Note: Switching from an Acard IDE controller to the new Turbomax v1.7.4 flashed card resulted in my having to reinitialize the Softraid volume/drives. I'm not sure if this happens if the RAID was setup with the Turbomax card before the flash rom update.

Ken Skidmore posted a note in the forums that after the update he did not need to reformat his drives. He also noted it did not help with movie playback issues he was having.]

Quake3 Point Release 116M: A post in the 3Dfx/gaming forum notes there's a new update (4.7MB) to Quake3 that is said to fix a few bugs. (The Server was too busy when I tried to download the file at 5:45 PM) According to this Fileplanet download page, the update is dated 3/4/2000.

Pismo Battery Sale Ended: A reader just called to say Outpost.com told him they have sold out and the current price is $129.95. (Their web site now shows the new pricing). Readers that saw the sale in the weekend news must have sold them out and perhaps tipped them off to the fact these batteries worked in the new Pismo. Goes to show it pays to check the news here everyday.

Bottom Line on Turbomax Support/Firmware Updates: A tech support person at Bottom Line replied to the posts here on getting support and firmware updates for owners of the card who didn't purchase direct from Promax:

"Mike,
My name is Matt Vernon, I am tech support rep at Bottomline. I noticed that a bunch of people are having problems getting the firmware upgrade for the Turbomax cards so I thought I would write in. We sell the Turbomax card and are therefore required to support it as per our aggrement with Promax. This being the case the flash utility and the actual firmware upgrade will be available at our ftp site: ftp.blol.com

Hope this is a help to you and your readers.
Matt Vernon
Bottomline Tech Support"

[ftp://ftp.blol.com/pub/TurboMax/ has been updated to include the v1.7.4 firmware.]

Bottom Line's FTP site also had Railgun (Mactell) CPU card software, but I'm not sure it's OS 9 compatible. [Matt later replied it was.] Mactell owners might want to try Powerlogix's free G3/G4 cache profiler should they have any problems.

IDE RAID Performance Tests: I've posted a page of real world and benchmark test results with IDE RAID. Included are Acard ATA/66 and Turbomax ATA/33 controller tests compared to the stock 20GB drive in the Apple G4 with onboard ATA/66 controller. Also included are benchmark test results from Joe Dylik of single and dual IDE controller tests with up to 4 IDE drive RAID stripes. (The review was written at about 4AM so excuse any rambling in the comments, but the graphs of results should be clear.)

Owner Comments on TurboMax/Older Mac A/V Performance: In reply to a post in the weekend news, several owners sent their comments on the issue of dropped frames/stuttering audio seen with the original cards used in older Macs (models before Beige G3). Note that the firmware version and even the Mac model may have an effect on this:

"I actually just picked up a card from CDW (still $109) and tried it with the new Maxtor 30 GB 7200 RPM drive (same as the 40 GB, just smaller). Unfortunately it did have problems with playing MP3, QuickTime movies, etc. in various applications. Identical files on drives on the built-in SCSI bus (5 MB/s) and the Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (20 MB/s) are fine.

Unfortunately, I don't have the card here to check the ROM version. It'll be going back unless there is actually a fix. My Mac nor its Apple equivalent is listed by ProMax in the passage sited.

PowerCenter 150
XLR8 ZIF Carrier, 375 Mz G3 w/ 1MB L2 @ 2:1
160 MB RAM

PS Have you seen that ProMax has password-protected their support site? This is ridiculous. I can't even check for updaters, etc. without requesting a password via e-mail, and apparently you don't get one unless the product is registered.
-Kevin "

As noted here awhile back, one reader said he returned his card to CDW since he could not get firmware updates (he was referred back to CDW for support he said).

A more positive report:

"Hi Mike,
Our company recently created a 4min music video (which has been airing nationally) using EditDV & AfterEffects. We did all of the DV playback & cuts on a 9600 200mp upgraded with a G3 350mhz (running @400) OWC/XLR8 ziff carrier card & 492mb RAM. The OS was running on a first gen. 9gig 10,000rpm IBM drive connected to an Ultra PCI Jackhammer. We edited and played the DV video off 2 older Maxtor drives connected to the older Turbomax card and fed the signal to a video monitor via Digital Origin firewire card (the SCSI card and Turbomax cards are connected to separate busses).

We used this configuration for about two months and only near the end of the project when all drives were 99% full, did we see any skipping problems. After clearing off space the problem was gone. We were even able to play 3min. EditDV projects composed of over a hundred separate clips of video spliced together without a hitch. Overall, I've been very pleased with the 9600 in this environment.
Eo Studios, Inc.
Interactive Media Design
http://www.eostudios.com "

"I have not captured anything to the HD but playing back MP3's and the 'One Week - BNL.mov' movie from the Sys 8.5 CD causes no problems. In fact the MP3 only rarely drops out when doing something like opening an app (using Audion 1.5 right now) and I can bring up MSIE 4.5, Apple System Profiler, etc without a glitch.

