G3/L2 Upgrades on Ebay

[coius]

I contacted Sonnet a while back, and they said some company came and bought out their old stock. I am guessing this is sonnet's old stock. They said they purchased 20-30 Sonnet L2 G3 upgrade cards. This very well could have been the buyer. It wasn't as if Sonnet was going to make much of a profit. These were probably cluttering up the office.

Another thing that springs to mind is reviewers. AKA they send these "Samples" to mac magazine people, they test them, rate them in the magazine, and send them back. We may have modules that were used in test machines to report on the speed/worthiness off the upgrade to people.

 

[coius]

btw, my Rage 128 caused the hang up. Must've kept the G3 from getting proper cooling. I also heard of conflicts on 6400zone between the G3 cards and the Rage 128. Coincidence?

 

[Unknown_K]

A number of years back on ebay a company was flooding the market with "new" 10/100 Nubus ethernet cards that seemed to be old returns sold off by whoever got the warehouse stock from the older defunct company (Fallaron maybe?). One of the units I got was DOA.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

There are more than a few companies selling Sonnet Accelerators for MUCH higher prices than they can be had on Sonnet's own site/online store! 8-o

If these cards are simply "old stock," why would they ship with a higher rev driver diskette than a newer model? Something about that scenario does NOT compute!

 

[trag]

A number of years back on ebay a company was flooding the market with "new" 10/100 Nubus ethernet cards that seemed to be old returns sold off by whoever got the warehouse stock from the older defunct company (Fallaron maybe?). One of the units I got was DOA.

I hope it wasn't Asante. I have a box full of NuBus 10/100 cards in the attic which I bought on Ebay from what appeared to be an Asante ID liquidating "Refurbished" stock. I tried to use one in a PM8100/110 with a NewerTech G3 and OS 8.mumble or maybe 9.something and it didn't work.

This left me wondering if the driver for the card works past 7.6.1 but I was actually trying to use it to move files to an MDD, so I gave up on the ethernet card at that point and moved on to other matters.

One of these days I'll take up the 10/100 ethernet cards as a topic, and I hope I don't find that they're defective...

 

[trag]

I got the "Powered by Sonnet" stickers, manuals and a Crescendo "Encore" Install Diskette 1.4.5 in each box.

What is the latest version of the software? Or is that it?

Wondering if I need to download newer software or just use what's in the box.

 

[trag]

There are more than a few companies selling Sonnet Accelerators for MUCH higher prices than they can be had on Sonnet's own site/online store!

I find those funny when I see them. The NuBus accelerator is the one that springs to mind. The 400MHz version is what?, $30 on Sonnet's site with another $20 for the PDS passthrough adapter. Ebayers are often asking $100 for them.

Even funnier is that Sonnet's on-line store has two different prices.

Let's see:

https://secure1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=22_91&osCsid=72c98574cc51e982e02b9602e5919b81

has the adapter for $19.95 and the G3 upgrade for $29.95.

But https://secure1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=51_52&osCsid=72c98574cc51e982e02b9602e5919b81

has the G3 upgrade for $39.95.

A few months ago that was reversed. The "Special Deals" link was $10 less than the regular CPU upgrades link. Now it's the other way around. I wonder what the price would be on the phone...

However, I can't see much point in putting a G3 upgrade in a NuBus machine these days when One could buy a G3 or G4 machine in similar box for much less.

For special cases/form factors such as the 6500, and the 20th anniversary, and maybe the 6100 I can see it. But not for something like a 7100 or 8100. And even with the 6100, I'd be tempted to hack a Beige G3 board into a low profile case or something.

My feeling about earlier Macs is similar. I can see putting a Turbo040 in an SE/30 because it's such a cool form factor, it's worth adding performance and keeping the original look and feel of the machine. But for a IIci or some such, why not just get a Q650 (or hack a Q650 logic board into a Q700 case)?

 

[Unknown_K]

Since you bring it up I can't see spending $25 for a G3 in a 6400/6500 either, they are just too RAM limited. Or worse you could get a G4 upgrade for a Nubus PPC machine, what would be the point of that?

Some upgrades are more usable then others, but we each have a price point in mind to where we say what the hell and just do it.

 

[trag]

Since you bring it up I can't see spending $25 for a G3 in a 6400/6500 either, they are just too RAM limited.

Honestly, I feel much the same, but there are some 6500 fans on this thread... And the 6500 is an interesting machine--not especially interesting to me, but the built-in subwoofer and video capabilities interest a number of people.

My interest arose because of my "smallest 7.6.1" computer project. I want PPC power, so a 6500 logic board seems the way to go, and to get the best performance possible, I need a G3/L2 upgrade. Of course a 500MHz, 1MB L2 upgrade would be better, but for $20 vs $100+ I'll settle for 400MHz and a 512KB cache which I may be able to upgrade to 1MB later.

Also, I think I'll be able to get the ram up to 160MB from 128MB. I have this 32MB EDO DIMM which seems to have exactly the kind of memory chips for which the logic board has pads...

That would still be kind of low for OS9, but for 7.6.1 I think it's probably plenty.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I caught the Specials/Regular pricing boo-boo on Sonnet's site too! )

As far as the NuBus G3 & HPV Adapter, I got those for my Radius 81/110, which is waaaayyyyy cooler than an 8100. I'll get an HPV Card and get this up and running some day for VidCap Playtime.

Meanwhile I'm setting up either my 8500 in its own skin for PCI era VidCap or my 9600 inside a fake Radius 81/110, just like the one I'm building for my UbuntuGIMPbox™. If I can find a fourth front Panel I'll have the Columns for the start of a MacShelf unit to display some Compact Macs including:

The http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=12737 and some relatively stock 128k/Plus Conversions, my 8500 and IIsi.

The reason the 6400/6500 boards are worth upgrading is that they're fun to play with using the TV Tuner/CD/Power-on-off features of the TV Tuner's remote control. This makes a nifty little AV Setup. The CC guys were doing the 6400/6500 based "Takky" hack for the longest time. Other than a Mac Mini, the 6400/6500<->Q630 boards are the only worthwhile MoBos that'll fit into a Compact Mac case for a "Short Bed Takky" hack.

Anyway, there's a lot of fun to be had stuffing these little puppies into all kinds of places. Two PCI Slots and a CommSlot II 10/100bT card cost less and are a lot more interesting than playing with a Mac Mini, IMHO! [] ]'>

 

[Gil]

Since you bring it up I can't see spending $25 for a G3 in a 6400/6500 either, they are just too RAM limited.

Same here, but they're just so frickin' rare, I couldn't NOT buy one.

 

[Unknown_K]

Some items you just have to pass up, rare or not, because of room and money for things you actually want to use.

Sometimes you do regret passing those things up...

 

[bbraun]

FWIW, there was no mistaking mine for new. I just got it today, and it came with no interior shrinkwrap, the empty backing of what the manual says should have been a sticker, the floppy was unreadable, and the cpu card its self was loose in the box. It apparently slid out of its unsealed anti-static bag during shipping.