UMAX C600 and C500 and Sonnet G3 upgrades

[Timothy A. Seufert]

At 7:44 AM -0400 7/29/02, Rich Dolinsky wrote:
>The Sonnet and powerlogix extensions should not load before bootx.  Bootx
>should be the very first thing that loads up.  The kernel has its own
>drivers of sorts to take care of upgrade cards.

Not ones like the G3 L2 upgrades.  The machines they're designed for 
were never intended to be upgraded and do not have a replaceable CPU. 
The upgrade card gets plugged into the L2 cache socket instead.  On 
powerup, the CPU that is in control is the original 603e.  The Sonnet 
driver MUST load in order for control to be transferred to the G3.

Or, at least, that's how I understand it.

The kernel would have to have a fairly complicated driver to support 
this kind of card.  All it actually has is the ability to set the 
L2CR register in a G3 to enable the G3 backside cache.


To the original poster: If you have options, consider dumping the 
whole machine and getting something at least slightly more recent.  I 
have never heard anything but bad things about G3 L2 upgrades from 
any company -- they always sound like in the end they're more trouble 
than they're worth.  Especially if you want to get a working Linux 
machine.

Even if you're strapped for cash, you can probably get something like 
a PowerMac 7600 and a G3 upgrade card for it for less than $200 these 
days.  Powerlogix has a $120 400 MHz G3 512KB L2 card for those 
machines (*), and the 7600 itself is going for next to nothing on 
ebay right now.  You might even be able to snatch an 8600 for very 
little money.

(*) Sonnet also has a cheap 400 MHz G3 card -- $100 -- but the L2 
cache on it runs very slow and Sonnet has been playing dirty tricks 
in recent times by shipping processors that may not really be rated 
at 400 MHz, so I can't recommend it.
-- 
Tim Seufert