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Proud new owner of a Sonnet 1.8Ghz DUAL

The only Sonnet upgrade I have is a G4 1GHz, which is a very cheap upgrade for a Sawtooth upwards. That is a straight swap, so no messing with firmware updates, which I suppose adds to the stability. The previous owner of the Cube unit said he always ran it at 1.6 with no problems although it arrived with the dip switches set to 1.5 for some reason. I honestly could not detect any engineering differences between the two. Both slotted in their respective machines with no issues.
The only issue I have had with an upgrade is with a Powerlogix Blue Chip G3 daughtercard for a Wallstreet. Cannot get that one to work in any I have tried. When I plug the power unit in the Wallstreet with it in the LEDs stay lit and the the fans race. I can force a shutdown from that but it will not boot. Prolly dead.
 
DayStar back in the had a program where you could pay them to upgrade your PowerBook G4 or iMac G4 with a faster CPU you sent in your Mac and they would BGA solder on a new faster G4 CPU the DLSDs used 7448s (the fastest G4s with a full speed on die 1MB L2 cache) the rest used 7447As I think
 
weckart said:
The only Sonnet upgrade I have is a G4 1GHz, which is a very cheap upgrade for a Sawtooth upwards. That is a straight swap, so no messing with firmware updates, which I suppose adds to the stability. The previous owner of the Cube unit said he always ran it at 1.6 with no problems although it arrived with the dip switches set to 1.5 for some reason. I honestly could not detect any engineering differences between the two. Both slotted in their respective machines with no issues.
The only issue I have had with an upgrade is with a Powerlogix Blue Chip G3 daughtercard for a Wallstreet. Cannot get that one to work in any I have tried. When I plug the power unit in the Wallstreet with it in the LEDs stay lit and the the fans race. I can force a shutdown from that but it will not boot. Prolly dead.
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Well, all I can say is that Bunnspecial reported that Giga did a crap job on planing the heatsink on the CPU - which is why he replaned it. You already know my complaint about the dip switches and the pins. And when I say pins, I mean the jumpers. I didn't have the term in my head this morning when I was trying to write that post.

Lastly I shouldn't have to worry about borking my OS X install any time I need to install some new piece of software that messes with boot caches. I shouldn't need to worry about reflashing the ROM every time I need to do a PRAM reset or reinstall OS X (because it got borked because I installed something that messed with the boot caches).

It's just a poor hardware/firmware design for Giga. I'm willing to admit that I'm possibly the exception to the rule and that everyone else had no issues, but I'm not so sure. Ben has hesitated to mess with his new GD processors for the same reasons. And he's also had the same experience with that dual I had.

I'm not invalidating your experience or arguing or anything like that. I'm just relating my experience/opinion is all.
 
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LightBulbFun said:
DayStar back in the had a program where you could pay them to upgrade your PowerBook G4 or iMac G4 with a faster CPU you sent in your Mac and they would BGA solder on a new faster G4 CPU the DLSDs used 7448s (the fastest G4s with a full speed on die 1MB L2 cache) the rest used 7447As I think
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Possibly this is where our periodic problem child Rabiz7 gets grist for his overclock mill. If I had a dollar for every time I was asked to take pics of my A1013's logicboard!
 
eyoungren said:
Well, all I can say is that Bunnspecial reported that Giga did a crap job on planing the heatsink on the CPU - which is why he replaned it. You already know my complaint about the dip switches and the pins. And when I say pins, I mean the jumpers. I didn't have the term in my head this morning when I was trying to write that post.
Click to expand...

I will say that looking at some other Giga offerings-including the two singles in the ~1.5ghz range I have-the heatsink finish is excellent. It's every bit as good as the Sonnet 1.8 I have.

When you can run your finger across a heatsink and feel the machining marks, though, you know you're in for trouble, and I'm baffled as to why Giga did this on what was probably their highest end processor.

I detailed my exploits with the dual 1.8 in this thread

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wish-me-luck.1848703/
 
bunnspecial said:
I will say that looking at some other Giga offerings-including the two singles in the ~1.5ghz range I have-the heatsink finish is excellent. It's every bit as good as the Sonnet 1.8 I have.

