF 3a4 with throttle at 24 and verbose mode selected with NewerTech G3 500MHZ CPU installed (also have another identically configured 8500 with a NewerTech 400MHZ G3 install that boots well). As soon as I install the Sonnet 800MHz G4 and try via XPF 3a4 with verbose and throttle at 24, I don't even get any text. The thing sits there for about 3 minutes and the boots into 9.1 sometimes not even on the original 9.1 drive (but on another with 9.1 on it). I confess I had over time become disenchanted with the 800 MHZ G4 card. Even under 9.1 the sound and video on "my" 8500 was choppy. I think I "had" to replace it with the NewerTech to install Yellow Dog Linux and noticed that with the Sonnet card out the machine simply behaved better over all. Again, I appreciate your thoughts on this so I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers, Lonnie King |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 28, 2003 9:42 PM |
chibi_delenn |
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Since that title on this thread throws more acronyms at me than I can shake a stick at, let's start with the basics. Once I know your system specs, I can help (I hope) a little more. I too run an 8500, and attempted (boohiss) to get a G4/800 from Sonnet working in my mac and miserably failed. For comparison, I'll show you my system specs, so you can see which parts of your system are differentn from mine: My specs: Power Macintosh 8500, Rev B 608 MB RAM, Interleaved ATI Radeon Mac Edition (R7200) Sonnet Tempo Trio (Firmware 4.5) Seagate 40 GB IDE HD Western Digital 200 GB SE IDE HD w/ 8 MB Cache Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM, DVD-106S Yamaha 6416 External SCSI CD-R (Only device on SCSI chains) Mac OS 9.2.2 Mac OS X 10.2.8 (ugh - I'm gonna have to reinstall/revert to 10.2.6) Microshit USB Intellimouse Explorer Optical Pelican PSX -> USB Adapter with DualShock controller (For Games) Lexmark X5150 USB Printer/Scanner - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 28, 2003 9:21 PM |
ltking |
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Hi: Yes to the CUDA button. Why the need to zap PRAM? Did not do that (but know how to). Thanks. Lonnie |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 28, 2003 6:00 PM |
tempest |
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Did you press the Cuda switch and zap your PRAM? |
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RE: XPF, IBM Us w/UAD'd, vs 800MHz G4 |
September, 28, 2003 4:39 PM |
ltking |
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Sorry: Am uncertain how I managed to get two of the same posted! Lonnie |