PowerSurging to Mac OS X 10.5.8: Power Macintosh 9600 fun

[LightBulbFun]

so as a few members already know

I have been trying to get a Power Macintosh 9600 for almost 4 years now

and finally that search has come to and end as recently I finally found one

my machine is a Power Macintosh 9600/300, from what I have been told it was an ex avid workstation, and interestingly it was made on the 5th of December 1998 according to its serial number sticker, making it newer then even most G3 beiges out there, it must of been one of the last 9600s apple made, according to the interwebs the 9600 was discontinued in early 1998 so go figure that one out

being a 300Mhz machine means it has a 604ev CPU with 1MB of 100Mhz inline L2 cache and as such it has a code-name Kansas motherboard which has the soldered L2 cache removed and control logic adapted to work with the Apple 604ev CPU cards, the Kansas machines are generally sought after more as they play better with CPU upgrades and the like (the Soldered 512KB of L2 cache on the older code-name tsunami boards can cause issues with G3/G4 CPUs)

as such I was pretty pleased to get a Kansas machine, (for those wondering, any Power Macintosh 8600 or 9600 that is 250Mhz or faster is a "Kansas" machine)

here is a backside picture of the 300Mhz 604ev CPU card from my 9600, worth noting is the "400Mhz" option apple never sold a 400Mhz 604ev System to the public but IBM did sell 400Mhz 604ev Chips, it would be interesting to know if there are any 400Mhz apple prototypes out there (the 2 QFP Motorola chips are 2 of 4 memory chips which make up the 1MB of inline L2 cache)

my machine came to me and is currently equipped with 192MB of RAM via 6 matching 32MB RAM sticks, the machine has a total of 12 RAM slots connected to the "Hammerhead" EDO/FPM memory controller, at some point I hope to get 12 128MB RAM sticks for it and max it out at a whopping (for 1995-1997 ) 1.5GB of RAM

now one of the main reasons I wanted to get a 9600 (aside for general shenanigans and the collection on account of how awesome they where back in the day with the 12 RAM slots 6 PCI slots and more CPU upgrade options then you could shake a stick at)

was to test the 2 major software things I had developed

that being my 604/603 10.4.11 tiger kernel project https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-tiger-on-a-603-604-cpu.1908276/

and a special image of 10.5.8 I built setup in a way that in theory would let someone boot 10.5.8 on a G4 upgraded Beige Mac, https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/power-macintosh-g3-beige-running-os-x-10-5-8-leopard.1937844/

while users @bunnspecial and @tevion5 where kind enough to test my special tiger kernel on their own 604e/604ev equipped machines for me, I have wanted to see my kernel running on actual 60x hardware with my own 2 eyes

and as for the Leopard image I put together, up until now I have only been able to test as far back as the G3 beige, and I have sadly not been able to find anyone to test it for me on anything older then a G3 beige

well im pleased to say that I was able to successfully test both on my new 9600

here is a screen shot of tiger running on the 9600 with its stock 604ev CPU its worth noting that Apple never updated OpenFirmware on the 9600 to recognise the 604ev CPUs properly hence the "PowerPC 60?" as OpenFirmware does not know what to make of the CPU (With that line in System profiler on PPC macs being pulled from the Open Firmware device tree)

also despite the 9600 having a 50Mhz 60x bus OS X reports a 100Mhz bus because the CPU it self IS on a 100Mhz bus, as on the Kansas macs the CPU card contains a special CPU bus and inline cache controller named "brick" which takes the 50Mhz 60x main bus and then spits out a 100Mhz bus that the inline cache and 604ev CPU sit on. as this 100Mhz bus is an internal bus just for the CPU it self and the inline cache and does not extend to the motherboard, the CPU card still interfaces to the rest of the system via a 50Mhz 60x bus, but OS X reads the bus speed literally from the CPU POV rather then the systems POV so you end up with a fun little "anomaly" in OS X when running on a mac with a 604ev Apple CPU card

now for the proper juicy stuff,

I am pleased to say that I was able to boot 10.5.8 on my 9600

I accomplished this via my custom leopard image and an Apple 350Mhz 7400 G4 ZIF Yikes CPU in an XLR8 "Mach carrier" Slocket, a card which plugs into a 7300-9600 CPU slot and lets you in turn use a ZIF G3/G4 CPU in those systems.

