Sonnet crescendo 7200 on Amiga

[wawrzon]

Actually I have a Prometheus.  It has three problems with the sonnet amiga project:
1)  it would need the 3.3V hack
2)  it would need a hardware upgrade for busmastering
3)  It lags behind the mediator in the sonnet amiga project.

It looks like from the EAB thread that the project creators wanted to use Prometheus originally.....

afaik the hardware upgrade for busmastering was available from eab 's m.boehmer. i think it was tersters release. would have to look up a1k for this. 3.3 hack might be realized with some voltage converter or something, but then who knows if its wort the hassle. not for me, i must admit.

[Motormouth]

That make you one of the lucky few that can consider this.
Cool.

@Iggy  Instead of looking for a Sonnet Crescendo 7200, maybe look for a powermac 7200 that has been "upgraded" maybe on Craigslist or equivalent.  That is how I got mine.

[Motormouth]

afaik the hardware upgrade for busmastering was available from eab 's m.boehmer. i think it was tersters release. would have to look up a1k for this. 3.3 hack might be realized with some voltage converter or something, but then who knows if its wort the hassle. not for me, i must admit.

@wawrzon   Thanks for the info  very useful!
The 3.3 hack can be performed on the sonnet directly rather than trying to mod the PCI slots from PCI 2.1 to PCI 2.2.  That info was on the EAB thread and the Github link.

Always wanted to play with the big boys and have a G3 or G4 in my amiga, the fastest Amiga I have is a 68040 25 mhz,  I know a lot of you have 68060 and G4 on this site.

[Iggy]

@Iggy  Instead of looking for a Sonnet Crescendo 7200, maybe look for a powermac 7200 that has been "upgraded" maybe on Craigslist or equivalent.  That is how I got mine.

You lucked out, your's works.
I can't find Mac 7200, let alone upgraded 7200s.
And the Sonnet boards I can find are all 'as is'.

[Methuselas]

Well, at least we now know why Elbox scrapped the SharkPPC. A shame, too, 'cos I'm sure they could have bundled one of their overpriced Radeon cards with it.

@Metalguy66,

If you see this, that decked out A4000 you offered me, I may be interested in it now...... I'll call you later.

[Methuselas]

You lucked out, your's works.
I can't find Mac 7200, let alone upgraded 7200s.
And the Sonnet boards I can find are all 'as is'.

Iggy,

Power PC macs pop up in H-Town all the time. If you want, I can keep a look out for one I can gut a Sonnet card from for you. I never see them for more than 100$ or so.

[johnklos]

The reason I am interested is I happen to have a PowerMac 7200 with a Sonnet crescendo 7200 fully populated with ram (if you think the sonnet is rare the ram for the sonnet and the 7200 is also very uncommon).

OWC sells 128 meg FPM DIMMs which are compatible with the Crescendo 7200 for $7.50 USD apiece.

[kreciu]

It is really great that Crescendo 7200 works with Mediator. Where can I buy it? Nowhere? Great...

PS. I have Time Machine at home. No, you can't use it.

[Kitch]

Just bought three pieces, I'll soon find out how compatible they are with the Crescendo.

[Motormouth]

OWC sells 128 meg FPM DIMMs which are compatible with the Crescendo 7200 for $7.50 USD apiece.

That is good that some one sells them.

These modules are doubly odd, first they are FPM (or Fast Page mode), which was not rare but was a little less common than standard DIMMs

What makes these a bit wacky is the fact they were 5V.  By that time 3.3V was common.

This is a bit interesting because the 3.3V rail is what the sonnet needs to work

[johnklos]

That is good that some one sells them.

These modules are doubly odd, first they are FPM (or Fast Page mode), which was not rare but was a little less common than standard DIMMs

What makes these a bit wacky is the fact they were 5V.  By that time 3.3V was common.

This is a bit interesting because the 3.3V rail is what the sonnet needs to work

All the Power Macs of the time after the first generation NuBus Power Macs before the G3 (except the Power Mac 4400) used 5 volt FPM DIMMs. All the PowerPC CPUs of the time before the G3 took 3.3 or 2.5 volts. It's not surprising that an accelerator card for a Power Mac 7200 would take the same kind of memory as the Power Mac itself. Sonnet even advertised that you could take the memory from the motherboard and use it on the accelerator card.

[Lurch]

Further digging one finds this is a dead end, hardware is again hard to find. Ah well.

[DutchinUSA]

Indeed, checked the PowerMac lot but nada

I did however get reminded of my http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_wgs/specs/mac_wgs_9650_350.html that I should give a better spot in my workroom :cool:

[Motormouth]

All the Power Macs of the time after the first generation NuBus Power Macs before the G3 (except the Power Mac 4400) used 5 volt FPM DIMMs. All the PowerPC CPUs of the time before the G3 took 3.3 or 2.5 volts. It's not surprising that an accelerator card for a Power Mac 7200 would take the same kind of memory as the Power Mac itself. Sonnet even advertised that you could take the memory from the motherboard and use it on the accelerator card.

I get the FPM (reminds me of the A3000).   But why mac uses the less common 5v than 3.3v.  If these were EDO they would be what servers used during that generation.
It is like they go out of way to be different just to be different.

Indeed, checked the PowerMac lot but nada

I did however get reminded of my http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_wgs/specs/mac_wgs_9650_350.html that I should give a better spot in my workroom :cool:

@DutchinUSA

Nice Machine!!!  I know this is an Amiga web site but you have to admire some high end macs builds from the 90s.

[johnklos]

I get the FPM (reminds me of the A3000).   But why mac uses the less common 5v than 3.3v.  If these were EDO they would be what servers used during that generation.
It is like they go out of way to be different just to be different.

To be fair, Power Macs started using FPM 5 volt DIMMs before 3.3 volt EDO DIMMs were around and before any servers started using (non-proprietary) 64 bit DIMMs.

@DutchinUSA

Nice Machine!!!  I know this is an Amiga web site but you have to admire some high end macs builds from the 90s.

I have one which is a full time NetBSD server which has run for more than a decade straight. It has a 1 GHz Sonnet upgrade, 1.5 gigs of memory and a 2 TB hardware mirrored SATA enclosure on a SATA-SCSI adapter connected to an 80 MB/sec ATTO SCSI card. Wonderful, high quality hardware!

[AltRN8]

Funnily enough I bought one of these ages ago for two reasons. The first and silly reason was because this was the device that was used in the Shark PPC advertising. The second reason was because I could always reuse it to boost the power to a 7200 if I wanted to run BeOS on it.

The second reason was a folly for two reasons. Turns out I no longer owned a 7200. I had given it away and I mistakenly thought you could run BeOS on a 7200 when it was the 7300 it worked on (I still have one of those).

I didn't mind since I paid like $25 for it. It's been sitting on a shelf for ages gathering dust. Now maybe I could put it to good use! Except I don't have a Mediator board just a Prometheus. I seem to have very weird luck.