Based on my experience with two PowerComputing machines (a PowerTower Pro 180 and PowerCenter Pro 180) and hundreds of reports in my Rate Your G3 Upgrade database as well as reader mail from thousands of PowerComputing owners over the years indicates that most CPU upgrades generally work well in these machines. I've ran literally every make of G3 upgrade possible in both my PowerComputing machines with no ill effects so far. However this reader report from a recent database entry indicates there are rare cases of failures of the logic board (motherboard) that have been known to happen after a CPU upgrade. My first reaction was that this was a random, coincidental failure not really related to the CPU upgrade, but after comments from Bottom Line (and another repair facility they say) I thought I'd post this info for the benefit of others and to see if we can obtain more information on the issue:
The following is a detailed reported from a PowerComputing owner that experienced a system failure immediately after a CPU upgrade, even though the CPU card tested fine in other Macs:
(For responses to this original post see the updates section below)
"
Mike
Here are the notes I received from Marc Bruner, the technician for Bottom Line. I agree with you that the 'cause' is probably not the G3 card itself, per se. The issue seems to be with a few Power Computing logic boards, though what it is precisely, no one seems to be able to answer.
My issue with the whole affair is that the cards (indeed, from most manufacturers) are advertised to be fully compatible, but in this case, seems to have not been. And I, too, wondered if there was some other problem as yet unidentified. Still--I went from a perfectly functional machine (which had been checked thouroughly beforehand using the latest version of Norton Utilities) to one which would not function at all. I am also extremely cautious when working inside a computer, always grounding myself, and so am hesitant to think that I did something to cause the problem.
Perhaps some of the tech people at Allmac.com could offer more insight, as they have seen this situation before, and work regularly on Power Computing machines.
Lastly, I appreciate your interest in this matter--not just because it cost me a lot of money, but also because if there are legitimate problems with upgrading Power Computing machines, consumers deserve to know there may be a greater than normal risk.
Thanks--
~Todd
The tech notes:
Here are my notes on the work I did on your system. In total I worked on the problem quite a bit over the last two days (several hours) but in the end I couldn't get the computer working.
* Marc on 7/27/99 at 13:24:57 I have finished testing the Railgun but I am still working on the customer's machine to see if I can get it running. After testing the Railgun in 3 computers, I have found nothing wrong with it and have operated off of it for long periods of time without errors. The card was tested at 250mhz, 2-1 ratio on its 512k cache. The card is good.
* Marc on 7/28/99 at 11:10:33 Unfortunately, I can't get the computer to work. Per the customer's letter I am emailing him the news.
Here is a detailed problem description:
-The computer will power on and get a boot chime with the customer's processor card installed, but before it gets a video signal it will stall and boot no further though everything is getting power. With any other processor card, the computer will do the same thing except it will not get even a boot chime.
And the troubleshooting steps I took:
-Upon first opening the customer's box, I found no physical damage to the processor slot or the logic board, though the inside of the computer was very dusty and looked like it hadn't been cleaned or opened in quite some time. Using an air compressor, I cleaned out most of the dust. I first tried a variety of processor cards that are known good and then proceeded to remove or disconnect everything from the logic board, taking the time after each removal to see if I could power up the machine. I finally got it down to just the board, the power supply with a known good memory chip installed. I also tried resetting the PRAM by removing the battery for 5 minutes and at the same time resetting the CUDA switch. Nothing worked. I then pulled the VRAM, put the PCI board back in and added a video card, still had the same problem. The final step I took was to replace the PRAM battery (even though the old one was working according to our voltmeter).
Conclusion:
The Railgun works in several of our tests machines but during installation somehow the computer was damaged to the point where it would not boot up. I contacted a computer repair shop that I know does power computing repair to see if they have been seeing computers come in with damaged logic board after G3 upgrades and they said that they do get a number of power computing machines that have failed when trying to be upgraded but no other brand of computer. To me and them (when pressed for more info) this means a couple of things, assuming that most of the users are competent at installing hardware into their systems: That SOME power computing machines are prone to failure when being upgraded and that it is probably because power computing was using "weak" logic boards to begin with. This company did say they could fix (or replace the logic board) the problem with this computer. Their name is Allmac and they can be contacted at http://www.allmac.com/ or 1-800-933-4962. They charge $299.00 for the repair. I am putting the computer back together until the customer decides what he would like to do (either ship it to him directly or ship it off to be repaired).
