What systems will the new RADEON(tm) MAC EDITION work in?

The RADEON(tm) MAC EDITION AGP version is designed to fit into any AGP based Mac. RADEON(tm) MAC EDITION PCI is designed for PCI-based computers running Mac OS even those limited to 7" cards such as the Performa systems or the Power Macintosh 6400 or 6500."

There was a initial problem with 603e based Macs with the Rage128 Orion (noted in my review last year of that card that was later fixed), so this time around there should (hopefully) be no issues. It's good to see that older Macs will be officially supported by the Radeon. I'm hoping the PCI version does appear late in September, shortly after the AGP retail version is released. The Radeon retail card also features a video output port (for TV use).

" Hi Mike,
It is our pleasure for someone else to re-iterate the ACARD's market leadership in a very strange manner, after all only the true market leader deserve such kind of minifying glass examination. We are more than happy to provide the right answer to many many thousands ACARD's customer who have already been use 6060M for their important daily routine job. The ACARD Technology would like to share with our customer that the way we design our firmware is to minimize system resource requirement to the maximum system throughput performance. Up to this moment, we have never received any customer's complain because of the bigger than 8K "issue", because it is simply not a issue, to most of the Mac users, they couldn't care less to understand what the "PrepareMemoryForIO" is. Rather they will ask "will the 6260M work on my 7xxx, 8xxx, 9xxx, SuperMac, G3 and G4?". After thousands hours testing on all these machines, which all work regardless of the system resource big or small, what is the true meaning for "PrepareMemoryForIO" ?

We must pay a special thanks to Mr. George Rath to re-challenge the leadership of storage of ACARD in the Mac world and to give us the chance to talk about the correct, undistorted way to handle the file IO chuck topic. All PCI adapter designer must have read the design bible by Apple 'Designing the PCI cards and drivers for PowerMacintosh', and follow the good designer practice to eliminate the ill behavior design practice regardless it is hardware, firmware or software, simply because the PCI adapter have to talk to different platform of memory, cpu, bus rate, OS version and many different application. So follow what Apple says is the most secure way. If we open the Chap. 9 page 228 of 'Designing the PCI cards and drivers for PowerMacintosh', it describes very clearly how a large file IO can be handled. It says "One possibility is to make a final 'CheckpointIO' call to verify the preparation and return an error to the client. Another possibility is to perform the transfer as a series of partial transfers.". There are two ways to response to System for large IO transfer. This is clearly stated in this design guide, both can be a good one, not one is better than the other. If the IO request is rejected by the IO driver, the original IO requester, either an application or the Finder has the responsibility to divide the large IO chuck to several smaller IO chucks and then re-send them to driver again to complete the IO transfer. Only if the applications operates in this way, they can have the maximum compatibility with the MacOS (as I know, there's none of any applications nor Finder will issue a such big chuck to do the IO transfer because that consumes too much valuable physical page frame to do. And this will drop the system performance extremely due to both the IO transfer task and system swap task have to scramble the page frame).

The driver of ACARD's IDE adapter is originally designed to operate in performance-optimized mode to do the IO transfer. Because the higher specs means driver may need more resource which is limit the preparation of physical page frames to make the buffer resident, mapping table size too small and not enough OS pool space. This is more evident in a resource critical system (small main memory).

We are very proud that our adapters has been widely use all over the world and we care for all our users in providing continuous enhancement to our firmware to fit all system regardless big or small. And we always make our adapter bootable even on the RAID products. To all our 6260M users, we welcome you to come to our web site http://www.acard.com/download/bios.htm for the most updated information and firmware, and wish you happy using ACARD technology state of art products.

Best Regards,
Richard Chern
ACARD Technology "

I've asked Richard what changes are in today's 3.08 firmware update.

The other common question is if the Cube will have the Radeon as BTO. In my opinion that will depend on whether the OEM Radeon has a fan on the heatsink. (As shown in my news page during Macworld, the retail card shown at MWNY had a fan on the heatsink.) Although the Radeon has a higher clock speed (core and RAM) than the Rage128 Pro, it may be running at a lower voltage (die shrink from Rage128 Pro perhaps, but I'm not sure on this). Other possible ways to reduce heat would be lower clock speeds (at the cost of some performance).

