UMax S900 604 CPU Cards in Apple Macs: Since I'd not tested a Umax 604e CPU card in an Apple Mac (a popular question lately) I asked Macgurus:

"M:
as long as you use UMAX CPU cards designed for the primary CPU slot, it's not a problem. We've used a bunch of pulls from various machines that work fine in most Apple Power Macs.

If folks are trying to use boards designed for the alternate slot, then they can run into a problem. That is a proprietary UMAX slot, and only boards built for it work there. We're noticing that there's a lot of UMAX hardware on the grey market right now...apparently someone is cleaning out a warehouse somewhere.

one observation we have is, most (if not all) UMAX machines have both logic board cache and soldered logic board memory, creating a relatively stringent electrical environment. If folks are running comparatively [low quality] memory or cache in an Apple Power Mac, UMAX boards seem more liable to choke than Apple boards. "

All S900's I think normally have 512K of soldered (non-removable) L2 cache on the motherboard (like the Apple 9500 that the mb is based on) as well as a unique 16MB of soldered on RAM. (There is a way to disable the L2 cache on 9500s by removing a surface mount resistor, not sure it works on the S900 however.)

One other issue is that depending on bus speeds of the CPU card and your Apple model, the stock L2 cache dimm may be too slow to run the faster bus speed 604 CPU card. Most 150MHz and 200MHz 604 cards have a 50MHz bus speed, 225's usually have a 45MHz bus as do most 180MHz 604 cards (exception is the PowerTower Pro 180 which has a 51MHz bus speed and the PowerCenter Pros which have 60Mhz bus speeds on their 180, 210 and 240MHz 604 CPU cards). Many Apple Mac stock L2 cache dimms may need to be removed to run faster bus speed cards. Note removing the L2 cache dimm on a 60x CPU mac costs about 30% in performance. G3 CPU cards have their own fast backside L2 cache on the card and don't need motherboard cache (in fact it's often a source of problems and better off removed before installing the G3 card in most cases).

More on Voodoo3/OrangePC CPU Cards: A reader responded to the conflict post earlier today regarding a OrangePC 660 card and Voodoo3 noting he's running a OrangePC 650 card with a Voodoo3 fine:

"I have a voodoo3 card and an OrangePC 650 card, which is virtually the same card as the 660 that was having problems, and they use the same software. I haven't had any conflicts between the two cards, and I'd recommend that the reader make sure that they are running at least the 3.4 release of the software. Version 3.4 fixed several incompatibilities, including with OS 9, which may be causing the problem rather than the cards themselves.
Nate Hamilton"

Mac Half-Life Preorders? The game news page has more notes on Outpost.com taking pre-orders for Mac Half-Life (cancelled some time back by Sierra) posted there earlier today as well as an update to Steel Panthers. (I just talked to Logicware to verify the Mac Half-Life project has not been resurrected - it hasn't.)

Sawtooth G4/450 at 500MHz: Michiro Isobe, author of the Sawtooth CPU Module Speed Settings page noted that his G4/450 system is running fine so far at 500MHz:

"500/250 operation is stable at default voltage and cooling conditions. When I was evaluating 450/300 operation, system freezes occurred during large file transmission by EtherTalk.

The MacBench 5 results are shown bellow. (System;Processor;FP;Graphic(1024x768x24bit)
G4/450/225;1387;1604;3797
G4/450/300;1440;1634;3837
G4/500/250;1536;1800;4101
-Michiro Isobe "

Note overclocking is NOT recommended and the delicate soldering required with the Sawtooth module will likely result in a DOA computer for most owners. Also note some time back there was an article that cited cache corruption at 500MHz in the current steppings of the G4 CPU as reasons why a 500MHz rated G4 was not currently available (granted mfr tests are run over the entire temperature range extremes, etc.).

Voodoo3 News/DVD Decoder/ROM Flashing Tips: My www.mac3dfx.com site has news on expected new drivers this week, a Wired4DVD PCI decoder card/Voodoo3 report and a tip for anyone having problems flashing their ROM in their Voodoo3.

