The 3D Game News page has been updated with discussions on Falcon4 - why the Voodoo2 looks better than the Rage128, Unreal 2.24 beta comments and much more. There's also a tip there on getting Quake PC addon level packs installed (with a link to the freeware 'Beyond Belief' pack). BTW - I'm set to get a Rage128 Orion card to review in within the next two weeks. I hear the Orions will be shipping in volume then.
Wanted: Mac Rage128 Tweaker: Lucian Fong writes about something I've been wanting since I heard the Rage128 clock speed was software tweakable. There is no Mac version of a Rage tweaker but Lucian wonders if the PC version would work under VPC:
"Hey Mike,
I was surfing the game sites and I came across a link to a Rage 128 overclocking utility for PCs. I haven't had much experience with
Virtual PC, but if you could get it to recognize the Rage 128 card on a
B&W G3, could you use the PC overclocking utility? I think that would be
neat. Just a thought.
Lucian Fong"
Since VPC can't really 'see' the Rage128 (it emulates an S3 video chip based card) I don't think this would work - but perhaps some skilled Mac programmer could write a Rage128 tweaker in native PowerPC code?
ORB Drive Freezing Tip: Allan Levy sent a tip for the IDE ORB owner that reported system freezes
when copying large amounts of files in Friday's News:
"
The user who had the orb freeze, try several things, set the cache down to 1024, and turn on/off virtual. One combo may work. I had similar problems with MO drives in 8.5.
"
I have an internal IDE version here and will be testing it this week.
B&W G3/ZIP 250 Feedback: This reader reports that his new B&W G3 came with an extra Bezel for a ZIP drive (?):
"Mike,
I just got my new G3 400 DVD last Thursday from Outpost. Bought two 128
chips from TransIntl - they work great! I bought a Zip 250 kit from
Club-Mac. It was just a PC 250 zip (said nothing on the box about Mac) with
a bezel from ProLine. However, I was surprised that my new G3 came with a
bezel, even though it had no zip (I now have an extra bezel). The zip works
great, but does read the 100 megabyte zip disks slowly. My Umax 1220U is
working great too. Also, bought a Best Data USB 56k modem. Happy with it
too. Playing games I can tell that it is faster than my old US Robotics 56k
modem.
I bought a griffin gport, so I could use my old laser printer. I haven't
been able to get it to work. Griffin is going to send me a new one next
week.
I am enjoying the speed of the new G3, and my parents are enjoying my old
PowerTower. ;-) Keep up the great work on the site (but take a break once in a while!).
Take care,
Jeff Caldwell"
I commented on the slow writing to 100MB ZIP disks as one reason I did not put a 250MB ZIP in my B&W. The other reason was that with 6 other 100MB ZIP drives here, I wonder if the thin tracks the 250MB head writes would be 100% readable/reliable in older ZIP drives.
IBM SCSI Drive Jumper Settings: A reader replies to a reader's IBM SCSI drive boot problem posted in the weekend news:
"When used in Macs, many IBM SCSI drives require a jumper over the pins to 'Disable Unit Attention' (on the Ultrastar 9LP this is pins 29 & 30).
The only pins that should be jumpered are:
pins to set SCSI ID
pins 11 & 12 to turn on 'Auto Start'
pins 13 & 14 to 'Enable Active Termination' (if this is the last or only
drive on the internal chain) [He mentioned that he had an active external terminator-Mike]
pins 29 & 30 to 'Disable Unit Attention'
Some SCSI cards (I have an Initio Miles UW) are sensitive to the
'Termination Power' settings. Initio says to set this to 'Termination
Power from the Bus' versus 'Termination Power from the drive'. On the
9LP this would mean leaving the pins open that say 'Termination Power
Enable'. [this Miles card note has been posted in the past, Initio says they supply term. power and suggests disabling it on the drive, but I've never had to do that
and I don't think it would prevent a boot-Mike]
My other thoughts are to do a clean system install instead of dragging
over the System Folder from the CD (I am guessing that's what he meant
by "...The first partition contains a copy of the installed system that
is contained within the Apple CD that accompanied the G3...", and/or try
formatting with something other that Apple Drive Setup. [I noted a clean install
of the OS from CD was needed on my B&W G3 IDE Slave drive article as well-Mike]
I have a B&W G3 with an Initio Miles UW and an internal IBM 9LP, but I
have not tried to install a system or boot from it.
Todd Fortier"
More SCSI vs IDE Test Reports: I've updated the IDE vs SCSI reader test reports page
with a graph of Quantum Atlas IV/2940U2W results from Rod Paine.
