asking for opinion: WGS 8150 vs. Radius 81/110

[rbbrchckn]

I have both of these, but only enough parts to max out one of them. The positives I see:

Radius has internal fast SCSI and integrated video.
WGS 8150 has a tape drive, is a bit smaller, and it's a WGS.

Whichever one I end up using I will also put in a Sonnet G3 266, an ATTO SE IV D SCSI card and a ProTools Audio Card; even though the cable is the same I think I can only plug in my 442, and not my 888 interface.

I could go either way, are there any issues or problems I may have to deal with either???

[beachycove]

The Radius is the greater rarity. WGServers are no different than ordinary Macs of the day, though both (?) machines likely have an extra large L2 cache. If it's 1MB, the chip alone is probably worth more than the computer, so don't throw it away when you stick in the G3.

[Unknown_K]

I like the 81/110 Radius, and I own one. Still the tape drive in the WGS 8150 is nice, but I have externals so backup is not a problem.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Radius Rocks! I've been using their products since '87 and the one I love most is my 81/110 with the Radius VideoVision Studio Setup.

I liked its design so much that I snagged a NIB 81/110 faceplate on eBay and I'm building my PC based ubuntuGIMPbox to make use of it. The 81/100's wider faceplate allows me to do a drop side, clear plexi deal. The sheet metal case on a Radius Clone is head and shoulders above the Apple Plastic Wonders of that era, in terms of packaging.

Design of the two cases is a matter of taste . . . but who backs up to tape anymore anyhow?

[Unknown_K]

I use tape all the time for the vintage gear (archives).

[rbbrchckn]

Thanks for all the info. Going to spend next weekend maxing out my Radius 81.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

[rbbrchckn]

I have started the upgrade, almost finished but ran into a snag. I can not get it to recognize the G3 card and when installed it will only startup with extensions off. The card is a Sonnet G3 266 1 Meg cache. I followed the directions, installed the crescendo 1.44 software, removed cache, processor is seated properly in slot. I ran Norton SystemWorks from the CD and there were no problems. The OS is 9.04 with nothing else installed. The one thing I have not tried is installing a PDS terminator in the G3 card. The directions say nothing about this, but I would assume it still must be terminated? Anyone have any tips?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I have started the upgrade, almost finished but ran into a snag.

<snip>

The one thing I have not tried is installing a PDS terminator in the G3 card. The directions say nothing about this, but I would assume it still must be terminated? Anyone have any tips?

If there's provision for one, it sounds like a very good idea to try one, I doubt it could hurt, if there's a slot to put it, or female sockets for SIP resistor packs, I'd do it in a heartbeat. You've got that funky two slot setup with the ribbon cable, IIRC?

If so, terminating the cable interface would likely be standard procedure. Post some piccies of the upgrade process, please. This sounds like something I'd really like to do with my Radius81/110-VidCapPlayToy/MacFurniture™_Support!

[trag]

I have started the upgrade, almost finished but ran into a snag. I can not get it to recognize the G3 card and when installed it will only startup with extensions off. The card is a Sonnet G3 266 1 Meg cache. I followed the directions, installed the crescendo 1.44 software, removed cache, processor is seated properly in slot. I ran Norton SystemWorks from the CD and there were no problems. The OS is 9.04 with nothing else installed. The one thing I have not tried is installing a PDS terminator in the G3 card. The directions say nothing about this, but I would assume it still must be terminated? Anyone have any tips?

Do you have a JackHammer card installed? The Sonnet upgrade was incompatible with the JackHammer when it was first released. I think Sonnet solved that later.

Another possibility is that the G3 card has a defective backside Cache. I saw this on a NewerTech card once. It worked fine until an extension enabled the backside cache and then it would crash the computer. Turned out the cache was bad.