Apple Software DVD Player v2.0 (non-Beta): A reader noted a new iMac DVD system came with a non-Beta DVD Player v2.0 (dated Nov 27, 1999). However he said it did not solve all the audio-sync issues seen with the beta:

"I e-mailed you the other day about the new DVD Player... I still had the sync issue even with these new drivers. One thing I did notice though is that the sound only gets unsynced when a scene changes. Each scene adds a little more time and it not usually noticeable until the scene changes 2 or 3 times. Matrix, got out of sync after every scene much worse than every other movie. Also Army of Darkness crashes completely on my system and is the only movie that doesn't work out of the dozen or so I have tried."

I'm wondering if the G4 systems would have better performance with the new version. Hopefully a public update to the player will be available soon. It's very disappointing that even a G4 CPU has very sluggish response with the current beta version of the player as well as audio sync issues (esp. when the video is stretched). Perhaps future versions will have support for Altivec to improve performance on G4 systems.

ATI 4.2 Drivers Update Feedback: This reader reports he's had sound problems after the driver update (and required OpenGL update) that were only solved by reverting to the previous version:

"The Open GL 1.1.2 drivers (have to install 1.1 or higher to get the new ATI Universal 4.2 Installer to work) seem to cause a sound problem with multimedia. I'm getting choppy sound in SoundJam and Quicktime etc... Tried running minimal extensions with the 1.1.2 Open GL drivers, but still had choppy sound. If I change back to the Open GL 1.0 drivers everything seems to work fine. I haven't found the OpenGL 1.1 drivers to test with the Universal installer, but if/when I do I will drop another note about my experience with them...

PowerMac 4400 Vimage G3 300mhz upgrade chip 64mb ram OS 8.6

I actually tried the Sound Catalyst install in both OS9 and OS8.6 to no avail (it's supposed to be for 7200 machines, but I thought what the heck and tried em anyway!!)... When playing an mp3 file with Quicktime 4.3 I get choppy sound - quicktime movies seem unaffected and play fine. Here is a weird twist: while playing that same mp3 file that sounds very choppy, if I click on any of the drop-down menus on the top apple menu bar (File, Edit, View, etc) the equalizer in QT stops moving and the sound is no longer choppy!! Same results with either Open GL 1.1 or 1.1.2. The only thing that seems to work is dropping down to the ATI Universal 4.1 update and Open GL 1.0.
JS"

As noted on my VR128 Feedback page, some past reports noted audio problems only after running the Video Player application.

VR128 Video Player Crashing Tip: This L2 cache slot G3 upgrade owner reported a workaround on his system for his ATI VR128 graphics card problems:

"Hello,
I have a PM 6500/275 with a Crescendo 400Mhz G3 upgrade running OS 8.5.1. I've had problems with my Xclaim VR 128 card, it crashes when I play games or have Xclaim Video Player running. I've tested a few things and it doesn't look like it's a problem relating to my G3 upgrade at all, since it still happens when the Crescendo extension isn't loaded...
But, in the ATI menu, if I just un-check "ATI Graphics Acceleration" it never freezes and there is no loss of performance or features in 3D games, just 2D acceleration is slow (scrolling, moving windows, etc,) but when I'm not playing games or in Xclaim Video Player I turn graphics acceleration back on again and it doesn't freeze (it hasn't so far).

I don't know if other people have this problem or if there's a fix to it, or why it happens, but this seems like an acceptable workaround for me.
Clint Noble"

I've added this report to my VR128 Feedback page. I've not seen any crashing problems at all with the VR128 card installed in my G4/450 sawtooth system. I can resize the video player window, etc. with no problems and games seem to run fine.

L2 Cache Slot G3 Upgrades and Busmastering PCI cards: In the last few months I have had many reports of compatibility issues with some brands of L2 cache G3 upgrades in Macs like 54/64/6500s with the Voodoo3 PCI graphics card (noted at my www.mac3dfx.com V3 compat. page) and now am getting similar reports on other PCI cards as well, including the Villagetronic MP850.

"Just a note for your site:
I recently upgraded my Performa 6400 to a G3 via the Sonnet Crescendo 300/1mb upgrade card. The speeds amazing, but there are problems!

Dont even think about getting an MP850 for your 6400/G3, it causes random conflicts (Conflict catcher keeps telling me that system components (appearance manager) are causing the problems, but when I hook up my old Rage Pro everything runs fine... Disabling the VT extensions also works, but then my computer slows down even more then without the card! I've never been happy with this thing... My machine now crashes even more then Windows95... It took me half an hour to start a UT game the other day due to crashing...
If any one knows how to fix this please send me an E-mail at darken@home.com"

I asked if he had updated the MP850 ROM/drivers to the latest versions (new ROM and drivers were released last month that improved performance).

