• Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.

USB/Firewire cards (or chipsets) that work in the TAM

That makes me think that my Trio must have worked fine in the 6360, once I unearth them we'll see. Hopefully the HDD has any patches required on it. I'll dig it out from under the HackStation and fire it up tomorrow to check.

I tried to chop a nice sized bite out of my left index finger Tuesday, so I'm home until Monday with a throbbing finger on a hand hanging in a looped power cord on a door hook and typing with the hand on the arm achy=ubg from a Tetanus shot. Left that bit on purpose, editing one handed is a beyotch and the Honey Bourbon nightcap ain't helpin' one little bit. :lol:

 
The interesting thing is when I bought the Tango 2.0 that I tried it was pretty clear Sonnet had put a sticker on the front of the box saying that B&W G3 and up was all that was supported. 

View attachment 11669

When I very carefully peeled the sticker off it showed that same full list yours did.

 
Yep, that'd be the one. Now I don't need to take a pic, THX! :D

I half-heartedly tried to get it running in the 6360/Alchemy/G3, wasn't surprised it didn't work. Mostly it's used as a surrogate for the precious Trios during hacks.

 
Trash80toHP_Mini said:
Looked in the recently unearthed box of "Boxed Accelerators and Upgrades" and no go for Trio. Just a PCI G3/500/1M, a PCI G4/400/1M and the empty box for the PCI G4/800MHz/1M that's in the PEx drawer.
Click to expand...
You wouldn't possibly maybe be willing to sell one of those PCI accelerators, would you? ;)

 
Prolly not anytime soon. Hoping one of them will work in the PEx after I finally get a ROM card squared away. L2's spoken for too, it's the only one I've got with only 512K of cache, but I've got Alchemy/Gazelle based hacks up the wazoo. I listed the contents as a counterpoint to this thread's project. It's interesting to me how different folks wind up with boxes full of one thing or another.

BTW: which is which? LEM has 6400 and 6500 both listed as Alchemy, no surprise there. :-/

 
Last edited by a moderator:
For reference this is the original Tango card:

Tango1.jpg.4fb1e3846c724009dc6d40bf999d53e4.jpg


If you want even more info, here are the original datasheet & quick start guide pdf files. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Interesting. I wonder if the PLX bridge makes a difference. In 2012 Mouser had the PLX PCI6140 in their catalog, but don't seem to any more. IDT claims their TSI6140 is a drop in replacement, but it has slight differences and since we have no idea what, if any, differences matter.

It might be interesting to take one of the cards with the TI firewire chipset, NEC USB chipset and replace the Hint bridge with the PLX bridge. Quest Components has them for a little over $5.

Now has anyone actually confirmed that the original Tango card actually worked, or is that just rumor or supposition?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'll have to post a pic later, camera was in my hand, but is now AWOL. :-/

Pulled out the BenchMac6360+ and hit pay dirt:

Sonnet TempoTrio: MIO-PCB-A ©2002

PCI Bridge:  HiNT HB1 0223

Fierwire:  agere  FW323-05  1394A-05  LINK/PHY   02135   9476825

USB:  NEC  D720100AGM  0213KP026

UDMA133 controller:  PROMISE  PDC20269M  ©2001-0222

No time to test it today, maybe tomorrow?

Forbidden edit: HAH! As soon as I give up looking  .  .  .

P2110400.JPG

Say what you will about dropping support under fire, but SONNET sure does build 'em pretty.

re-edit: took a quick look and found the Tango 2.0 in the 6500 Drawer of the digital STARION 910 re-case hack, It was acting as a stand-in for TRIO#2 and will now be heading straight into the B&W G3 BridgeDrawer.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I purchased the original Tango when it first came out and installed it in my TAM and a few work computers, it worked just fine, but back then it was only used for USB input devices and the occasional importing of DV video. It was quite a long time ago, but I don't recall problems. Unfortunately, I did not keep the cards, I sold them alongside my Beige machines to fund upgrades. 

Looking further into the matter, it looks like the Tempo derived Tango card was sold alongside the 1.0 card around 2003. You can see the original card on the bottom and the new one listed on the right. The 2.0 that we mostly have seen then appeared around March of 2005. One should not take the payback machine dates as hard dates, but as approximations. 

On another note, here is a pic of some OrangeLink cards and their respective board dates, only the 3rd one is USB2 hence the addition of the plus.

