Subject: Sonnet L2 cache G3 card, was Re: MOL on Umax c600
From: Frank STENGEL (fstengel@wanadoo.net.ma)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 11:00:21 MST
Jackson Damien a dit dans « Re: MOL on Umax c600 ».
[2001/01/23 22:23]
> Hello, long time no email. I kind of fell away from working on MOL,
[snip]
>
> I am running Mac OS 8.5.1 and have a Sonnet L2 Cache G3 upgrade in my
> machine. Since my machine seems to run dog slow while in Linux
> (since I don't believe it's taking advantage of the card) if I get
> MOL working should it theoretically take advantage of the card?
> Otherwise I'm just wasting my time because it's pretty much too slow
> to be usable.
>
[snap]
The slow speed problem is normal: without the G3 card enabled, your
machine is running a 603 *without* L2 cache. I.e. a *really* slow
machine, since, even a 603 takes great advantage of the L2 cache for
speed improvement. That is the bad news. However you can have your G3
back...
The only way I have found to enable the L2 cache G3 card which I use on
my 6400 (from what you tell it is the same as mine) for Linux is that I
have to start the computer normally under MacOs having a downsized set
of extensions, but, at least, the Crescendo extension and then (and
only then) launching BootX. Using the BootX extension does not work,
since it loads almost first. When BootX restarts the machine it does
not really (as far as I can tell) do a cold start, especially, the G3
card stays enabled. The down side is two-fold, first there is that
rather cumbersome startup sequence and second, the G3 card being rather
unorthodox, the machine sometimes freezes unexpectedly, even in Linux,
thing which does not happen when the card is not enabled (no kernel
panics, proper freezes). The up side, as you will guess is the drastic
improvement in performance, both in Linux and in Mol which does not
need any pre-patched kernel to run.
--
Frank STENGEL (fstengel@nordnet.fr)
(fstengel@wanadoo.net.ma)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Wed Jan 24 2001 - 10:57:03 MST