For comments on the OmniGroup demo and config file, including notes on disabling SMP for dual processor owners, see this xlr8yourmac.com forum thread. That thread discusses the claimed 20% faster OS X Q3 performance using the OmniGroup demo and config file.

" If you would like to try this without editing xml files, I've created an installer package that you can download and install. It is located at:

http://homepage.mac.com/RyanRempel/ "

Several owners of older Macs have written to say the sound mod worked. One noted however that it only worked for the audio output jack (internal speaker didn't work).

Regarding my new G4/500 DP system, I've ran Quake1, Quake2, Quake 3 and some UT tests with the Radeon card as well as some other benchmarks like CineBench 2000. However it will be a day or so before I can post the results as I'd like to include comparisons to the Rage128 Pro AGP and Voodoo5. I've had to stop testing tonight to take care of some urgent personal matters that will have me tied up for the rest of the night and most of tomorrow.

A quick summary of Radeon performance I've seen so far in games is that at 640x480, performance is similar to the Rage128 Pro AGP and/or Voodoo5 in most cases. At higher resolutions it's significantly faster than the Rage128 Pro of course (higher fill rate) and similar in performance to the Voodoo5. 16bit mode gaming has poor image quality as seen with the Rage128 in the past (slightly different dithering however, no buzzing bees effect, but still very poor quality). However there's little performance drop (1-2 FPS typically) by running 32Bit instead, which looks good.

Under OS 9, no games I know currently take advantage of dual processors so my scores are close to those posted here previously from Cube owners w/Radeons and in the FPS Database.

I'll have more concrete comparisons as soon as I can, but I must take care of some personal matters that will delay posting results by at least a day or so. I'm sorry for the delay but it is unavoidable.

" Mike,
My friend that helped me make the hack of the System disk panel which lead to OSX working great on my J700 sent me the info on hacking (which he got from a Darwin site) so the sound would work but I'm not all that great at editing files in UNIX (yet) So I was glad to see that Ryan Rempel (gregel) put a link up on your site under Re: No Sound in OSX Beta Hack....for an installer that does the work for you.

I ran the installer rebooted went to sound under System preferences and suddenly I have system sounds!!!! I then tried Quicktime player and went to a audio site I had sound for maybe 2 seconds before it froze...I had to do a force quit....and restart to get sound back for system sounds. I then tried putting an audio disk in and guess what I'm listening to my favorate Music using "Music player" while I write this ! Works just fine...So yes it works on my J700 UMAX.

The first system disk hack we did worked fine but once we went back to OS9 no way to get back to OSX without reinstalling...The new hacked panel works just fine! No problem going back and forth from OS9 and 0sX and now sound works!

What happened to your install of OSX on the S900? I would be happy to send you a copy of my working System disk panel. It's only been used on two machines my J700 and my friends S900. Thanks for your great site and all the work you do!
Will S "

I just got an Apple CDrom drive for my S900 and with the tests of the new G4 have not had time to test the S900 patch.

" Thanx for the posted hack.
On my 7500/G3 the sound works perfectly !
Greetings,
Cornelius "

" Hi,
It does work, the second path is the correct one:

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleScreamerAudio.kext/Info-macos.xml (noted in an update to the original post yesterday-Mike)

I'm quite happy now, I was bummed that I had gotten sound from DP4, but not the Beta.

Here's a quick rundown of what I have going (if you're interested)

8600 with XLR8 Carrier card and Xlr8 400Mhz ZIF, 160MB RAM, VooDoo3 (using it as the main display, with on-board as secondary, I get very occasional video glitches on the voodo), Adaptec 2940 (PC version flashed with Mac BIOS, mounts all drives fine, but OS X is installed to a drive on the internal bus). I think the XLR8 ZIF is running wqith cache enabled, as the 8600 feels faster than my Wallstreet PB, and the ZIF runs in OS 9 without any driver extensions)

Wallstgreet 300 mhz, 192MB RAM, installed and runs flawlessly, if a little slow.

Now that I have sound on my 8600, my biggest complaint about OS X beta is how slow apps launch, hopefully that will be improved in the final release.
Thanks again for the great work you do on your site!
Mike Caplinger
System Administrator "

" Hey Mike,
Yes this does indeed work for reviving the sound. My machine is a 9500 with a PowerLogix G3 upgrade, and it did not have sound in the Public Beta until I tried the hack.

