Sorry there was only one update to the news yesterday but I was out of town most of the day and when we returned there were severe thunderstorms here that kept the machines off.

I did manage to get some items yesterday for testing/reviews such as:

• OEM Western Digital Expert 18GB IDE drive for $295 (for use with the TurboMax PCI IDE card review)
• Low Profile Fan/Heatsink for ZIFs ($7)
• Combo Peltier/Fan cooler heatsink for ZIFs (won't fit Apple G3s due to height but should work on the CarrierZIF CPU Card)

The only thing that bothers me on the peltier is the contact area of the G3 CPU is 10x smaller than the peltier area. I'm wondering about possible condensation.

Using Fixed Speed ZIF CPUs w/ZIF Socket CPU Cards: Although any ZIF CPU module should work fine with the ZIF based CPU cards, I want to make readers aware that on models that are fixed speed (non-adjustable) *and* are sold for specific Apple G3 models with a note that no motherboard jumper setting changes are required may not be able to run at their full speed. Here's why:

• These types of fixed speed ZIFs are made so that you don't have to mess with jumpers on the motherboard. These have the bus to CPU ratio fixed at the ZIF and the ratio settings on the ZIF CPU card would be ignored. That means in many cases the ZIF won't run at its rated speed with a ZIF Socketed CPU card. Why? here's an example - using a fixed speed 400Mhz ZIF made for a Beige G3 only:

  I.E. The ZIF is made to run at 400Mhz in a Beige G3 (fixed ratio for 66mhz x 6), and the ratio is set on the ZIF and cannnot be changed. It would work (run fine) but the CPU speed could not be set to run at 400Mhz as the fastest bus speed possible on the Carrier ZIF is 60MHz. Therefore it would run at a max of 60MHz bus x 6 (fixed on ZIF) = 360MHz CPU speed. And remember - that's assuming that your Mac could run 60Mhz Bus speeds reliably (many older Macs can't - my Powercenter can, a friends 9600/350 can, but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Even if another ZIF card allows higher than 60MHz bus speeds, it's not likely those speeds will be usable by most Mac models.

• Best ZIFs to Use: Apple OEM (from any Beige or B&W G3s), adjustable speed ZIFs with a wide range or ratio settings like Powerlogix or XLR8 (see CPU Cards page for reviews), or the $299 Other World Computing OEM 366/183/1MB ZIF.

  The OWC 366MHz ZIF is an OEM like Apple's design and as noted requires you to change the motherboard jumpers to select speeds (see the overclocking reports in my Rate Your G3 Upgrade database).Since the Bus/CPU ratio is not fixed on the ZIF, the CarrierZIF card ratio settings would be fully fuctional.

Always ask when buying a non-adjustable ZIF for use with the ZIF-based CPU Cards like the CarrierZIF. If the ZIF does not require changes to the Apple motherboards jumper settings and doesn't have a wide range of settings on the ZIF then I'd not recommend it for use with the ZIF based CPU cards for the reasons mentioned above. I'm not sure if Newer Tech's ZIF upgrades have a wide range of ratio settings or not. Some brands may only have 2 settings - one for the 66mhz beige G3 and one for the 100Mhz bus B&W G3. These would not be recommended either.

Kenwood TrueX CDROM in Beige G3: A reader beat me to the install of one in a Beige G3. He notes that the tray is higher than the stock CDROM and rubs a bit. It was very close in the 9600/350 but worked fine (the tray did not rub on opening).

" Mike,
Once again I have to thank you. I have just installed my new Kenwood 52X True-X drive. Amazing how simple it is. I was going to write to tell you I was having very little trouble playing audio CD's under 8.6, but I see your page is already updated! [This is noted below as well - Control Strip player works fine but there are some quirks on the Apple CD player-Mike]

The only problem I have run into is that in my beige desktop G3, the drive drawer sits up higher than the stock drive, so it rubs the top part of the bezel when opening and closing. I think I can take care of that, though.
Thanks again, this thing ROCKS!
Scott "

Here's a tip that might help - with the CD's mtg plate screws loose make sure the tray is pressed all the way down - then tighten the screws. That might buy enough clearance to fit. I have a Beige G3 MiniTower here to try hopefully tonight (I've been on the road most of the weekend). I noted in 9600 update to the TrueX review (bottom of the review page) that it fits there (looks VERY close but doesn't rub - see photo1 and photo2). You might check with www.macgurus.com - they may have a bezel that will work better perhaps. (I wonder if Proline might have a version with more clearance - Macgurus and Bottom Line sell them I think.)

