A 200 MHz 604e for Production Work?
From William J Plowman
I noticed your recent column on Low End Mac
about your S900. I thought I'd drop
you a line and mention that I recently upgraded my J700 with a PowerLogix G3/400 1 MB,
another OWC 128 MB DIMM, and I also put another small SCSI hard drive
in, all this from Other World Computing.
Basically, the whole thing went great, once I got the cache profiler
installed it was up and running at 400 MHz, which gave me a very nice
speed boost. I did overclock it to 467 MHz a couple weeks after I got
it and have now been running that configuration for over a month
without a hitch. There are two things the computer crashes on that I
know of, the SETI "attention" screen saver and Myth II, which I've
never been able to get to work right (it freezes up solid every time
you exit a level in any way under 3Dfx video; I'm thinking maybe 9.1
will fix it, but I don't have drive space or a bootable CD to install
it). The only disappointment is that the CPU's onboard thermal sensor
doesn't work; it reports a temperature that is almost always below
ambient and never changes. I called PowerLogix about it, and they said
that there are a few out there that do that; this was confirmed by Mike
Nelson at XLR8yourmac.com.
Hardware crashes are nonexistent as far as I can tell, even now when
I have it clocked to 467 MHz. I will probably buy an ATA card and a
larger hard drive, maybe a CD-RW, eventually, but I'm very happy with
the rest of the hardware and probably won't be doing any more
upgrading.
I hope to keep and use my J700 for a long time to come, it's been a
great computer so far and should stay that way.
Will
Thanks for the report Will. Sounds like the upgrade
went well for you.
Charles
Re: A 200 MHz 604e for Production Work?
From Matthew
Charles,
Nice article.
I've been pondering the past few months on "how fast does it need to
be?" In my current stable of various low-end Macs, I primarily use one
of them, my 7300/180.
Along with my B/W 300
upstairs in my bedroom. My 7300 resides downstairs, next to my
roommate's PC(a pretty formidable machine; I think he's running a 1.2
GHz processor or something). But every morning, my low-end Mac boots
up, I look at your website, drudge, xlr8yourmac, check my email, and
browse a little bit. No real problems.
Specifics. Well, currently on my 7300, I'm saving for a G3 upgrade,
but the 180 is working well enough. It has twin 9.1 gig/7200 Western
Digital's from OWC, A Rage Orion, Farallon 10/100, 196 megs RAM (1-128,
4-16's). Other than that, stock. Oh yea, I'm using XPostFacto to run
X on drive #2.
I could probably get away w/o using the Rage card, and even skipping
the ethernet card, but I like the fast x-fer speed between it & the
B/W. Soon I will get a FireWire/USB combo card as well, to use newer
printers, scanners, etc. I am limited on my PCI slots, so we'll see. In
terms of a monitor, I'm using the Sony 100es that I bought in Feb 99,
along with my b/w. It's a great little monitor for most things (earlier
this year, when MacResQ had a deal on the 17" b/w Mitsubishis, I got
that to match the G3). I was using it in tandem with the Orion card for
a little bit, upstairs, but currently I haven't done anything that
needed two monitors, so it's down here.
Overall, I'm impressed with its browsing speed. It reminds me of
when I was using the GV internal 56k modem with a fast connect speed,
because I have Roadrunner, so the data is there fast, but to crunch the
numbers takes a bit longer with the 180 MHz processor.
I guess my question after all my blabbing of all the pieces and
components is How fast does a machine need to be? What is a real world
example of 100 MHz bus vs. 50 MHz? Does x-ferring files take a lot
longer? Encoding MP3s? Burning a CD? Although the MP3 example is
processor heavy task, isn't most of the other tasks lean heavy on the
PCI cards, the burner, etc.? I'm not a "Gamer," so I may be missing out
on really pushing the machine, I don't intend to do video work or music
production. Maybe some Photoshop or things like that that.
For my $20 investment in the 7300, $150 for the two HDs, $65 for the
video card, and $25 for the ethernet card, and finally 25 bucks for the
128 DIMM & utilization of already owned components, I think it
works fine.
Any comments would be appreciated.
Best,
Matthew.
Hi Matthew,
If you're satisfied with the performance, it's fast
enough. ;-)
I found my 233 MHz WallStreet quite
satisfactory for most things other than dictation. My 450 MHz Cube and this 500 MHz Pismo did/do dictation
nicely, especially in OS X. On the S900 200 MHz, Web surfing is great, but
scrolling is frustratingly slow, and processor intensive stuff like
running HTML conversion AppleScripts is unacceptably slow as well.
Graphics for anything bigger than thumbnails is also slow, and
dictation is all but hopeless.
It really depends on what you want to do with
computers.
Charles
How Hot?
From Kady Mae
Hi Charles,
Sorry to hear that your WallStreet bit the dust.
(I've not yet come across an epithet that quite expresses the level of
frustration and dread that 'puter death causes.)
Anyhow, I'm calling upon your knowledge of all things Mac. I'm
trying to find out how much hotter a 200 MHz runs than one at 132. I'm
thinking of upgrading the processor in my PM 7600 to a 200 MHz, but in my
home office, heat is an issue. So far the question has defeated my
web-fu. (I'm not planning to do more than web surfing and low end word
processing, so no need for a G3.)
