PowerTower Pro 250 Clone: Loved Lots in last life!

[Superdos]

The other day I picked up a Power Computing Power Tower Pro 250 after being tipped off that it was sitting without a pricetag on a shelf at the thrift shop.

Went to the back, got a $20 pricetag on it, went up front, hey, it's 50% off day! Paid $10 and left. Sat for two days. I suspected it was rocking a PPC 604e 250MHz as advertised, I knew it was decked a bit with RAM but I did not know how much, and that it had 3 hard drives, two graphics cards, USB and FireWire cards, and an Adaptec SCSI card with external header which I could only surmise was for a Zip or Jaz drive (of which I do have.)

It was way more decked out than I could have hoped for.

- 384MB of 60ns RAM, interleaved,

- 2GB, 6GB and 18GB hard drives,

- a TwinTurbo 128M8 alongside a ProFormance III 16MB (which turned out to be dead!)

- upgraded Apple-branded 12x SCSI CD drive,

- and to top it all off, an XLR8 G3 400/1M CPU card!

I think I did rather well for $10, and I think someone loved this machine a whole lot in the 90s. I have it running 9.2.2 right now, really helps with the G3 upgrade installed.

So far I've removed the 2 and 6GB drives, leaving only the 18GB, replaced two 80mm fans (CPU and rear exhaust) due to dust-induced death rattle, redid the thermal compound on the XLR8 card, installed my Rage 128GL 16MB from my 6500/275 and installed a Realtek 8139C 10/100 clone from SMC and modified the driver from Realtek to see it as the correct card as per the manual that came with the driver itself! (had me use General Edit Lite to do it.) May be switching this with an MPX card with proper 10/100 indicators, but this seems like a better deal than paying money for an AsanteFAST card with a DEC tulip chip on it. ALso dropped in the SCSI zip drive from the 6500, which I've also stolen the RAM from to up it to a total of 576MB with another 128MB stick on the way to bring it to 640, fully interleaved.

Currently I have a 73GB IBM eServer pSeries rebranded Hitachi Ultrastar on the way, SCA, and appropriate terminating SCA to wide adapter as well. I'm working out whether I want that drive to be on the Adaptec card (25MB/s transfer rate max) with the CD/Zip on the internal bus, or vice-versa. Memory serves that the double bandit Macs had some issues with the PCI slots and different cards, something something cards that needed something or other needed to go in the top slot for each bus (so slot 1 and 4 from the top-down). Otherwise I"ll just leave the original drive as-is in place and use this on the bus with the CD/Zip as the original was.

Also contemplating SCSI cards for replacements, PowerDomain 2940's are pretty expensive still though, and turning a 2940UW on hand into a PowerDomain Mac card seems to be too tedious a task. Also following through on PCI SATA; I have a Sonnet SATA card somewhere from when the GigE dual G4 450 in my mom's closet was once fitted with a SATA drive, this might also turn out to be a viable option. I still have some older 80-gig drives with molex power, so that'd work. The plan is to dual-boot 9.2.2/Debian PPC on this  with seperate drives, if that's even plausible. Also awaiting SOMETHING good to come out of Haiku/PPC, but that's still STILL in the baby stages as far as anything is concerned.

Graphics card? not sure where I'm going there. the Rage 128GL is fine for now, something a little heftier would be nice later on, be it a modded PC Radeon card down the line or what have you. I have a PCI 9250 256MB, but I don't think there was ever a 9250 for Macs outside of AGP. if anyone has any info on this, let me know.

And lastly I'm planning on finding a proper PSU swap. I understand that these are normal ATX supplies? if that's the case, I have a HIPRO H-29538 400W supply I can just drop in, it has PIII and ATX12v connectors on it but it's right as rain otherwise. and, the fan isn't loud as all living dead like in the current!

Pics of this magnificent beast can be found here -- little yellowed on the front, but I think it'll clean up nice.

