Power Mac Workgroup Server 9650/350

[bunnspecial]

Corrosion is a persistent problem in machine of this vintage.

I'd start by pulling all the RAM, giving the sockets a good dusting with some compressed air, and then reseating the RAM. It doesn't hurt take in and out a few times-working the sockets can help clear up corrosion.

The same thing goes for the PCI card-I'd suggest pulling and reseating a few times, or even try a different socket.

Finally, it doesn't hurt to run something like TechTools and have it check your RAM. Even though it's all(presumably) new, you're still not guaranteed that all is good. A single bad stick can throw things off. When diagnosing RAM problems, it's often helpful to force the computer to disable interleaving by removing everything from one of the RAM banks. In the worst case, test the sticks one by one. OS 9 likes a little more than 128mb of RAM, but it will run fine on that for testing purposes.

 

[LightBulbFun]

one other thing to try is putting the SATA card in the Lower 3 PCI slots (I think A1 is the top one) due to how the PCI Bus on the 9600 works it can be a bit picky to how you arrange the cards so try shuffling them around a bit... also Try running OS X see if you get a panic in there and if you do post the log here so we can read it and see what its crashing on. also finaly i recommend if your not already that you update to Mac OS 9.2.2 on it heh

 

[dermeister]

Corrosion is a persistent problem in machine of this vintage.

I'd start by pulling all the RAM, giving the sockets a good dusting with some compressed air, and then reseating the RAM. It doesn't hurt take in and out a few times-working the sockets can help clear up corrosion.

The same thing goes for the PCI card-I'd suggest pulling and reseating a few times, or even try a different socket.

Finally, it doesn't hurt to run something like TechTools and have it check your RAM. Even though it's all(presumably) new, you're still not guaranteed that all is good. A single bad stick can throw things off. When diagnosing RAM problems, it's often helpful to force the computer to disable interleaving by removing everything from one of the RAM banks. In the worst case, test the sticks one by one. OS 9 likes a little more than 128mb of RAM, but it will run fine on that for testing purposes.

I just installed Tech Tools Pro 3, running a test.

one other thing to try is putting the SATA card in the Lower 3 PCI slots (I think A1 is the top one) due to how the PCI Bus on the 9600 works it can be a bit picky to how you arrange the cards so try shuffling them around a bit... also Try running OS X see if you get a panic in there and if you do post the log here so we can read it and see what its crashing on. also finaly i recommend if your not already that you update to Mac OS 9.2.2 on it heh

Already running 9.2.2 - right now B1 has a SCSI-3 card installed, with - I think - with all the drives plugged to it. Will try that once done with the RAM tests.

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Based on what I've read, I need a XLR8 ZIF Carrier Six Slot Edition and a 1 GHz G4 ZIF processor. Anybody know where I can get these or have some to spare/sell?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Good luck with the ram test. I already mentioned a few posts back that the slocket plus 1Ghz G4 ZIF combo will not work. if you want a 1Ghz G4 you need to find a 1Ghz G4 sonnet crescendo slot CPU very rare but they do exist

 

[dermeister]

Good luck with the ram test. I already mentioned a few posts back that the slocket plus 1Ghz G4 ZIF combo will not work. if you want a 1Ghz G4 you need to find a 1Ghz G4 sonnet crescendo slot CPU very rare but they do exist

Passed the RAM test. It's something else... possibly PCI slot positioning

 

[LightBulbFun]

one important thing i forgot to mention is if your still getting freezes with the SATA card no matter what you try then it may be a case of the firmware on your card being too new for your mac: http://www.firmtek.com/download/ (scroll down till you see Additional Information under legacy software and also http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=343&expand=_a3_a2_b206&action=a3#a3 ) you could try downgrading to firmware 5.1.3 (its recommend if your having issues in your Mac but only do it if nothing else solves the issue like moving the cards around) (hope it makes sense currently 4AM here at the time of typing this )

 

[dermeister]

one important thing i forgot to mention is if your still getting freezes with the SATA card no matter what you try then it may be a case of the firmware on your card being too new for your mac: http://www.firmtek.com/download/ (scroll down till you see Additional Information under legacy software and also http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=343&expand=_a3_a2_b206&action=a3#a3 ) you could try downgrading to firmware 5.1.3 (its recommend if your having issues in your Mac but only do it if nothing else solves the issue like moving the cards around) (hope it makes sense currently 4AM here at the time of typing this )

Ok, a lot of updates/questions:

I got the Radeon 9200 card. Can it handle 1920x1200? I'd love to get a Cinema Display 23 DVI to use with it!

Installed the Radeon 9200 in top slot A1, and Tempo SATA in D2. Have 2x 120 GB SSDs on the SATA card. Removed the SCSI-3 card.

Now that the SCSI-3 card is out, the two SCSI drives in the bottom 2 bays are off and it makes MUCH less noise. I am wondering what to do with those bays. I'm interested in installing a period-correct ZIP drive in the 3rd bay, and maybe moving the SSD drives to the 4th. Does anybody have the correct ZIP drive+bezel for sale?