When you can run your finger across a heatsink and feel the machining marks, though, you know you're in for trouble, and I'm baffled as to why Giga did this on what was probably their highest end processor.

I detailed my exploits with the dual 1.8 in this thread

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wish-me-luck.1848703/
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I wonder. Maybe the 1.8 was released towards the end?

Going out of business type of thing, quality suffers. Whereas better quality while things were selling well. Just speculating.
 
LightBulbFun said:
DayStar back in the had a program where you could pay them to upgrade your PowerBook G4 or iMac G4 with a faster CPU you sent in your Mac and they would BGA solder on a new faster G4 CPU the DLSDs used 7448s (the fastest G4s with a full speed on die 1MB L2 cache) the rest used 7447As I think
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I thought that was the process for pretty much all of them, including the Pismos. One such G4ed Pismo came up a couple of months ago and I pulled back from bidding because I reckoned I had more than enough Pismos already. Didn't stop me from buying another Pismo recently, however.
 
Yay! My Sonnet has made it to Hodgkins, IL. It'll go through the United Parcel Service CACH facility and out by rail some time later today!

Two days from CACH to Phoenix by rail.
 
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jbarley said:
I can respect your unbounded enthusiasm,
I think I can remember a time when I was in a similar state.:(
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My problem is I've never left this state!

I was in preflight mode when my parents bought me a Commodore 64 in June 1984 (I was 13). A year later when I discovered the local users group AND that the local users group had a BBS - that's when it took off and never came back!

PS. If you had no interest at all you wouldn't be here! ;)

I will just mention as well…I have a great fondness for a gentleman who ran a local BBS back in 1989-1990 when he was in his early 60s. He took an interest in me and it's because of his cutthroat discounts that I was able to get a PC ($250), a 500MB hard drive ($100) and a 2400 baud modem (Hayes, $100) during my senior year in high school and first year of college. Always $10/month. Without this and his guidance my online aspirations would not have gone very far.

I've always tried to give back (in his honor) to the online communities I am in based on that experience.
 
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I see you've got it in your signature already. The wait must be killing you!
 
flyrod said:
I see you've got it in your signature already. The wait must be killing you!
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Yeah, I was hoping to see it Friday so I could have it over the weekend, but UPS is not showing delivery until the 16th.

At least I'm closer to it now than I was Monday. Yeah, that's it! :D
 
eyoungren said:
Yeah, I was hoping to see it Friday so I could have it over the weekend, but UPS is not showing delivery until the 16th.

At least I'm closer to it now than I was Monday. Yeah, that's it! :D
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You can thank the UPS store here in Richmond for that partly. When I dropped it off I asked what the estimated arrival would be, expecting to hear Thursday or Friday of this week, but I was told it wouldn't make it until around Monday or Tuesday of the following week. I think they must just sit on the packages for a few days before sending them off, because that seems slow to me! Maybe I should try FedEx next time!
 
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TxBook said:
You can thank the UPS store here in Richmond for that partly. When I dropped it off I asked what the estimated arrival would be, expecting to hear Thursday or Friday of this week, but I was told it wouldn't make it until around Monday or Tuesday of the following week. I think they must just sit on the packages for a few days before sending them off, because that seems slow to me! Maybe I should try FedEx next time!
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Ahh, no worries. I used to work for UPS (that's where I met my wife) so I know what goes on in the system.

They gave you a 5 day window, they will take all 5 days. Even if that means it sits somewhere for 2 or 3 days. Once it leaves CACH (Chicago Area Consolidated Hub) it's strictly in the hands of BNSF until it arrives here. I am expecting to see it roll in late tonight. We'll see what happens from there.
 
Hey @bunnspecial!

Care to speculate on this?

Seller is selling this dual Giga but he supplies a link for a Sonnet firmware upgrade. The auction pics also show the firmware update so I must assume that the Sonnet upgrade allows the Giga to function.

Is that even possible? And if it is, does it open new options to make GD processors more stable?

Curious to know your opinion on this.

*MODS - NOT my auction!!!
 
eyoungren said:
Hey @bunnspecial!

Care to speculate on this?

