Thread

Another this weekend - Umax S900

68kMLA PowerPC 14 posts May 12, 2008 to May 17, 2008

#1 Mon, 12 May 2008 - 14:04 68kMLA

I got yet another mac yesterday. I bought a Umax S900 for $30 from the original owner. It still has the front cover on it, and the original CPU was included.

The best part is he said it has a G4 upgrade in it! I'm not sure if this is true or not (will check tonight), but that's pretty sweet. Another cool thing is that this board has 2 slots for daughtercard CPUs... wonder what I can do there... }

#2 Mon, 12 May 2008 - 16:58 68kMLA

A Good score on the Umax S900. You can look on the bottom of the case and see if it was a Dual CPU machine. It will have a S900D desigination on the bottom of the case.

I have one of these machines. Its running a Newertech G3 275/183 upgrade CPU in it as it originaly had the Dual 180MHz CPU's in it. However when I got it the CPU's were gone. In order to use the second CPU slot you will need to find a set of DayStar CPU's made for the Umax S900D.

They are somewhat rare and a bit pricey. I'm not sure if a Mac dual CPU daughter card will work in the Umax although I do know that most of the single CPU daughter cards will. If it does have a G4 upgrade card in it I'd stay with that.

#3 Mon, 12 May 2008 - 20:26 68kMLA

S900 is a good snag. I saw one on ebay not long ago that I was going to try for but the time I was ready to snipe it the price had already broken through my price barrier. The shipping was also on the high end of reasonable, so it was just way too much money.

#4 Tue, 13 May 2008 - 05:04 68kMLA

it seems the G4 upgrade doesn't want to work in the 8500 or the S900 - maybe there's something I'm doing wrong?

#5 Tue, 13 May 2008 - 05:58 68kMLA

Off the top of my head, I remember something about the Umax CPU slots being different.

#6 Wed, 14 May 2008 - 02:07 68kMLA

Off the top of my head, I remember something about the Umax CPU slots being different.

The second slot is the Gemini slot for the second processor in the DP configuration.

#7 Wed, 14 May 2008 - 02:09 68kMLA

it seems the G4 upgrade doesn't want to work in the 8500 or the S900 - maybe there's something I'm doing wrong?

It should. Is the card is good? What is happening? Did you seat the card well?

#8 Wed, 14 May 2008 - 02:12 68kMLA

I got yet another mac yesterday. I bought a Umax S900 for $30 from the original owner. It still has the front cover on it, and the original CPU was included.
The best part is he said it has a G4 upgrade in it! I'm not sure if this is true or not (will check tonight), but that's pretty sweet. Another cool thing is that this board has 2 slots for daughtercard CPUs... wonder what I can do there... }

There is nothing more disappointing then a dual processor Mac that runs the classic Mac OS. Totally worthless except for a few Photoshop functions. The highlight in the case of the Umax was when running the Umax DP Libraries you saw a cool looking extension load when you booted the Mac.

#9 Wed, 14 May 2008 - 02:13 68kMLA

Off the top of my head, I remember something about the Umax CPU slots being different.

THe pci slots had some strange bridge. Trag is an expert on that.

#10 Wed, 14 May 2008 - 21:55 68kMLA

I HOPE the card is good! From what I gather though it's probably bad. The original CPU works fine in the unit, as does a Sonnet G3 300 card.

#11 Thu, 15 May 2008 - 07:52 68kMLA

as far as i remember only the daystar "master" cpu was special and you could drop any cpu you want into the second slot? but dunno anymore if it was that way.

#12 Thu, 15 May 2008 - 12:29 68kMLA

as far as i remember only the daystar "master" cpu was special and you could drop any cpu you want into the second slot? but dunno anymore if it was that way.

No, the master cpu would work if you dropped it in a 7500 or 8500 or 9500. The second cpu was the proprietary cpu. The two cpu's were attached by a ribbon cable. The cpu's could be mixed and matched. The main cpu could be a 233 MHz with a 46 MHz bus speed. The secondary cpu could be 200 MHz with a 50 MHz bus speed. The machine would then run at the speed of the slower processor. In this case 200 MHz with the 50 MHz bus speed.

#13 Sat, 17 May 2008 - 05:24 68kMLA

Got the G4 working! It only gives a millisecond or so of a chime but it's running fine now. The processor card is REALLY picky about how its placed in the machine.

#14 Sat, 17 May 2008 - 07:45 68kMLA

Nice one! What speed G4 izzit?

JB