[faddah]

hi all,

i've been having a series of problems with the powerlogix iforce g4 500 mhz board for the old rev. a - d imacs.

i got the board to upgrade an older lime imac rev c. 266 mhz, which i am in the process of donating to a charity and just wanted to give them something that would be fairly zippy and up to date for the next few years. after reading reviews and pricing around, powerlogix seemed the way to go with the iforce boards.

first, i purchased the board through ecost.com (best price at the time) last march, 2003. what i didn't know was powerlogix in texas had just contracted wavepoint distribution in new mexico to do their distribution and handle support calls. at the same time, they were re-tooling wavepoint's contracted chip mfgs. to make a new run of the boards. so i didn't get the board for over two months, which was already testing my patience.

the first iforce g4 500 mhz board, with alleged 200 mhz backside cache, crashed the old lime imac (rev. c) in both mac os 9 classic and mac os x 10.2.6 left and right. in fact, it crashed mac os x so badly, that the hard drive volume it was on was complete trashed, and i had to wait yet another four weeks while alsoft was backordered on disk warrior 3 cd's they were supposed to send out to me (but that's another story of rotten customer service when i was in need -- i could pay $80 all over again for an update they owed me for free to get it right away, and diskwarrior 2.1 would not repair the crossed nodes, ugh). at start up, each time under os x, i'd get the new grey apple screen, but then the clock would stop spinning and i'd see something very scary -- two swipes across the video display in white in grey, or what i'd call "zebra striping" at the start up, and the computer would freeze and go no further.

when i finally got the drive repaired and called powerlogix, they rma'd the board. it took another week and a half for a board to arrive, after much calling and reminding them, no it's not an older 400 mhz g4, it's a new 500 mhz g4, so they wouldn't keep me waiting even longer. that board failed with four beep tones during its install and transfer of the apple rom code over to it. they had no utility by which i could just flash their rom and start the install again. i had to rma the board, yet again.

10 days later, a new iforce g4 500 mhz board. this install goes fine, and for the first hour, it's running under mac os x just fine. then, the trouble start again -- it would run, and then a kernel panic while doing something totally innocuous, like chaning the info tags on an itunes 4 mp3 song or drag enlarging a window in text edit. often i'd leave the machine alone to go do something else, only to come back and find it in a kernel panic, and i'd have to get out the paper clip to hit the programmers restart yet again. at start up, i'd sometimes get the "zebra striping" on the start up grey apple screen i'd seen with the first borad, only now not totally trashing the drive, just forcing me to do the restart yet again. sometimes i'd just get utter freezes, not even a kernel panic. i can work for some time, anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours, but sooner or later a kernel panic or freezed necessitates a restart.

to say the least, i'm not happy with the $360 down the drain on this board.

i've gotten utilities like "cocktail" and used disk utility to repair permissions, dump all the caches and re-do the pre-bindings over and over until i'm blue in the face. it still crashes after working with it in normal use for some time. now, to top it off, it no longer recognizes audio cds.

i've called powerlogix/wavepoint yet again and now the support tech at the wavepoint new mexico office (believe it or not, their down to just one to support all their boards, which i find very disconcerting), and he is now convinced the problem is mine and with the memory upgrade i installed in the older lime imac rev. c. he seems to think the memory is bad, and that is what is causing the random and intermittent "zebra striping" crashes at start up and kernel panics and freezed during regular use when interacting with the new powerlogix iforce g4 500 mhz board. no matter that the 512 mb of ram (two 256 mb chips) worked just dandy with the older apple g3 266 mhz logic board, and even booted and worked under mac os x 10.2.6 with no problem. he's convinced i have to test out each 256 mb ram chip for a day or two running with their iforce board to determine if that is the problem. he also claims on the original boards i sent back to them, no "zebra striping" or any such crashes/panics happened for him in testing them out (no matter that on the first board, it happened to me on the lime imac rev. c 266 mhz every single time). long sigh.

so my question -- is this company, powerlogix, even worth it? has anyone else seen these problems with their boards, particularly with the iforce? i can't contact the parent company of iforce in texas directly, they keep shunting me back to the new mexico wavepoint distribution they've contracted with. anyone got any answers on what to do here? i've been dealing with this over six months, and it's really a test of patience, as you can see.

any and all help and/or advice would be appreciated. thanx.

sincerely,

-- "faddah" steve wolf
portland, oregon

[signal68]

Actually, it COULD very well be the memory. See, on your old G3, you probably hadn't updated your firmware, bla bla bla, and the memory would work fine. When you install your new spiffy iForce, it has a newer firmware patch thingie, and if you search threads you'll find a TON of really pissed off apple users, right after apple released some firmware about 1-2 years ago. Basically, it made the memory not recognize. This could MAYBE be your problem, but I say its worth a shot. Try swapping it out for some diff memory, and then seeing if it works better. If not.... I say throw that iForce on ebay, and get a powerlogix harmoni....

the one thing I don't understand is why you're upgrading it right before you give it away....

G'luck, and get back to me!

- Ca$h

[faddah]

well, o.k. maybe i'll just have to test the memory out.

but, to let you know, i had updated the firmware to the highest this older, tray cd, rainbow color "lime" imac rev. c g3 266 mhz could use, firmware 1.2, ***years*** ago, when that firmware update first came out. there have been no upgrades for that firmware since. i tried running the same apple firmware installer that powerlogix recommends *again,* just prior to installing their board, just to make sure, and it came back saying the firmware version was already up to date for what it needs to be. so there you go.

and... the 512 mb memory upgrade (two low-profile 168-pin 256k chips)was running *fine* with the older g3 266 mhz board and the updated firmware, with no problem. why then would the memory cause problems with the newer g4, if the firmware update was already in there?

but i'll give it a try... sigh. don't know what i'll do if it's that the new g4 doesn't like one of the chips. don't think the on-line store i got it from will take it back.

will let you know this week after testing it out. thanx for the input.

oh, and as to your confusion -- i'm upgrading it because... well, i like this charity i'm donating it to (or leaving it with), and want to make sure they have something usable for a few years. a g4 500 mhz board with 512 ram will see them through 10.3 panther and beyond. a g3 266 mhz will end up a boat anchor too soon. i plan on getting a newer g4 powerbook when i am working again.

-- "faddah" steve wolf
portland, oregon
[email protected]

[signal68]

Hrm. Good point about the firmware. Can memory ever just 'go bad'???? Try running on just one 256 strip, then the other. Maybe one is slightly flaky... but seriously, if all is not well, throw that sucker up on ebay (I can help you with that if you'd like), get your $ back, and purchase a 500mhz Harmoni from Sonnet.

- Ca$h

[faddah]

well, i'd try to make the company, powerlogix, do right by me before i'd sell the board. no reason i should take a loss for their shoddy engineering. they're not willing to full support older imacs, then they shouldn't be making the upgrade, or at least testing it with a bit more competency.

it's the memory chip i'm worried i won't see one dollar back on, if it truly is wonky, as they suggest. i had a problem once before where kingston wouldn't take chips back that were incompatible (accidentally ordered the wrong kind) once the seal on the package was broken. which to me is just ridiculous and mean spirited. they can test the memory and see it's working just fine, why not take it back?

and yeah, the sonnet tech harmoni looks ok, and even adds firewire, but... but they only do g3 and i really wanted a g4 in there.

i'll test out the chips this week some time (busy doing lots of other stuff), and let everyone know what happens).

-- "faddah" steve wolf
portland, ore.

[signal68]

This 600mhz Harmoni I'm on right now is pretty speedy.

Let me know how it goes, perhaps we can think of something else if it isn't the mem.

- $