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11/10/98 - Tuesday's News:	Click for Current News Page
Vimage wrote with a reminder that their cards are fully compatible with the Adaptec 2940 and 3940 PCI SCSI cards (as noted here in the past). " Hi, Mike. As you know, macweek.com recently carried a story entitled "G3 upgrade cards unstable?", in which it suggested that G3 upgrade cards may have difficulty working with third-party SCSI cards. We wish to make you aware of Vimage's situation with regard to upgrades for PPC 604-based machines: Our engineers achieved a software solution to the 604 ROM problem with version 1.2.0 of the Vpower driver software (announced by our parent company on 15 May 1998). As our compatibility pages note, our cards work just fine with Adaptec's 2940 UW and 3940UW cards. All cards like Adaptec's and others which appear on our compatibility pages have been subjected to rigorous testing by our engineers. " A reader review on my CPU Cards page and a VAR (AZTEC) here in Virginia (quoted in Sunday's news) also verified that the Vimage cards work fine with Adaptec SCSI Cards. I've heard nothing but good reports on their G3 upgrades. Since they were able to address the Adaptec compatibility issue in their software controls that gives me hope that other card vendors may be able to do so as well. Jeffrey writes with some preliminary info on his new Mac DVD RAM (writeable) drive: " I received the Hi-Val DVD-RAM internal SCSI drive from PCMall today.... It cost $600. It did NOT come with a DVD-RAM cartridge (I should have checked that out), but I do have DVD-RAM TuneUp 1.0.1. I installed it and under Mac OS 8.5. I then installed the DVD-RAM drive (which is a Hitachi mechanism) internally in my UMAX S900. Being that I don't have the dvd-ram cartridge, I cannot test this most important feature yet. However, as far as cd-rom performance goes, with my Disk Cache set to 8160K, MacBench 5.0 CD score of 500 (and it probably would have been lower had it been set to the standard 512KB), so for database use, this dvd-ram drive is probably a no-no. As far as copying items from a CD placed in the DVD-RAM drive, as it is a multispeed drive (read is slower on the inside of the disc and faster on the outside of the disc, SpeedDoubler 8.1.1 reports speeds as low as around 800KB/s for files on the inside of the disc to as high as 1.7MB/s for files on the outside of the disc. MacBench 5.0 1024KB seqeuntial read test reports 1.1MB/s. Jeffrey L. " Jeffrey is to provide a full reader review of the drive after the DVD RAM cartridge arrives. Dan Kuraisa noted that his OS 8.5 installs were very problematic until he discovered that his 9600/350 was shipped with the ZIP drive not terminated (it was the last drive on the SCSI cable but not terminated). After enabling termination on the ZIP drive he said the install went fine and it's been running well. Just a tip for other 9600 owners to check on their systems. = 4:10 PM Update = Carmine's (MIM) News Feed AppleTIL Updates (Tuesday:11/10/98)  Power Mac 8100/80AV: Mac OS 8.1 and PAL Video  AppleScript: Using Network Setup Scripting in Mac OS 8.5  Apple PCI Token Ring Software 1.0.1a2 Read Me  LocalTalk PCI version 1.2 Read Me  Drive Setup: PowerBook 5300/2300 In SCSI Disk Mode Issue  At Ease: Update History & How to Get Latest Version  Drive Setup 1.5: Hard Drive Won't Spin Down G3 CD Update 1.0 (Apple Software Updates) Our Unreal News page has just been updated with the IP of a dedicated Mac Unreal server on a T1. Apple has a new TIL #24714 on the G3 CD update (U.S. 510K bin file link) which updates firmware on CDRom drives to address the long delay on wakeup from sleep seen in some Apple G3 models with certain brands (not specified) of CDRom drives. For more information see the Update's Read Me file. = 12:00 PM Update = Today's Unreal News Page page has the results of our 3D Card usage Poll, a new Poll asking for reader opinions on Voodoo II and Banshee Card Pricing, Tips for those stuck in some of the new Unreal Maps, and the results of tests on the Generic Voodoo II drivers/PC Voodoo II card vs the Game Wizard and official drivers. This page should be a daily read for Unreal gamers! Speaking of games, my copy of Tomb