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Fun with FireWire/USB 2 card

Submitted by bfutrel on December 12, 2006 - 2:19am. PowerPC Macs

I'm attempting to install a SYBA USB2/FW400 PCI card into by Blue/White G3. I have tested this card in the past with PCs and a Beige G3 and it worked great. Mac OS X recognized it on the Beige G3 and I could use either type of connector on it.

However it appears to knock the video for a loop on this newer G3. It sounds like it starts up normally, there's just no picture. The last time I tried this I left it unplugged overnight and it started again this evening.

Currently it has a 8.4GB IDE drive for booting and two 9.1 GB UW SCSI drives for misc storage for the moment. Other cards are the standard 16MB Rage128 video card and an ATTO SCSI card. The left and right PCI slots are free.

Any suggestions for placement of this card or hints for a replacement of said card?

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themike's picture

Have you tried removing the o

Submitted by themike on December 12, 2006 - 2:45am.

Have you tried removing the original firewire module from the B&W? I hear those can cause all sorts of weird problems.

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Not Yet

Submitted by bfutrel on December 12, 2006 - 3:41am.

I haven't as of yet. I just did manage to get it to show video again. I'll wait a little while and try that.

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coius's picture

hmm..

Submitted by coius on December 12, 2006 - 3:57am.

did you try moving the card to another slot?

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Yes

Submitted by bfutrel on December 12, 2006 - 4:07am.

I tried both the left and right PCI slots. Same result on either one. I also tried connecting an external hard drive to the built-in FireWire connector. It didn't get far enough to boot.

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Oh Well

Submitted by bfutrel on December 12, 2006 - 4:28am.

I removed the SCSI card and the FireWire module and tried the USB/FireWire card in all three free slots. It still blanks out the video when it is turned on. Grrr...

At this point in time I'm thinking of an Agere-based FireWire card.

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coius's picture

is the machine overclocked?

Submitted by coius on December 12, 2006 - 5:49am.

and do you have the right config for the jumper settings?

your problem may be with the PCI Timing, and the fact that the bus is not playing happy with having cards that are not compatible with the timing. Also, is the video card in the 66Mhz slot?

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Nope

Submitted by bfutrel on December 12, 2006 - 2:32pm.

I haven't even bothered trying to overclock this beastie. It's still running at its original 300mhz.

I do have a 333mhz chip from a Beige G3 I was planning on overclocking to 350mhz, but have not had the time to do so.

The video card is in the third PCI slot with the first being the leftmost one with the side opened.

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protocol6v's picture

I had a 300MHz G3 and i overc

Submitted by protocol6v on December 12, 2006 - 6:04pm.

I had a 300MHz G3 and i overclocked it to 400 without any problems. Ran like a champ for over a year.

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Jon's picture

Re: Nope

Submitted by Jon on December 13, 2006 - 12:57am.
bfutrel wrote:
The video card is in the third PCI slot with the first being the leftmost one with the side opened.

The 66MHz slot is the non-64-bit one. The one closest to the CPU is the 32-bit 66MHz slot. The other 3 are 64-bit 33MHz slots. See here.

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

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Re: Nope

Submitted by bfutrel on December 13, 2006 - 1:17am.
Jon wrote:
bfutrel wrote:
The video card is in the third PCI slot with the first being the leftmost one with the side opened.

The 66MHz slot is the non-64-bit one. The one closest to the CPU is the 32-bit 66MHz slot. The other 3 are 64-bit 33MHz slots. See here.

Whoops!

Apparently Computer Geeks didn't check the card position either. That was how it came to me. That might explain some of the slowness in comparison to other B/W G3s that I have tried. That also may explain the issue with putting the combo card in the right-most slot.
I'll put the video card in the correct slot and try again.

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: I placed the video card in the 66mhz slot. It powers up and boots, but no video appears. I hope the slot isn't bad.

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Here's hoping....

Submitted by bfutrel on December 14, 2006 - 2:06am.

I just won an auction for a Rev 2 motherboard with 400mhz G3 processor and Rage128 video card. I'll swap them out when it arrives and hopefully that will take care of it.

A lot cheaper than a G4 I was contemplating.... Smiling

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Jon's picture

That may be why it got put in

Submitted by Jon on December 14, 2006 - 2:19am.

That may be why it got put in the 64-bit slot. Huh. I do hope the new board solves it.

I'd also guess that CG didn't even know what slot it was supposed to go in, or that it even had a dedicated one.

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

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Perhaps

Submitted by bfutrel on December 14, 2006 - 12:53pm.

I hope so too. I really like it and at times it seems faster than my Athlon 64 3700+ system.

I think that Computer Geeks primarily deals with PCs, although they do have a nice selection of used Macs too. At the time I bought this one I was wanting the least expensive Mac that could run Panther. Computer Geeks had it for $60 at the time which was the best price I could find around here.

Even if it turns out to be a Rev 1 board - it appears to be a Rev 2 due to the heatsink - it will have a better processor and video card. The video appeared to have some sort of daughter card on it.

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Smiththers's picture

you didnt happen to get a Bei

Submitted by Smiththers on December 14, 2006 - 9:07pm.

you didnt happen to get a Beige G3 mobo did you? because thats the only thing i can think of that would have a daughter card off the main video/audio card.....

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Nope

Submitted by bfutrel on December 14, 2006 - 10:32pm.

According to what I've read, it's the DVD MPEG option that deals with DVD decoding under older versions of MacOS. I also have a Beige G3 with the A/V personality card so I do have something to compare against.

There's 4 memory slots like my current B/W G3 has. The last picture on the link below shows the heatsink. The picture of the video card also appears to match the image in the auction.

http://xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/newfeatures.html

As far as I know, it's a Rev 2.

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