Now that I have sound I'll try the Quake 3 that Omni released for OS X!
Later!
Anonymous Speed Freak "

" Mike,
Just wanted to let you know that the 7x00 sound hack worked for me. It is just that simple. I believe what is happening with this hack is that by adding the "awacs" string to the list, IOKit can know that when it loads and detects the "awacs" hardware it can register this particular driver with this hardware. I imagine Apple left this off too streamline testing and stability for "supported" machines. Since sound has been working flawlessly for me in MacOS X Server and Darwin.
Thanks,
Joel Reed. "

" It worked on my 7500 with a XLR8 board for alerts and QT.
Steve "

" At first I was quite disappointed that the sound hack didn't work on my 8500.

Then I remembered some of the many posts I had seen on Macfixit about various supported systems having audio problems from one souce or another (ie external speakers/internal speakers).

So I plugged in my walkman headphone and ... Holy ****... sound. Not on the internal though.

I have not tested the RCA out's because I don't have a cable long enough to reach to my stereo (other then the one with the walkman type plug).

8500/Powerlogix (cache enabled soon?) Zforce with apple B/W pull g3 350. 192 Meg of RAM.

I'm liking the whole hacking community being able to "fix" or re-add the features Apple left out.
Your site rocks.
Marty "

" Mike
This hack works for the beep sounds and quicktime, but not for the music player, my 7600 (w/railgun 275 overclocked to 318 with the cache not enabled), won't play a cd yet.
The hack was that easy.

George Noble
previous to this hack NO SOUND period. DP4 had sound. "

" the hack sure did work for my 7300 (with upgrades).

pretty incredible what sound will do for a silent operating system.
Ryan "

I've added a link to the patcher in the FAQ's OS X beta area for future reference.

One of today's updates to the Rate Your CPU Upgrade database was from an owner of a PowerLogix iMac upgrade:

" Installation of : Powerlogix iForce 500 MHz/1 MB
iMac 233 (Rev. B) overclocked to 300 MHz
Mac OS 9.04
160 MB RAM
Maxtor 10 GB 7200 rpm
Sony CDRW (TechWorks)
Voodoo 2 video card in Mezzanine slot

The kit includes the iForce 500 card, a printed instruction manual, and a CD containing the iForce Utility Installer, Profiler and a QuickTime movie showing the installation.

Unlike the NewerTech upgrade which requires a swap with your old processor, the PowerLogix upgrade writes the required Apple ROM data to the HD which is read and loaded every start-up to enable the processor to run. [Correction - As mentioned above this statement is not true, the ROM is flashed only once-Mike]

Before installing the processor, the iForce utility is installed. This writes the Apple ROM data into the HD. The computer is then shut down and the processor swap may be done.

Both the printed manual and the CD QT movie make the take-apart quite easy.

Took out the original Apple Processor and transferred the top and bottom RAM to the PowerLogix card.

First problem encountered :
The PowerLogix card is slightly thicker than the Apple board. The alignment tabs at one end of the card that slip into the metal frame don't quite fit. I carefully filed the tabs until they slipped snugly into the metal slots. Made sure that the two sockets under the processor aligned with their counterparts on the motherboard and pressed down.

Second problem encountered :
The PowerLogix manual and movie instructs that the iMac be turned over on its right side and the Video, Audio, and Power cables be re-attached to the motherboard (while still outside of the iMac) and restarted. The cables are not long enough to comfortably have the board lie on its side beside the iMac. I decided that as long as I have carefully transferred the RAM to the new board and double-checked that it was fully seated, it was safer to put the whole thing back together.

The upgraded iMac was restarted. No startup sound (as what was indicated by PowerLogix). ROM files were loaded during this time with a warning that the setup was not to be interrupted for any reason. After the loadup, the machine restarted with the usual startup sound and the extension/control panel loaded normally.

