Building the fastest Power Mac 9600

[re4mat]

Aren't you supposed to install the Sonnet CPU extension for OS 9 in order to enable cache on those upgrade cards? And SonnetCache for OS X?

 

[Bolle]

Indeed. The extensions test the cache size and speed and afterwards set the correct registers.

They fail at picking up the cache for testing though and I did not find a way yet to force the cache registers the way I want them.

ReggieSE in OSX won't let me do it.

 

[beachycove]

Just wondering did you make any progress with this?

I recently got a 9600 myself and Have been having much fun playing/experimenting with it

which you can read about here  https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powersurging-to-mac-os-x-10-5-8-power-macintosh-9600-fun.2144305/

What is the performance of the stock machine like when running Tiger? And would your build (made on a dual G5) run both processors of a dual 604e card, do you think? Or is that a limitation in xpostfacto?

 

[re4mat]

Indeed. The extensions test the cache size and speed and afterwards set the correct registers.

They fail at picking up the cache for testing though and I did not find a way yet to force the cache registers the way I want them.

ReggieSE in OSX won't let me do it.

And that's even with the original SRAMs installed? You mentioned back in June that you "soldered the original 700MHz 7451 back on and cache is working just fine with that one." Is it still enabling with the 7451, but fails with the 7455?

 

[jeremywork]

Not sure if you're still working on this project...

I thought I fried a G4 card today- my ventilation was a bit constrained, it froze and wouldn't restart past the Sonnet extension. I popped my spare in and it booted to the desktop, so I decided to re-paste both cards, and discovered evidence against the rumors of Sonnet building 1000/2Ms only after running out of 800MHz parts- both of mine have 800MHz chips overclocked to 1GHz. Thankfully the first G4 worked again after repasting.

These pictures aren't great, but could be useful as both cards do run 2MB of cache at 250MHz, though it is only listed in Sonnet Metronome and System Profiler, not Gauge Pro (which is very confused and also sees a disabled motherboard cache, despite this being a 9600 Enhanced board.) It looks like your 2MB cache chips are the same part number, so nothing jumps out at me, but I'd be happy to help provide more information if it would help.

I've seen native G4s like the MDD fail a startup test in 9.2.2, which indicates just before the desktop that the L3 cache has been disabled due to a hardware failure. Does yours produce a message like this?

 

[LightBulbFun]

with some semi cheap 7457's showing up on ebay it would be really interesting to see if they work on one of these sonnet cards  

perhaps time to revisit this project? @Bolle   

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184311937918

I also came across this most interesting normal apple G4 CPU card fitted with a 7448 on an interposer board to go from CBGA483 to CBGA360

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/g4-7448-and-7457-swap.2233532/page-2?post=28563255#post-28563255

it would hilarious if you could use such a interposer-board here as well a 7448 9600 would be epic  

 

[max1zzz]

I did actually start drawing up such a interposer card a couple of years back (or it might have been to replace 7400 series chips with one of the newer ones, I can't remember what mac I was targeting with it) but got board manually drawing the BGA footprint's as I couldn't find them online, I was also a little unsure how well a normal fibreglass PCB would survive being hot air soldered

Maybe it's time for a revisit

 

[trag]

Just posting  a couple of files.   One is the Motorola/Freescale ZIF datasheet which was linked to earlier.  The link is not working.  The other is an IBM doc on connecting/configuring L2 cache chips -- but it's only for the 750/G3, not for the G4.

View attachment MPCPCMEC.pdf

View attachment 750_dg.pdf

What is the maximum size for the G4 L3 cache?    I ask, because Digikey has some Cypress chips on clearance (no warranty/no returns) which are 250MHz, 512K X 36, $9.10 each.   So a pair of them would yield a 4MB L3.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I did actually start drawing up such a interposer card a couple of years back (or it might have been to replace 7400 series chips with one of the newer ones, I can't remember what mac I was targeting with it) but got board manually drawing the BGA footprint's as I couldn't find them online, I was also a little unsure how well a normal fibreglass PCB would survive being hot air soldered

Maybe it's time for a revisit

yeah would be interesting to see what can be done  

Just posting  a couple of files.   One is the Motorola/Freescale ZIF datasheet which was linked to earlier.  The link is not working.  The other is an IBM doc on connecting/configuring L2 cache chips -- but it's only for the 750/G3, not for the G4.

View attachment 34947

View attachment 34948

What is the maximum size for the G4 L3 cache?    I ask, because Digikey has some Cypress chips on clearance (no warranty/no returns) which are 250MHz, 512K X 36, $9.10 each.   So a pair of them would yield a 4MB L3.

ah cool find I had seen the first PDF but not the IBM one  

maximum size for L3 cache is generally 2MB the 7457 can "do" 4MB but only up to 2MB of it can be used as L3 cache

I wonder if the L3 cache setup you mentioned can just be used in 2MB mode with the last 2MB ignored?

(like 512MB SDRAM sticks in a G3 Beige or BW G3)

I do still wonder how L2 cache is set/detected by Uninorth based macintoshes, I know there is an SPD chip on the CPU card that contains the info

but I dont know what format it is in or how to manipulate it 

it must clearly be possible as this guy on ebay upgrade the backside L2 cache on a G4 to 2MB! 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/293535144530

 

[LightBulbFun]

BTW has anyone contacted sonnet? I hear they are generally quite willing to provide detailed technical info on their old PPC CPU upgrade cards

wonder just how much info we could get from them, schematics, board layout info and any technical notes would be neat! LOL

 

[trag]

maximum size for L3 cache is generally 2MB the 7457 can "do" 4MB but only up to 2MB of it can be used as L3 cache

Is there any potential use for the other 2MB?

I wonder if the L3 cache setup you mentioned can just be used in 2MB mode with the last 2MB ignored?

I think there are some 256K X 36 @ 250 chips in the $4 - $6 range, so it would probably make more sense to use those.   I'm not certain, as I browsed scores of SRAM chips and the brain is full.  It all started with a simple search for some Galvantech chips on a Sonnet G3 card, which popped up a link to Digikey where they were clearing them out for $1.7X (don't remember 'x').   128K X 36 @ 250.   And I just kept looking.   It looks like Cypress passed a lot of their old product on to Renessas (sp?) or discontinued a bunch of the old line of SRAM chips recently and there's a bit of a fire sale going on.

 

[trag]

BTW has anyone contacted sonnet? I hear they are generally quite willing to provide detailed technical info on their old PPC CPU upgrade cards

wonder just how much info we could get from them, schematics, board layout info and any technical notes would be neat! LOL

That's a good idea -- for someone else to do. 

Didn't you mention that someone else had had success?   Perhaps that person could be contacted.   Presumably, he has established a friendly beach head at Sonnet?

 

[trag]

BTW have you tried contacting sonnet for some details on the CPU card? A friend of mine doing stuff like we do contacted sonnet for info on the TAM G3 upgrade cards and actually got back a good wealth of detail

Ah, here we go.  Perhaps this friend could be asked?

BTW, did you friend get info on how the cache size/speed is encode on the Flash on the board?

I ask because i have some G3/512K Cache upgrades and I am sorely tempted to replace the SRAM chips to take them to 1MB, but there's no point if it won't be recognized.