Although the Cube is not an upgrader's machine, I like the design a lot as far saving desk space. I'm not really thrilled about the new ADC connector, although it does reduce cable clutter. For owners of DVI displays, an adapter would be nice to allow them to use the new Macs with their existing displays (especially important for those that own a DVI version of the Cinema display which was a significant investment in $$$$). There are reports that Apple is working on a DVI/ADC adapter.

The other questions I have regarding the OEM/BTO Radeon cards is whether they will be 16MB or 32MB and if they will use DDR or standard SDRAM for video RAM. The Mac retail Radeon cards will use DDR, although they do offer a retail PC 32MB SDRAM version (in addition to 32MB and 64MB DDR PC versions) .

" The CPU rating should be a 10 when OSX ships with even better multiprocessing support.

Yes the machine is very fast, I was using a iMac 500 recently, and it felt slower even in the finder.

Most interesting so far is the hard drive, a Quantum LM30, with the following speeds in the ATTO SCSI benchmark (peak - sustained) are:

Read 60MB/s - 26MB/s
Write 41MB/s - 26MB/s

I think that most users will find that decent performance for a stock Apple drive, and we all know that has long been a weak point. Anyone out there benchmark their Dual G4/500 HD's?

Ok back to the CPU, Guage Pro 1.1b2 shows the wrong CPU temp (50 Degrees F), but a CPU version of 2.9.

I also want to comment on the new 17" Apple Studio Display, which I am finding so much better than I expected. On the front left is what appears to be a brightness buton, but it brings up the Monitors control panel instead (that has no brightness control actually). Instead, included in the control panel are an auto calibration feature, that flashes various patters on screen, but I do not know how it is sensing the results. After the self calibration, you can then do a custom setting for the ambient light in the room, using a grey plastic sucker-shaped device placed on the screen. A selection of color swatches are displayed on screen, and you choose the one that matches what you see on the grey sucker-thing. Well, it sounds like more work than it is, but the results are very good. To finish, the screen is indeed ruler-flat, which really helps to cut the glare.

One last thing about the display, even the stand is better, it is now high enough that most people will not need to pile telephone books to lift up to a useful height.

I am also going to be using a Nikon LS-30 Slide scanner, and so far it works well. In fact, I have not discovered any flaws or incompatible software with the Dual G4's yet, I will write back again in a week.
David L."

As I noted last week, although the database is primarily for CPU Upgrade reports, I welcome new G4/MP, iMac and Cube system owners to post an entry on how their like their systems, how they perform, etc.

" Mike -
V5 drivers only work on the Voodoo3 if the B12 ROM is used. I was using the B11 ROM originally and although the extension loaded no 2D/3D acceleration worked. When I updated to the B12 ROM - everything worked fine.
Dan Hines "

" I just wanted to let everyone know that the v5 1.01 drivers did not work well for me on my Voodoo3 3000 PCI on my 8500 G3/333 running MAC OS 8.6 [He was using B11 ROM/drivers - see updated report below-Mike]

The control panel settings always return to "disabled" status when I reopen it, and Dues Ex demo won't run, neither will Descent in Glide mode. Opengl crawls along and the whole system seems bogged down while running any Opengl app.
W. H. Clark

[He later wrote after reading the B12 ROM note above-Mike]

Mike,
After reading Dan Hines' report on your site, I flashed my Voodoo3 3000 with the B12 ROM (was running B11 ROM). Now everything seems to be working well. Dues Ex demo ran fine (if just a little darker) and Descent ran fine. Opengl previews in Inspire 3D (Lightwave jr.) and sfree views in Bryce also worked without a hitch. The control panel works fine (except for 3D options greyed-out as other report).
W. H. Clark "

" Mike, I am using the the 1.01 V5 drivers with my V3 2K. The only games I have tested are Q3 Demo, UT Demo, Myth 2 with all the current updates. All played fine with some visual distortion at the bottom of the screen for UT Demo ONLY, every other game I tested is fine. Timedemo 1 gives me 30FPS, same as beta drivers.