I cannot offer you compensation for the amount needed to fix your logic board, that's not a decision I make but is determined by company policy. If you have any questions concerning the repair report, you can contact me at 512-485-4602 ext. 615. If you have any questions concerning reimbursement, you need to contact our customer service department at 512-485-4602 or write service@bldistribution.com. And unfortunately, as the Railgun works in our tests machines, it is unlikely that you will receive compensation for any repair of the logic board from our customer service department.
-marc
Marc Andrew Bruner
Bottom Line Tech Support
"
Reader Feedback/Responses:
(1/6/2000) Thinner Ckt Card on CPU Upgrade Cards Note: Most CPU upgrade cards have a thinner
circuit board than the original OEM cards. (Newer Tech cards however are as thick as the
OEM boards from my examinations.) In general the thickness of the circuit card is often related to the number of layers (circuit layers) in the board. I've not seen this as a problem personally but this PowerBase owner reports on his experience.
"I'm the technology coordinator (Computer Person) for a large high
school. I decided to upgrade my father's PB200MT. Previous to the
upgrade it had been having some trouble starting up with a blank screen
or hanging on boot up. I purchased a PowerLogix 150 card for it. No
settings worked. When I replaced the PB card the machine fired up. I
tried this several times. I sent back the card and got another one with
the same results except the video gave out completely. I cleaned all
the boards with no luck. Then it would not start with the original 603
card. I found the machine would start with the riser card removed
though.
By putting lateral pressure on the PowerLogix card I was able to get the
machine to start. It turns out the PowerLogix card was just a bit
thinner than the original and one pin in the processor socket was
sticking in the card inserted position. By re-cleaning the connector
and working the pin back and forth the function of the socket was
restored. I replaced the riser and the system works.
I don't know if the upgrade card contributed to the riser card failure,
it was on the edge but the timing combined with other reports makes me a
bit suspicious
Thanks for the great source of information on upgrades. I'm running an
over clocked Vimage in my Starmax 3000 and believe in the value of older
machines.
Aloha,
Bryant Schultz
"
Power Supplies: This owner reports a bad power supply was the cause of a DOA. A year or so ago there were a lot of reports of P.S. problems, especially with some batches of machines (supplies):
"Dear Mike:
I bought a used PCC PowerWave 150 for a G3 upgrade, despite the notices I
read on your site about a smattering of failures in PCC machines following
upgrades. I put a Railgun card in it and everything was fine for a month.
Then, one morning, the machine started with the chime, immediately followed
be several reboots before anything much had loaded, and then it quit
completely -- no chime, nothing. Of course I jumped to the worst possible
conclusion -- that the G3 upgrade had smoked the motherboard, as several
PCC owners had reported.
I took a deep breath, let my anxiety settle a bit, then took the machine
apart. I opened up the power supply to look for bad connections, burned
parts, open fuse, etc. Everything I could check easily was pristine, which
looked bad for a simple outcome. I decided to try a new power supply
anyway, since it was the cheapest place to start. I bought an ATX-type
power supply** and installed it. The machine immediately booted up and is
running fine. I wonder what level of trouble shooting the folks who had
problems did vis-a-vis their power supplies, which I now find out are
notoriously failure-prone. The hobbyist-style computer parts store I got
the new supply from literally had piles of dead supplies laying around. It
appears that the sleeve-bearing fans in the supplies fail and then they go
down from heat-stress. I'm going to put a ball-bearing fan in mine next
time I open it up.
Just a thought that some folkes might want to follow up on before ordering
that new motherboard or sending the machine in for service.......
** The PowerWave and other PCC machines seem to use a standard ATX supply.
I had to buy a whole ATX case with supply included and pull the supply,
which was the only way I could get the supply locally -- but at $69 it was
still cheaper than getting a PowerWave supply from any on-line or
mail-order sources.
Dick Moore
"
At PC computer shows I've seen PC ATX Cases w/200W supplies for as low as $35 or so, but a quality ATX supply (the best) from PC Power & Cooling costs $99 for a 300W. A readers said PC Pwr says their supplies don't work in macs, but
not sure they realize the PowerCC machines seemed to use std. ATX supplies as far as I know.
[from the Saturday 8/28/99 front page news]
"Hi Mike,
Just a quick one on the Powercenter dead after upgrade bit.
I have seen a Mac (7300) that apparently died after upgrading, there was
no visible sign of damage.
The cause of the failure was the CPU had been swapped many times -
perhaps less than gently - and the solder joints for the CPU slot had
been damaged. We re-soldered the connections and all was well again.
