Sorry today's news has been light but I've been tied up all day.
MicroConversions Closes?: I've gotten several mails like this today and when
I called their order number below I heard a message that echoes this reader mail:
"
Hi Mike,
Yesterday I tried to order a second Game Wizard 12 MB and asked when the SLI
drivers were coming out. The response I got from MicroConversions on the
phone in person right then was call back later this week and they would be
available. I was excited and looking forward to SLI Voodoo2. Then I figured
I would just order a card anyway and download the drivers later. Good thing
I did not do this.
I tried to order a Game Wizard 12 MB direct from MicroConversions the next
day and I got a message that told me that they are no longer in business.
Give them a call at 877-986-4276. Bruce Keslow answers and says that after
14 years of serving the Mac after market, Microconversions, Inc. has stopped
operation. Please confirm this for everyone. But they still have some
technical support for the mac since many folks have the 12 MB game wizard.
This means that no new drivers will be developed likely and certainly no SLI
for Voodoo2 on the mac, perhaps. Which may also mean that unless someone
else, such as VillageTronic, develops Voodoo2 SLI or Voodoo3 for the mac, we
in the mac community will likely not see either for our beloved platform
soon if ever. 3Dfx support for the mac is looking dark and sad. But RAVE
is doing fine.
Just thought I would pass this along and please confirm this
for me and your Xlr8yourmac readers. Also, as the MacOS develops, the
drivers for the Voodoo2 Game Wizard will likely not be compatible for what
ever reason, which means that the life of the Voodoo2 Game Wizard is going
to be short lived or at least only on the MacOS that is up to 8.6. This is
very sad. And I think a serious blow to the mac community. Pass it along.
Thanks
Glenn Dawes
"
Their web site has no mention of this and appears alive and well but the answering machine at the order number listed above (the same one as on their order page) does say they have ceased operations and gives a tech support number to call if you need help. I had gotten a mail yesterday from an industry insider saying a maker of the GameWizard cards had stock that was available. This didn't make sense until now. I am stunned at this news and still can't believe it. One reader said that there may be a new company supporting the Game Wizard and possibly continuing to sell Mac 3dfx cards. Let's hope so.
In response to an earlier reader report of not being able to boot off the Turbomax IDE card under OS 8.6, several readers replied they were having no such problems with the card and OS 8.6. Here's a sample:
"
You've probably heard this from others already, but I just
wanted to confirm for you that 8.6 DOES boot off a ProMax connected IDE
drive. In case it matters, here's my system config:
- PowerTowerPro200/604e (original CPU)
- 4.5/4.5/9 GB 7200rpm Barracudas (all 3 on internal SCSI bus)
- Apple 8x/Plextor 40x/Philips 2x6 CDROMS (all 3 on internal SCSI bus)
- ProMax (2nd revision, which is 1.2 or 1.3, I think; latest 1.5 is 3rd
revision, I believe)
- Maxtor DiamondMax 17.2GB on Promax IDE bus
- IMS TwinTurbo/ATI XClaim VR video cards
- 208 MB RAM (all interleaved)
(I've left out external devices, since I'm pretty sure those don't matter)
Frank Hsu
"
Bob Arthur reported no problems as well in a PowerWave running OS 8.6.
That's another system to add to the list that seems to work fine.
Apple released iMac Firmware update v1.2 with the following changes/fixes according to the TIL:
"
iMac Firmware Update 1.2 should be installed on all iMac computers used in NetBoot client environments. Features delivered with this update include improved support of NetBooting and minor improvements to Open Firmware for connecting to a Mac OS X Server. Version 1.2 also corrects a rare condition wherein SGRAM amounts over 2MB may not be properly identified at startup.
"
I've updated my TurboMax IDE Controller review for comparisons
to an Ultra2 10,000 RPM Cheetah U2 SCSI drive/ATTO U2 SCSI card in the same system (9600/350).
Although the Cheetah delivered a higher sustained rates as I expected, you can't
argue with the total cost/performance value of the TurboMax/WD Expert combination.
The update includes MacBench 5 (complete disk test series), ATTO Benchmark and Finder test results with the Cheetah drive/ATTO card.