QuickTime seems to be the same or I can't tell. Do you have a test I can try?

The 3dfx MacTools control panel recognizes the V3 2K card but 3D tab is greyed out.

SuperMac S900
208 MB RAM interleaved
Powerlogix ZForce with 366MHZ G3 Formac
ZIF OC to 440 MHZ/55MHZ system bus
Quantum Fireball Plus LM connected to TurboMax ATA 33 card

macwarrior"

The 3dfx section of the forums here have many other reader's comments on using the V5 drivers with a Voodoo3 card.

" Mike, following up on Jarod Wilson's report (see this past article from Jarod here-Mike) on the Acard ATA/66 in a 6500, I have the same problem in a beige desktop G3 - the machine won't boot when anything is connected to IDE channel 1, but channel 2 works fine.

Also, the new BIOS (3.07b) fixed a strange and annoying problem that I was having with MOTU's Digital Performer 2.7. I have two ATA (Maxtor) drives connected to the Acard, and one IBM ATA drive connected to the internal IDE channel on the motherboard. I recently moved all of my files from the IBM drive to one of the Maxtor's, in order to make room to install Linux (SuSE Linux won't recognize the Acard at all). After doing so, all of my programs ran fine, with the exception of Digital Performer - it would get the message "the application can't be run because Digital Performer can't be found". I tried rebuilding the desktop, zapping pram, the extension dance, reinstalling, etc, but nothing worked. To my amazement, the new Acard BIOS (3.07B) fixed the problem!

One other note - I also experienced disk errors when copying files to the drives attached to the Acard. This was due to the use of a 24" ATA/66 cable that I got from Ultracable. Installing an 18" cable was difficult (it just barely makes it from the first PCI slot to the 2 closest drive bays), but solved that problem.
Jim Weisbin"

Note: 18" is the max. spec length for ATA/66 cables according to the notes on this Ultracable page. If you've seen any errors with an Acard ATA/66 controller (including Turbomax ATA/66 and Sonnet Tempo brands), please contact me with specifics.

• Newer Tech Carrier card w/ ZIF in PowerTower Pro 250 (rated 10)
• OEM G3/400 ZIF in Beige G3 Server (rated 9)
• Powerlogix G3/250 in PowerCenter 132 (rated 9)
• Powerlogix G3/350 in 9500/150 (rated 6)
  (Noted failure after running at 450Mhz)
• Powerlogix G3/400 in PowerCenter Pro 180 (rated 9)
• Powerlogix G3/400 in 8500/180 (rated 8)
• Sonnet G3/400 in UMax S900 (rated 10)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF in 7300 (rated 10)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF in 8600/200 (rated 5)
• Blue and White G3/350 OC report
• Detailed owner report on new Dual G4/450 system

You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database of over 4200 entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy.

CDRW Drives:

• HP 8210i (4x/4x/24x) in ADS Pyro Case
• Smart & Friendly TurboWriter Ext 6x4x24
  
  Hard Drives:
  
• IBM IDE 75GXP 30GB in Beige G3
• IBM IDE 30GB in G4/PCI (Yikes)
• Maxtor IDE 60GB in Dual G4 MP (slave to 40GB IBM drive)
• Maxtor IDE 60GB in Umax S900 using Sonnet Tempo PCI IDE card
• Maxtor IDE 30GB in Beige G3
  (includes story on master/slave issues )
• Maxtor IDE 30GB in Beige G3
• Transintl external 60GB Firewire drive
  (problems noted)
• Maxtor IDE 40GB in iMac
  (booting problems noted)
• Maxtor IDE 40GB in iMac
  (notes it worked fine in OS 9, problems after OS 9.04 update)

If you've added a IDE, SCSI, Firewire or USB hard drive, CDRW, tape drive, etc. make sure you add a report to the database.