S900/150
I have a - S900
- 150 MHZ 604
- System 8.6
- 80 MB RAM / 81 MB VM
- 4x8 7502 Panasonic CDR - FWB CDT 3.02
- 730 MB Quantum SCSI (circa 1995)
- Matrox Mystique (slot 6)
- Entrega 4 port USB w/Apple 1.3.5 Driver (slot 5)
- TurboMax IDE bought in Late December (slot 4)
- Maxtor 18GB, 2MB Buffer, 5400 RPM, UDMA/66
- MS Intellimouse, Apple Ext II KB, LocalTalk Bridge, 10BT
Chris Guy "

A reader (graffix) wrote to see his older post in the G4/Upgrades forum on his 7500/Turbomax Firewire capture success story. He noted he bought the card in January from OWC and that its a 'rev 3.0'. ASP won't report the firmware version however. (The thread is way down the list now).

Although not directly related, this Turbomax owner reported moving the card to a new G4 resulted in odd I/O pauses during file copies. [He later wrote the card is 8 months old and has never had a firmware update. I suggested he email Promax to request a firmware update.]:

"I have a comment. I have a Turbomax card that was installed on an old 7600 with a G3 card and it was working great. I got a G4 350 and transferred it with he same drive connected, and whenever writing to the drive I experienced periodic freezes. In other words, when I would copy a file onto the drive that was connected to the Turbomax, the system would lock for about 7 seconds, then copy for a little while, then freeze for 7 seconds, etc. I couldn't trace the problem -- booting with no extensions didn't solve it. This was with a very recent install of OS9. Reading from the drive was fine, writing was bad. I initialized the drive with the new OS9 drivers, and still no good. No other PCI cards present -- a stock machine. At this point, I have removed the card and given up, but I haven't called Promax yet. Beware.
Mark Edwards "

Pauses like this are common with the IDE ZIP drives in the G4s and B&W G3 systems, but I didn't see this in my tests with the Turbomax in my G4. I asked what firmware version he had and what drives were used.

PCI Bus Errors Feedback: In reply to the weekend news post regarding PCI bus too busy errors from a Protools audio user, several readers replied:

"I have a MixPlus System with a G-3 500hz in a Power Tower Pro. I've been seeing that same error in my system when trying to use DirectConnect.
Dan Geary

[He later wrote with more info on the system:]
I am running a Mix core card and 2 Mix farm cards. I also have Samplecell TDM installed along with a IMS monitor card and an ATTO ExpressPCI PRO SCSI accelerator card. ATTO is in slot 5 and the monitor card is in slot 6. "

A Sawtooth G4 owner wrote:

"Hi,
with G4/450 Sawtooth. 256 Mb RAM, MacOS 9.0, Digital Performer 2.6.1, Motu 2408 PCI card, Advansys ABP3925 SCSI card we have consistent crashes (Error 11) in Digital Performer forcing reboot of the G4.

Removing SCSI card "seems" to alleviate the problem though (TBC). I do not know, it might be related to traffic on PCI bus as well.
Michele

[Michele sent more info on the system in answer to my questions:]

No difference with memory allocation [increases]
there was a MIDI USB interface running as well.
only the stock 128 RagePro card was present. (only 1 video card)"

A Yikes (G4 PCI) user reports no problems with dual video cards (and only one Audio card I assume):

"Hey,
I have a friend in the music business, & I recently helped him out automating his studio. He's currently using a G4 (yikes) PCI system, with ProTools & dual display. The only problem he initially had was making sure enough memory was allocated to ProTools...after that was altered no problem. The audio layers & plug-ins chomp up alot of memory.
VSW"

According to the forum posts, dual video cards seemed to make matters worse.

Testing Wallstreet DVD Decoder Card in Pismo: Steve Weisel said he was unable to get the Wallstreet DVD Decoder PCMCIA card to work with the new machine (I had told him to make sure all the card's support files and DVD player version were copied over).

He also commented that the tip from last weekend (disabling Appearance sounds) fixed his DVD movie popping problems. (He disabled the Software Update control/extensions also.) Last weekend's news has the first reports of the DVD movie 'pops' from a Pismo owner and even G4 system owners replied they also heard them after updating to QT4.1 and the latest Sound manager. Some said disabling the Sound manager or reverting to an older version also helped.

Pismo HD Whine - Toshiba Drive Related? Based on feedback from other owners, the whine I reported from the Pismo 500 may be related to the Toshiba drive. Several other Toshiba owners reported the same noise, but IBM drive owners said their drives were quieter.

