[Nobody]

For those who have been tracking my installation of the Sonnet/Crescendo 800 Mhz G4 Card and the Radeon 7000 Graphics Card: they are now installed in my PowerPC 9600/200 along with a RAM upgrade bringing the total to 920 System RAM. I am running OS 9.1 and have had the following difficulties:
1) could not interleave the RAM, it just would not work without system freezing so we de-interleafed it and it is fine
2) Unable to install the the Sonnet G4 enabler 9 - so we have no access to the AltiVec Engine
3) Tried to reinstall OS 9.1 and just install the AltiVec Libraries but to no avail. The OS 9.1 Updater does not allow us to customize the install so that we can the AltiVec Engine Or Sonnet Processor Upgrade Extension
4) in the System Profiler the info about the upgrade card reads that the processor speed is 450 Mhz NOT 800 Mhz as purchased.
5) as far as the Radeon card goes it doesn't seem any faster than the card that came with the 9600/200 and 4 MB VRAM.
I guess I need the original Mac OS 9.1 install disk not the Upgrade disk. And I also need some confirmation on whether this is a 450 Mhz or 800 Mhz G4 Card.

So far: total disappointment. Did some tests in Photoshop and ho hum performance. This is why I have never been one get a processor upgrade card. Just get a new machine because it is all new and integrated to for maximum performance. HELP!!! I am so disappointed plus I feel like I got ripped off (450 Mhz for the price of an 800 Mhz that I ordered).

[avserviceguy_1]

did you call them?

[Nobody]

Something is definatly wrong there im betting you fugded something up. I recomend you uninstall ALL the new Parts. Reinstall OS 9. Then install and test each part seperatly to see if one of them is screwing up all of them. Also if the card is only giving you 450 Call Sonnet and get a REFUND as the card should register 800. HOWEVER you sholud NOT have been expecting the performance of a new G4 800 as your system has PCI Vidio, a slow System Bus,ect

[Nobody]

We did that. Deinstalled everything and then reinstalled one at a time and now all are installed again. No matter what, I can no get the Mac OS 9.1 Updater to install the AltiVec Libraries nor the Sonnet software to install the Sonnet g6 Enabler 9. I realize it will not be a responsive as a real G4 800 but come on I have seen G3 upgrade cards performing better than this. Aghrr. Hopefully Monday will bring some helpful info via tech support .

[2zaps]

heh...I don't know if you have already covered this stuff but...here it is anyway...

Sonnet requires that the software be installed prior to and after the card being installed... so after the card has been installed according to the manual you need to install the Altivec stuff off of the OS9CD as it is installed only if there is a g4 detected...

Sonnet says to reset the CUDA after removing the old processor and BEFORE the new one is installed (this seems odd to me but it is what the manual says so...I would have thought htat you would do a CUDA reset after the new card was installed... ).

Sonnet's Read Me for the PCI based upgrades says that there is a potential compatibility issue with certain Adaptec cards... they also say that ...

"Some diagnostics applications, such as Apple Personal Diagnostics and Apple System Profiler, may not report correct CPU type, speed, bus speed or backside cache size."...

[Nobody]

You should contact our customer service groups ASAP. There is no reason that your configuration, as described, should not work just fine. A few specific points:

1) Apple System Profiler will not report the speed of the card correctly. You should use Metronome, which comes with the card. ASP was written by Apple, and only supports machines that Apple sells, the way that Apple expects to see them. Sometimes it sees third party upgrades correctly, and sometimes it doesn't. We will probably have a future software release to connect with ASP, but it is not a simple task, and not a high priority.

2) Without the cache enabled, your speed gains will not be highly evident, especially in Photoshop, which relies heavily on Altivec processing.

3) The loss of the Altivec processing will also impact your apparent video performance, especially in PhotoShop.

The bottom line is that we have to successfully complete the installation of all your parts. If it turns out that you have some unusual set-up that we simply can't support, we do have a 30 day compatibility guarantee that most of our US resellers honor. If we find pre-existing hardware or software in your system that is incompatible with our card(s), you'll have the option to return our products.