Latest CarrierZIF Info: If you missed this weekend's news, I posted the XLR8 CarrierZIF review. Despite the reported issues with some PTP systems, from what I've seen of the review sample here it is the best CPU card I've tested so far. It ran very well in my 9600/350, Genesis (9500 mb based) and PowerCenter Pro. As noted here last Friday when the PTP problem reports came in, it also ran 50MHz bus speed in my PTP180 with the L2 cache removed and with 128MB of interleaved RAM. It ran faster bus speeds in the other 3 Macs used for the review. Until more is known on the PowerTower Pro issues I can't recommend the card for PTP or PowerBase owners however. The PowerBase may not be compatible based on one early report. If any PowerBase owners have run the CarrierZIF, please contact me with specifics.
OWC ZIF/CarrierZIF Overclocking Warning: A CarrierZIF owner with OWC 366MHz ZIF module reported that in his 7300,
when overclocked to 400Mhz he had data errors on his TurboMax IDE connected hard drive. He also reported that he could boot at 50MHz bus speed, but that some lower bus speeds would not boot.
"Hi Mike!
I received the XLR8 ZIF Carrier with the OWC 366 ZIF and installed it on
my PPC7300. Based on reader reports on your CPU database (a very useful
resource!), I set the card for 400/200 and installed the card. The
machine booted up fine and seemed to be quite stable. I did, however,
observe something odd. When mounting image files created using Apple's
Disk Copy utility, I get a checksum error. I tried mounting different
Disk Copy image files (both self mounting and manual mount images) but I
always get the a checksum error. Since the image files were on a 20Gig
Maxtor drive connected to a TurboMax card, I first suspected that the
problem was related to the data corruption problem on EIDE drives that
was noted by FWB. What was puzzling, however, was that the images were
working prior to the installation of the ZIF Carrier. I then tried
running the ZIF card at its rated 366MHz CPU speed (46MHz bus speed, 8:1
ratio) and guess what. I don't get any video and I can't boot past the
startup chime (FWIW, my monitor is connected to an ATI XClaim VR video
card). Setting the card back to 400/200, I can boot up just fine. After
my limited experiments with the ZIF Carrier settings, here is what I was
able to find out:
a) My machine could boot up as long the bus speed remains at 50 MHz.
b) There are bus speed settings *lower* than 50 MHz that allows booting
and there are some that don't. I still haven't figured out the pattern
of bus speed settings that allows or doesn't allow successful startup,
though.
c) The ZIF carrier is now operating at 375/187.5 (50Mhz bus) and haven't
experienced any checksum errors yet when trying to mount Disk Copy
images. To verify whether the CPU speed setting causes the Disk Copy
checksum errors, I set the the card back to 400/200. This time checksum
errors occur randomly when trying to mount Disk Copy images.
BTW, I was able to boot up my PPC7300 successfully at a bus speed
setting of 55 MHz with CPU speed 385 MHz (7:1 ratio) though I haven't
fully tested if it's stable at that bus speed.
FWIW.
-Raymund"
I did not see any errors here with the XLR8 ZIF but the only IDE drive
I used was a CDROM connected to the TurboMax card in the 9600. As noted in the review, I backed up over 1.2GB (over 10,000 files) with verify on
fine in Retrospect with 'speculative processing' off at 440/220/55 with
an XLR8 400Z ZIF module. Since he reported
that the data errors were only at higher overclocked speeds I suspect it
is due to the overclocking of the OWC ZIF. I'll try to attach a WD Expert drive
to the Turbomax card in the 9600 and test for SMI file errors while overclocked.
I do not have an OWC ZIF module to test however. I've added this warning to the CarrierZIF review.
More on CarrierZIF/PowerTower Pro: I've gotten additional feedback from PowerTower Pro owners that reported problems
with CarrierZIF cards - both had motherboards marked PCC- 5000-0141-01. They didn't mention if they tried removing the L2 cache but they did try deinterleaving RAM. My PowerTower Pro 180 (PCC- 5000-0121-04) works fine with the L2 cache removed at 50MHz bus, as there were other PTP180 owners that reported that helped. One report in the weekend news noted replacing a 128MB Dimm with another brand fixed the problem as well. PowerTower Pro 250 owners reported problems and the first guess was that it might be motherboard revision related. I'll keep you posted on any updates on the issue. If anyone else sees checksum errors when overclocking please contact me with system specifics.
PowerCenter Pro/IX3D Card Feedback: Four readers responded to the weekend news post from PowerCenter Pro owner with IX3D card problems saying they had seen no problems running IXMicro Ultimate Rez or ProRez cards in a PowerCenter Pro.
