Dual 8500

[Temetka]

So I am curious. My 8500 has served me well (Thanks Orion!), but I've always wanted to toy with a dual 604e or 604ev card.

Will the 8500 accept such a card and what would be a fair price to pay for one? Right now I have a 300MHz 604 in it and it runs great. I used to have a 400MHz G3 in it, but pulled it to use in my 8600 which is now on loan to a friend.

I really love my 8500 and it is the only Mac to compete for my heart minus the PB5300. As such I know that no matter what other machine comes into my house, it will sit in the co-pilot seat in comparison. To that end I would like to take it to the height of it's classic goodness. It's got 512MB RAM, a 32MB Rage Orion, a Sonnet ATA/133 card, an 80GB HD and a 16X SCSI CD-ROM in it.

I don't really have any practical need to replace the CD-ROM with anything else. I would love to add an internal Zip 250 drive and faceplate to it though. Finally I would like to repaint it black with a Platinum colored racing stripe going down the side (horizontal, 1.5" tall, same height placement as model sticker on front), or repaint it with a close match to Platinum.

So if anyone out there owns an 8500 series machine, what are your thoughts on the matter?

 

[alk]

...I've always wanted to toy with a dual 604e or 604ev card.
Will the 8500 accept such a card and what would be a fair price to pay for one? Right now I have a 300MHz 604 in it and it runs great.

The 604ev (genuine Apple 604e processor daughtercard at 250MHz or faster) requires a Mach V motherboard from a late model 8600 or 9600. If you are running a 300MHz 604(ev) in your 8500, you must have already done that motherboard swap with an 8600/250 or 8600/300. So it will also run a 350MHz 604ev which can be easily overclocked to 400MHz. That would be a nice setup. I have a 400MHz 604ev in my 9600/350.

Dual processors are definitely possible, but I think you will need the original motherboard. I don't know if the Mach V motherboards will work with older daughtercards than the 604ev (3rd party upgrades are a different story). Any dual processor daughtercard should work fine from the dual 180MHz 604e in the 9500/180 MP to the 200MHz 604e in the 9600/200 MP. Daystar processor cards (nPOWER upgrades as well as processor daughtercards from the Genesis and Millenium series of clones) will work fine. I've got an nPOWER (dual 200MHz 604e) in a PowerTower Pro. If you are looking for a speed increase, don't bother with the dual processor cards. The classic Mac OS spends more time managing the two processors meaning that there's more overhead with a general slowdown as a result. OS 9 is better than System 7 in this regard, but it's still nowhere near as good as a truly MP-aware OS like OS X. You will only get a speed increase by running certain MP aware apps (like Photoshop). For general use, the MP setup on PCI-class Macs isn't very practical.

I think I would expect to pay about $50 for a 604ev/350 and probably somewhere near the same for a dual 604e daughtercard. But you'll only be bidding against other collectors like yourself.

Peace,

Drew

 

[alk]

Ooh, I didn't think about this. I've also got a 9500/133 around here somewhere. The heatsink on the 133MHz 604 CPU is much shorter than on the faster 200MHz+ parts. Some processor upgrades (like some ZIF carrier cards) won't fit in the case with a big heatsink. That might be a problem for you as well...

Peace,

Drew

 

[Temetka]

I can swap the heatsink from another 604 and add a low profile fan to it if need be.

I know about OS 9 not being gully MP aware, and it doesn't bother me one bit. Having 2 CPU's in the machine just satisfies some inner geek lust for me. I've always loved the 604 chip and thought it had a real good future in store for it. It's 64-bit chip, PPC architecture and runs great! What's not to love?

 

[Bunsen]

PPC Linux or BSD would be fully dual processor aware.

One thing I've always wondered but so far never tried is whether you could run two seperate instances of Mac-On-Linux, perhaps by renaming one of them.

 

[alk]

PPC Linux or BSD would be fully dual processor aware.

Are you sure? The last time I ran a Linux (YDL 3) on a dual 604e Mac, the second CPU was not active. Mac OS is required to get that second CPU active. This is in contrast to dual G4 processors which use a different architecture that Linux can enable.

A while back, Danamania said the same thing - that Debian, out of the box, works on dual 604e CPUs. Which seems strange because I thought that out-of-the-box support for PCI-class Macs was pretty much non-existant in ANY Linux distro. YDL, which is built specifically for PowerPC, doesn't even support those Macs anymore - since YDL 3, you have to figure out how to install it yourself.

Peace,

Drew

 

[Bunsen]

Are you sure?

Not 100%, no. I have heard reference that -something- supports both CPUs, but you have to maybe set a flag in the setup. Perhaps it was NetBSD rather than a Linux.

 

[QuadSix50]

PPC Linux or BSD would be fully dual processor aware.

Are you sure? The last time I ran a Linux (YDL 3) on a dual 604e Mac, the second CPU was not active. Mac OS is required to get that second CPU active. This is in contrast to dual G4 processors which use a different architecture that Linux can enable.

A while back, Danamania said the same thing - that Debian, out of the box, works on dual 604e CPUs. Which seems strange because I thought that out-of-the-box support for PCI-class Macs was pretty much non-existant in ANY Linux distro. YDL, which is built specifically for PowerPC, doesn't even support those Macs anymore - since YDL 3, you have to figure out how to install it yourself.

Peace,

Drew

I can only imagine that the kernel used was not SMP-aware. Most of the kernels available now have a kernel compiled for SMP support for multi-CPU and multi-core systems. I used to use YDL, but compared to today's PowerPC ports of GNU/Linux, YDL is waaaaaaay behind in terms of features IMO.

 

[Temetka]

What's a good PPC disro to use than?

SuSE?

Ubuntu?