PowerPC Mac Liberation Army Forums

equill

I bought such a card for the Quadra PDS some years ago, but it was only after I acquired a 950 last year that I tried it out. It was a blue duck, never giving me anything but the dying four-chord farewell when the Mac was switched from 040 booting to the 601.

Out of curiosity I tried the card in a newly-acquired 700. This time the Mac booted into OS 8.1 without demur, and both ASP and TattleTech saw the CPU as a 601 at twice the 040's speed, ie 50MHz. Later, I left the Q700 idling while I went inside the house (a 15-m ethernet cable away) to check for conflict of its IP address with any other Mac in the LAN, and returned half-an-hour later to a dark display. The Quadra had not been 'seen' by any other Mac in its Chooser during the interval. I used the reset switch to restart, which produced the startup chords, but, before the raster even appeared the crash chords sounded. Two more restarts showed the same pattern.

So I pulled the mains cable for 30sec or so, and then replaced it and restarted from the keyboard. This time the Quadra fell over after appearance of the splash screen, which I take to show that there was no software/drive problem. Suspecting a possible thermal cut-out as the cause, I let the Mac sit for half-an-hour before starting it up again. This time it booted to the desktop, but it teetered there for only a few minutes before black screen/death chords took over.

The 601 upgrade card has a massive heatsink, so if this behaviour is the result of the processor's overheating, it must be that the ventilation streams inside the case miss the card by a wide margin, or flow too slowly past or across it. Is there any recorded experience of poor thermal tolerance in this upgrade, or is it possible that I have a card in which a thermal cut-out goes off prematurely? I add that I had already removed the heatsink and applied new thermal grease to the processor before putting the card into the 700.

de
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(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

danamania · Private First Class Joined: 09 Apr 2007 Posts: 16

I only have two Quadra PDS PPC601 cards, one 100MHz and the other (I think) 66MHz. I can't remember having any problems with them, across all the Quadras I've used them in, which includes a 700 and 950. Two successes may not be much to go on, but that's all the experience I have to give.

The room they've been used in hasn't been a particularly well cooled one either.

Dana

equill · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject:

alk · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:01 am Post subject:

Hmm.

I've got a Daystar PowerPro 80 with RAM expansion for a Quadra 650/700/9x0 and an Apple Power Macintosh Processor Upgrade (APMPU) for 630-type Macs. Both run extremely hot.

The Daystar card has a fan on the end of it that is supposed to draw air over the heatsink, but the Apple card does not. In my 630, the Apple card seems to run just fine (the case has a fan right above the CPU). I've run the Daystar card in a Q800 (but it was pulled from a 950 - woe is me for not grabbing the 950 along with the card!) without too much difficulty, but I did find that it crashed when I inadvertently disconnected the fan.

I also found that the APMPU appeared to be broken (death chimes on startup) when I tried to enable it using the wrong control panel. Which software are you using?

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!

Kallikak · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:52 am Post subject:

My DayStar 601 66MHz card runs fine without a fan in my Quadra 650. It does have the mother of all heat sinks though... Smile

equill · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:18 am Post subject:

alk · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 9:24 am Post subject:

Hmm. That definitely sounds familiar. I seem to remember having similar problems getting to boot on the '040 again, but I can't remember how I did it.

I'm not usually one to spout nonsense about pushing the cuda reset button, but this may be one of those cases where it might help. Have you tried that?

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

equill · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 11:33 am Post subject:

danamania · Private First Class Joined: 09 Apr 2007 Posts: 16

I should also add another comment. While my PPC601 upgrade cards do function correctly, they do run exceptionally hot. Despite the size of the heat sink covering the card, it's still near too hot to touch.

Dana

Kallikak · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:57 pm Post subject:

Bolle · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 11:45 am Post subject:

when I got my 601 card it did also crash everytime. when I took off the heatsink I saw that the thermal grease had completely dried. cleaned everything using some ethanol and put on some arctic silver. since then it did run without any problems.

equill

Small update. There is no CUDA switch on the 700 board, but I reset the logic board again. Taking a cue from the solitary appearance of Sad Mac (software and bus errors), I removed the HDD to an external enclosure, checked it after attachment to a 9600/400, reinstalled Silverlining 6.2.1, ran DW 2.1.1 and PlusOptimizer, and booted the 9600 and a Quadra 950 (without the 601 card) from the drive. The 9600 ignored the 601 control panel, as expected. I checked the Diamondtron against other Macs, and checked the absence of raster with an attached Color Plus 14.

The OS 8.1 installation (for any Mac) had placed Power Macintosh Card 1.0 and 601 Processor Upgrade 1.0 on the HDD. I have used only the former, not least because the latter 'cannot be used on this computer'. I also have the DayStar 3.2 software installed, but not active.

At this moment I lean to the possibility that logic-board video is the culprit, which I shall have to test.

de
_________________
(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

equill · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:21 am Post subject:

Another update. I acquired another (nominally Apple) Quadra PDS 601 card, and put it into the 950. Boing! Up, up and away at 66MHz.

Oh yeah? So I put the formerly mucking-up card back into the 700, taking care to re-install OS 8.1 with PPC additions. Boing! Up, up and away at 50MHz.

The sole differences between now and May were that the 950 now had 192MB of RAM in twelve of the older giant cards with 32 chips each, instead of more-recent cards (with 8 chips), totalling 128MB, and the 700 had 68MB (with 4MB soldered-in and 4x8-chip cards) instead of the previous 20MB.

In both cases only the Apple CP was active. Blessed computers! (That's blessèd, not blest.)

de
_________________
(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

alk · Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:16 pm Post subject:

Have you tried switching cards again?

-
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!

equill · Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:34 pm Post subject:

Do I really appear to be suicidal? I shall probably do so at some time, to check what's going on, but it has priority h at the moment as I try to resuscitate a PTPro:

After all that I've done for you, you sit there as if you have a defunct logic board and do nothing at all ... sort of thing.

de
_________________
(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

alk · Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 11:04 pm Post subject:

One thing I learned a long time ago w/ PTPs is to remove the L2 cache early in the troubleshooting process. If the machine doesn't boot and only shows a black screen, I'd be leaning toward the L2 cache being bad...

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

equill · Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 6:56 pm Post subject:

This PTP 225 came to me as a case (in fine condition) and logic board (in unknown condition) only. There was no cache card. I know the PPC 9500 fairly well, as my scarred knuckles will attest, and I hoped, perhaps forlornly, that that knowledge might be helpful with this incarnation of the Tsunami MLB.

I have supplied the PSU, CPU, (FPM) RAM, drives and intended expansion cards. Absolutely zilch sign of life at intended startup—by which I mean boings and drive-reading—is not promising, however. LEDs light; PSU huffs and puffs; but video is conspicuously wanting. Regrettably, it is now time for some systematic troubleshoon, starting with the speaker. I may even (grits teeth ...) have to install an FDD for SCSI-independent startup.

de
_________________
(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

Quadraman · Sergeant Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 62

I have the Apple 50mhz card in my homemade Q700 and had a real problem with overheating. The 601 would get hot and the system would stop recognizing it. It would lock up and on reboot would boot the 040. I solved that by cutting a small square of tin and putting it between the CPU and the heatsink but no thermal compound. The heat sink was a little loose and the tin square tightened the gap right up and a lot more heat is drawn away than before. I then added a fan from a clock chipping kit for good measure and since then no more problems.