So far only one of several dozen Sonnet L2 cache slot upgraded Mac owners reported running the Voodoo3 PCI card without problems. Most Newer Tech L2 cache slot upgrade owners reported running the Voodoo3 fine however except for a recent Powerbase owner report in my CPU review database. Searching my Rate Your CPU Upgrade database for your mac model may also help spot specific compatibility issues owners often note in their report comments. Here's a report from the most recent database updates that notes even a PCI Network card can have problems in some of these upgraded systems:

"Reviewer's Name: Richard Murray
Date Submitted: 12/3/99
Manufacturer: Newer Tech
Rated Speed (CPU/Cache MHz): 300/200
Cache Size: 1MB
Mac Type: 5400/120
Comments: Newer MAXpowr G3/L2 card works great as long as there are no cards in the PCI slot. Using it with an Asante 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI card caused lockups every time. Call to Asante had them tell me, "The problem is the G3 upgrade requires the only bus-mastering allowed on the system and our card requires bus-mastering too." After looking at this for two months Newer told me that it doesn't look like they'll have a solution soon, if ever, but will refund me the price of the card. "

[Update: Richard later replied he had the same problem with a Vimage G3 Upgrade and the Asante card, so it's not just a newer tech problem. I wonder if a Farallon NIC card would fare better.] I've asked Newer Tech for more details/comments on the issue but welcome other feedback from L2 cache slot G3 card owners running PCI cards like NICs or modern graphics cards.

Voodoo3/OrangePC 660 Feedback: [See the later report with tips from an Orange 650 card/Voodoo3 user.] A reader reports problems with this combo:

"Hello, I've been reading your great site for over a year now, and I finally decided to get a Voodoo3 3000 PCI and flash the ROM on it. I love the performance, but it has a side effect: When I try to launch my OrangePC 660, it crashes the machine with a type 10 error. I figure this has something to do with the video (the Voodoo card loops into the PC card, and from there to the monitor). It's not life-threatening (I'll just have to go back to onboard video before I want to use the PC card), just the inconvenience of shut-down and reboot to change the cables.

I'd like to know if anybody else has this problem, and if they've fixed it. I guess that's the price you pay for beta drivers!
Timothy Dimo "

I welcome other reports from any owners of this combo. At the price of some of the PC CPU cards for the Mac, you could buy a far better performing standalone PC however. Often these cards have less than stellar video capability (esp. 3D), limited ram/cache, etc..

Seagate Barracuda 28GB IDE HD Performance: [Note - Several Mac owners including a B&W G3 rev 1 owner reported problems getting this drive to work. The rev 1 B&W G3 owner reported two drives were tested and not recognized - but they worked fine in a rev 2 B&W G3 which has the improved IDE chip.] Although I've had some reports this drive may not work well in all Macs (Beige G3s or iMacs), Allan Landwer reports his upgraded PowerTower Pro with Turbomax IDE card flies with the IDE Barracuda 28GB drive:

"Mike:
Here are the ATTO Tools Benchmark Results for my Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA 28G drive hooked up to the TurboMAX card. The System Disk Cache was not used and the file size was set to 8 M. This was run under OS 8.6 @ 466/233/46.6 in PTP xlr8 [MAChCarrier G3/450 card-Mike]

Sustained Read 20.76 MB/sec
Sustained Write 26.91 MB/sec

Peak Read 22.76 MB/sec
Peak Write 56.97 MB/sec

Best, Allan "

Note that as listed in my review and originally noted by Promax - the Turbomax card is not generally suitable for Audio/Video capture/playback in Mac models prior to the Beige G3 due I suspect to the older PCI/memory controllers. It seems this note is not on Promax's latest Turbomax page however. Contact them if in doubt about Turbomax compatibility.

Although Prodirect is said to be advertising ATA/66 cards (readers noted Apple G3 system or later recommended as well), I've not heard of them shipping yet and don't have any information on the card. What baffled me about their ATA/66 ad was a note of _external_ IDE ports on one model (I've never seen an external IDE drive and cable limits in the IDE design make this a very dubious feature in my opinion). In the last week or two there have been threads on FirmTek developing Mac firmware for Promise Technologies popular PC ATA/66 controller cards that are eagerly awaited.