Thanks again for the great site!
from sunny Sydney,
Greg Hutchings
"
Something to check. It would probably take a flashlight and maybe a magnifying glass
to be able to spot any broken/cracked solder joints on the connector/motherboard
pin contact area. Also check for bent pins in the CPU connector on the motherboard.
I had one case where a CPU Card did not have a beveled edge on it and therefore it
bent the pins in the connector (but that was so severe a problem the CPU Card would not seat).
More reports:
"About a year ago I upgrade my PowerCenter150 with an XLR8 266/512 [PowerForce design-Mike]
upgrade card. The machine ran for two days, and then died.
Before I performed the upgrade, I did every precautionary routine,
diagnostics, drivers updated etc. First symptoms were inability to boot
from internal drive, could still boot from cd-rom at this time, all
diagnostics said all drives were fine. Upon re-booting several times the
machine deteriorated to the point where even the floppy was useless.
Paid $90.00 to COMP USA to have tests run, they said it was a bad
internal drive. I knew that was wrong, but I hoped they knew what they
were doing. Had a new Quantum 9 GB drive installed by them.
They called and said 'Your machine is ready'. Picked up the machine.
First time I tried to copy my Back-up (Retrospect) from my external
drive to the new internal, the machine froze during restore. Upon
restart, guess what? No HD recognized! Comp USA didn't even run any
read/write tests after installing the new drive to see if it worked!
[I wonder if the drive was terminated properly - as freezing during
IO is one sign of this-Mike]
The machine booted and they proclaimed it fixed.
Returned it to them for further 'testing'. After having some of their
best "corporate techs" examine the machine. They returned it unchanged
and unresolved. They just said 'It must be something on the
motherboard.' No definite diagnosis. It sits in my closet, replaced it
with a UMAX S900 (Cost $1000.00), but I still don't know why it died.
The only clue was an article posted by a former PowerCC employee who
said that machines based around the 604 chip had repeated failures
during preliminary G3 testing due to some timing issue I believe. It
still bothers me that I had to replace a machine for some reason that
cannot be explained. I feel responsibility for my unnecessary expense
lies with one of the companies involved, but I expect never to know the
real answer.
I wish I knew why a pre upgrade perfectly functioning machine died and
how I can bring it back to usefulness. Re-installing the original CPU
card had no effect. If anyone has a clue or suggestion, or question,
please contact me at rfischer@nacs.net
Thank You
Rick Fischer"
This reminded me of a problem I had with my PowerCenter Pro back in February of this year.
It was originally my Mac sever and was running fine for about a week (G3 CPU card, 80MB RAM)
when I went down to my ISP to add more RAM. I took two known good 64MB Dimms, in a static bag,
observed all precautions,etc. but after installing the RAM (replacing two 16MB Dimms) the
system would not boot - no chime, no video, nothing. I did everything you can imagine
(removing the battery for 5 minutes, swapping the RAM out, reseating/underclocking the
CPU Card, etc.) to no avail. I suspected there had been some unrelated coincidental
failure (Power Computing power supplies were not always the best...but that's another
story). After sitting here for several months I decided to try it again - it booted
right up again. With the same RAM, CPU card, Disk, etc. Go figure.
More reader reports:
" Dear Mike,
Earlier this year I bought a barebones Power Curve Tower (Case, logicboard,
and floppy but no CPU, no RAM, no vRAM, no HD, no CDROM ) from MacResQ. I
bought a MaxPower 250/125 G3 card, placed 32 MB RAM, 2 MB vRAM,24X CD ROM,
Quantum Viking UW 4.5 gig SCSI HD on an Adaptec 2940 UW SCSI card. At the
first boot it worked fine as well as all my peripherals. At successive
restarts it started hanging as the extensions were loading or before the
Newer Tech G3 logo, or after the start chime just a blank video. But every
now and then it would successfully startup. But finally on the 3rd day there
was no electric power at all. I returned it to MacResQ and I was told that
the problem was fixed. I got it back and I reinstalled everything just like
before and the most it would do after the start chime was a blank screen. I
returned it to MacResQ and got a refund .
I then installed the MaxPower card to a Power Center Pro 180 and it is
working fine.
Lamberto
"
"Mike,
Recently had a client's PowerCenter Pro 210MT fritz out when upgrading
w/ CarrierZIF. Short story is; ended up being blown L2 cache module,
something goofy with the the ADB port (still not sure what, but it was
only partially functional), and slightly mismatched RAM. Won't bore
you/your readers with the hours, and days, of lurid details of messing
with, and diagnosing, the crippled machine, but the broad strokes were:
AllMac wanted $199 for a bare motherboard swap, and somewhat more if
they did it, plus obviously higher two way shipping, and longer down
time. New L2 cache about $180 [not needed with a G3 card-Mike], any way deal gets stretched, so
potential repair costs were getting higher than client desired.