to make my life easier I fitted a Radeon 9200 GPU and an ACARD 6280M ATA133 PCI card with a 16GB CF card attached to it. (the card presents ATA drives as SCSI devices hence the SCSI icons on the desktop) the PCI ATA card+CF card combo allowed me to easily image OSs to the system and edit files on a modern system, and also fitted because the Stock 4GB SCSI HDD is sadly missing from my 9600

I have to say it was pretty awesome to see Leopard boot on a computer that came out in 1997 (with close ties to 1995, the 9600 is heavily based off of the 9500 which came out in 1995, to the point of using the same OpenFirmware image hence the "9500" in system profiler) but its interesting to note that my Main System today is a 2009 Mac Pro which it self is almost 10 years old which the 9600 was in 2007 when Leopard came out, but the 9600 was much more obsolete when it was 10 years old compared to my Mac Pro now at 10 years old. just an interesting thing to think about

also as you can see the bus speed here is properly reported as 50Mhz as the G4 CPU interfaces directly to the main system bus.

and heres a Lobo shot of my 9600 configured to boot 10.5.8 I plan to geekbench the system with various CPUs and OS X configurations once I get more RAM as Geekbench needs at least 512MB of RAM to run properly (the 9500/9600 has 2 separate "Bandit" 60x to PCI Bus controllers each driving 3 slots, giving you 2 PCI buses, allowing you to have 2 high speed devices without them fighting for PCI bus bandwidth)

and heres a bonus shot of the System in Mac OS 9.2.2 (this was taken when I just got the machine booted into an OS for the first time, and was done with the Stock IMS Twin turbo 128 video card hence the wonky video rez)

as mentioned I have been looking for a 9600 for years now and im very happy/excited to have finally acquired one I will continue to update this thread as I continue to tinker and experiment with it

and I hope you enjoyed reading this post (and free internet cookie if you get the title of the thread )

 

[weckart]

Congrats on finally crossing that one off your list. Both the Tsunami and Kansas boards work with the XLR8 G3/G4 zif upgrade card with dip switches. If you do find a cheap source for the RAM let us know.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Congrats on finally crossing that one off your list. Both the Tsunami and Kansas boards work with the XLR8 G3/G4 zif upgrade card with dip switches. If you do find a cheap source for the RAM let us know.

Thanks all I can say is thank you Mr best offer button while indeed the cards do work generally in Tsunami machines, I have read reports of the external L2 cache causing issues as well as personally having to tech support such issues when @Gamer9430 had an 8500 which refused to POST properly with a 400Mhz Sonnet G4, pulling the external L2 cache DIMM solved the issue, but on a 9500/9600 the L2 is soldered to the board so you would have to start removing resistors to disable it.

the hunt for RAM has been fun, sadly theres nothing good on ebay atm (1-800-4 memory used to sell brand new 168 pin 128MB 5V EDO sticks at a good price on their ebay store but it looks like they stopped now. and OWC sadly has not sold EDO RAM in a long time)

I know of one place that may have PowerMac specific kingston 128MB EDO 168 pin 5V DIMMs, but assuming that place still have em last I checked they only had 11 sticks in stock... (I swear im being trolled to the very end LOL)

my other plans for this machine is, eventually un-burry the 500Mhz 7410 Sonnet ZIF out from the G3 beige and see how that plays in the slocket/9600 espcially since the MPC7410 only supports 9x multiplier max and considering the "Smart" jumperless nature of Sonnet cards this could get very interesting LOL, although if a post on the MLA is anything to go by sonnets engineers where smart enough to have a "if bus=less then 66Mhz set 9x multiplier" thing, so in theory it should at 450Mhz in my 9600 (given a 50Mhz bus speed)

I also want to figure out if I can get the Yikes! ZIF properly enabled in Mac OS 9.2.2 as it stands currently 9.2.2 freezes just before the desktop loads and you need to boot in safe mode to make it to a desktop and the backside L2 cache is not enabled, my G4 Sonnet ZIF did the same thing in my G3 beige, but that was solved via installing the sonnet extension, but said extension does not load on non sonnet CPU cards AFAIK, so ill have to figure out something else for the Apple G4 ZIF (on a side note I also want to test if the sonnet extension can detect a sonnet ZIF through the slocket properly)

