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Worthwhile Upgrade?

Ih8reno

Ih8reno

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 10, 2012
1,383
207
Picked up a Sonnet Crescendo G3 500MHZ upgrade card tonight on the cheap and was going to put it in my Power Macintosh 9600. Problem is I'm not sure if it will be worth installing the upgrade. The plan was to upgrade to Tiger but with such an old machine will it even function well. Any suggestions
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Think i used to surf the net back in the days on one of those machines, at my dads work. :) Try to upgrade to Tiger, if it doesn't work...use it as a Mac OS 9 machine?
 
Folks who have actually used these can probably advise you better than I on the specifics, although I think that Xpostfacto will get you up to 10.4. I know that Intell, who frequents this forum, put a G4 upgrade in his 8600 and installed Leopard.

I can speak from experience, though, and tell you that your life will be much easier if you install a PCI graphics card. OS X in any form really taxes the built in graphics. Even a lowly PCI Mac-edition Rage 128(the standard card in the B&W G3 and Yikes!) which should set you back ~$15 on Ebay will be miles ahead of the onboard graphics and is adequate(although not great) for Tiger. This also gets you VGA out, which makes the computer easy to use with a modern LCD panel or other current monitor(although in my experience a 1920x1080p panel will really tax it, even under OS 9)

If you want to spend a few more bucks, the best Mac-edition PCI graphics card is the Radeon 9200. This has 128mb of VRAM as well as VGA, DVI, and S-Video out. I have one of these cards in my G4-upgraded B&W G3, and it's a superb card under Tiger, although it does lack Core Image support.

There's also an option between these two-I think it's the Radeon 7500, although may have the exact number wrong.

And, finally, if you don't mind playing around with flashing, there are PC editions of the GEForce FX5200 in PCI. Unlike the Mac version of this card(which was standard on many G5s) most of the PC editions have 128mb or even 256mb of VRAM. I have a 256mb one that I've been playing around with, although haven't been successful in flashing it yet. The 5200 supports Core Image. Tiger doesn't rely on Core Image as much as Leopard, but it still definitely benefits from having a card which supports it.
 
The GeForce 5200 doesn't work in Old World Macs like the 9600. Its ROM never had Old World support coded into it. The best video card for Old World PCI Macs is the ATI 9200.
 
Intell said:
The GeForce 5200 doesn't work in Old World Macs like the 9600. Its ROM never had Old World support coded into it. The best video card for Old World PCI Macs is the ATI 9200.
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I have a spare ATI Rage Pro PC edition laying around, would this work if I figure out how to flash it
 
It'll work, if you can flash it. But it's a poor performing card for Tiger. A good choice for a cheap one would be the Mac ATI Radeon or ATI 7000/7500. Just keep in mind that a PCI video card is required as 10.3 and higher cannot use the built in video on older Old World Macs like the 9600.
 
Intell said:
Just keep in mind that a PCI video card is required as 10.3 and higher cannot use the built in video on older Old World Macs like the 9600.
Click to expand...

Why Not? Also I have a PCI PC nVIDIA GeForce FX 5500. What mac firmware could i flash to it?
 
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The GeForce 5200 never had Old World OpenFirmware support coded into its ROM as it was only ever an AGP New World card.
 
Ih8reno said:
Picked up a Sonnet Crescendo G3 500MHZ upgrade card tonight on the cheap and was going to put it in my Power Macintosh 9600. Problem is I'm not sure if it will be worth installing the upgrade. The plan was to upgrade to Tiger but with such an old machine will it even function well. Any suggestions
Click to expand...

About 9 yrs ago,
I saw a PM9600 with a G3 900MHz upgrade (OWC) and
a Radeon 32MB PCI Vid Card.
RAM wasn't full, but a decent amount existed to try an attempt with OSX
(can't remember the exact RAM amount).

xPostFacto got Panther installed & running.
...the glee the owner had back then for such an accomplishment ;)
YouTube ran a bit choppy in a small window
(Jake from Hawaii playing his ukelele, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps").