Custom UltraATA Cables: As noted on page 2 of my B&W G3 Rev 1 IDE Slave drive article the standard UltraATA (80 conductor) cable did not fit in the new G3 due to the side-by-side drive mounting (the master and slave drive connectors were too closely spaced). However I was able to use a standard IDE cable that shipped with my (now obsolete) 10GB Diamondmax drive retail kit. Readers have said some Radio Shack standard (non-UltraATA) cables also fit. If you must have a custom made ATA/66 cable - see my Hard Drives and Controllers topic area of the FAQ for a source of them. Often there may be a minimum order of 2 cables. [Note: Modern Ultra ATA/66 or later drives will often show data corruption with the rev 1 B&W G3's IDE chip - in master (single drive) or slave mode. Search the Drive Database for reports and the Systems page has a G3 macs section with a Rev 2 B&W G3 features page that shows how to check your IDE chip version on the B&W G3 motherboard)

B&W G3 Rev 1 Maxtor HD Sleep Problem: [Update: Disabling HD Sleep in the Energy Saver Control panel advanced settings solves this issue readers say.] An owner of a rev 1 B&W G3 notes his mixed Maxtor DiamondMax drive causes the system to not wake from sleep.

" Rev. 1 Blue and White G3, with internal 6 gig IDE hard drive. I slaved a Maxtor DiamondMax hard drive to the internal, and it works fine. The problem is that my computer will NOT wake from sleep while this drive is plugged in. Unplug the drive, and no problems. I also do not get the .SMI errors with this drive (never have). I've given some thought to using Hard Disk Toolkit instead (it isn't my boot drive, so it shouldn't be a big deal), except given that MacOS X is on the horizon, chances are FWB will be typically slow to upgrade their drivers to deal with it.
Any ideas?
Nik"

I'm not sure how common this is but driver changes are one common fix for other drive issues (data corruption, warm start problems, etc.) as noted in my FAQ (see the HD and Apple G3 topic areas there). I welcome any feedback from other owners that may have seen and solved this problem.

Sawtooth ATA/66 Drive Performance: A reader doubted that the Sawtooth really had an ATA/66 controller on the motherboard but based on the peak rates I've seen (50MB/sec with small file sizes that fit in the drive's cache) I'm sure it is, at least the primary IDE channel. I checked Apple's web site for G4 info and found that the Apple G4 FAQ (PDF file) states the interface is ATA/66. For a Graph of a sawtooth's 20GB WD Expert performance in ATTO Tools, see my FAQ's Apple G4 section question titled 'How fast is the Sawtooth's ATA/66 drive?. [Update - see the IDE articles page for the latest drive and controller tests and related articles.]

More OWC G3 Upgrade Specials:

"Z333IBM OWC Mercury G3/333 with 1024k 117mhz Cache IBM Copper 8X 2yr Warranty - $165

XGZM333 XLR8 Zif Carrier w/Z333IBM 333mhz 1mb Bundle - $309

In stock for immediate delivery. Free Ground and $5 Fed Ex Delivery available.
Best Regards,
Larry O'Connor
Other World Computing, Inc. "

(Note - prices usually drop over time on upgrades - so check the linked page for current pricing/availability.)

More Turbomax/OS 9 Reports: I've gotten mixed reports of Turbomax card and OS 9 compatibility. After several reports from owners that could not boot from hard drives with the card after updating to OS 9, most reports since then are from owners that are not having problems (like this one):

"...I have a Turbomax card installed on my 9600/300 with just a single regular Maxtor ATA/66 hard drive hooked up to it (not a RAID or anything like that) and I've been using OS 9 on it fine since October. I wasn't aware of any firmware updates in existence until seeing the note about it on your website, so I guess I have the version that shipped with the card as I never updated it. Hope this is useful.
WIng-Yip Chu"

As noted last week, if you are having problems a reader said Promax sent him a 1.7.1 beta firmware update, but it didn't solve his problems. (If you're not having problems I'd not update the card's firmware.)