I also of course plan to play with BeOS and Linux on this machine (and have a bash around with System 7.x.x and if I can get a SCSI drive, ill also try OS X Server 1.2v3 on it) I really need to grab my self a Radeon 7000 because my only DVI out old world ROM friendly Video card is my 2 Radeon 9200 Mac editions and they dont have OOB driver support which can be a bit of a PITA... (plus the Radeon 7000 has System 7 drivers )

a couple things worth noting on that note

The PowerMac 9600 wont by default detect/output to a Monitor plugged into the DVI port of a Radeon 9200, you have to boot up using with the VGA port and then hot swap to DVI then Mac OS 9.2.2 will set it up properly so the 9600 will then output via DVI (you can also use xpostfacto to double check the output is set correctly)

also if anyone is having issues booting OS X on a beige mac if you have anything SCSI plugged in try unplugging it if you can, guess who found that one out the hard way... (I think my SCSI chain needs reconfiguring since someone pulled the HDD from this thing)

 

[647156]

I also of course plan to play with BeOS and Linux on this machine (and have a bash around with System 7.x.x and if I can get a SCSI drive, ill also try OS X Server 1.2v3 on it) I really need to grab my self a Radeon 7000 because my only DVI out old world ROM friendly Video card is my 2 Radeon 9200 Mac editions and they dont have OOB driver support which can be a bit of a PITA... (plus the Radeon 7000 has System 7 drivers )

Not many Macs that can run everything from System 7 through to Leopard! Similar to your comparison of how obsolete the 9600 and Mac Pro were at the same age, my Xserve 2,1 actually spans a wider range of time by running everything from Tiger to High Sierra (and hopefully Mojave once I give it a try, I have the GT 120 from a Mac Pro 4,1 in there, which from what I gather mostly works), yet 7.6 (January 1997) to Leopard (October 2007) is a far wider gap in terms of how much more modern Leopard is!

 

[weckart]

the hunt for RAM has been fun, sadly theres nothing good on ebay atm (1-800-4 memory used to sell brand new 168 pin 128MB 5V EDO sticks at a good price on their ebay store but it looks like they stopped now. and OWC sadly has not sold EDO RAM in a long time)


I also of course plan to play with BeOS and Linux on this machine (and have a bash around with System 7.x.x and if I can get a SCSI drive, ill also try OS X Server 1.2v3 on it) I really need to grab my self a Radeon 7000 because my only DVI out old world ROM friendly Video card is my 2 Radeon 9200 Mac editions and they dont have OOB driver support which can be a bit of a PITA... (plus the Radeon 7000 has System 7 drivers )

a couple things worth noting on that note

The PowerMac 9600 wont by default detect/output to a Monitor plugged into the DVI port of a Radeon 9200, you have to boot up using with the VGA port and then hot swap to DVI then Mac OS 9.2.2 will set it up properly so the 9600 will then output via DVI (you can also use xpostfacto to double check the output is set correctly)

The only place I know that always seems to have obscure RAM in stock (or so it claims) is this place

https://www.memoryx.com/edo.html

but the prices are never attractive unless you are desperate.

With regard to BeOS, sorry but you are SOL. Won't work on a Kansas board. You need a Tsunami. Source for this: BeOS' own hardware requirements page and my own experience. I have both boards (a 3650 PM Server and a Dual-200 PM). Works with the G3 zif card in situ.

That thing with the DVI port on a 9200 is something I have noticed but I am sure I did get it to boot and display from the DVI port for a while. It doesn't seem to work right now. I thought something was up with the 9600.

If you want to flash a PC 7000 card, I could pop a M25P10 chip in the post for you so that you can get FHD output.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Not many Macs that can run everything from System 7 through to Leopard! Similar to your comparison of how obsolete the 9600 and mac Pro were at the same age, my Xserve 2,1 actually spans a wider range of time by running everything from Tiger to High Sierra (and hopefully Mojave once I give it a try, I have the GT 120 from a Mac Pro 4,1 in there, which from what I gather mostly works), yet 7.6 (January 1997) to Leopard (October 2007) is a far wider gap in terms of how much more modern Leopard is!

it is worth noting tho that a MP4,1 once flashed to a MP5,1 is still officially "supported" by apple where as the 9600 (and your XS to some extent) where long out of support by the 10 year mark

much like you got Tiger going on your Xserve, I do plan to see if I can bodge System 7.5.x on my 9600 (on the XS note im surprised I have not seen anyone try and boot Tiger on an MP3,1 the hardware is pretty much the same so it should boot, it would be interesting to see if the Radeon 2600 XT works in tiger, I know the Radeon 2xxx Tiger drivers do contain the 2600 XTs Device ID but I dont know if they contain the ATI Radeon 2600 XTs frame-buffer personality)

The only place I know that always seems to have obscure RAM in stock (or so it claims) is this place

https://www.memoryx.com/edo.html

but the prices are never attractive unless you are desperate.

