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[This is a past news page, the current news page is at www.xlr8yourmac.com/]
Barney Buoy sent a huge list of Other Net News and Software Updates
I didn't post it tonight as I think there's been driver overdose today, but I've received a preliminary performance report from an HDT 4.0 user and even more in the debate over native drivers. More details in tomorrow's news.
= 7:15 PM Update Follows =
Prosoft's Drivers also Native PowerPC: Just when it looked like FWB might have the only ATA/USB/Firewire compatible native drivers, Prosoft responded their drivers are also
'100% powerpc native code'. The latest update to the Native PowerPC drivers page lists the complete reply from Prosoft's VP of Engineering, who also comments on features of their Radialogic Storage Master drivers.
= 2:00 PM Update Follows =
SoftRaid Disputes FWB Driver Claim: I've updated my native PowerPC drivers page with a copy of a mail from Mark James of SoftRaid to FWB stating SoftRaid's drivers have been native since v1.5 in 1996. Mark's reply is a very interesting read. [Note: FWB later revised their web page to remove the claim of the only native driver.]
= 12:30 PM Update Follows =
Intech Comments on Native PowerPC Code Disk Drivers: In reply to the earlier post today regarding HDT 4.0, Chris Karr of Intech sent his comments and technical references on native PowerPC code disk drivers.
= 10:00 AM Update Follows =
Radeon Previews Listing: ATI To Become a Power Player Again? ATI's Rage6/Next generation chip reported on previously at the register, was officially announced yesterday. If the specs are to be believed, this could put ATI back in the power user category on the PC and Mac. With up to 128MB of 200MHz DDR SDRAM (that's 400MHz timing), FSAA and claiming over 1 Gigatexel/sec with a single chip this card sounds
like just what ATI needs to shed their past image of lackluster 3D performance. And like their MAXX card, the Radeon could be offered in multi-chip versions. One article's specs show the 1.2 Gigatextel/sec specs are at 3 textels/pixel, with the chip having a fill rate of 400 MegaPixels/sec. The 3D feature set is very impressive with T&L and clipping engine on-chip. Here's some links to more info on the cards:
Despite some comments, I'd be surprised if the .18 micron device with 30 million transistors ran cool enough for a notebook (and looking at the heatsink/fan on the card view at hot hardware makes it obvious it's not suitable for notebooks). However future versions are said to be shrunk to .15 micron and then .13 micron. They also could roll these features into a new version of the Rage128 Mobility chip I assume. Firmer retail card model information is said to be available this summer.
ATI's Mac product manager wrote with some additional info:
"Hi Mike,
There is a bunch of information on our web site in a showcase that went live
last night. In general people can get to it right from the www.ati.com home
page.
Specifically here are some pages which may be of interest to you:
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/showcase/radeon/techspecs.html
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/showcase/radeon/press.html
We are still in the process of defining board configurations for Radeon so
there are no announcements of specific board products for either Mac or PC.
Having said that, there will be Mac retail products using this new
technology. From the inception of this chip, Radeon has been designed to
work on the Mac platform and it currently is up and running on Mac OS. In
fact, there was a demo of Radeon running Quake III on a G4 at the launch
event in New Orleans yesterday.
Regards,
Deanna"
ATI also has a page of reviewer comments (previews) of the Radeon.
Hard Disk Toolkit 4.0: Barney Buoy sent a heads-up that FWB has released HDT 4.0 which since 3.x has included RAID support. V4.0 supports SCSI, IDE and Firewire drives. See the important notes there to OS 8.6 and OS 9 users. I find it very interesting that they claim to have the "the industry's only Power MacTM native storage device driver" [Update: FWB later revised their web page to remove the claim of the only native driver..]
ADS Firewire Case + TrueX 72X CDROM Report: [UPDATE: I was later told by this reader he used proprietary drivers to allow the ADS case to work with the CDROM drive.] Most Firewire/IDE cases are sold for use with hard drives and work well with them. Despite having drivers for CDroms and CDRW, most readers reported no luck with getting CDRWs to work. (A previous post here noted the bridge chip needs to be reprogrammed for an ATAPI device.) This reader notes he used the ADS Firewire case with a Kenwood 72X IDE CDROM drive with good results however:
"
Mike,
Also, I bought a Kenwood TrueX 72 this weekend to play with. I
installed it in one of the ADS Tech cases (with the Oxford
Semiconductor bridge).
The results are very impressive. Transfers from a data CD average
between 9.8 and 10.5 megabytes per second. Audio Extraction was
equally impressive at 21x, i.e. I extracted a 42.5 minute CD to a
FireWire disk in just under 2 minutes using Astarte CD-Copy 2.03. The
same test on my DVD drive (nominally 40x CD speed) yielded a 14x
extraction rate.
Both tests were performed on a Beige G3, 8.6, 350MHz G4 ZIF upgrade,
with the Firewire card that ADS ships with their Pyro Drive Kit
bundle. The Firewire drivers were my own, running under the
distributed FW 2.3.3.
