8500 G4 Issue

[stretch]

I've been running this 8500 with a Sonnet 500MHz G3 processor for years. I've had no issues with it and I've been quite satisfied. I've rigged this machine with 768MB of memory, two 4GB and one 9GB hard drives and I boot 7.5.5, 9.1 or 10.2.8 depending on what I need to do. The only PCI card I installed is a USB card. Video is on board.

I recently acquired one of those rare Sonnet 1GHz G4 accelerators. I checked it out on another machine and all seemed well. However, when I put it this machine, all seems well booted with OS X. When booted under 9.1, I see random crashes most notably using Netscape 4 and Quicktime 6.0.3. I haven't used 7.5.5 much yet, but I did a clean 7.5.3 install and upgrade to 7.5.5 in less than 5 minutes.

I tried doing a clean system install (9.0 CD - 9.04 update - 9.1 update) with a clean install of Quicktime 6.0.3 (after I deleted all of the previous QT version) and the problem remains. I'm using the Sonnet software version 2.3.1 installed from floppy. I tried Version 3.1 but didn't notice any difference.

Is it possible that this machine under 9.1 is just G4 picky? Is there something I overlooked or didn't do? As much as I love this fast G4, I may have to go back to the G3 if I can't find a solution. If anyone has any insight, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

 

[Byrd]

Are there any DIP switches on the card that need adjusting, or have you tried adjusting the backside cache speed using CPU Director?

JB

 

[stretch]

This is a Sonnet card. No switches. However, CPU Director did the trick. Thank you. It took me a while to hunt down an older copy since the latest release refused to run.

What I found is when I booted in OSX, the L3 Cache was turned off. I turned it on to see what would happen and danged if I didn't see intermittent crashes. I went back and made sure it was off and disabled at startup.

When I booted in OS 9, I found the L3 Cache turned on. I turned it off and had no further problems.

CPU Director says the L2 cache is on and enabled in both cases, so I'm not going to mess with that. But I'll keep this little application installed since it's the only way I can get to and see these options.

 

[johnklos]

The Sonnet 1 GHz G4 CPU cards come with 2 meg of L3 which is supposed to be able to run at 250 MHz. Since turning off the cache seems to fix your problem, you could also try to run the L3 cache at 200 MHz and see if 250 is just a wee bit too fast.

Slower L3 is better than no L3.

 

[stretch]

John, that's a reasonable suggestion. However I don't see an option to change the speed. I have reported sizes and speeds, then an option to enable/disable the cache at startup or an option to turn it on/off.

It seems I have a choice. Run with the smaller 256k @ 1GHz L2 cache or the larger 2MB @ 250MHz L3 cache. Since I know that running both causes problems, I may try running the L3 cache with the L2 turned off or for that matter, running with no cache at all.

This 8500 being what it is, the next time I have the case open, I'm going to take a closer look at the memory sticks. I could have one that a little slow as well.

 

[johnklos]

Hmmm... It's been a while since I've run these kinds of Sonnet accelerators in Mac OS 8 or 9. Mine are in various NetBSD machines (I have a couple of 700 MHz Sonnet accelerators, too), but the 1 GHz one has been 100% solidly stable.

I thought that PowerLogix' CPU Director had an option to set the ratio, but it's been a long time, and the last time I think I used it was when booted into OS 9 on a first generation iMac G3. It's worth a try, though:

http://www.powerlogix.com/support/downloads/CPU_Director_2.3b4.zip

John

 

[mac2geezer]

Hmmm. I have a 9500 with a Sonnet 800MHz G4 that has strange problems from time to time. ie Apple System Profiler freezes the machine solid when I attempt to list the SCSI devices.

Downloaded CPU Director 2.3b4 to check Cache speeds but it won't run in OS 9.2.2; so, where did you get the version that runs in OS 9?

 

[stretch]

John - That's the version I tried first. It refuses to load in OS9. I had to dig through my collection and found a copy of 1.5f6 and that works just fine. I'm a little older than a first generation iMac G3.

I knew there was a reason I rat holed software when I bought my first Mac LC in 1994! :lol:

 

[Temetka]

Is the motherboard onboard cache disabled or enabled?

When I had an 8500 and a NewerTech card if I ran the onboard cache alongside the CPU cache I would have some of the same issues as the OP.

 

[stretch]

I pulled the on board cache card from the mother board when I installed the G3 years ago. This was recommended in the Sonnet installation instructions. The 500Mhz G3 processor worked great. This 1Ghz G4 processor works well now and the original issue I had with crashing is gone. I still see intermittent issues that I relate to timing issues somewhere. These issues I can live with since I see them mostly at startup. Once its up and running, it screams.

One issue I do see once and a while is the spinning color wheel. CPU Monitor says it's really bound up and I just have to wait it out.