Had local tech shop replace ADB port on stripped logic board for $30 (was in
conjunction w/ $300 repair to another machine from same client, so they
waived usual $45 diagnosis fee, since I had already isolated [one of]
the problem[s]) instead of swapping boards, and then played musical RAM
with a pair of client's PowerCC machines, so that both then had matching
pairs of 32MB DIMM's. Since they were put in service at different
times, each had one original PCC 32 megger, plus additional same
size/speed aftermarket. Didn't matter which matched RAM pair was used
in fritzed machine, only that they matched exactly, even though both
machines had run for over two years unmatched. [Powercenters don't interleave RAM-Mike]
Bagged G3 upgrade for
time being, and restored to PCP210MT w/ 1MB L2, 2X32MB matched RAM, 4MB
riser video, and have fingers crossed for continued motherboard
integrity and performance. Upgraded another machine with CarrierZIF
afterwards, which worked fine, but you won't get those details here :-)
Buzz McBragg
"
One other note - as I mentioned in my PowerCenter Pro review (compatibility info) last year - this model uses
3.3 Volt L2 cache - not 5 Volt as do most Macs. The manual mentioned a jumper on the
motherboard for 5V cache but I've never went looking for it. Just a tip to someone
that a) wants to use PCPro cache in another mac and b) thinks about putting a std 1MB cache in a PowerCenter Pro (most are 5V cache dimms).
I received one odd PowerCenter Pro/CarrierZIF mail that said that their bootup hang (gray screen) was solved by removing the ATI VR video card and putting it in the middle slot. I've never seen video cards in the 3 slot macs really care which slot they were in. Most gray screens are due to
the card being set for too high a speed (bus/cpu) or not being fully seated. Other tips are in the
Troubleshooting G3 Upgrades section of the FAQ.
This PowerCenter owner didn't report a failure, just some odd quirks with a G3 upgraded machine:
"Hello Mike,
I have been a reader of your page for well over a year, and have
found your reviews very useful when deciding on upgrades for my
PowerCenter 150. I've had a strange problem with my computer ever since
I upgraded it with a MaxPower G3 250/125Mhz card (CPU to cache ratio set
to 2.0) and an IX3DProRez Video card about 11 months ago. I am running
System 8.1 and have the latest software installed for both of these
cards. I'm contacting you because, although I haven't experienced
complete system failure as you describe, I'm wondering if I could be
experiencing a milder variation of this.
The first symptom is that if I start my computer up with extensions
off by holding down shift, when I choose restart from the menu the
computer powers on but there is no start up chime and the screen remains
grey. I have to use the forced restart key combination 2 or 3 times to
get the computer to start up. If I choose shut down, and then start up
normally there is no problem. I do not have the energy saver control
panel installed on my machine. All of my memory is 60ns purchased from
PCC or MacGurus. Newer Gauges says everything checks out. [I asked her
to make sure the CPU card was fully seated-Mike]
The second symptom is that if my computer is left running idle for
long enough that the monitor goes to sleep (NEC Multisync M500), I
cannot wake it up by taping a key on the keyboard. There is still power
to the CPU, the fans are running but nothing wakes it up. It will
restart after using the forced restart key combination 2 or 3 times.
When it restarts I always get the alert message that the computer was
not shut down properly. [I asked he to try turning the monitor off then
back on when this happens to see if the monitor is asleep or the
system and to try to repeat it with the onboard video-Mike]
I discovered the first problem immediately after installing the G3
upgrade. I didn't discover the second problem for many months because I
usually turn my machine off when I finish working. I only discovered it
when the computer was inadvertently left idle after a very long
download.
I have not seen this problem reported anywhere. Have you? I would
appreciate your insight. Otherwise, I am very happy with the performance
of my upgrades and am just avoiding both of these situations and the
problems that ensue. It does worry me though, and I am not terribly
confident about the future life expectancy of my motherboard.
Thank you for an excellent site. Your continued support of PCC
owners is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely, Colette O'Shaughnessy
"
There have been reports even of Apple G3s with upgrades not waking from
sleep. I also remind all PowerCurve/Catalyst based system owners to disable
the '7200 graphics' extension as it has caused problems with some G3 cards
in the past (see the CPU Cards page for a PF/PowerCurve article).