MacWorld Rumors: The latest info sent via the Anonymous Mail Form indicates that the P1, C2 (iMac 2?) and Quake II are likely to be shown at Macworld N.Y. next month:
"...I heard a rumor that Quake II will be showcased at Macworld NY and that Carmack himself will be present to make the announcement. It is likely that Q2 will be referenced in the keynote address as part of the 'Mac gaming revival' that is sure to be a huge part of the expo, even if it is overshadowed by P1, C2, and speedbumped G3s."
QT 4/MP2 Files: [Update: see reader post in Tuesday's news that QT 3 and 4 do support MP2 files] A reader reports that QT 4 does not work with MP2 files:
"
Hey, Quicktime 4 DOES NOT run MP2's! I encode all my music
files in MP2 format, since it (arguably:-) sounds better than MP3 at bit
rates of 128 and above. MacAmp will run them fine, and I didn't even
consider that Quicktime would have a problem...! It just won't
recognize the file format at all. I'm pissed, 'cause I have a lot of
music that I hoped would be dumped on Quicktime instead of finicky
MacAmp....
Does anyone else have any workarounds/hacks/solutions to this
problem????
greg
"
If anyone has any tips please contact me.
Andy Watters sent a URL and comments about Apple being bought out:
"computers.yahoo.com/computers/rumor/1999061201.html
This is a link to an interesting article examining the possibility of
Apple being sold to an entertainment giant. The article does actually make
sense from the consumer electronics angle... interesting. I just thought
you might want to check it out. Whatever happens, as long as there are
affordable Power Macintoshes made by a well-managed company, I'll be happy.
But I also don't want the Mac to become a "toy" (at least completely :)
It would be nice to have one place to go for gaming, TV, internet, and the
current computer creative work I do... and to have it perform everything out
of the box. Say hello to myMac!
- Andy Watters"
Andy Watters also sent a note that MacMate.com is registered by Apple. Currently it goes
to the Apple store.
David Miller said he spotted another Mac in the latest Austin Powers movie:
"
I went back to see the movie today with some of my friends and noticed another Apple product. In the very beginning of the model scene, just when Austin enters, a photographer walks by, on the right, with a PowerBook G3. I'm sure about this because the white Apple logo is clearly visible. Thanks, I just try to help MacEvanglism and way I can. - David Miller
"
My Mac server that run the FAQ and Rate Your G3 Upgrade databases apparently went down sometime yesterday but should be back up today. Due to a ton of other work and reviews I'm behind on reviewing/posting updates to the CPU database but will try to get to those this week.
If you don't check every day's daily news (updated several times a day normally) you might miss something valuable. Check the summary list below for highlights of the last two days news and the archives page for older new page links. For a blast from the past, read what was on the news page here exactly a year ago.
Other Net News:
Weekend's News Summary
- XLR8 CarrierZIF review posted
- B&W G3 owner report on BUZ, problems with IBM drive
- Summary of PowerTower Pro/CarrierZIF problem reports
(including tips that solved some reader problems)
- IXMicro Ult. Rez/PowerCenter Pro problem report
- 3D Game News page updated
- Tip for OS 8.6 owners that moved Sherlock prior to install
- Other CarrierZIF/Manual feedback (positive)
- Warning on Peltier Coolers
- iMac spotted in 'Spy Who Shagged Me' movie
- ZIP disks formatted in non-Apple ZIP drives OK here
- Tech support mail backlogged
- Other Net News Links
Friday's News Summary
- CarrierZIF card/OWC ZIF module/PowerTower Pro 250 comments
- CarrierZIF works in my PTP180 at 50MHz bus w/L2 cache removed
- CarrierZIF working in PTP180's
- CPU card troubleshooting tips
- 3D Game News updated
- Register article says G4 CPUs still on schedule
- ZIP drives in B&W G3 - false alarm.
- CarrierZIF testing update
- CarrierZIF w/OWC ZIF module reader problem report
- Apple Drive Setup 1.6.2 solved WD Expert data corruption in my B&W G3
- HINT benchmark page from Univ. of Minnesota Mathematics research assistant
- ORB Drive Problem reports suface - large file copy problem
- OS 8.6 Memory Leaks
- 2 More WD Expert drives arrive for IDE Raid tests
- IDE ORB drive arrives for review
- Rate Your G3 Upgrade database updated
- Other Net News
For other recent site news/features links, see the Sidebar to the right and the Recent Site Features page.
