Hello,

I have been having some very weird problems with my PowerCenter Pro. Possible even a "rare" logic board failure after installing a G3 upgrade! I called XLR8 Technical Support but it has been two days and they still haven't called me back.

I got a Rage 128 Orion about two weeks ago and installed it. It was running just fine while I waited a week to get my XLR8 Mach Speed G3 400 Mhz. Initially when I installed the G3 card had problems starting up and crashing. After removing the L2 cache, Speed Doubler, and updating the G3 software my problems were solved. The computer ran really well for about 4 days. During this time I played lots of Quake II and surfed the 'net with no crashes.

After coming back from being out of town my family told me that that my computer had not been working. While I was gone they couldn't even get it to startup. I tried it and didn't even get a chime which scared me. After pushing down on the G3 card I was able to get it started up and running. However, from then I on I get repeated crashes soon after the Finder booted. I finally reinstalled the old processor card (604e) and that won't even boot!

I was really getting worried at this point to so I started changing around the configuration (it PCI cards, RAM, ect) to see if I could find a problem. After removing my Rage 128 I found that I could boot the computer with the old processor card again and run with no crashes (so far!). However, the G3 card when inserted won't even give a startup chime.

Do you have any suggestions or resources I could check for help with this problem. Hopefully technical support can be helpful if they call back. Maybe I should try a Carrier ZIF card?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

--Kurt Wiersma

I've been having less severe problems with a ZIF in a beige G3 Mac, which has an onboard ATI Rage II. Check out this post on MacFixit a few days ago:

ZIF upgrades and ATI Video Update

Bob Moriarty (of MacCPU) writes: "After some puzzling stability problems with ZIF upgrades in the beige G3 and G3/BW machines, we have come to the conclusion that anyone adding a ZIF upgrade to either Apple G3 machine should first install the ATI Video Software Update Version 1.0. There is a timing issue between the ZIF upgrades and the ATI video which Apple has addressed with the update." Note: Apple recommends installing this update in general; this is just another reason to do so.

------------------
Patrick

You could try a number of things...
- pressing the hardware reset switch on the MB each time you swap out processors.

- There's a 'Prevent System Hang during boot' patch for early clones w. Rage128 cards in 'em available on ATIs site...
http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/xclaim.html#ATI Products for the MAC

- Power Centre is based on the 7200 Motherboard, see if there's a trouble shooter for either model in XLR8s documentation.

... i have a Power clone with the same kinda upgrades so here's hoping you get up and running soon!

[This message has been edited by r0b0t (edited 09-19-1999).]

[This message has been edited by r0b0t (edited 09-19-1999).]