Seller is selling this dual Giga but he supplies a link for a Sonnet firmware upgrade. The auction pics also show the firmware update so I must assume that the Sonnet upgrade allows the Giga to function.

Is that even possible? And if it is, does it open new options to make GD processors more stable?

Curious to know your opinion on this.

*MODS - NOT my auction!!!
Click to expand...
Well if the pictures in the auction are to be believed, it looks like it works... Pretty much every auction for a Giga/Powerlogix/non-Sonnet G4 CPU that doesn't include the firmware cd advertises that you can just use the sonnet software/patch.

When I had the PowerLogix Dual 1.8, it had a patch cd that required booting into Open Firmware to install, and it was very stable! In fact I preferred this approach to the sonnet installer application, but that's a matter of preference.

I tried to use the Sonnet card with the PowerLogix patch, and it did work, but it gave me a kernel panic or two over an hour of use, so I figured it was best to remove the PowerLogix patch, reinstall the original CPU, patch the firmware using the sonnet installer, and then reinstall the sonnet. It never gave me a single kernel panic after that.

Just thought I'd share my experience.
 
eyoungren said:
Hey @bunnspecial!

Care to speculate on this?

Seller is selling this dual Giga but he supplies a link for a Sonnet firmware upgrade. The auction pics also show the firmware update so I must assume that the Sonnet upgrade allows the Giga to function.

Is that even possible? And if it is, does it open new options to make GD processors more stable?

Curious to know your opinion on this.

*MODS - NOT my auction!!!
Click to expand...

I guess fundamentally the big thing with these super speed upgrades is making the computer work with a 7447A, so I'm not surprised that the firmware patch is compatible across brands.

With that said, I kind of doubt that it would help with the stability of that particular processor since the problems seem more heat related than anything. The Sonnet patch would probably allow you to boot into OS 9, but I don't know that it would necessarily offer anything beyond that.
 
TxBook said:
Well if the pictures in the auction are to be believed, it looks like it works... Pretty much every auction for a Giga/Powerlogix/non-Sonnet G4 CPU that doesn't include the firmware cd advertises that you can just use the sonnet software/patch.

When I had the PowerLogix Dual 1.8, it had a patch cd that required booting into Open Firmware to install, and it was very stable! In fact I preferred this approach to the sonnet installer application, but that's a matter of preference.

I tried to use the Sonnet card with the PowerLogix patch, and it did work, but it gave me a kernel panic or two over an hour of use, so I figured it was best to remove the PowerLogix patch, reinstall the original CPU, patch the firmware using the sonnet installer, and then reinstall the sonnet. It never gave me a single kernel panic after that.

Just thought I'd share my experience.
Click to expand...
bunnspecial said:
I guess fundamentally the big thing with these super speed upgrades is making the computer work with a 7447A, so I'm not surprised that the firmware patch is compatible across brands.

With that said, I kind of doubt that it would help with the stability of that particular processor since the problems seem more heat related than anything. The Sonnet patch would probably allow you to boot into OS 9, but I don't know that it would necessarily offer anything beyond that.
Click to expand...
Thanks guys! I guess I just assumed that since these were third party upgrades the software/firmware would be proprietary and therefore would not work for the competitor's hardware.

Bunn, you're probably right given that Giga is overclocking a slower CPU.
 
OK. So, I followed instructions and got as far as running the Sonnet Firmware Update app. It gave me an error for an unrecognized ROM.

Absolutely no idea what this means and I'm not about to try and figure this out if it turns out the CPU will work.

I know it was mentioned that these are different processors. But, the Mac had a Sonnet in before. So, I shut down and installed the Dual.

Booted right up. System sees it as a Dual 1.8Ghz (screenshot) and is working just fine.

Unless someone can see any idea as to why my system should NOT be performing I'm just going to let the ROM thing go. It's working.

And it's FAST!!!

System Profiler.png
 
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very nice to see its working out :) the sonnet firmware patcher prolly got confuse by the fact you already had the giga designs patch installed. that must be a very fast G4 now :) Just needs a Graphics card upgrade...(im thinking if the FireGL X3s wont work maybe you could find something like a Geforce 6800 or 7800 since those are known to work in QSs...)
 
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