[ppuskari]

If you have the SA4 Protools Audio Card installed then yes, it will only connect to the 442 interface and not the 888. If you have the even older SoundTools audio card, then the only thing you can connect to it is the PRO analog, DAT, and standard Analog SoundTools interfaces. I've never tried and honestly since my 888's were and still are a bit pricey I'm not going to try that one. The 888's and 882's will hook up to a standard Digidesign SA8 (Elvis) Disk IO card, or the Bridge Card.

If you need the older Protools software that supports what you have, let me know. I have a cd made up for this type adventure.

[rbbrchckn]

The SCSI card that I will eventually use is the ATTO SE IVD, but it si currently not installed. I'm pretty sure that both ProTools cards I have are the SA4 kind, but again, not installed. The RAM is maxed, and it worked fine in the WGS 8150 as well as in the Radius before I tried the G3 card. It also has a virtually brand new PRAM battery. When I start with extensions off or boot from Norton disk it says the processor is the 601 110 MHz, not the G3. I might try wiping the hard drive and doing a re-install of OS 9

[trag]

The SCSI card that I will eventually use is the ATTO SE IVD, but it si currently not installed.

IIRC, neither the Sonnet, nor the NewerTech upgrades were compatible with the ATTO SCSI card. I may be misremembering though. The forums where I discussed this back when are either gone or hard to get to. I think we talked about this on the XLR8yourmac.com forums and also at PowerWatch.com (power computing user community).

I might try wiping the hard drive and doing a re-install of OS 9

Is OS 9 supported? I honestly don't know. I ran 7.6.1 with my G3 upgraded 8100-equivalent (PCC Power 120).

[Bunsen]

9.0.x yes, and I think 9.1. 9.2.x, no.

[LCGuy]

OS 9.1 is supported on x100 series Macs so long as you use an original Mac OS 9.1 install CD. You cannot use a Mac OS 9.0 or 9.04 CD + the downloadable 9.1 updater.

If you don't have an original OS 9.1 install CD, get your hands on another PowerPC Mac with SCSI. Remove the hard drive from the PowerMac, and connect it to the other Mac, either internally or in an external enclosure, and run the 9.1 updater on that. This really does work - many years ago when my 8100 worked, I got my 8100 updated to 9.1 by putting its drive in an external enclosure and running the 9.1 updater on my PB1400.

[rbbrchckn]

I'm guessing my G3 issue was a bad cache, luckily I bought 2 G3 266's in the same auction and the second card works. Unfortunately I do have the OS 9.04 upgrade issue now. I do have a flaky 8600 that I might try the upgrade tricck, but all my other machines are G4, whether stock or upgraded. I'm hoping the ATTO card will not be an issue. I also just won an auction for a nubus SampleCell card; so I'm hoping to max the thing out with the ATTO card, ProTools SA4, and SampleCell. The ATTO will allow me to install 1 or 2 extra hi-speed 18 Gig drives. Slowly but surely getting there... Woo-Hooo!

[Bunsen]

G3 266 / ATTO card, ProTools SA4, and SampleCell / hi-speed 18 Gig drives.

Awww yyyeah, now we're talking

[Quadraman]

Isn't the Radius 81/110 faster than the Powermac/WGS? I thought the Apple machines were only 100mhz.

[rbbrchckn]

I think the WGS may have started with 100, but the one I have is the "speed bump" 110. There is a "technically" faster point with the Radius; the internal SCSI buss is faster than on any of the Macs of the time. This is another reason why I'm going with the Radius, I'll use the OS drive on the stock internal buss. I know it will be slower, but make troubleshooting easier.

[trag]

I think the WGS may have started with 100, but the one I have is the "speed bump" 110. There is a "technically" faster point with the Radius; the internal SCSI buss is faster than on any of the Macs of the time. This is another reason why I'm going with the Radius, I'll use the OS drive on the stock internal buss. I know it will be slower, but make troubleshooting easier.

The SCSI buses on the Radius are identical to the SCSI buses on the Apple because the Radius logic board and ROM is identical to the Apple logic board and ROM with the single exception that the Radius board omits the HD-45 connector and substitutes a 15 pin video connector for the DRAM based video out.

