[sledsbehave]

i think i got it and i know a little about upgrading but i just have a few trivial questions.

ok, so i am upgrading giga/ether G4 400mhz with a sonnet encore 1.4ghz. i am told i need to upgrade my firmware using os 9.2. i don't have this installed on my powermac currently, but i do have an second hard drive i use for video only that i coudl format and install os 9.2 temporarily in order to upgrade the firmware. is this possible??

if that is not possible, and i switch my second hard drive to master and make it he bootable drive, then install os 9.2 and update, do i then install the new processor or do i want to boot into os X.2 once the new processor is there???

seems simple enough, but this is my first processor upgrade, so i want to get it right and not screw up my new $400 investment

[Lateralus]

The firmware update probably won't be necessary, and I have little more advice on the subject since I have never had to update the firmware myself. But I would like to suggest that you draw your eye away from the PowerLogix upgrade and towards the OWC and GigaDesigns upgrades. Both upgrade manufacturers are currently making higher quality products than PowerLogix at prices that are lower while providing customer support that is undeniably far better than PowerLogix's.

[sledsbehave]

ah, good to know.

and i already bought the sonnet encore. seemed like a good deal $400 shipped for a 1.4ghz processor.

so just put the processor in and turn it on? that sounds too easy

i'll give it a try though.

[emark]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
The firmware update probably won't be necessary, and I have little more advice on the subject since I have never had to update the firmware myself. But I would like to suggest that you draw your eye away from the PowerLogix upgrade and towards the OWC and GigaDesigns upgrades. Both upgrade manufacturers are currently making higher quality products than PowerLogix at prices that are lower while providing customer support that is undeniably far better than PowerLogix's.

I think he mentioned a sonnet. what do you think of them?

From what perspective/how to you gather info to assess trends as broad as this?

I had excellent experience w/ Sonnet upgrades on two old old machines, but that was a few years ago...

Curious myself...wanted to upgrade my dual 800 quicksilver and pass my cpus along to my father with an AGP 350, but alas, his revision of the board doesn't support dual cpu's...
It makes it much harder to justify upgrading w/ the chips I have if I can't recycle what I've got...oh well...

post your experience, interested to hear how it goes whatever you get.

[Lateralus]

Whoopsie. Brain fart there. I was thinking Sonnet and saying PowerLogix. I had just had a conversation about PowerLogix on AIM with a friend, it must have screwed with my thinking there. Sorry.

Anyways, the same applies to both Sonnet and PowerLogix. Both were companies that pioneered the world of Mac upgrades, but have lately become lax in their drive to compete. Both companies have allowed the quality of their products to slide immensely, and have never taken strides to improve their customer service. And I do not say this talking out of my ass. I had used PowerLogix exclusively in the past when upgrading my personal Macs and the company I worked for, MegaMacs, used Sonnet exclusively for processor upgrades. And since MegaMacs does most of their system sales by selling mass-bought PCI Power Macs and putting G3 processor upgrades in them, I had the joy of dealing with defective parts and dealing with Sonnet in getting them replaced. I had vowed to never buy a Sonnet for myself after the experiences I had. Anyways, last year when I had my B&W G3 Power Mac I had decided to take a chance by going with PowerLogix for the 900MHz G3 upgrade for it. I only went with them because they were the only one producing G3 upgrades that fast. Long story short, the first processor I received was DOA and they replacement they sent would not run stable at the rated speed.

The advantage to going with GigaDesigns or OWC/Fast-Mac (Fast-Mac produces OWC's upgrades) is that both are new to the upgrade market and are trying very hard to set themselves apart from Sonnet and PowerLogix. They are setting themselves apart by producing very high quality upgrades, with excellent heatsinks and cooling, selling them at great prices and providing excellent customer support. I have delt with both Fast-Mac and GigaDesigns via e-mail, and my conversations with their tech support representatives quickly turned into what I would call casual conversations back and forth via e-mail. Very quick to respond to e-mails and very thorough in their explanations/answerrs to questions about their products and future products.