The PowerLogix Profiler shows the machine running at 500 MHz, system bus speed of 66.7 MHz and the Backside cache at 200 MHz. There is no adjustment for the ratio of processor to backside cache. Apple System Profiler incorrectly sees the processor speed at 66.7 MHz

I did not do any benchmarks yet but the iMac feels a whole lot snappier than the previous setup (I had overclocked the 233 processor to 300/120 by rearranging/resoldering the resistors). I would say almost as fast as my 9600 running an XLR8 Carrier ZIF at 500 MHz.

You must keep the old processor handy. If for any reason the HD is replaced (or maybe the PRAM battery goes), you will have to re-install the PowerLogix software again and this can only be done with the machine running from the old processor. [Again this is not true based on Powerlogix's own comments above. Once the ROM is flashed into the card, you do not need to do it again. -Mike]

The almost $ 500 upgrade does breathe new life into an old iMac. As with upgrades to Legacy machines, it only makes sense if you already have a substantial investment in it, in my case the RAM, Voodoo card, and the CDRW.
Jose Lopez-Vito "

I had always assumed the ROM was flashed into the card once (rather than copied to volitile RAM at each startup). It wouldn't make sense that the ROM would be copied to the iForce at each boot as that would make it impossible to boot from CDrom for instance.

• Other World Computing G3/400 ZIF in Beige G3/233 (rated 9)
  (notes the tip of reseating the AV card if you lose sound - see this Apple TIL)
• Other World Computing G3/466 in Beige G3/233 (rated 9)
  (Actually one of the G3/400's they sold as 'guaranteed to run 466MHz')
• PowerLogix iMax G3/500 upgrade (rated 8)
• Sonnet G3/250 in 5500/250 (rated 10)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF w/OWC G3/400 ZIF in 8500/120 (rated 10)
• OEM G3/466 ZIF in Beige G3
  (listed under 'other' brand)

You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database of over 4,600 entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy.

CDROM Drives:
• Plextor SCSI Ultraplex 40x in PowerTower Pro
  (Notes drive was a bit noisy)
  
  CDRW Drives:
• Yamaha SCSI 8824SZ (8x/8x/24x) in 7x00
  (hard drive problems noted, perhaps termination related)
  
  Hard Drives:
• IBM Travelstar DJSA-220 20GB in PB Lombard
• IBM 75GXP 30GB in G4 Cube
• IBM 75GXP 60GB in G4/AGP Dual CPU system
• IBM 75GXP 30GB in G4/AGP
• IBM 75GXP 45GB in G4/PCI
• IBM 75GXP 15GB in Beige G3 w/PCI IDE card
• IBM 75GXP 30GB in Beige G3 w/PCI IDE card
• Maxtor Diamond Plus 20GB in iMac
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 30GB in Beige G3
  (used my 1998 Beige G3 HD Upgrade guide)
• Western Digital 307AA (caviar) 30GB in G4/AGP dual CPU system (running OS X)

If you've added a IDE, SCSI, Firewire or USB hard drive, CDRW, tape drive, etc. make sure you add a report to the database.

Total entries in the database to date: 2086. If you haven't already, enter your results with any of the game titles or benchmarks listed on the entry page (details on how to test are there). If you're curious how a CPU upgrade or new Video card would help game performance, the search page options can help you find similar system/configurations to get an idea before you buy.

Software Updates:
• ProJPEG 5.0/5.0
• Lasso Lite 3.6.5b1 OSX
• Cult Effects Demo
• VST Wrapper v2
• CreativePage 2.2
• FlightCheck Collect 3.9r1 (direct download link)
• FlightCheck 3.9r1 (direct download link)
• FAXstf Pro 6.0.3 (direct download link)

Apple TILs:
• Mac OS X Public Beta: File Sharing Only Shares Public Folders
• Mac OS X Public Beta: Remember User Name and Password
• Mac OS X Public Beta: How to Log In Automatically at System Startup Time
• Mac OS X Public Beta: Reinstalling Mac OS 9
• Mac OS 9: Adobe Type Manager, Type Reunion Compatibility
• Mac OS 8: New Icons in Finder Windows
• Mac OS 8: "There Is A Problem With The Disk..." Error Message
• Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet): CD/DVD Disc Does Not Appear on Desktop
• Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet): Computer Display Is Blank
• System 7.5: PowerBook Processor Cycling Location
• AppleShare IP 6.3: System Requirements, New Features, and Setup