The internal SCSI bus on the 8100 and Radius 81/110 (and Power Computing Power 80, 100, & 120) is based on an NCR 53CF96 and is Fast SCSI-2, which has a theoretical transfer rate of 10 MB/s. The internal/external SCSI bus on those machines comes out of the CURIO chip from AMD but is probably a 53C96 or 53C94 cell and is *unenhanced* SCSI-2, which has a theoretical transfer rate of 5 MB/s.

[rbbrchckn]

AACK!!! Having to back-pedal now, install an older OS. I (obviously) intend to run ProTools as well as getting Sound Designer II back up. ProTools will have to be version 4.2 so I may have to go back all the way to OS 7.6.1.

The SCSI info I was going from came out of everymac.com:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/radius/ ... 1_110.html

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/m ... 0_110.html

[rbbrchckn]

AAACK!!! part 2. I ended up having to go with OS 8.1 as it appears OS 7.6.1 only recognizes 2 gig or smaller. I also decided to pull the SCSI card as there seems to be conflict issues that I'm not really wanting to troubleshoot. I do still have a 9 gig and an 18 gig 7200 RPM drives, but now they have to use the 68-50 pin 'chokers'. The good news is I won an eBay auction for an 8100/80 board with all RAM slots filled and a nubus video card (NOT PDS), but now I'm back to AAAACK!!!

I'm debating whether to rip everything out AGAIN to switch out the motherboards as the Radius board is 36 MHz while the 8100/80 is 40 MHz. Still trying to find out for sure if the internal SCSI buss on the Radius is truly faster or not.

[Unknown_K]

OS 7.6.1 can only boot from 2GB partitions, but can use anything you have left for non bootable partitions. OS 8.1 can boot from larger then 2GB partitions.

The early PPC macs had issues on the nubus when using SCSI cards and any other card that did bus mastering (like video capture cards), so you are stuck with the internal SCSI if you want to do audio work.

[tom7447]

That's odd about the 2GB partition booting. My PowerBook 1400 is running 7.6.1 and has a 5GB drive in it (therefore partitioned to a single volume of 4.7GB). It boots up first time, every time

[ojfd]

OS 7.6.1 can only boot from 2GB partitions, but can use anything you have left for non bootable partitions. OS 8.1 can boot from larger then 2GB partitions.

This is not quite correct. I have several PPC machines running 7.6.1 that boot off of a 4 and 9 gig drives. If I remember correctly, it was only true for 68k models (2GB limitation in ROM or something).

The early PPC macs had issues on the nubus when using SCSI cards and any other card that did bus mastering (like video capture cards), so you are stuck with the internal SCSI if you want to do audio work.

Also not quite correct. ATTO was a pain, but FWB Jackhammer (both Nubus) gave me no problems on various 7100/8100s with 7.6.1, AM II and/or Sound Tools+ 442. I haven't tested SampleCell or any video capture, though.

Drives were formatted with FWB HDT 2.5.xx or 3.x.x, can't remember


Here's one interesting excerpt from FWB FAQ re. Nubus Jackhammer that I saved many moons ago:


Can I use an array volume as my startup volume?

Yes, IF your machine has SCSI Manager 4.3 in ROM, you can start up from a striped, spanned, or mirrored array volume. Machines with SCSI Manager 4.3 in ROM include all Power Macintosh (and later) models (but no PowerBooks except the PB3400 and later models), Quadra 660AVs, Quadra 840AVs, and NuBus Macs with SCSI JackHammers (the JackHammer makes it appear to the system that SCSI Manager 4.3 is in ROM)

Note

If you have SCSI Manager 4.3 only by way of a Hammer Storage NuBus SCSI JackHammer card software, you can't array devices on the JackHammer bus with devices on buses without SCSI Manager 4.3 (in this case, for example, devices on the native bus).