With regard to BeOS, sorry but you are SOL. Won't work on a Kansas board. You need a Tsunami. Source for this: BeOS' own hardware requirements page and my own experience. I have both boards (a 3650 PM Server and a Dual-200 PM). Works with the G3 zif card in situ.

That thing with the DVI port on a 9200 is something I have noticed but I am sure I did get it to boot and display from the DVI port for a while. It doesn't seem to work right now. I thought something was up with the 9600.

If you want to flash a PC 7000 card, I could pop a M25P10 chip in the post for you so that you can get FHD output.

"but your SOL" is that a challenge?

as for the 9200 thing, once you get an output in Mac OS 9, you can open up display preferences and tick the "show start up screen" box and make sure the happy mac is on the DVI screen, then when you reboot the 9600 will output from the Tool Box ROM image (TBXI) level to the DVI screen (because Mac OS 9 specifically sets the display output device in NVRAM for OpenFirmware to use, you can also reinforce it using Xpostfacto and making sure the OpenFirmware output device is set to the 9200s DVI port, this will let you even get to an OF prompt via DVI out if you wish annoyingly this option does not show up unless something is already connected to the DVI port hence the whole VGA-DVI hot swap rigmarole)

ya just gotta make sure your PRAM does not reset which with no PRAM battery can be fun

as for the EEPROM if you have a whole bunch lying around I may be interesting in buying a few off of you (since it would avoid having to wait from them to arrive via china) otherwise im good but thanks for the offer iv got my eye on a seller in china who is selling tubes of 10 for about £5 (its one of those £5 items you never order because there so minuscule and you just keep putting it off LOL)

 

[weckart]

as for the EEPROM if you have a whole bunch lying around I may be interesting in buying a few off of you (since it would avoid having to wait from them to arrive via china) otherwise im good but thanks for the offer iv got my eye on a seller in china who is selling tubes of 10 for about £5 (its one of those £5 items you never order because there so minuscule and you just keep putting it off LOL)

I got mine from Poland. I think it was about 10 for £3 plus the same for p&p. At least I didn't have to wait a month for delivery.

For anyone else, this looks to be the best deal at the moment outside of the US.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/50p...0VP-M25P10-ST-SOP8-IC-Memory/32255873561.html

A few other sellers around that price or slightly lower.

 

[647156]

(on the XS note im surprised I have not seen anyone try and boot Tiger on an MP3,1 the hardware is pretty much the same so it should boot, it would be interesting to see if the Radeon 2600 XT works in tiger, I know the Radeon 2xxx Tiger drivers do contain the 2600 XTs Device ID but I dont know if they contain the ATI Radeon 2600 XTs frame-buffer personality

Sorry for off-topic, I did actually try this fairly recently, I don't have the Pro any more (found it cheap at an auction and it was missing some bits, have since completed and sold it) - I didn't get any acceleration from the 2600 XT, same as the built-in X1300 in the Xserve 2,1 (apparently it is different to the Xserve 1,1's X1300) or the GT 120.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I got mine from Poland. I think it was about 10 for £3 plus the same for p&p. At least I didn't have to wait a month for delivery.

For anyone else, this looks to be the best deal at the moment outside of the US.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/50p...0VP-M25P10-ST-SOP8-IC-Memory/32255873561.html

A few other sellers around that price or slightly lower.

yeah these are the ones I have my eyes on https://www.ebay.com/itm/170868970082 the same seller has some 256KB versions too which i want to get for EFI video card shenanigans

Sorry for off-topic, I did actually try this fairly recently, I don't have the Pro any more (found it cheap at an auction and it was missing some bits, have since completed and sold it) - I didn't get any acceleration from the 2600 XT, same as the built-in X1300 in the Xserve 2,1 (apparently it is different to the Xserve 1,1's X1300) or the GT 120.

View attachment 790741

very cool Did you install the ATI Radeon 2xxx Drivers when testing the setup? as they are not included by default in 10.4.11, you need to install them separately or spoof your Model identifier to that of iMac7,1 then Software update will fetch em for you (as for the X1300 thing, thats because the XS1,1 X1300 is RV515 based where as the X1300 in the XS2,1 is RV516 based)

so we have in this thread Tiger running on some of the oldest/slowest hardware to some of the newest/fastest hardware it can run on (does anyone have a 8500/120 or 9500/120? that would be fun )

 

[DearthnVader]

I too have been looking to get a 9600 on the cheap somewhere, I don't really want to pay to ship the thing.