Software Updates:
• Tri-BACKUP 2.2
• PhotoPage
• Terminus Retail Patch for version 1.1 to version 1.7:
• MacLink Plus 12
• Pagespinner 3.0b4 (site may be down)
• Eudora 5.0b14

Apple TILs:
• PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze Keyboard): Upgrading Memory
• Macintosh Computers: ROM Version Numbers
• AirPort Wireless Communications: FAQ - Part 2 of 3
• At Ease: Unlocking iMac Hard Disk
• PowerBook and iBook: Trackpad Does Not Respond
• PowerBook and iBook: Troubleshooting Won't Run From AC Power
• Mac OS 8.6: USB Printer Compatibility
• iBook: What To Do When It Won't Run on Battery
• PowerBook and iBook: Troubleshooting Stuck or Non-responsive Keys
• Disk First Aid: Purpose
• PowerBook 200 & 500 Series: PPC Upgrade Issues
• iMac: Restarts Instead of Shutting Down
• Disk First Aid: Frequently Asked Questions (1 of 2)
• At Ease: Flashing "?" and Drive Not Mounting on Workstation
• Mac OS: Rebuilding Desktop File and Icon Recovery
• Power Macintosh: Composite DIMMs Not Recommended
• Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White): Speech Recognition Now Supported
• Hard Disk Driver: Identifying It And Ensuring Compatibility
• Macintosh: Monitor and Video Chart (2 of 4)
• Power-On Self-Test Beep Definition - Part 1
• Power On Self-Test Beep Definition - Part 2
• Power Mac G4 Cube: Mold Lines in Enclosure Plastics are Normal
• iMac: How To Use America Online To Register With Apple
• NetBoot, Macintosh Manager: Software Compatibility
• Mac OS Extended Format: Volume and File Limits
• Mac OS 9: Missing or Moved Items After Installation
• Mac OS 9: PowerPrint USB Compatibility
• QuickTime 4: Adobe Premiere DV Plug-in Compatibility Issue
• FireWire: Transferring Still Images From Camera To Computer
• Microsoft Internet Explorer: Freeze At Launch
• Microsoft Internet Explorer: Configuring For MacBinary
• Mac OS: Alternating Flashing ? and Icon Inside Folder at Startup Time
• Mac OS: Shutdown Warning Appears At Every Startup
• Apple LaserWriter Drivers: Windows 98 Compatibility
• AirPort 1.1: Base Station Extras Folder Contents
• CloseView: Can it Do Screen Inversion Only?
• PowerBook (FireWire): Ensuring Battery Level Indicator Accuracy
• Mac OS 9: Incorrect Version for CD Update 2.0
• AirPort Card: "Required AirPort Software Not Found" Error
• Macintosh: No Internet After Installing KeySpan USB to Serial Adapter
• Mac OS 9: Freezes On Startup After Installing Software For USB Device
• Memory Configurations: Portable, PowerBook, iBook
• PowerBook, iBook: Voice Mail/Speakerphone Compatibility

Gaming:
• Interview: Blizzard's Tony Tribelli (IMG)
• Blizzard offers up myriad Diablo II goodies (maccentral)

Mac News:
• Rejuvenated Apple set to take a bigger bite (SMH)
• Hands-On Report--My G4 Cube Has Landed (Part II)! (macsonly)
• CD-RW drives preferable to DVDs? (maccentral)
• Aladdin Systems Holdings Reports Second-Quarter and Six-Month Results (Yahoo)
• Anderson confident on 35 percent revenue growth for Apple (maccentral)
• Dragoon rack-mounts Macs to stream QuickTime (maccentral)
• Technology workers kept happy by bosses (SMH)
• DataViz announces MacLink Plus Deluxe 12 (maccentral)
• Eudora 5.0b14 fixes crash bug (maccentral)
• iREZ fixes menu problems with Reel-Eyes update (maccentral)
• EarthLink: we're working closely with Apple on Mac OS X (maccentral)

Rumors/Speculation:
• Seybold pred(il)ictions (wincent)

Other Net News:
• Be Incorporated Announces Support for Compaq Computer Internet Appliances (yahoo)
• EdgeMatrix Adds Color to WAP Browser (PCworld)
• IBM lays plans for optical transport (EETimes)
• RIAA vs Napster trial to commence Friday (the register)
• Linux backers exclude Corel (National Post)
• Intel's Itanium Still Has A Way to Go (techweb)
• MP3 fans buy more CDs - report (macworld UK)
• Corel in quandary, as Cowpland quits (macworld UK)