SETI not a Good Benchmark: A reader sent a note why:

" i was reading about the troubles some readers were reporting with their SETI@home clients.. there are a few things to keep in mind here when quesitoning the amount of time it takes to complete one block. 1 each block is different and will take any amount of time to complete.. ive completed some in 7 hours and some in 15..
Evan Brightwell "

Overclocked RAM Fails: A reader sent a panic cry for help a day or so ago, noting a overclocked Apple G3 that was left running was frozen and would not reboot. He was concerned he'd burned out the CPU, etc. but after I sent him a list of things to try he determinted it was a bad 66MHz RAM dimm (he was running at 83Mhz bus speed).

" Dear Mike,
Just to say, a thousand "thank you's" for your help. I tried what you suggested, and voila, it was in fact the ram. Particularly, it was ram that I bought at CompUSA, the stuff that was on sale for $80 for 64 meg (Kingston). But I did notice that the rated speed on this stuff was only 66 Mhz; I was running my machine at 315/85 [83.33-Mike] so I wonder if this is what might have caused it to burn out. (Have now set the machine back down to 300/66 and it seems to be running fine, cpu temp is reading around 40C with only fans and no Peltier running.) "

He said there seemed to be evidence of damage on the affected dimm pins (oxidation). My first concern when he noted a peltier running was condensation shorting something out. [Update - another Peltier user noted a similar ram failure after 7 months of use - he thinks it's due to power supply loading issues with the peltier cooler.]

The 3D Game News page has the weekend update posted (sorry it's late - just got it). Check it out - a really good mix of Mac game news. There's even a note on reactions to 'Jar Jar' from the latest Star Wars movie. Apparently one game company president and his crew wore T-shirts to the movie showing their desire to have the character removed (so to speak).

ZIF CPU Cooling Tips: Several readers have written concerned about temperatures in their desktops (note: PB G3s run at 70+C all the time). In many cases their very high temps were fixed by following one of the other of my tips below (#1 is the biggest factor to watch for):

1. make sure you have not reversed the heatsink clip - it has a depression that is not on center - if it's 180 degrees out the CPU runs hotter. I think this was noted on my Tips page - G3 Temp/Cooling article last year. The CPU is not centered on the ZIF - so the metal spring clip has a compression bend offcentered as well - it should be over the CPU side of the ZIF.

2. Apply some white thermal compound (avail at radio shack) - just a very thin amount to the contact area on the center of the cpu (the 1/4" or so square section that contacts the CPU

Note my stock Apple Beige G3/266 ran 56C (not overclocked). Later, copper and lower voltage G3s run cooler, but don't believe the illogical temps reported on them from utilities (often below room temperature - an impossibility).

Trouble with IDE drives?: If you have trouble adding an IDE drive to G3 here are some general tips. (Note that as mentioned in my Beige G3 IDE HD Upgrade article - you have to have a rev 2 or later G3 to support IDE slaves.) Well over 500 readers have wrote with success reports but the following is a list of tips based on mistakes/problems others made. Remember that Apple does not 'officially' support IDE slaves on the B&W G3 primary channel but I've run mine fine since the 2nd day I owned it (back in January):

1. I tested maxtor drives, but western digital and others have been reported to work. IBM seems to have the most confusing settings to readers however

2. Use apple drive setup (pref. 1.7.2) to prep the drive and select the partition option (customize before initialize) - then select 1 partition or more if you like. this seems to be a factor readers said for some odd reason (use partition option even if you only want one partion)

3. Some mixes of drives (master & slave) seem to run best when the new drive is master and the original drive is slave. two or three reports of this with some brands of drives

4. Make sure the drives are set to master and slave - not cable select. If it has it, set the master drive to 'master with slave present' - this setting is on some IBM drives but not maxtors, etc.

