MAXpower G3 L2 in a TAM

I would link for you, but if you Google it you should find it. Known issue.

I cant find it? More importantly, is there any way to fix it? 

I took the card out and it still froze. Hmm... So I uninstalled the driver and installed 1.3.9U. It didnt freeze anymore, but putting the card back in, it doesnt recognize it either. 

hmmm... I am at a loss. Any ideas? 

I guess not...

I tried OS 9.1 and same deal. Freezes with or without the card. doesnt matter. 

Well, I guess I will throw it in the trash and lesson learned as a bad investment. 

Oh well... 

Do you have any USB extensions turned on?

the maxpower extension loads well before any USB stuff does? And I dont have A USB card installed in my TAM yet. the extensions might be there. 

I would try booting with minimal extensions and see what happens. I cant find the article that solved this. Sonnet had a similar issue.

I know all the performa L2 Macs hate connectix software.  Ram doubler in particular.

The freeze with the card uninstalled would seem to indicate against it, but on these G3 upgrades, if the machine freezes during extension loading, it is often a defective cache on the upgrade card.  The cache isn't active until the extension modifies the PPC750 register settings.   When the cache is activated and is also defective the machine freezes.

I had a NewerTech NuBus upgrade (goes in PDS slot of x100 series) with this symptom.   I pulled the heat sink off and the factory applied heat sink grease had a trailing line which crossed the pins of one of the cache chips.

The last time I checked, DigiKey still had compatible cache chips available, in the event that you want to risk some money trying to replace them.

http://www.cnet.com/news/newer-maxpowr-2-0-released-and-then-pulled-problem-with-g3-l2/

this article says 2.0 does not work with the L2 cards.  

Try CPU Director or XLR8 Mach speed software - they might work with the card.  If continual crashing, disable the L2 cache or downclock the speed

There was a file called 2.05 and there was a file called  2.05J. I have the J-version but I no longer have a TAM so I can't check it. Could that file be of any use to you? Maybe it is an update?

I tried both 2.0.3 and 2.0.5 they both hard freeze without or with the card.

So to feel safer I pulled out my 6500 Tower does the same exact thing it will hard freeze right when the progress bar shows up with or without the card.

No I don't use any RAM doubler anything like that.

And no its not random the hard freeze happens every single time right when the driver extension tries to load.

Do you want to try 2.05J? If you DM me an e-mailaddress I will send it to you.

I did try 2.05J the very first time when I got the card. I couldnt read the text, but I think it installed correctly. It did the same thing though. freeze on load. 

Grasping at straws, I grabbed a 6300/6400 board. I dont know which it is, But, Tried it and same deal. freeze right at the Mac OS screen. 

Then I grabbed my 5200, and 5260 boards, and those have a different slot so I couldnt try them out. 

Gr... thats telling me bad drivers or OS issue.

I only have 8.6 and 9.1 my 9.0 disk is toast. wont read. (burned). 

It sure does make you wonder of it would work with any other version of MacOs. Maybe some flavour of 8 or 7 even...

Supposidly the G3/L2 works with 8 and above. But who knows? If I cant get it working in 8.6+ then this card is 110% useless to me. 

Too bad. G3 upgrades are becoming rare these days...

Something is definitely not right here. 

Downgraded to Mac OS 8.1, Installed 2.0.3 as the original sellers specifications as he mentioned he was running it, and nope. Same Deal. Hard freeze at the progress bar. 

GRRRRRRRRRRRR...... 

Its almost as if the G3-L2 couldnt have ever worked in its lifetime?? 

guess ill return it. 

Well, I did a barbones install of OS9 (burned another CD). 

Installed 2.0.5, Hard freeze. 

So, I empted the entire system folder leaving ONLY the system resources, finder, and system in place. Rebooted so it would recreate the nested folders. 

Reinstalled 2.0.3 this time, Again, Hard Freeze.... 

So.. Not sure what to think unless the drivers that are on the internet have gotten tainted somehow. I downloaded them from the newer technologies/owc site, and then I tried the copies at the mac driver museum. They both do the same thing. 

I saw a maxpowr system update 1.0, not entirely sure what that is as I cannot find any documentation on it. I did however, throw it in the extensions folder and it didnt change anything. 

I tried 7.6.1, and you guessed it. no change. 

So, Unless there is a pre-requisite that was in the documentation that I dont have, I have exhausted everything I could think of. 

I downloaded the drivers via archive.org from the newertech site.

Well I downloaded from 3 different sites which had different binhex signatures. 

But once decompressed, all 3 installers were identical. 

Good/bad PRAM battery? Maybe answered already, sorry if you did.

Try a reflow of the board?

How are the caps in the TAM?

Was it the 6400 or 6500 board that is the same, do you have one of those to try it in?

The 6500 is the same.

Yup, I have 3 different motherboards including the TAM. Tried em all. All do the same. 

I dont have PRAM batteries in any of them. 

Since I was on the accelerator subject, I grabbed my 6100 and I had another MAXPowr sitting here for the 6100/66 model. 

of course it wont work with my DOS card, as its a different connector, I decided to try it with the same exact driver disk. It worked, but its a completely different card and its a nubus mac.

So this is clearly a PCI mac issue. 

I'm confused. Do you "pci mac issue" in a sense that a TAM is a pci Mac. Or in the sense that the MaxPowr upgrade is a pci card? It's a L2 cache card isn't it?

its an L2 card. But only the PCI based macs have that particular L2 slot. 

I have a 5200 and a 5260 board which are nubus based PPC units, but the L2 slot is completely different. 

and what I mean is, the driver is hard freezing on any PCI mac I have tried so far. with or without the L2 G3 card. The driver should NEVER EVER freeze a machine when the card is NOT present!!! thats the part thats throwing me down the tubes. 

I am really starting to wonder if this MAXPowr G3L2 didnt ship with a very specific driver diskette. 

When it crashes, do you try another boot after of just pull the extension.

I found this snippet, but its for Sonnet. I know you have a different card, etc. Just want to try to cover anything we can. At this point its seems odd that these are causing a crash like this under so many systems with so many versions. Makes no sense.

It seems that Sonnet is aware of a problem were the card may crash during boot and might be connected to having serial devices? I will admit that I had some boot crashes during the 1st boot after the install of each but none after that, and I boot my 6400 a few times each day. Although I don't keep my Epson printer turned on until I need it, I do have a GV modem on all the time. On a side note, I did try loading the Cresendo extension 1st and this caused all sorts of crashes during boot? I don't think their theory of compatibilty with the Geo is correct as mine worked flawlessly once I removed RamDoubler (which is known to cause problems with the Geo modem)