September 2000 marked an interesting upgrade for one of the few
Power Macs previously unable to upgrade to G3 and G4 technology: the
Power Macintosh 7200.
Sonnet released a G3 upgrade
card for this machine (and the similar 7215, 7250, and 8200) that uses a PCI slot in the
machine and replaces the soldered-on PowerPC 601 processor. It's quite
an interesting little card, since it uses the company's Fortissimo
technology to deliver an independent bus for the G3 and support
chips.
One of the other interesting things about the Crescendo/7200
is the way it deals with memory. It includes three DIMM slots, which
work independently of the DIMM slots on the motherboard. You have to
fill the DIMM slots on the Crescendo card to use it, and you have to
leave some RAM on the 7200's motherboard to allow the machine to boot.
The card takes the same 5v DIMMs as the 7200.
While the card's current setup with 5-volt DIMM slots certainly
appeals to users who have already invested into a lot of RAM in their
machines, it's a turnoff for those who don't. 5-volt DIMMs are fairly
inexpensive today:
Other World Computing lists 64 MB 5-volt DIMMs for $25, but
3.3-volt DIMMs are ridiculously inexpensive. Commodity-grade 64 MB
PC133 DIMMs (more than fast enough for the comparatively pokey 66 MHz
bus of the card itself) list for $4 on Pricewatch! Brand-name DIMMs (Micron
Technologies) are $6. And larger DIMMs are just as cheap. Thirty
dollars - just $5 more than the OWC's 64 MB DIMMs - will buy a single
PC133 512 MB DIMM.
My suggestion is that Sonnet revise the Crescendo/7200 to take the
3.3-volt DIMMs along with the normal 5-volt DIMMs. This would make the
Crescendo/7200, and even possibly the 7200 itself, a more viable choice
to people looking to upgrade or buy and assemble. People looking to
upgrade a 7200 are already looking at between $250 and $450 to upgrade
their machine to G3 or G4 technology; if they haven't already invested
in RAM, they are also looking at another $50-$100 to bring their
machines up to a more usable level.
Sonnet could also be really clever with this as well; they could
engineer the card to allow 5v and 3.3v DIMMs to coexist on the card.
Perhaps they could also figure out a way to make the memory controller
on the Crescendo card itself be able to talk to the memory controller
on the 7200's motherboard, thus allowing users to have 7 DIMMs in their
machine - maybe 3.3-volt DIMMs on the card, and the existing 5-volt
ones on the motherboard.
Adding these memory additions to the Crescendo/7200 would likely
make it a more viable choice to people looking to upgrade or to cash in
on low 7200 pricing.
Further Reading
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