 

[olePigeon]

Heck of a score.   Sucks about the ProFormance III.  You can connect 3D glasses to it.  It's a fun video card, if a bit underpowered.

 

[trag]

+1 to olePigeon's comments. I have a couple of Proformance III cards, and for their day, they're great cards.

The 3D glasses required a little plug-in daughter card on the video card. Not every PIII card had the required daughter card.

You might check the fan/heat sink on the Proformance card. I've had a bit of trouble with overheating and fan failure, but if it's not outputting anything at all, it's probably dead. I would expect an overheating card to work at first, then develop artifacts, then freeze up.

 

[gocarlo]

Such an awesome find! That's going to be quite a beast when you're done suping it up!

Where did you get that awesome 3D wireframe of the Chrysler building shown in your MiniCAD screenshot?

 

[Superdos]

Such an awesome find! That's going to be quite a beast when you're done suping it up!

Where did you get that awesome 3D wireframe of the Chrysler building shown in your MiniCAD screenshot?

it came with MiniCAD+ 3.1 as a sample file. There's also another which is a schematic for a circuit with a small spreadsheet parts list-- I sent both to someone with both Mastercam and AutoCAD and it turns out the wireframe model does not show up and yet the schematic opens just fine. I'm wondering why that is. I've since found a newer version of MiniCAD (7) and am going to try opening the file in that and exporting it to another DXF for testing purposes once more.

+1 to olePigeon's comments. I have a couple of Proformance III cards, and for their day, they're great cards.

The 3D glasses required a little plug-in daughter card on the video card. Not every PIII card had the required daughter card.

You might check the fan/heat sink on the Proformance card. I've had a bit of trouble with overheating and fan failure, but if it's not outputting anything at all, it's probably dead. I would expect an overheating card to work at first, then develop artifacts, then freeze up.

Not really a priority-- the Rage 128 is more or less the card I'm going to keep in the machine until a more viable alternative drops in my lap. the card is just deadski-- no video output whatsoever. fan also had a death rattle, replaced that, doesn't seem to have helped any. may try ovening it later on. but again, not a priority.

 

[pathw]

That's funny - your find is very similar to my main system from 1996 to 2004:

a) Power Tower 180 with an XLR8 Mach Speed G3 300MHz processor card running at 466MHz

B) 448 MB of memory

c) 18GB IBM Ultrastar 18ES (Ultra SCSI Fast) hanging off of an Advansys Ultra SCSI3 card

d) 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI video card

e) Plextor 32X SCSI CD-ROM drive

f) SyQuest SyJet SCSI 1.5 GB removable cartridge drive

g) USB PCI card

as well as the default (slow) SCSI and built-in video card.

Just now fired it up, to get this information - still working great. Kept adding to it until it was clear that I had to move on to a new(er) system.

 

[Superdos]

Welp, that 400W supply turned out to have a busted cap in it. good thing I popped the cover off before dropping it in-- it worked, but I had to be sure. and then I was greeted to blown nougat all over the top of a cheapo teapo! so pending repair, that's one PSU off my list. Anyone familiar with these things have any recommendations for a supply that would be just right?

That's funny - your find is very similar to my main system from 1996 to 2004:

a) Power Tower 180 with an XLR8 Mach Speed G3 300MHz processor card running at 466MHz

B) 448 MB of memory

c) 18GB IBM Ultrastar 18ES (Ultra SCSI Fast) hanging off of an Advansys Ultra SCSI3 card

d) 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI video card

e) Plextor 32X SCSI CD-ROM drive

f) SyQuest SyJet SCSI 1.5 GB removable cartridge drive

g) USB PCI card

as well as the default (slow) SCSI and built-in video card.

Just now fired it up, to get this information - still working great. Kept adding to it until it was clear that I had to move on to a new(er) system.

What was the transfer speed on your Advansys card, do you remember? the 2930B I'm rocking has a max of 25MB/s nominal, and the internal SCSI is rated for 20 nominal.