VST ZIP Corrupted by Enabling Virtual Memory? A reader notes twice he's seen a ZIP disk corrupted by enabling Virtual Memory on his Powerbook G3 running OS 8.6 with a VST ZIP drive:

" My wife had a Zip disk in her PowerBook G3/266/64M RAM/VST Zip drive when she turned on Virtual Memory. After she restarted, the Zip was not ejected (as her preferences specified), but then when it tried to mount, it was reported as being unrecognizable. Her options were to Eject or Initialize.

Fortunately, I made a full recovery with Data Rescue 2.1.1 on my 7600/G3. Data Rescue is $39 shareware from Sylvain Demongeot available at: http://www.wildbits.com/rescue/

I was wondering if you had ever heard of this kind of thing and I missed finding it, or if this is just our PowerBook misbehaving.

I had a Zip disk do the same thing a couple months ago in the same PowerBook when we first got it, but don't remember the details of the incident. (The disk didn't have anything important on it, so I just reinitialized it.)

She is running Mac OS 8.6 and did not select the Zip to be the VM disk as far as I know. I'll see if I can reproduce the problem this weekend. "

I didn't have a spare ZIP disk to test this here on my Powerbook.

Proformance 5.7 Drivers Feedback:

"Mike,
Just tried on the DEMO1 timedemo on my s900/180MHz 604e/160MB/normal extension set/no VM. (My previous problems turned out to be a corrupted .cfg file.)

At the highest quality setting and 1024x768 I get 7.5FPS At the fastest setting (no tweaks to it, whatever Quake means with "Fastest") I get 9.9."

That doesn't sound very good but may be due to the slow CPU (180MHz 604e). I welcome other Proformance 3 owner feedback with the new drivers. Info on how to test framerates in games is listed in my FAQ's game topic area. Searching the Game/Video card performance database will allow you to compare other cards/systems performance.

ATI Driver Update/RagePro Feedback: Byron Franek noted his Beige G3's RagePro onboard video got a huge boost (1100 to 2168) from the latest ATI 4.2 driver update, now scoring higher in MacBench's Graphics tests (2D) than his Voodoo3 (2168 vs 2035). Of course the RagePro is left far in the dust in 3D games compared to the Voodoo3 (about 3 times slower). For Macbench comparisons with other cards see my Video card page list of reviews or my Mac 3D card Roundup.

Reader Review Databases Updated: The site's CPU Review, Game Review, and Game/Video Card Framerates databases were updated last night with more reader reports.

Another OS 9/B&W G3 rev 1 Gray Screen Fix: Although as noted here most rev 1 B&W G3 owners with IDE slave drives said that reverting to the previous 8.6 drive setup drivers solved their gray screen at boot problem after an OS 9 update, this reader sent what he says was the only fix for his system:

" DRAGGING MACOS ROM FILE (V. 1.6) TO OS9 SYSTEM FOLDER FIXES GREY SCREEN HANG!!!!

Unbelievable. Maybe you, your readers, or Apple can figure out how I made this work:

I have a B&W G3 rev. 1, 350mhz, Master/Slave IDE drives, Adaptec 2930 (w/external Jaz, Zip, Yamaha 6416 CDRW), VooDoo3 2000 (Dual monitor setup with Rage128). I have macOS rom v. 1.6, and BootRom v. 1.1f4. I was running 8.6 perfectly with no crashes.

I could not boot OS9 from CD, nor from an installed OS 9 volume. I had 'grey screen hang," before the cursor even appeared.

I tried everything. Clean installs, dirty installs, removing the scsi card, removing USB, Pram resets, HD Speedtools, FWB drivers, Drive Setup of all versions, etc.

Late last night, just for the hell of it, I initialized my master IDE. Then I successfully installed 8.5.1, then updated it to 8.6. All was well. Then I installed OS9 on top of that. Same symptoms, no boot, no way.

After rebooting off my 8.51 CD, just for the hell of it, I...
..DRAGGED MY 8.6 MACOS ROM FILE (v. 1.6) TO MY 9.0 SYSTEM FOLDER!!!! OS9 WORKS PERFECTLY NOW!!!!!

This has been a problem for months, I have spoken with Apple many times and have scoured the web for help, but nothing worked. THIS WORKS PERFECTLY!