I have not yet tried to get a realistic rate for ripping and encoding
with SoundJam. It seems that extraction rates above those that you
can do anything useful, i.e., either burning to a CDR or encoding to
MP3 are pretty academic, in any case.
John Brisbin
[he later wrote in reply to my questions on the ADS bridge:]
The Oxford Semi bridge is similar to the LSI bridge used in most of
the other boxes and products. Both were originally supposed to
support ultraDMA, but hardware bugs keep them from doing it. The LSI
guys have managed a software workaround that allows reads using UDMA
(with the 55 firmware), but writes are still PIO. The Oxford guys
must wait for a silicon turn, later this year.
Both work well for CD/DVD type devices where the max speed is not
critical. The Oxford bridge is a bit more standards compliant, while
the LSI bridge is a bit faster on reads."
Velo CDRW in a Mac/Is the Velo a Plextor Drive? Two readers commented on the TDK Velo CDRW which claims to have the highest audio extraction rate in the PC world. The first comments are from Todd Eddie on his first tests in a Mac and another reader comments that the drive mechanism is said to be made by Plextor. For those that don't read the forums here's Todd's report:
"[BTW: Todd later said the drive is bootable]
I was at MicroCenter today and saw the VeloCD writer for $299. MicroCenter has a full return policy even on opened hardware, as long as it is returned in like new condidition so I bought it. Funny thing is, it ran up $249 at the counter. I installed it in my Yikes G4 and here are the results.
Mounting CD-ROM with Apple CD/DVD driver
Ejects most CD-ROMs immediatly most of the time. Eventually it will accept a disc and mount it, sometimes the first time, sometime after 6 tries. This is unfortunate, perhaps Intech drivers will fix this.
CD-R and CD-RW mounting
Mounts first time everytime. Strange.
CD-R
Will Burn audio and data cds with Toast 4.1b3. Toast 4.0 will not recognize the drive. 4.1 sees it as a TDK, but says the driver loaded may conflict and to disable it if writing problems occur. Well I never installed a driver, just plugged it in, and I burned an audio cd at 8x. Sweet!
CD-RW
It reads RW discs, but I heven't tried burning at RW yet, I hardly ever do, so this isn't an important feature to me
Audio Playback
Works with Apple CD-Player and the control strip player. Works fine, rewind and skip tracks. Auto plays on boot as well.
Audio Extraction
1.7mb/sec on the inside track, 3.8mb/sec about 2/3 out. Trying to extract past around 2/3 out on the disc resulted in "Mac OS errors" accourding to Toast Audio Extractor 1.1. Using CD-Copy would just lock the system after the eject of all discs. Any other programs out there to extrack audio from a cd?
Mixed results mainly. There is a firmware upgrade, I'm not sure if this will help or hinder. Intech drivers may also help. Hope this helps. I haven't decided to return it or live with the "eject happy" drive
Todd Eddie
"
I suggested he give Intech's trial/demo CD drivers a try and he wrote:
"Ok, here's the new scoop.
With Intech's drivers, the eject problem is gone! Actually, I should say, lack of drivers. When launching the Intech control panel, and click quick load a driver, it says no supported devices found. Perhaps they will have a driver for the TDK soon. Anyways, I disabled the apple cd/dvd extension when I "installed" intech's. So it seems I am running no cd driver at all?
Intech says it doesn't have one, and I can't play audio cds, but cds mount on the desktop, I can extract audio, and burn cds. Audio extraction works on all tracks now with Toast Audio Extrator. So I think the only thing needed now is the release of Toast 4.1 and an Intech driver for the drive to support audio playback, then it will be fully working. Looks like I may just keep this thing.
Also, its looks really cool! The bezel is a grayish white, and the panel on the cd-rom tray is translucent/white. When the bay opens, the tray is revealed, and its translucent blue! It would go perfectly with a B&W, and when the tray is not out, it matches perfectly with my graphite g4! Cudos TDK.
PS Perhaps I did something wrong when I installed intechs drivers, anyone else ever find a drive not supported by it?
"
"I have had it confirmed (on background) by engineering executives at
Plextor that the veloCD and the Plextor driver are, in fact the same.
The only differences are the plastic and the inquiry string (the rest
of the firmware that Plextor loads is the same).
"
Another PowerCenter Pro/1MB L3 Cache Benefit Report: Here's the 2nd PowerCenter Pro owner report that leaving the stock 1MB L2 cache dimm installed resulted in a boost of memory bandwith (and game performance).
"Just FYI:
After reading your reader's report on using the old [1MB PowerCenter Pro] L2 cache after a G3
upgrade as an L3 cache, I stuck my old motherboard cache back into my
Powercenter Pro 210 w/ XLR8 400 MHz G3. I haven't had any stability
problems and I also realized about a 2 MB per second increase in memory
access according to GaugePro.
Incidentally, I then went through my extensions again and noticed some new stuff being loaded under my "Unreal Tournament" configuration so I turned those off and have found
UT to run a little faster now (~2 FPS under HEAVY strain).
