Sonnet Crescendo G4 1Ghz (in PPC 9650) Blues ...

[Byrd]

Hi all,

In storage I've had a Sonnet Crescendo G4 1Ghz (PCI) CPU card, which I assumed worked, but finally got the chance to try it out in a PowerMac 9650.

Boot fresh install of OS 9.1, chimes and gets past Happy mac, to start of OS 9.1 loading screen, cue an error of one of the following:

"divide by zero"

"error type 10"

"bus error"

"illegal instruction"

... holding down shift to bypass extensions does result in it booting to desktop, but it freezes after a few minutes.

I've stripped the system down to a pair of known good interleaved RAM, basic graphics, single SCSI HD boot and get the same errors.  The PPC 9650 usually runs a Sonnet G4 450Mhz CPU card which when reinstalled, works and boots the Mac without issue in the same configuration.  CUDA and PRAM have also been reset.

I've checked over the card - there are 6 x 47uF 16V electrolytic caps on there in what appears to be good shape, but what more worrying is the long purple heatsink appears to flex the card.  I've re-applied thermal paste and re-seated the heatsink to have less flex on the PCB, and this affects it booting.  Tighten up some screws and it'll chime and get to the same errors as before.

I have a vague idea that maybe OS 9.2.2 has better G4 drivers, so I'll try the universal MacOS9lives version next.  After this, I'm next at the stage of potentially recapping the board, and reflowing the CPU ... or, any other tips?

Thanks

JB

 

[nglevin]

I have the ZIF version of this Sonnet upgrade with the giant purple heatsink and I've never even gotten a startup chime to sound, despite applying the supplied firmware patches for the B&W ROM and seemingly following instructions to the letter.

So you got past the chime by reapplying the thermal paste and adjusting the heatsink? That sounds interesting.

Keep us posted on what you find. I'm suspecting these upgrades were not built to last, despite the positive reviews they received when they were new.

 

[nglevin]

One more thing. This card did come with a set of OS 9 drivers that are supposed to cover the Crescendo and Encore G4 upgrade cards.

I have version 2.3.1 in a CD that has a... decaying label that's flaking off bits of plastic, from the looks of things. Never seen this happen to my CDs before

I'm pretty sure you can find those drivers elsewhere. If not, I can ship the CD I have, but the label makes me wary about actually putting this thing in a slot or tray loading CD-ROM drive.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

I'm running an Encore ZIF G4/1GHz in my G3 All-in-one and occasionally on startup I used to get a Bus Error / Error Type 10 and had to reboot, at which point everything worked fine.  The issue in my case turned out to be a dead PRAM battery.  For whatever reason the Sonnet extension didn't pick up that the upgrade was installed 100% of the time if I had a dead PRAM battery, but the second I switched that out for a fresh one everything worked fine consistently.

 

[Franklinstein]

Sonnet recommends de-interleaving RAM with their upgrades so you may want to try that.

Did it come with software? You may have to run a patch or something specific to the 1GHz card. Also you'll need a good PRAM battery so that it doesn't forget the patch.

 

[johnklos]

I ran first the 700 MHz version, then the 1 GHz version for a total of 15 years with years of continuous uptime in a 9600 running NetBSD. Interleaved memory is fine so long as the memory is fast enough, and if it runs well with a 450 MHz G4, then the bus is pretty certainly running at 50 MHz and is fine.

I think my 9600 now, finally, needs to be recapped since it only boots properly every other time. Yours might need to be, too. It stopped being a full-time server about two years ago. One day I'll make it happy again