[Update - several readers said they can boot with the ProMax card under OS 8.6 - perhaps this is a firmare or specific drive model issue] Speaking of the TurboMax card, this reader says he can't boot with it under OS 8.6.
I asked if he was using the latest TurboMax ROM v1.5 (noted earlier this week) and if he'd talked to ProMax about this but have not gotten his reply yet. Here is his story:
"
Hi Mike,
Thanks for reviewing the TurboMax board, and especially for testing it
with the True-X CD-ROM drive. I have another question for you, however.
Have you tried it with MacOS 8.6? I've got an 8500/150 with a TurboMax, 1
IDE drive, 1 SCSI hard disk, a Pioneer 36x SCSI CD-ROM, a SyJet and a
Rage128 [Rage128 - from a BW G3 I assume-Mike], and I can't get 8.6 to boot. 8.6 hangs before displaying the first
extension icon, but will boot if I hold down the shift key. It doesn't work
from either of the drives. 8.5.1 works fine (and fortunately I've got it
installed on the other drive...). If you could verify that the TurboMax
works with 8.6 for me, I'd be grateful. :)
Andrew Brownsword
Software Engineer
"
I've booted under 8.1 and 8.5.1 with the card, but have not tested it with
OS 8.6 (I'm holding off upgrading all my machines for now - only the PB G3
is running OS 8.6 currently). If you own a TurboMax card and OS 8.6 please contact me with specifics.
Gordon Bell wrote to say thanks for the response to his post in yesterday's news
about trading a new 333MHz iMac for an unmodified 233MHz Rev B. Some reader got a heckuva deal (but lost IR in the bargain). Gordon wrote:
"
Hi Mike,
You're readers are awesome! Thanks for posting that request. We have secured a Rev B iMac and I just wanted to let everyone know...Long live the Mac and www.xlr8yourmac.com
gordon
"
If the lucky reader misses his mezzanine slot, remember Microconversions' $349 (SRP) iMac modification includes a Voodoo2, Subwoofer mod and speed bump (to 366Mhz I assume). If any readers have had this conversion done I'd like your comments on how it turned out.
John Selvia reports he just picked up Mac Falcon 4 at CompUSA. I didn't know it was out yet.
A reader reports that the Newer Tech G3 466 ZIF has the dip switches like the std CPU cards to allow changing bus/CPU ratios (a must to allow use in the Beige and B&W G3 due to different bus speeds in those systems):
"
Hi, Mike! I am enjoying your site everyday (every 4 hr, actually). I got Newertech ZIF G3/466/233 yesterday and I noticed this has 4 dip switches
on it. And one piece of photo copy showed this switches are for adjusting the
CPU clock for both Beige and B/W G3s (i.e. 466 for Beige 450 for B/W). I
played with it a little and it does really change the clock/bus ratio. Now
this card is running at 500/250 stably. Setting (7.5 x) is 1 off 2 off 3 off 4
on. It seems for me that the combinations of switches are identical to
Gossamer's jumper setting.
Please make this information from 'anonymous' because this will void warranty
from Newertech. Of course I will be glad to share this information with the
community...[he later wrote]
I found the same information at http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~t-imai/mpg3j1.html.
quot;
Thanks, whoever you were ;-) I'm going to add the above link to the FAQ and Links page later today. I've asked him to post his results in the Rate Your G3 Card database as well.
A reader notes that NetCD version 1.6.6 was just released. It's the audio player noted in yesterday's news by a reader as working well
with the Kenwood TrueX drive.
In response to the OS X Glide Driver post in yesterday's news Andrew sent a note on the hardware accelerated version of Quake2 for OS X:
"
Hi Mike,
What hasn't made it to any new sites yet AFAIK is that Omni has also
released a hardware accelerated version of their port of Quake 2
(http://www.omnigroup.com/Software/Quake2/). Quake 2 for OS X is a native
Glide port; it's not OpenGL and doesn't require the Mesa libraries. Now,
I haven't tried this myself but I assume that Quake 2 for OS X will run
in SLI mode. Apparently, Omni demonstrated it running SLI at MacWorld San
Francisco.