I had a Seagate Cheetah 18GB hooked to it for a bit, and although I loved that it was much quieter, it ended up giving up the ghost for some odd reason. and it was a drive I knew to be perfectly good, too!

so now I'm wondering if a SCSI card like that can do something such as kill a drive. Other drives have been plugged into it since then and it hasn't had any problems.

also... 466MHz? I know people overclocked these things, I didn't know that much was possible on a lowly 300. makes me wonder if I can up this thing to 500MHz relatively easy. would probably be unstable, but I'd be willing to do it. ...not that I need the speed, it's chugging along pretty quickly as it is now.

 

[pathw]

> also... 466MHz?

I'm a little vague as to the details ... been a long time since I did this ... but I believe that there are dip switches for setting the processor speed (as a multiplier of the bus speed?). In any case, it is a manual process to set this and then check whether the system is stable or not. I was lucky it would appear, but it has been running at 466MHz for a long time. There are actually two "knobs" - you also need to set the Backside Cache speed (but this can be set in the MACh Speed Control panel). I have it set to the lowest setting (154.6MHz in this case - a ratio of 1:3) currently, and I know that setting this too high for this processor clock speed will cause problems.  I also have "Speculative Processing" disabled, as this also caused problems back in the day.

I'll have to look around to see if I can find the specs on the Advansys card. I can also run a drive performance benchmark, if that is of interest to you. The Advansys card was not a high end purchase - but it is definitely faster than the internal SCSI.

 

[Superdos]

> also... 466MHz?

I'm a little vague as to the details ... been a long time since I did this ... but I believe that there are dip switches for setting the processor speed (as a multiplier of the bus speed?). In any case, it is a manual process to set this and then check whether the system is stable or not. I was lucky it would appear, but it has been running at 466MHz for a long time. There are actually two "knobs" - you also need to set the Backside Cache speed (but this can be set in the MACh Speed Control panel). I have it set to the lowest setting (154.6MHz in this case - a ratio of 1:3) currently, and I know that setting this too high for this processor clock speed will cause problems.  I also have "Speculative Processing" disabled, as this also caused problems back in the day.

I'll have to look around to see if I can find the specs on the Advansys card. I can also run a drive performance benchmark, if that is of interest to you. The Advansys card was not a high end purchase - but it is definitely faster than the internal SCSI.

That'd be cool.

I'm now in posession of the drive and adapter, and another older known working 9.1GB SCA drive from my spares.

looks like I may have gotten the wrong adapter? MacOS won't see either drive as either the only drive in a chain (with the adaptec card) or in the middle of an existing chain with other terminating devices and a proper free ID number.

the adapter was, as I later found out, one without onboard termination; but that doesn't mean a whole lot. I should still be able to see it if it's in the middle of a chain, right?

it's been a long time since I've messed with SCSI stuff on this scale; is this something I should make a new thread about to look for insight into?

 

[Superdos]

UPDATE!

Turns out one of my old boxes of junk upstairs in the closet housed an old Atto card I got way back for free in the trash-- an ExpressPCI UL2D. From what I've read, they're decent cards. I've had this since 2008, running in a Precision workstation 420 for farting around. so I hooked up my 18-gig boot drive thinking I had nothing to lose but try.

Sure it took a little more time before the system was able to get to the happy mac, but...

it still works. and it booted. that's the awesome.

it's missing some LEDs due to being manhandled for all these years, and a small corner of a RAM chip is missing, but not enough to get past the package walls.

I have it installed in the topmost slot of the second Bandit chip with just the single drive with 68 to 50pin adapter and the backplane cable from my Dell PowerEdge 2300, and it's been nothing but awesome so far-- both channels work, too. that's even more awesome!

What's not awesome is I did in fact need a terminating adapter, something I overlooked as thinking I had-- nope. needs the unused data pins terminated too.

so, no quiet mac clone yet... soon.  Wish I knew where that sonnet SATA card went off to.