Thanks,
-Katherine-
PS. OS 8.1
Hi Katherine,
Yes, I was fairly well prepared for backup, but it's
still a trauma to have a major hardware failure (this was my
first).
Re: your question, I don;t think you have anything to
worry about heat-wise. I have run my Umax 200 MHz machine with the case
open by times, and I never noticed a lot of heat coming from the
processor.
Charles
Apple CD driver for clones
Charles,
I read the letter about the person trying to help get a StarMax CD
to work correctly (which you mentioned to be beyond your experience).
While I haven't owned a StarMax system, I imagine that they suffer from
the same situation that other clone systems do, in that they don't
usually come with an Apple ROMed CD drive.
I have had great success on my clones (two Power Computing and a Umax) using Apples old 5.3.1 CD
driver.
Here is a working link:
<http://www.macdrivermuseum.com/disk/Apple_CD-ROM_D-5.3.1.sit.hqx>
The user will need to install this driver and disable the current CD
driver. After a reboot, the drive should work correctly and even allow
booting from CD (something that never seemed to work right for me using
the FWB drivers).
As a reminder (which I am sure you are aware of), the best place I
have found to get serious and helpful answers for all sorts of Mac
issues is by subscribing to the Low End
Mac mail lists. There is the PCI Mac list and also an exclusive
StarMax list as well. You may want to
pass the information onto the person, in case they were unaware.
On a completely different topic:
I have been attending a Traditional Anglican Church here in my town.
I know that you are Anglican, and I would be interested in any
information that you may want to send my way. I am sorting through
things such as the Affirmation of Saint Louis and the different
jurisdictional provinces (Province of Christ the King, the ACC, etc.)
Also, I am looking for more information on Objective Grace through the
sacraments. Objective (as opposed to subjective Grace) is an entirely
new concept for me, as I come from an Evangelical background (we don't
even have the Sacraments). Again, any information or Web links you
would like send my way would be great.
Thanks and take care,
Aaron Oechsli
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for the tips re: the CD-ROM drive issue. You're
probably right about the Apple ROM thing. I have an 8x Apple CD-ROM
drive in my Umax, and it works great.
As for the TAC, welcome. You already have the
Affirmation of St. Louis, which should answer a lot of questions. I
would also encourage you to get hold of a copy of the Catholic
Catechism, which explains issues related to Objective Grace quite
extensively in layman's terms.
I am also a former Protestant evangelical - was
brought up Baptist and accepted Christ through a pan-denominational
campus ministry 31 years ago. I guess it was a growing conviction that
the concept of Sacramental Grace filled in a missing piece in my
Christian life that drew me to the Catholic, Apostolic faith, as well
as the beautiful Book of Common Prayer liturgy. I still consider myself
evangelical - I don't think evangelism and Catholicism have to be
mutually exclusive.
Here are the TAC US and Canadian homepages:
• http://www.acahome.org/
• http://www.zeuter.com/~accc/
Charles
OS 9.2 on Clones
From David Klaus
To your answer on running OS 9.2 on clones, I would add that OS 9.1
is much more stable than OS 9.0.x and a free upgrade from Apple. Also,
all the information about running 9.2.2 on older Macs can be found
<http://www.os9forever.com/> along
with software to make it very easy to do.
David Klaus
Thanks, David. I've indeed found OS 9.1, my all-round
favorite Classic OS version more stable than 9.0.
Charles
Umax S900 internal CD-ROM
From Chris Wissmann
C:
You wrote me awhile back re: my problems with my Umax S900 internal CD-ROM (a Matsushita,
which works only once in a while) and suggested sticking on an
Apple-brand drive, which apparently you've successfully done. I thought
Apple drives required proprietary PRAM and some other stuff that clones
don't have. Anyway, I wondered what model drive you're using so I could
replicate your success.
Thanks for your many attempts to help me with this pain in the
ass!
Thanks!
Chris Wissmann,
Editor-in-Chief
NIGHTLIFE
http://www.carbondalerocks.com
Hi Chris,
I've used standard Apple 2x, 4x, and 8x CD-ROM drives
pulled from Apple PowerMacs in my S900, and they have all worked fine.
Just plugged 'em in.
I also have a 2x Apple drive stuffed in an old SyQuest
SCSI enclosure, and it works great there too with a standard SCSI
hookup.
Charles
StarMax 4000 CD Driver
From Gary
Hello Charles,
I read your column on 8/14 - the StarMax
4000 should use the Apple CD driver, unless the original CD-ROM has
been replaced. I've done clean installs of OS 9 to both of the
4000s I own, and I've never encountered any problems booting from CD or
having the device available. Inasmuch as the stock CD-ROM is "only" 8x,
perhaps it was replaced at some point. I believe it's possible to use
an older CD-ROM driver (from 7.6? I can't remember for sure, though no
doubt someone on the StarMax mailing list will email you with that
info) to at least access the drive once the OS is up and running.
Re: 9.2 for Mac Clone
From Dan
Dear Charles:
Thanks for the info. I was finally able to get our tech support guy,
who just confirmed your info about 9.2, and he also suggested I run 9.1
which shall be done promptly.. Thanks again.
Dan
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