One thing in particular that sets OWC/Fast-Mac and GigaDesigns apart besides the above for me is the fact that both companies allow for the overclocking of their processor upgrades. PowerLogix and Sonnet both lock the processor speeds so that the cards cannot be tampered with in the slightest. Whereas OWC/Fast-Mac and GigaDesigns put jumpers on the processor cards for overclocking to different speeds and include instructions for the jumper settings in the manual. More over, both OWC/Fast-Mac and GigaDesigns honor the warranties on the cards even when overclocked, which is amazing IMO.

My friend bought an OWC/Fast-Mac 1.33GHz G4 processor upgrade for his 867MHz QuickSilver and has had it running overclocked at 1.467GHz for 48 hours now with the CPU at 100% useage from running the RC5 client. It is solid as a rock. And it only cost him $419.

[Lateralus]

...That said, you still got a great price on that 1.4 Sonnet upgrade. And provided that you're not looking to tinker with jumpers and speed settings, I'm sure you'll completely love it and see a tremendous speed difference over your original processor.

[sledsbehave]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
...That said, you still got a great price on that 1.4 Sonnet upgrade. And provided that you're not looking to tinker with jumpers and speed settings, I'm sure you'll completely love it and see a tremendous speed difference over your original processor.

yeah, i think it'll be good. although i am having trouble installing it. after putting in the card, i got nothing. so now i am attempting to load os 9 on a spare hard drive to do the firmware update that the instructinos swears i need or the upgrade will not work. and the os 9 disc will not boot, i can boot into os X, and norton utilities for os 9.1, but nothing with the os 9 disc

i get the folder flashing ? and the mac happy face.

[Lateralus]

If holding down C doesn't force it to book, you could try allowing the machine to boot into OS X and then selecting the OS 9 disc as the boot disk and then restarting. If that doesn't work, unhook the drive that has OS X on it and it might force your machine to look for another system to boot from. If THAT doesn't work, I would verify that your OS 9 disc is an actual disc and not a burned disc. I've tried to boot from burned discs before, it doesn't always go well. And then check to make sure that your optical drive is set to Master.

[sledsbehave]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
If holding down C doesn't force it to book, you could try allowing the machine to boot into OS X and then selecting the OS 9 disc as the boot disk and then restarting. If that doesn't work, unhook the drive that has OS X on it and it might force your machine to look for another system to boot from. If THAT doesn't work, I would verify that your OS 9 disc is an actual disc and not a burned disc. I've tried to boot from burned discs before, it doesn't always go well. And then check to make sure that your optical drive is set to Master.

nothing's working

my os 9 disc comes up under os X, but it will not boot. it's an actual disc as well, i just can't figure it out. never had a problem booting into os 9 before.

thanks for the help, i will keep on keeping on

[emark]

thanks for the elaboration on your experience...

will report in if / when I make an upgrade move...

[sledsbehave]

aight, is there any reason that my powermac G4 400mhz won't boot to os 9.0 but will boot 9.1??

i can't get os 9.0 full install disc to boot, but i have norton utilities 6 with os 9.1 on it and it boots just fine into that.

[Lateralus]

The minimum your GigE can boot would be 9.0.4

[sledsbehave]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
The minimum your GigE can boot would be 9.0.4

this sucks, i have the updates, but my 9.0 disc won't boot. and i can't update the firmware.

i guess i'll check some local places for a 9.1 discs

[Lateralus]

Well, you know...

Just hop on mlMac/Poison/LimeWire and download a disc image of 9.1 or 9.2. Normally I would not condone something like that, but with Apple's current policy surrounding OS 9, I am now considering it abandonware. And since you're only looking for it so you can update your firmware...

I'm assuming you have a burner though.

[sledsbehave]

alrighty, i finally got a copy of os 9.1 from a friend

so i updated my firmware with no problems except, one of my 128mb sticks is no longer recognized. kinda weird...

small sacrifice for now having a 1.4mhz G4 zooming along.

i made this post in .2 secs because of it

[Lateralus]

Enjoy it.

I am now jealous of your processor speed.