Raider II arrived last night thanks to Aspyr Media. The TRII Poster and T-shirt were also much appreciated! I'll have some screenshots and a writeup on the game with 3Dfx, Rave and software comparisons as soon as I can. It's great to see these mega-hits arrive on the Mac. Thanks to the companies that make this possible. Please show your support to let them know there is a market for quality games on the Mac. Alex Koyshman sent Issue 12 of our Cats-n-Dogs Living Together column that deals with a controversial topic for Mac owners - the Microsoft Connection. Alex wrote this in response to the trial going on and it's interesting reading. Several readers say that the various sources on the Web have lowered prices on their 8MB ATI RagePro cards and that they are available for approximately $150 or so. Check our Unreal Tips page for comparisons of video cards in Unreal and read the "Budget Trio" Review on the Graphics Cards page for a review of the ATI RagePro 3D card. More Generic Voodoo II driver feedback: " Hey Mike, After all these fuss about the drivers I decided to try them out for myself. I used Diamond 3D 12 meg card in a PowerCenterPro 210. Surely they worked! However there were couple of issues. First, Myth (v1.3b2) worked only if I was starting a new game, if I wanted to restart or to switch to another level it quits. I haven't seen any video artifacts and the game does indeed seem to run faster than on my old Power 3D. As for Unreal as long as you modify the .ini file it works fine [this is detailed on the Generic Voodoo II drivers page-Mike]. I like to run it at 640 by 480 anyway because I haven't been impressed by 800X600 resolution. Frankly the speed of the game hasn't increased that much. Tomb Raider 2 demo works fine so I guess the actual game will too. A weird thing is that before any of my 3D games start I see a box with a scrolling text -- looks like the .ini file for Unreal and then in two seconds or so the game starts. Other than that I'm still thinking if the card is worth keeping ($150) or I should stick around with the Power3D and wait till the Micro Conversions cards will fall in price. (that will be a long wait I bet). Any suggestions? Pavel Sado " I'm not sure what MicroConversions plans are on pricing. With the $199 Banshee due in December from VillageTronic I suspect something will have to give. I strongly suggest readers go to our Unreal Page and vote your feelings on 3Dfx card pricing Poll. The results will be sent to several companies. Powerlogix sent a press release about their PowerForce G3 ZIF 400 powering the UCLA Appleseed Project. An interesting quote from the Press Release "A cluster of 4 Macintoshes now has the same computational power (and twice the memory) as a 4 processor Cray Y-MP, one of the best supercomputers of 8 years ago, for less than one thousandth of the cost." If you missed my review of their 400MHz ZIF upgrade for Apple's G3 check it out. For other Apple G3 specific info and reviews, see the G3-ZONE. One reader mentioned that the MkLinux Ram size fix noted in yesterday's news may not be required on all systems or versions. It was posted as a workaround for those that have had the problem and the reader said it solved his problem. Note: Before sending tech support related questions please check the Freq. Asked Questions, Site Contents, CPU Card reviews/articles, SCSI reviews articles, Graphics card reviews, Tips/Misc, Message Boards and Help pages - in many cases the answers to your questions are there and they have far more detail than I can list in an email. For Apple G3 system info - see the G3-ZONE. News and guest reviews that don't require a reply are always welcome. I hope to catch up in the next few weeks. Thanks. Looking for past articles? Check the menu frame topics links (CPU Cards, SCSI, Graphics Cards, Systems) under the logo above or in the menu frame below or check the Recent Features page. Make a Difference: Be the Difference Randy Mita, Brad Lau and I came up with a new slogan and theme for Mac advocacy - "Make a Difference: Be the Difference". We're asking that all Mac owners take advantage of every opportunity to let others know the Mac advantage. It's a grass-roots approach that will surely help.