I ran Panther on my old 8600, and it was so much slower than my G3 AIO or Sawtooth, even with a Sonnet G3 running at 480Mhz.

That old 60ns EDO ram is just really slow, and a 48Mhz system bus is limiting.

Of course if one could find one of the elusive Sonnet G4 1Ghz daughter cards that would be fun to toy around with.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I too have been looking to get a 9600 on the cheap somewhere, I don't really want to pay to ship the thing.

I ran Panther on my old 8600, and it was so much slower than my G3 AIO or Sawtooth, even with a Sonnet G3 running at 480Mhz.

That old 60ns EDO ram is just really slow, and a 48Mhz system bus is limiting.

Of course if one could find one of the elusive Sonnet G4 1Ghz daughter cards that would be fun to toy around with.

sadly the days of cheap 9600s seem to be behind us @weckart can attest to this that at least in the UK its not uncommon for a 9600 to fetch £100 or more (luckily I got lucky and did not have to pay that much for mine, but its an expense I really could of done without LOL)

id LOVE to get one of the 7450/7455 Sonnet Cards but those can fetch $200-400 on their own, I do know that they are unique and unlike most sonnet cards they have multiplier resistors you can fiddle with

as such I know of one guy who put a 1.42Ghz 7455B from a half dead MDD CPU card, onto his 700 or 800Mhz Sonnet 7300-9600 card and was able to clock it up to 1.4Ghz making a 1.4Ghz 7455B G4 9600 sadly the L3 cache decided to depart during all of this, we suspect it might be because the card was setup for a 7450 and not a 7455 (the sonnet cards do have some onboard firmware) I do wonder if a 7457 could be stuck on

 

[weckart]

I too have been looking to get a 9600 on the cheap somewhere, I don't really want to pay to ship the thing.

Don't even entertain shipping. I did that with my 8600 and it arrived D.O.A. although the seller claimed he had tested it as working prior to despatch. I don't have any reason to doubt him but he shipped it fairly loosely in a box with the CPU card installed. Although it didn't arrive visibly bashed up, I reckon the strain it was under with that damn card pulling on it broke a trace or two on the logic board.

Both my 9600s were collect only. Shipping pushes prices out of the impulse buy range. I do understand that your potential travel distance is probably going to be much further than what we have to contend with in the UK.

 

[Intell]

Congrats on getting one of those and bringing them into the world of the G4

 

[comda]

Looks good guy. Wish more machines these days where that expandable

 

[LightBulbFun]

Don't even entertain shipping. I did that with my 8600 and it arrived D.O.A. although the seller claimed he had tested it as working prior to despatch. I don't have any reason to doubt him but he shipped it fairly loosely in a box with the CPU card installed. Although it didn't arrive visibly bashed up, I reckon the strain it was under with that damn card pulling on it broke a trace or two on the logic board.

Both my 9600s were collect only. Shipping pushes prices out of the impulse buy range. I do understand that your potential travel distance is probably going to be much further than what we have to contend with in the UK.

if we aren't even entertaining shipping, does that mean I can ignore the cost of shipping and say I got my PowerMac 9600 for £55?

sadly collection only is pretty much never an option for me due to me being disabled and not having a car. so I have no choice but to have my systems shipped me, and just cross all the toes and fingers.

I would collect if I could however, and if you have the option I too highly recommend you do so.

 

[pl1984]

I too have been looking to get a 9600 on the cheap somewhere, I don't really want to pay to ship the thing.

I ran Panther on my old 8600, and it was so much slower than my G3 AIO or Sawtooth, even with a Sonnet G3 running at 480Mhz.

That old 60ns EDO ram is just really slow, and a 48Mhz system bus is limiting.

Of course if one could find one of the elusive Sonnet G4 1Ghz daughter cards that would be fun to toy around with.

Probably doesn't meet the definition of cheap:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Ap...197423?hash=item1a4b2a0faf:g:CX8AAOSw-89ZOpyi

Or if you can pick up:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Ap...314400?hash=item3d738840e0:g:k1kAAOSwzi9bmDvy

MODS: Not my auctions

 

[LightBulbFun]

small update No1 of probably many

I decided for Gits and shiggles to try the sonnet CPU extension set with the Apple G4+XLR8 Slocket setup and much my surprise it actually works it enables the L2 cache and lets OS 9.2.2 boot up properly. I was expecting the extension to not load due the CPU not being a sonnet one, but I guess the extension is able to detect that the system is not in a stock configuration even tho its not a sonnet setup and tries its best anyhow

Funnily enough it still says "Crescendo G4" under the main startup box even tho its very much not a Crescendo card

 

[weckart]

Question is, does your 9600 perform better with the Sonnet extension or the Daystar extension?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Question is, does your 9600 perform better with the Sonnet extension or the Daystar extension?

not sure where ya picked up daystar up from in this case? iv not installed anything from them I dont think, unless your asking me to track down the software daystar used and test it out?