Why does the MACOS rom file from 8.6 work in 9.0? Have I discovered an obscure bug?...
Rod Bonios "

I didn't see any update problems here (no gray screens) on my rev 1 B&W G3 but I had removed the IDE slave drive before the upgrade. When I asked he said he was using the latest v1.1 ROM update.

Multi-Language TILs: A reader sends a note that Apple has TILs available in non-English language versions (very long email was trimmed for posting here):

"Hi Guys,
... I am the webmaster of Gete.Net, http://www.gete.net, and creator of TIL FR, a translation in French of best TIL articles. This action proved to be quite successful till today (about 1300 French-speaking Mac users registered on TIL FR mailing list since January 1999), and I am delighted to announce today that I will stop it. [since] There is a multi-language version of the TIL available from Apple.

...about 500 articles (and probably much more) have been translated by Apple and are available in many different languages like French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and probably others (I did not checked exactly which the other languages were, however, they seem to be Nordic ones, Swedish or another). The URL is :
http://til.info.apple.com/tilww.nsf

... TIL WW is still young, it has to improve, indeed....
Best regards,
GG"

Other Net News:

• Bizarre Hack of the Week: Performa 6290 as MP3 player for Geo Metro

For a blast from the past see what was on the front page news here one year ago.

Weekend's News Summary

• Yikes G4 400 vs Sawtooth G4 350
• Yikes G4 Pros/Cons
• Sawtooth G4 Pros/Cons
• 3Dfx cards and DVD
• Unreal Tournament Review

Friday's News Summary

• 20th Anniv. Mac Cooling Mods
• Phase 5 G4 Upgrades
• More on Price Protection
• Nubus Mac G4 Upgrades
• Older Mac Upgrade Advice
• Proformance 3 GA 5.7 Driver and ROM update
• G3 Upgrades & Onboard Video
• Wanted: Rage128 PRO Results
• ORB Drive Benchmarks Update
• PL updates Spec. Processing/PRAM Zapping article
• OWC Sonnet Nubus G3/233 upgrades for $199
• Reader Mailbag Upgrade Questions:
  
   -Can I use an Apple 604e 250/300/350MHz CPU Card in my clone?
   -I installed a Voodoo3 card and flashed it but my Beige G3 doesn't work.
   -Is the Voodoo3 3000 worth the extra cost over the Voodoo3 2000?
   -Is there a CPU Upgrade for the 7200?
   -Is there a CPU Upgrade for my older Mac?
   -What should be my first upgrade?
   -I'm having IDE drive problems with a B&W G3
   -My B&W G3 has the 1.1 Firmware update - can I upgrade to a G4 CPU?
• 140GB CDROM
• Other Net News

Thursday's News Summary

• ATI Universal Installer 4.2 Notes
• $99 Rage128 PRO AGP Kits
• New Apple 15" Digital LCD
• Price Protection comments
• IDE Raid Feedback page has Turbomax/Remus/Softraid/FWB Raid reports
• Links to SCSI RAID reviews and articles
• TurboMax/OS 9 Compatibility
• iBook 6.4GB HD Upgrades
• OpenGL - Don't Panic
• Adobe Altivec Extensions Due Soon?
• ATI's Reply on VR128 Resource Manager Extension
• No More Yikes - All New G4s are Sawtooth AGP
• Faster Rage128 *Pro* AGP Standard in new G4s
• Other Net News

Wednesday's News Summary

• Reader Request: Turbomax/Softraid Feedback
• Quesa Update (Rave under Opengl/OS X possible)
• Sawtooth CPU Module Speed Settings Info
• ZIF Socketed CPU Cards Feature Comparison
• More Kenwood 72X IDE CDROM reports
• More Airport Networking Feedback
• MP Libraries - Not Just for Dual CPUs
• Tennmax Coolers price reduction
• Lightwave 3D Benchmarks site
• Homeworld Petition
• OS X Client DP2 - Motherboard Support List
• Comments on OS X and software support
• OWC CPU upgrades sale
• Sonnet lowers prices
• iMac Game Wizard/3Dfx Drivers Tips updated at www.mac3dfx.com

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? Check the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. Readers post new entries daily and the database is updated several times a week. I urge any owners that have had problems to report this via the Survey Form. Always give the most weight to recent owner reports (dated in the listing) as in many cases problems are later found to be due to settings errors, slow L2 cache, etc.

-Freq Asked Questions