But now, thinking of this OSX performance chugging through a 50MHz system bus...:(

Personally, I'd think the 9600 with all its PCI slots would make a great old Mac OS Classic machine
for running all those old Audio/Visual software/hardware packages that one reads about in the past.
But then that means looking for those old sw/hw packages (for cheap only) on eBay & craigslist.
But for a collector/tinkerer, that's kinda cool.

I'd definitely install that G3 500 upgrade for whatever purpose.
 
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Intell said:
Just keep in mind that a PCI video card is required as 10.3 and higher cannot use the built in video on older Old World Macs like the 9600.
Click to expand...

Does that include the beige G3 and the on-board chipset?
If so then no wonder it wouldn't complete the boot...
I asked on my thread if I required anything like a PCI craphics card but nobody said anything about that.
 
Did the install tonight. All it entailed was installing some sonnet software, removing the original 300mhz card pressing the reset cuda switch and then putting in the new processor. Not sure if I will go install OS X as there is only 320mb of ram installed and I doubt it would work very well. Here are some pics and a comparison of the original and upgrade card.

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Ih8reno said:
Did the install tonight. All it entailed was installing some sonnet software, removing the original 300mhz card pressing the reset cuda switch and then putting in the new processor. Not sure if I will go install OS X as there is only 320mb of ram installed and I doubt it would work very well. Here are some pics and a comparison of the original and upgrade card.

ImageImageImage
Click to expand...


Woah :eek: Are all those modules with big fat chips the RAM?!
 
Ih8reno said:
Yeah, 320mb in 32mb chips
Click to expand...

You still have two empty slots :)

I've been looking for a 9600 for a little while now(I have a WTB up in the sales corner for one)...seeing your photos just makes me want one even more! There's something really appealing about all those RAM slots and all those PCI slots. They truly are beasts of computers.
 
bunnspecial said:
You still have two empty slots :)

I've been looking for a 9600 for a little while now(I have a WTB up in the sales corner for one)...seeing your photos just makes me want one even more! There's something really appealing about all those RAM slots and all those PCI slots. They truly are beasts of computers.
Click to expand...

Yeah it certainly is, its next to my mac pro 1,1 right now and looks pretty cool to see the evolution of Macs. The only thing that bothers me with it is that is sounds like a vacuum cleaner when its on!
 
384mb is fine for Tiger or older. Panther and older require 128MB minimum and Tiger requires 256MB minimum. Tiger may be a little sluggish. Panther should be good.

----------
Ih8reno said:
Yeah it certainly is, its next to my mac pro 1,1 right now and looks pretty cool to see the evolution of Macs. The only thing that bothers me with it is that is sounds like a vacuum cleaner when its on!
Click to expand...

Fans probably on their way out... They're probably sleeve bearing fans. Try oiling them; if that doesn't work then just replace them. Fans are cheap :D
 
would pc 100 or 133 ram work? I have a bunch of that
 
Ih8reno said:
would pc 100 or 133 ram work? I have a bunch of that
Click to expand...

I don't think so...even though both are 168 pin, I think that the DIMMs used in these are a little bit different. If nothing else, I think that the keys are slightly different between the "correct" RAM and PC66/100/133.

That's at least the answer I got when looking into RAM for my 8500.
 
bunnspecial said:
I don't think so...even though both are 168 pin, I think that the DIMMs used in these are a little bit different. If nothing else, I think that the keys are slightly different between the "correct" RAM and PC66/100/133.

That's at least the answer I got when looking into RAM for my 8500.
Click to expand...

ah ok. Well the mac works just fine, simply loud though, louder then my dual 1.42 mdd if you can believe it. I shoehorned 9.2.2 into it even though it only is supposed to go to 9.1. The seller of the card said he may have some ram so I wrote to him and will see if I can get some from him rather then ship it in from the US (in Canada here).
 
Ih8reno said:
ah ok. Well the mac works just fine, simply loud though, louder then my dual 1.42 mdd if you can believe it. I shoehorned 9.2.2 into it even though it only is supposed to go to 9.1. The seller of the card said he may have some ram so I wrote to him and will see if I can get some from him rather then ship it in from the US (in Canada here).
Click to expand...

Oil the fans or replace if that doesnt work
 
There's no need to mess with the fans in a 9600. They're loud like that and always have been.
 
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