Orange_Link.jpg.a801dbcbe720c32d991a534752785024.jpg


 
Thanks for the links, I just backed up most of that SONNET info locally. My head hurts from going back and forth just as regards my Trios, but I found a few discrepancies:

Neither the Trio pages nor PDFs mention support for the 6500 anywhere!

Both site pages list the Trio as compatible with: Performa Series 6400, 6410, 6420

But neither of the PDFs make any mention of those machines.

Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe your TAM and my 6500s are out of luck. :-/

 
The Alchemy design seemed to be more malleable to the software patches that Sonnet created, where as the 6500 was notoriously problematic. I think they tried to make it work on the Gazelle line but gave up in the testing phase. 

Incidentally here is a better pic of an actual Tango 1.0 card from a recent auction. It looks like the HiNT bridge is the most common among the Mac-centric cards. 



 
Last edited by a moderator:
Luckily I've got the original 6360 and a 6400 board for the pair of TEMPOtrios. That expansion flexibility coupled with the SONNET CRESCENDO L2/G3/400 cards make up for the lower bus speed for all practical purposes. Especially with DMA PC133 for fixed disk ops compared to Apples' lame@$$ IDE implementation.

I'll test the Trio in the 6500 boards all the same, just not anytime soon. :-/

< patiently waits for eudiG to chime in and say it just ain't so  .  .  .  >

 
The OrangeLink+ is from 2002, but is similar in design to 2001 model. It is compatible with Classic Mac OS (super slow USB), but it will NOT work in the 6400/6500/TAM. Here is the manual in case you want to dig deeper. The 9600 should be just fine.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Silly experiment might suggest the possibility of an even sillier upgrade for the TAM:

It's a given, Gazelle architecture's 50MHz system bus would seem to be an  insurmountable advantage over Alchemy's 40MHz bus. So, in memory intensive operations Gazelle would clearly the winner. However, Gazelle/Alchemy disk operations are both hobbled by Apple's partial implementation of ATA-2

SONNET's TEMPOtrio introduces ATA/133's maximum data transfer rate of 133MB/s into the mix, but only for Alchemy. Gazelle is limited to whatever it can manage to squeeze through the obsolete 40 line cable of Apple's borked implementation of ATA-2. So, if you were to upgrade to an SSD capable of swamping either architecture's I/O bus, Alchemy should clearly be the winner?

Depending on the mix of memory and disk operations in any given benchmarking suite, does Alchemy/trio or Gazelle come out on top for overall performance?

Which would be the winner in real world performance running what applications?

Could a street legal OEM Gazelle TAM be shut down on the line at the drag strip of real world performance by a data fueled SuperTAM™ with its hot-rodded small block Alchemy engine?

Is such a logic board upgrade even a remote possibility within the limited cubic and possible MoBo modification constraints of the the TAM? Is there a way to snake any kind of Ultra ATA cable through the silly thing from a PCI card's connector(s)*** to an SSD/adapter in order to leverage the I/O advantages represented in the TEMPOtrio's ATA-133 data pipe?

I've got the goodies in my grubby little paws to put Alchemy/trio and Gazelle on the starting line with identical CRESCENDO L2/400MHz /512K accelerators revving to the max to find out.  :rambo:

*** I'm guessing the TAM must use a laptop cabled version of the 6500's harness? Is it a surgically implanted modification? The TAM must be such a frimping hack on a patch on a kluge that it appears to be the single glaring exception to the rule that you'll find an exploded diagram on the last page of any given model's ServiceSource document. I didn't find one anywhere in the TAM's anyway. So, has anyone got linkage to an exploded diagram of the TAM or at least a HiRes pic of its cable harness a/o pics of how the tentacles from it snake through the thing?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Seeing all those screws going into plastic holes and imagining how brittle those plastics must be gives me shudders. :O

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

jdowns
Firewire and MaxPowr in my 5400/120?
Replies
2
Views
607
jdowns
jdowns
indibil
Power Mac 6500 USB and ethernet cards
2
Replies
32
Views
2K
croissantking
croissantking
D
Interesting find on PCI Bus booting NWM's
Replies
3
Views
1K
joevt
J
Byrd
iPod 1st gen 5GB - Windows format, can't see in Mac OS 9/iTunes
2
Replies
24
Views
4K
CC_333
CC_333
indibil
Designing Firewire card for Mezzanine??
Replies
9
Views
2K
indibil
indibil
Back
Top