A GBE card and a USB 2 card (4 int ports, 1 ext port) are ordered and on the way.

I installed a G3 350 MHz card someone gave me, which allowed me to install Tiger on an SSD using XPostFacto.

The SSDs still crash when copying to them under OS 9 though, which tells me I have to downgrade the card firmware. Will do that soon. I found that the SeriTek1S2_513 driver is the one I need to flash it down to. Actually one problem - running it requires Tiger and Tiger is installed on the SSD, and I can't possibly flash the card while it's running the OS, can I?

Meantime, I ordered a Sonnet Crescendo G4 800 MHz

Tiger is slow right now (the poor G3 card has like ~10% idle time in Activity Monitor). Eager to see what the G4 800 can do.

I was copying a file and noticed disk IO on the SSD at 26 MB/s for a split second in activity monitor (need to do better testing). Is that basically in-line with what is expected?

The next step will be getting Leopard on the 2nd SSD. Does anybody have a link to PM9600 instructions? I think I'm basically supposed to use ktexts from the WWDC 2006 Leopard Beta based on my research so far. But I haven't found anything very precise.

Leopard would provide much more software from what I can tell. And it would feel a lot more modern.

Edit: Just got the GBE card in. Put it in slot E2, works great in Tiger. I suspect it might not work in OS 9 (no drivers) - will find out.

 

[bunnspecial]

I got the Radeon 9200 card. Can it handle 1920x1200? I'd love to get a Cinema Display 23 DVI to use with it!

Yes, with no problem.

 

[flyrod]

I have a Sonnet SATA in a Digital Audio G4 along with a 2.0ghz 7448-based Newertech upgrade...

Did you ever figure out if it's a 7448 or a 7447? Without looking at the the chip (the '48 is smaller and shorter) the amount of cache is the only way I know of to tell the difference.

 

[LightBulbFun]

To put Leopard on the 9600 is not an easy task I recommend reading the PDF in this File here http://www.mediafire.com/download/d3443ol971uvyir/Complete+Leopard+on+Unsupported+Macs+package.zip (it also has the kexts). Btw do you think at some point you could install my Patched kernel on your tiger disk and see how tiger runs on the stock 350Mhz 604ev? another thing you can do to help imrove resposivness is enabling QE on the Radeon 9200 http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8979/pci-extreme! (I have run this fine in OS X 10.4.11 and it should even work in Leopard) enabling QE on a PCI Video card can some times cause Kernel panics and slow downs if the PCI bus is being hit hard so keep that in mind

 

[bunnspecial]

Did you ever figure out if it's a 7448 or a 7447? Without looking at the the chip (the '48 is smaller and shorter) the amount of cache is the only way I know of to tell the difference.

Definitely a 7448 based on cache size

 

[dermeister]

To put Leopard on the 9600 is not an easy task I recommend reading the PDF in this File here http://www.mediafire.com/download/d3443ol971uvyir/Complete+Leopard+on+Unsupported+Macs+package.zip (it also has the kexts). Btw do you think at some point you could install my Patched kernel on your tiger disk and see how tiger runs on the stock 350Mhz 604ev? another thing you can do to help imrove resposivness is enabling QE on the Radeon 9200 http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8979/pci-extreme! (I have run this fine in OS X 10.4.11 and it should even work in Leopard) enabling QE on a PCI Video card can some times cause Kernel panics and slow downs if the PCI bus is being hit hard so keep that in mind

Great. Will definitely try it and report back. Is there any benchmark tool I should use, or do you mean how does 604ev 350 feel vs G3 350 & G4 800?

Also update: Just installed Sonnet Allegro USB2 card.

Now cloning Tiger to the 2nd SSD (to upgrade to leopard), and will then clone tiger to a USB key. That way I can boot from the USB key, and then flash the SATA card to 5.13 to allow it to be seen by OS 9. Will then test your kernel on the 604ev, and then upgrade the 2nd tiger install to Leopard.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Thanks Just a heads up while on NWR Macs you can boot from USB you cant do so on OWR Macs due to the lack of USB boot code in OF/Mac OS ROM so if you plan to boot from USB and flash the sata card you will have to do it in something Like PowerMac G4. regarding benchmarks we mostly use geek bench here (geek bench 2.2.0 being the last for tiger and 2.2.7 for Leopard) if you do run geek bench remember to save the result (File save as IIRC) as no one has ever run geek bench on anything older then a 750 (I dont even know if geek bench will run on a 604)

 

[dermeister]

Thanks Just a heads up while on NWR Macs you can boot from USB you cant do so on OWR Macs due to the lack of USB boot code in OF/Mac OS ROM so if you plan to boot from USB and flash the sata card you will have to do it in something Like PowerMac G4. regarding benchmarks we mostly use geek bench here (geek bench 2.2.0 being the last for tiger and 2.2.7 for Leopard) if you do run geek bench remember to save the result (File save as IIRC) as no one has ever run geek bench on anything older then a 750 (I dont even know if geek bench will run on a 604)

Ahhhh... Ok, I think I have an external SCSI somewhere I can use then.