Speaking of the Pismo 500, I've almost completed the applications, games and benchmark tests for the review. I added an OWC 128MB 222 SODIMM to increase total RAM to 256MB and disabled virtual memory. This made responsiveness in the finder much better, although general apps performance stayed the same. Trimming extensions and with VM off, MacBench 5 CPU scores rose from 1360 to 1460, but some owners are reporting further trimming resulted in scores over 1500. Macbench isn't the end-all indicator of performance, but the Pismo 500 performs well in real world applications. One sour note - the LCD picked up another bad pixel over the weekend.

Rage128 & Flash Tip: A reader comments on how he fixed a performance problem in Flash 3 & 4 with a Rage 128 card:

"Dear Mike,
Like all you guys I had troubles with Flash 3 and 4 in combination with the ATI RAGE PRO on my G4/400. Maybe we did not have the same problem, but I definitely solved mine. Working in Flash 4 and surfing on the net I was struck by the lousy screenredraws on my new G4, this was not what I hoped for, as I was pleasantly surprised by the overall speed of my new machine. I found out that if I kept moving my mouse, the Flash movie would keep on running at the right speed, but of course that should not be the answer.

So I suspected a possible ATI software/USB conflict and started with the help of the great Conflict Catcher eliminating the troublemaker. On my OS 9.0 base set the problem was gone, so I kept adding groups of extensions and cdevs, till I could reproduce the problem. I found out that if I enabled the energy saver CDEV, my problem was and still is gone. That explained a little bit why I had to keep moving my mouse to keep Flash movie running, if I stopped the movie would gradually come to an almost halt.

I have installed a lot of (graphic orientated) Macs, and the first thing I do is disabling Virtual Memory (Photoshop) and disable the energy saver CDEV, because I don't want to wait for my monitor to be stable again. This definitely did the trick for me and I am sure it will help a lot of other people, so they don't have to make 30 restarts to get the same result. In my opinion it is a conflict between the ATI software and the energysaver CDEV.

If this helps please let me know, so I can be sure this really is the solution. By the way it doesn't matter what setting you use as long as the CDEV is loaded you will be smiling whilst enjoying Flash....
Detlevski "

I wonder if his specific energy saver settings had anything to do with the problem. [Note - this should not be a 'processor cycling' setting issue - as playing a flash animation and browsing the net, etc. should not have the CPU in any low-power mode.]

The Owner's CPU Upgrade Reviews and Mac Game/Video card Performance searchable databases were updated last night with new reader reports.

For a blast from the past, see what was on the main news page one year ago today and two years ago.

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.

Weekend's News Summary

• G4 PCI Bus Errors?
• Plus40 Maxtor in Beige G3 benchmarks
• Pismo Batteries - $69.95 Delivered
• G4 Stepping 2.9 Now Shipping?
• Software Updates: Startup Doubler & OS X Web Browser
• Warning on Using Password Security Control Panel on Pismo
• Newer Tech Updates G3 Control Software
• More on Fan/Fanless Rage128 Pro AGP Cards
• L2G3 Upgrade/Gaming Freeze Tip
• OS X DP3 Install on Umax S900
• More Peek-a-Boo/Performance Comments
• TurboMax IDE Card OK for AV Now in Older Macs?
• Reminder to Update USB Card Drivers
• B&W G3 Airport 1.1 Base Station Comments
• Eudora Pro and Yahoo Mail Problems?
• Bottom Line's weekly specials
• Owner's CPU Upgrade Reviews, Mac Game Reviews and Mac Game/Video card Performance searchable databases updated.

Friday's News Summary

• Mac Game/Video card performance database Powerbook category search bug fixed
• Bottom Line sale on PF G4/350 CPU cards
• Bottom Line relies on Cinema Display Pricing
• Bottom Line $99.99 sale on Turbomax PCI IDE card
• More Info on Cinema Display Dealer Sales
• Adaptec 2906 V1.2 Software fixes G4 Sleep Issues
• Adaptec SlimSCSI 1480 in Pismo Report
• 66GB Mac Tape Drive
• More Extensions Performance Impact Comments
• More Comments on OS 9/Peek-a-Boo/CPU Time/Extensions
• Owner's CPU Upgrade Reviews, Mac Game Reviews and Mac Game/Video card Performance searchable databases updated.
• Other Net News/TIL Updates/Software Updates

Thursday's News Summary

• Bottom Line selling Cinema Displays separately
• More USB Midi Adapter/Apps Reports
• OS 9 Performance Tips
• New Pismo Comments page includes benchmarks
• Cinema Display review updated with another owners comments on bad pixels
• Ram Prices Still Rising (Korea reader's comments)
• OS 9.0.2 solves reader's USB/SCSI adapter problem
• DVD Player 2.1 Comments
• Better Palm Serial Port Monitor Tip
• About USB/Midi Adapter Apps Support
• Owner's CPU Upgrade Reviews and Mac Game/Video card Performance searchable databases were updated last night with new reader reports.
• Other Net News/TIL Updates/Software Updates

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.