5. As noted in my B&W G3 Slave drive article - perform a clean OS install to the new drive from the original B&W G3 cd. Dragging a system file over to it did not work reliably as I noted in the review (it would boot but often with errors)

6. Make sure your cables are good - most of the problems with adding the slave on the primary channel are cable related. page 2 of my BW G3 Slave article has dimensions for a custom cable to fit, but I got lucky with a std cable. Ultracables can give you a source for custom made UltraATA cables. There was no perf. gain in my tests but they are the best choice for noise reduction, etc.

This covers most of the problem areas - I've not tried a quantum drive - the fastest drives seem to be Maxtor 7200 rpm and WD 7200 RPM drives, and they are often the least expensive (at least the maxtor) They are proven to work as noted in the article so they are the safest bet. To summarize - Use known working drives, good cables and make sure the master/slave settings are correct.

PowerCenter Pro/G3 Upgrade Tip: As noted on last year's PowerForce/PowerCurve page - enabling Virtual Memory may fix some issues like the 7200 Graphics accelerator extension problem. This reader said it also fixed an audio problem (stuttering/loss of audio in some games). (Note - for older OS versions PCI Timing Update was to address this (see the PowerCenter Pro review and Power3D review for links/info.)

XLR8 400 Maxes Out 9600/350: Dan Kuraisa writes that his XLR8/400 card is running at the maximum speed possible (60mhz bus x 8x ratio):

" Mike,
I just wanted to tell you that I've been running my Mach 5 9600 XLR8 card at 480MHz with a cache setting of 192MHz, and a 60MHz bus for some time now. Not one freeze or crach to speak of. I'm getting a Macbench 5 processor reading of 1412!
dan "

MAJOR Performance Tip for SETI: In case you've not read this sent a note that your Mac's display mode color depth can have a dramatic effect on performance:

" Hi Mike,
Not exactly a performance report but a point well worth noting. I just noticed the following on the SETI site (maybe it was there all the time I just never noticed):

The Mac version will run considerably slower when run in 32-bit color (millions of colors) instead of 16-bit color (thousands of colors). Both modes will run equally fast in the next version.

I'd been tearing my hair out before I read this - my Mac was so ridiculously slow, over 24hrs to complete 0.25 of a work unit. I've just changed to 16-bit and processed the same amount of data in three and a half minutes!

Keep up the good work!
Bruce Doswell
PowerMac. 4400, Newertech 300/200MHz G3 upgrade (1MB backside cache) "

That's a mind-numbing difference. Running the lowest color depth and resolution is one of my general tips on the (old but still useful) Performance Basics article. Josh Lewis also sent a note that the SETI PC version mentions blanking the screen and a mention of using 800x600, thousands colors on the Mac.

David Wolf also sent a note on lowering color depth/reducing extensions:

" I have a B/W 350 Desktop with 128 MB ram installed, running 8.6, and I am getting roughly 10 minutes per 1% .

I have a Powerbook G3 300 with 128 MB ram installed, running 8.6, and I'm getting roughly 1 HOUR per 1%.

UNTIL I DID THE FOLLOWING- I had to reduce the video down to thousands of colors, and make a new extension set that was only the 8.6 base and the SETI control panel.

(Now my times are approaching 11 minutes per 1% on the Powerbook) [almost over 5X improvement]

I'm a little curious about why I need to strip the system down to the bare minimum just to get times that aren't even as fast as a 266? Any suggestions? I really wish the SETI people would get rid of the massive interface and switch to something more like the RC5 clients. First of all, it would cut down on processor overhead. Secondly, it would allow me to run SETI@home on all of my machines in my office. The interface makes it kind of hard- it's not very stealthy, and raises a lot of questions from the higher-ups.... =) Oh well, just my $00.02
Cheers!
David Wolf "

SETI Performance: The following are some times readers sent I'm getting too many to post all of them but this will give you some idea of general performance differences. Thanks to all that sent their times. Color depth of the monitor is not shown but if read this (and the tip above) I'll add the info:

There were many more recieved but I'm running late for an appointment and can't post them all. Thanks again to all those that sent their results.