(as for speed, all the extension does is get the L2 cache going and maybe the CPU properly recognised, L2 cache is L2 cache once its enabled its gonna be the same speed regardless of what enabled it so overall speed should be the same AFAIK)

BTW I also stuck a G3 ZIF in from my 400Mhz G3 BW, and the sonnet extension enabled it too without issue, this time calling it a Crescendo G3 LOL

its good to know the Classic Mac OS sonnet extension will try and enable non sonnet CPU upgrades too

 

[647156]

Did you install the ATI Radeon 2xxx Drivers when testing the setup? as they are not included by default in 10.4.11, you need to install them separately or spoof your Model identifier to that of iMac7,1 then Software update will fetch em for you (as for the X1300 thing, thats because the XS1,1 X1300 is RV515 based where as the X1300 in the XS2,1 is RV516 based)

Ah interesting, I didn't know that, it was just a vanilla install of 10.4.11 from the universal retail copy of Tiger Server, with the latest updates applied, so I guess it may well work with acceleration if you do this!

 

[Adamscomputerrepair]

What exactly are you looking for ram wise? I just had to strip down several servers from the 90s. God knows I’ve got at least a small bucket of obsolete RAM. If I have some, I don’t see what would be wrong with sending it to you.

 

[LightBulbFun]

5V FPM or EDO 168 pin memory modules preferably of the 128MB size

(its important that they are 5V rated)

 

[weckart]

not sure where ya picked up daystar up from in this case? iv not installed anything from them I dont think, unless your asking me to track down the software daystar used and test it out?

I just assumed you had tried the XLR8 extension before playing around with the Sonnet one

https://archive.org/details/XLR8_Universal_Install_CD-ROM_XLR8_Interex_1999

This does a little bit more than enable the L2 cache.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm glad to see that you were able to get a 9600.

Also, I'm glad that yours played nicely in OS X with a G4 with the RAM you have. If you remember, my 9600 was SUPER unstable in Tiger with a G4(although not with the 604) with the mixed RAM I had. It became rock-solid when I put 8 good, matching sticks in, but was basically unusable in OS X with the G4 before that.

Also, how's the speed in Tiger with the 300mhz 604?

 

[LightBulbFun]

I just assumed you had tried the XLR8 extension before playing around with the Sonnet one

https://archive.org/details/XLR8_Universal_Install_CD-ROM_XLR8_Interex_1999

This does a little bit more than enable the L2 cache.

ahh thats where i got the manual/dip switch for my slocket from

the software on that image appears to be for G3 stuff only tho

and if I wish to really tweak all the settings and change the L2CR on the fly then I have PowerLogixs CPU Director (its companion extension shows as loading fine however Mac OS 9.2.2 still freezes at desktop load, but you dont need that extension to use CPU Director so i can run the sonnet extension to boot the system then use CPU director if i wanna get real technical/fine tune things)
[doublepost=1538351597][/doublepost]

I'm glad to see that you were able to get a 9600.

Also, I'm glad that yours played nicely in OS X with a G4 with the RAM you have. If you remember, my 9600 was SUPER unstable in Tiger with a G4(although not with the 604) with the mixed RAM I had. It became rock-solid when I put 8 good, matching sticks in, but was basically unusable in OS X with the G4 before that.

Also, how's the speed in Tiger with the 300mhz 604?

Thanks according to your posts you did your testing in your 8600 (AFAIK you never tested the G4 in your 9600/200MP?)

indeed tho I was worried about RAM stability at first but luckily it seems stable in OS 9 and X (with all CPUs), and its also passed 100 passes of Gauge Pros memory tester thingy. (I think the corrupt screen shot of the G4 in your 8600 pretty much sums up the importance of getting your memory down pat in these systems )

speed wise tiger on the 604ev, it was surprisingly snappy in some scenarios (prolly helped by the fast CF card) but quite slow in others, I really need to get more then 192MB in the system to make a fair assessment of OS X on the 9600 Leopard on the 350Mhz G4 is very slow however and defo needs more RAM