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To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question — Vic Lennard provides some of the answers...

Technology waits for no one, or so the old adage might read in modern times. You buy the latest Mac and find it's been superseded a month or so later — exit a large chunk of your investment. But there is a solution, or so the processor‑upgrade card manufacturers would have us believe. The question is — is it better to sell an outdated Mac or try to upgrade it with a new processor daughter card? The answer isn't an easy one.

I went down the upgrade path with my 8500, one of the first generation of PCI‑based PowerMacs. UK prices for a G3 card were high at the time (July '98) and so I purchased a 225MHz PowerLogix upgrade card from the States. And that's when the problems started. My previously stable system became a total liability — I couldn't burn a CD or even transfer files from one hard disk to another without data errors. PowerLogix made various system extensions available, none of which made a blind bit of difference. The UK distributor didn't wish to get involved, as I hadn't purchased the card within their domain, and the US store weren't prepared to help, as the product was outside of their 30‑day warranty. It's a common story. In the end it became clear that the card would work fine on a basic system with no external SCSI devices and only a single internal hard disk. I sold the card, admitting fully that there might be a problem with a substantial SCSI setup and then had to refund a week later.

Six months later I bought another card, this time from Newer Technology. In my opinion, this is the only company that really understands the science of processor upgrading — I had previously purchased a 180MHz 604e card for the same PowerMac from them. In fact, Dantz, the company behind Retrospect backup software, tested G3 accelerator cards from various companies and came to the conclusion that only Newer's worked. The 250MHz G3 card still resides in my 8500 and the system is, once again, bulletproof.

And so to today. Numerous companies sell G4 upgrade cards, and all at decent prices: £500 will buy you a 350MHz card, £600 a 400MHz card, but do the same problems still exist? Probably. The key factor is what is termed 'Speculative Addressing', a method for attaining near‑optimal processor performance. The processor fetches extra data from locations near where it is currently getting data, speculating that it will eventually need it. Unfortunately, there's a down side: it can cause unintended problems on older Macs which are not properly set up to handle this. Why? Because some status and control registers may change or be cleared as a result of such an access. For example, your hard drive controller chip may need the control registers to be accessed in a particular order. If they are speculatively accessed and the speculation results are discarded, the control registers may be out of sync. This could cause data to be written to the wrong sector causing corruption of the Mac hard drive. I have personally seen the results of this.

Newer Technology believes that a hardware solution, residing on the card itself, is the only solution. Other companies use a firmware fix via a system extension to configure code in the Mac's NVRAM (non‑volatile memory). The problem here is that if you zap the PRAM (parameter RAM) very early in the boot‑up procedure, the firmware fix is erased and the Mac won't boot, as it can no longer see any of its hard drives.

Serial Killer

Megawolf's Romulus and Remus cards are a professional answer to the G3/G4 serial port problem.

I'm currently working on an article for SOS concerning problems with the G4 and MIDI hardware, so I thought I'd give you a sneak preview. Apple have dumped the old modem and printer serial ports on all USB‑equipped Macs including the G4. This poses an immediate problem for those with existing serial‑port MIDI interfaces, such as the MOTU MTP II that resides in my studio. With a G4 (and the same is true of a blue and white G3) I had considered trying the Stealth card which replaces the internal 56K modem with a small card and old‑fashioned 8‑pin serial port. Many companies recommend this as a cheap solution (around £50); others claim that it causes MIDI delays. Even if it does work satisfactorily, it still leaves the problem of feeding the MTP II's two serial ports — a better solution than just piping all MIDI information through one of them.

For live work, I use a G3 Powerbook with a MIDISport 2x2 USB interface, Roland Sound Canvas and the QuickTime Player, as I only play back MIDI Files. I've always been aware that the timing was a little loose but it's been fine for live performances. The studio is quite a different situation though — I certainly wouldn't be happy with the MIDI timing for professional work. Given this, I decided to try a Megawolf Romulus card. If you haven't heard of this, you certainly will as it provides four serial ports on a PCI card (there's also a two‑port version called the Remus). After setting it up with OMS and QuickTime as the default musical instrument, I have to admit to not quite believing my ears — the timing with the same synth and MIDI files was quite impeccable. Quality comes at a price, of course. The Romulus card costs £300 and the Remus £225 (inc VAT and UK delivery) and are available from Hinton Instruments (01373 451927). They come complete with FreeMIDI and OMS 2 and should work with all standard sequencers. Nice to know there's a solid, professional solution, isn't it?

Space: The Final Frontier

The latest version of Deck, now in the capable hands of BIAS, is MacOS 9 compatible – and has a 15‑day trial available too.

Are you running MacOS 9? Have you noticed the free disk space on the boot partition going down and down? Well, there's an invisible folder called Temporary Items that applications use for holding non‑permanent files. Usually, these files are deleted when you quit the application. If your Mac crashes and needs to be restarted, the Finder cleans out the Temporary Items folder and places them in a folder entitled Rescued Items in the Trash. At least it used to. MacOS 9 no longer carries out this clean‑up operation thus causing such files to build up. The solution? SOS's web site has a little AppleScript available for download, called https://web.archive.org/web/2015..." target="_blank). Place this in your System Folder's Startup Items and it will clean out the offending items each time you boot up.

Do Yourself A Favour

You need a calculator to keep up with emerging MP3 programs, but Audion is established and a cut above the rest.

• If you want to go down the processor upgrade path, do yourself a big favour and buy a G3 or G4 Newer Technology card. Even though other companies may offer cheaper options and state better performance figures, Newer's cards work.
• Given the cost, consider very carefully whether you'd be better off selling your current machine and buying either a secondhand G3 or a new G4. You may well find there's little to be saved by upgrading. Also, even with a processor upgrade card, your old machine won't offer the same performance as a real G3 or G4, especially the latter with its Velocity Engine and larger Level 2 cache.