OS 8.5.1/Virex Note: It's not just an OS 8.6 issue Jim says:

" BTW, you saved my rear-end again just this week. I had a Mac that was locking up using network Retrospect 4.0 with updated drivers. It was driving me crazy, until I read the note on your site that 8.6 and Virex had a problem. Well guess what? So does 8.5.1. I had to turn off Vixrex to fix the problem. 15 hours, no fix....your site....15 seconds...fixed!!!
Thanks for your help.
Jim Prete "

Be Thankful: You really don't know how lucky you are with a Mac until you work with PCs regularly, at least a large number of them. Around midnight last night I was talking to a friend who I've helped from time to time with repairs, etc. of his PC. He's an engineer and far from a computer newbie, but I had to chuckle at the long horror story on trying to reinstall windows 95 after a virus wiped out his hard drive. One of his comments really summed it up - he said that he had ran the Windows 95 install routine so many times that "I have the serial number memorized" (that's a very long number). Use the Force...get a Mac.

Fixed ZIFs Note: One reader wrote asking why his ZIF did not seem to recognize motherboard jumper setting changes (Beige G3). Normally this would be for two reasons:

1. Double check your jumper settings. You could have the orientation of the jumpers numbers reversed (ie postion one at the opposite end). If this were true then I'd expect something else to be affected (PCI bus or Memory bus speed). Speedmeter would report that. So the primary reason is usually #2

2. The ZIF has been disabled for allowing the MB to control the ratio. Most 3rd Party (non-OEM) fixed speed brands of ZIFs did this to allow running higher than MB speeds without having to mess with jumpers (and void the warranty). On some you can tell this by two missing pins on the bottom of the ZIF, but that's not true of all brands.

ZIFs and CarrierZIF Card: As mentioned in my First Look article, the XLR8 ZIF based CPU card is designed to work with all ZIFs including of course the Other World Computing ZIFs. (see Notes above on some fixed speed 3rd party ZIFs however).

Speaking of that card, I've added the picture I promised of the modified bracket. It takes about 10 seconds with a pair of scissors (only the top side protrusions need trimming). This does not affect the the function of the bracket, as the channel is left intact and still supports the card as before.

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.

Friday's News Summary

• Kenwood TrueX CD and Apple Audio Player clarification (good news)
• Latest Cable Modem/OS 8.6 Tips: 3 solutions
• SETI Performance Stats
• Bluenote SCSI ROM Update
• More Cable Modem/OS 8.6 Feedback
• Quake 2 Server Browser from Ruffin Bailey
• Quake 3 Test client version out for Mac OS X Server
• More on PB G3/333 DVD (PCCard Decoder works?)
• Update on CarrierZIF
• FAQ updated
• G3 CPU Upgrade Ratings database updated
• Other Net News

Thursday's News Summary

• Kenwood TrueX Audio CD compatibility issues (updated)
• First Look at XLR8's CarrierZIF
• 3D Game News updated
• Ireland Apple dealer website has custom PB G3 configs
• WD Expert vs Maxtor 5120: reader comments
• Reader Review: Western Digital Expert IDE drive
• TurboMax PCI card/Kenwood TrueX CDrom tests
• XLR8 CarrierZIF press release
• Sears/Mac Demo days call for volunteers
• Kodak Blue Dye CDs/Yamaha 4416S reader comments
• Mac Mechwarrior III Petition started
• 1 Inch 800x600 Display
• News.com reports melting PC notebooks
• 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.

If you own a G3/300 or faster Mac, you might want to get our PPC Checker utility that will report if your CPU is copper or aluminum based.

Considering a G3 Upgrade? Check the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. The database is being updated daily for new reports. Also make sure you ask your dealer about any issues with current builds of some models (ie PF G3) as I have gotten several reports of issues with certain mac models in the last few months (Mach 5, PowerBase, 7300). 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).