Thread

Software for G4 ZIF processor replacement for Power Mac G3

68kMLA · PowerPC · 5 posts · Jun 13, 2015 — Jun 23, 2015 View original thread ↗

#1 Sat, 13 Jun 2015 - 22:15 68kMLA

Hi,

I bought a beige Power Mac G3 mini tower. It has a G4 400 Mhz processor installed instead of the original G3.

The replacement is from a company called Metabox (went out of business long ago). I read it is basically the same as Sonnet's Encore/ZIF G4 or Daystar's XLR8 MACh Speed G4 ZIF upgrades and that one can use the respective software to control the accelerator.

Here is a list of these upgrades: http://www.everymac.com/upgrade_cards/by_system/powermac_g3.html

I have been looking for control software (like Daystar's XLR8 MACh Speed Control) but had no luck so far.

Any hints are appreciated.

Best, bobo68

#2 Sat, 13 Jun 2015 - 23:17 68kMLA

When metabox went out of business OWC bought and sold the rest of their stock of accelerators: http://eshop.macsales.com/Accelerators/Vendor_Page.cfm?vendor=metabox

I would suggest asking someone at owc...

Also: here's some information about the Joecard z: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4CARDS/MetaboxG4_450_2MB/index.html

#3 Sat, 13 Jun 2015 - 23:32 68kMLA

Try Powerlogix' CPU Director - easily obtained, it tends to work with most third-party G3 Accelerators (better than Mach Speed Control, I've found)

#4 Sun, 14 Jun 2015 - 11:19 68kMLA

I tried CPU Director 2.3b4 and b6 but it would not run on my beige G3 mini tower. It seems to be for OS 9 and OS X (has respective folders with resources and the readme says so) and I installed the system init it produces an error message relating to OS X (ioctl...) on OS 9.

#5 Tue, 23 Jun 2015 - 16:22 68kMLA

I tried CPU Director 1.5f5 and that works! :beige: I can now control the 2nd level cache amongst other things.

BTW, the ZIF processor card is a Metabox joeCARD Z 400 Mhz. I think it was a unauthorized clone of a US product by a German company and that was also the reason why they had to cease production.

I rescued some info about the card from the web with the help of the Wayback machine. If somebody is interested drop me a note.