Also, Stepwise reported (months ago) that Omni's Glide port did include
SLI capability. All of which leads me to ask, what ... is
MicroConversions doing? Oh, and as fantastic as MesaGL is, what about a
proper OpenGL driver for the Game Wizard from MCI? Is "we're waiting on
Apple" really a valid excuse? What about 3Dfx's recently released drivers?
Andrew
"
If anyone has tested this I'd love to hear comments on how it performs. I'm also looking for feedback on tests of two Voodoo2 cards (SLI Mode) in OS X using the glide drivers.
From many of the mails I'm getting it seems a lot of new readers are not aware of the FAQ (answers to Frequently Asked Questions). It contains literally hundreds of answers to common questions on over a dozen topics.
Apparently I wasn't clear in my Pentium III 500 (Dell) update to my Photoshop 5 Performance page.
Although the 'configurations' section and the table of results listed Windows 98, the intro could have been misread. I've updated the intro on the page to make this clearer. The Dell PIII 500 was running Windows 98. As noted in the article the PIII 500 had 256MB RAM, a Voodoo3 3000 AGP card and the Photoshop PIII specific update. The Dual PII 450 machine was running NT 4.0. Although most filters in the test did not have updates for the PIII's improved instruction set, the new lighting filter showed dramatic gains over the previous dual PII 450 (about 4x improvement). However the total time to complete the 21 filter test was still longer than most fast G3 Macs.
Gene Steinberg's latest Reality Check column is titled An Ode to Simpler Times. His comments remind me of
the term we use at work in reference to much of today's computer software - 'bloatware'. Software will expand to fill available RAM and disk space is a common saying and often new features/addons to operating systems seem to soak up some of the improvements from faster CPUs and drives (needed to load these large files and run the many threads/processes in the background). Although somewhat of an exaggeration, there is a lot of truth to these statements. I remember the days when I ran an Atari 800 with 48KB of RAM
and considered that massive. That machine had very advanced audio/video hardware for its day. I still have it and other than having to seat the socketed ram chips every now and then - it still works. The 40 column displays are painfully crude however.
Jon Simon of PC site Sharky's Extreme wrote to say they have a first glimpse of the (coming soon) dual platform game Tribes II. It is set for simultaneous release on Mac and PCs he said.
I'm in the middle of a lot of personal matters which have interrupted my
nightly review work but I still have the Vimage G3/400ZIF, CarrierZIF and Beige G3/TrueX drive articles in the queue. Today I have to do a massive cleanup/reorg of all the computers/related hardware that has taken over the 2nd floor in preparation for a house appraisal so news may be a bit lighter than normal. (I finally made time to take advantage of lower mortgage rates and Kay's considerable patience is wearing thin. :-)
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:
Tuesday's News Summary
- Digitek comments from readers
- Offer to trade 333Mhz iMac for 233Mhz rev B (taken)
- Review of TurboMax PCI IDE controller w/WD Expert HD
- TrueX not compat. with CVGS reader says
- Another reader report of TrueX in Beige G3 MT (fits)
- Powerlogix PR on new Cache control and 466MHz ZIFs for $699
- Site mentioned in Baltimore Sun CPU upgrade article
- Frequently Asked Questions Updated
- 3D Game News updated
- Rate Your G3 Upgrade database updated
- Other Net News
Monday's News Summary
- Another report of slow audio extraction w/B&W G3 DVD drive
- 3D Game News updated
- How to check for CPU Upgrades for your Mac
- FAQ updated for ZIF Cooling tips and IDE drive troubleshooting
- Report of Newer Tech G3 Nubus upgrade & Remus 1.4 extensions conflict
- PCPro owner reports VM has fixed audio problems with G3 upgrade
- OS X Developer Preview works with 8500 & G3 CPU Upgrade
- Notes on aftermarket heatsink/fan fit in B&W G3
- Reader's hack running 'OS 8.5 plus' with Sonnet L2 cache slot G3 upgrade
- FAQ updated to for new PB G3 CPU/Video upgrade question
- Question on TrueX and CVGS compatibility
- Farallon's new phone line home network kit
- FAQ updated
- G3 CPU Upgrade Ratings database updated
- Other Net News
For other recent site news/features links, see the Sidebar to the right and the Recent Site Features page.