For the memory bandwidth limited PCPro G3/400 with V3-2000, that meant going from 7 to
9 FPS when in a major firefight, which feels like a tremendous
increase). Unfortunately I don't know if the speed increase was due to
turning off the extensions or re-installing the cache. The moral of the
story is to all those speed freaks who pulled the L2 automatically, they
might want to at least try it and see if they have crashing problems.
Jeremy Hansen"
PowerCenter Pro's have a very fast 1MB L2 cache (the fastest ever shipped with
a Mac) for their 60MHz bus speeds. I had problems running 60MHz with my PCPro's 1MB dimm installed, but your results may vary. For owners of other models, it's usually a must to remove the stock Apple 256K L2 cache dimm as many of them are not reliable with G3 upgrades, especially
at bus speeds of 50MHz or more. In tests using Newer Tech's first control panel with a motherboard cache disabling feature, Photoshop showed better performance in the 8500 with Powerlogix Rapidcache 1MB cache dimm disabled. I also noted lower disk performance with the S900's motherboard cache (512KB soldered in) enabled during my review of the G4/450.
One note to those thinking of using a PowerCenter Pro cache dimm in another Mac. Most PowerCenter Pros had 3.3 volt cache dimms, whereas most other Mac models have 5V cache as far as I know. The PowerCenter Pro has a jumper on the motherboard to select 5v or 3.3v cache types. (Noted in the manual.)
OWC Out of G3/450s: George Cole of Sponsor OWC wrote they are out of G3/450MHz chips and the chances for more look slim. He also mentioned the price of the G3/400 Motorola ZIFs are now $299.
Ratings Databases Updated: The searchable Rate Your CPU Upgrade and Mac Game/Video card Performance databases were updated with new entries.
Software Updates/Other Net News:
Hardware Releated News:
General News
The recent features page also lists articles posted (most recent first) as does the sidebar links here. The site topics pages (systems, cpu upgrades, etc. - see top and sidebar links on this page) also are places to check as well as the FAQ.
Monday's News Summary
- QT based Chat
- Rebel Macs at ILM
- MS Stock Takes a beating/Apple eyes FishPC
- Musikmesse Audio Show Report
- Airport Card Install Tip
- Cache Cooling Heatsink Project
- Tip for 64/6500 Owners w/PCI Video Cards (not a cure)
- G4 vs G3 CPU Details
- More Voodoo4/Voodoo 5 Previews
- ClubMac Firewire Case Performance (Beige G3/PowerBook Wallstreet)
- Comments on Wired4DVD Benefits
- Rate Your CPU Upgrade, Mac Game Reviews and Mac Game Framerates databases updated.
- Software Updates/Other Net News
Saturday's News Summary
- Beige G3 Upgrade Troubleshooting Tip
- Beige G3 owner upgrade disaster
- Voodoo5 vs GeForce DDR Tests
- TrueX SCSI CDROM Feedback
- More Wired4DVD/Surround Sound Speaker Reports
- MaxPowr PDS/OS 9.04 Feedback
- Printer Rated Speed vs Reality
- Games 4 Mac has started a campaign for Earth 2150.
- Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game Framerates databases updated.
- Software Updates/Other Net News
Friday's News Summary
- Comments on PC Excel vs Mac Excel performance
- G4 Lost Audio Tip
- Wanted: TDK VeloCD CDRW Feedback
- MaxPowr G3/G4 Software Update
- OWC's weekly specials (ends 4/27/2000)
- Maczone has limited time $300 instant rebate on Apple 15" LCD (DVI) display
- OWC G3/450 ZIF Specials w/Beige ROM and Without
- Promax TurboMax ATA/66 Card
- Wanted: Kenwood 52X SCSI CDROM Drive Feedback
- Reminder on CDROM Install Guides
- More Western Digital Firewire Card Feedback + FW Installer Tip
- Wired4DVD/Dolby 5.1 Surround Comments
- iMac iMaxPowr G3/466 Upgrade Giveaway
- Prosoft Announces New Radialogic Drive Utilities
- CDW Apple Display Sale (Still On)
- Bottom Line's weekly specials (ends 4/27/2000)
- Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game Framerates databases updated.
- Software Updates/Other Net News
For links to older news pages see the Archives page. The recent features page has a lists reviews/articles you may have missed.
For a guide to finding answers to questions - see my Site Guide page.
Considering a CPU Upgrade? Search the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. The current database has more than 3,300+ reports and growing.
Make a Difference: Be the Difference
Randy Mita, Brad Lau and I came up with a new slogan and theme for Mac advocacy - "Make a Difference: Be the Difference". We're asking that all Mac owners take advantage of every opportunity to let others know the Mac advantage. It's a grass-roots approach that will surely help. You might save someone from a lifetime of Windows in the bargain.
Thanks to my wife Kay, the ultimate computer widow
for putting up with all the time I spend with the site work, tests and email.= Top of Page =
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