Give us a call. There's nothing about your system that sounds suspicious, and 9600s make up a large portion of our installed base. Everything should turn out OK.

[Nobody]

I have called and spoken with Tech Support at Sonnet. The tech guy said I did everything right and the manual was wrong about needing to install AltiVec Libraries. He said that the libraries were an integral part of OS 9.1 and that even if I did a search to find files with AltiVec in the name I wouldn't find it. He told me to download AltiVec Fractal Carbon from Version Tracker.Com and test to see the performance, however at first in the FILE menu where it says Turn AltiVec Code On in says in parenthesis (not detected) then after a crash and restart it seemed to detect it. So as I was trying in vain to explain to the tech guy - I don't think AltiVec is installed or activated or working properly. I have also installed the AltiVec Plug In for Photoshop 5.5 downloaded from Adobe site (we have kept the older version until we had a processor upgrade on this machine). I can't even try to see if the manual instructions are in fact correct because I don't have the OS 9.1 System software disk. I have the disk for OS 9.0.4 and the Updater for OS 9.1. The updater does not allow me to do a Custom Install. I am trying to find someone who has an original MacOS 9.1 CD that may let me do a custom install. The computer crashes are troubling as this was a very stable machine. It now crashed at initial startup and has crashed five times since this morning. This is a really clean machine with no funky software, games or other cards just the Sonnet/Crescendo 800 Mhz G4, Radeon 7000 and PCI Wide Drive card everything is updated: drivers and software. Maybe I am expecting too much but the Fractal program did not show me outstanding performance with the AltiVec On or Off images/icons/frown.gif

[Nobody]

One more thing: I can't get File Sharing to work anymore since I installed the Sonnet card. I have 2 other machines networked to the 9600: a PowerBook and a G3 both recognize each other but no longer see the 9600 and the 9600 sees nothing. I have tried turning File Sharing On and Off; restarting and rebuilding the desktop nothing any ideas?

[Nobody]

I posted this on the other string as well:
Okay, I made one mistake something that has faked me out before: the problem with File Sharing has been solved. I had neglected to go to the AppleTalk menu and set it to Ethernet it was on Printer Port. So I now have my Networking restored. But as far as Sonnet tech support is concerned I have to go through the arduous task of eliminating an Extension conflict with no hints as to known conflicts. I keep getting a finder has unexpectedly quit error and the system freezes. The tech guy at Sonnet says it the card works with the Extensions: Sonnet Power Upgrade and Text encoding Converter ONLY in the Extensions folder than there is nothing wrong with the card. If that didn't work it would have meant that the Cache was bad and I would need to return the card. I don't know what is worse - I don't relish hunting down a mysterious conflict with no hint or history about what it might be. Any suggestions out there?

[avserviceguy_1]

Conflict Catcher works very well at finding conflicts! I've used it extensively with near perfect results. Conflicts that took HOURS to find by turning them on one by one, Are now found by conflict catcher in usually less than an hour. It has some other spiffy features also...

I upgraded My 7500/100 with an xlr8 g3 card, ratoc firewire/usb card, Radeon 32 pci card, mirromotion dc30+ capture card.... All at the same time! what a nightmare.

But conflict catcher found ALL of the conflicts. (ususlly video/graphics drivers) most times they were 3rd party extensions... non-apple.

Hope this helps.

[Nobody]

Also posted on other string
Thanks I will try Conflict Catcher I hope I can download it from the internet. My woes with this install are painful to describe:
I keep getting "The Finder has unexpectedly Quit" or "Finder Error" and "Bus Error", the system freezes up or it just crashes immediately at startup. I have been trying to clear my Extensions Folder of conflicts however, everything except (practically - no kidding) the Sonnet Power Upgrade and Text Encoding Converter extensions are the only two that will load and not cause a freeze or crash. I am so unhappy and have lost sooooo much work time. I have experienced the speed increase and it is very nice but the longest this upgrade card has stayed up and running is about 15 minutes and in fact the longer it stays installed the worse everything is getting. The glory days of 15 minutes up and running ended yesterday. I want it to work but it just ain't doin' it. Tech support has no ideas and I could spend forever coming up with Extension variations until I hit the combination that works and then that might not be what I need to actually run the programs and utilities I need to get our work done. Should I just bag it and send it back?

[Nobody]

This is just a thought, but does the 9600 have a removable motherboard cache chip? I know the 9600 motherboard architecture is different than other legacy Macs, but the three I have here that I upgraded (7300, 7600, 8500) all needed the motherboard cache chip removed for the Sonnet and Powerlogix upgrades. So perhaps it is Apple's cache enabler software or something like it that needs to be turned off.

Another thing. I had to remove all the RAM that was not 60 ns or less. The older 8 and 16 meg 70 ns stuff was too slow for the G3 processors.

One last idea. I had bought several new 128 meg ram sticks for really good prices at a less-than-reputable online reseller. Upon putting them in one machine, everything started freezing up. Following some advice from an e-mail list, I discovered the following: one of the ram sticks was bad, and it happened to be in the slot that the OS (and all the extensions and processor upgrade enablers) were loaded into at startup. You might want to take a look at your ram sticks. I found that several identical 128 meg sticks were more stable than a bunch of misc 32 and 64 meg ones. Make sure there are no 70 ns sticks in there, and test a few on another machine with GaugePro (about 2000 iterations successfully usually means it is a good chip and won't fail any time soon). Install only the known 60ns, tested good sticks, and see if anything improves.

- Wolf

P.S - the speed of the ram is usually listed somewhere on it, but I cannot recall what specifically to look for, other than 70NS or 60NS hidden in a string of other characters.

[ 09-24-2002: Message edited by: WolfpactVI ]

[avserviceguy_1]

Don't give up yet! I will never forget the time "Apple videoplayer" screwed up just about every attempt I made on solving a graphics card driver conflict. but conflict catcher found it. Also, if you can boot up far enough to see some icons appear while they are loading, sometimes you can spot the problem by paying attention to the last icon that loads before a crash. This extention is part of the problem... or the one that was loading next but the icon never quite made it to the desktop.. with conflict catcher you can view the load order of all extentions, and shuffle the load order of some extentions which can fix a few things sometimes...

If it crashes before any icons appear..... Is all your ram the same speed and correct speed for the card? The skidding crash noise is usually (by my experience) A Ram problem of some kind, either unseated ram, or faulty ram, or just plain wrong ram for the card.

I have a maxpower card that ONLY will run with 60ns ram.

Yank some ram and see what happens.

[ 09-24-2002: Message edited by: avserviceguy 1 ]

[Nobody]

The RAM i s fine, the noise is gone everything checks out perfectly, now. I know about conflicts and I ran Conflict Catcher 9. I changed the order played with every variation of extension set and in fact CC9 kept telling me there is nothing wrong with my software. Something was causing the Finder to Quit / Freeze. I think it was the Sonnet card. Maybe a replacement would work but we are now behind on our already heavy schedule soo

It's 10 P.M in Seattle and I have just completed deinstalling the Sonnet/Crescendo 800 Mhz G4 Card and the Radeon 7000 Graphics Card put all the original parts back in the 9600/200, deinstalled the software that came with the above and my computer is humming along, again a machine I can work on. I went against my strongest convictions in buying these upgrade cards; I have never believed in upgrades as I have witnessed my colleagues fight with conflicts and system crashes and lost time and money. We have always purchased new Macs and have never (really) had any trouble (the Quadra 840av - motherboard had to be replaced twice - long ago but that was the only exception in a string of great computers). We will either buy a new workstation from the top of the line selection Apple has just put forth or wait until after January announcements of new products. I really wish this had worked but three days of trial and error and error and more errors and crashes is all we can afford; it will cost us overtime to catch up and I am sure Sonnet or ATI does not reimburse for wasted billable hours. Thanks all of you for your help and advice.