Very much needed upgrade!
Written: Jul 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of installation, Speed upgrade, Customer Support
Cons: Not a complete solution, still a bit pricey
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| estoke61's Full Review: NewerTech Maxpowr G3 PDS |
PDS Slot? What's that?
Ok, here is your hypothetical problem: You have a first generation Nubus PowerMac. With no Daughtercard Processor slot or ZIF upgradeability, you are stuck with a PowerPC 601 Processor, ranging anywhere from a measly 60 mHz to 110 mHz. What do you do? Just load up on RAM, level 2 cache and other upgrades and hope that the processor can handle the tasks you need? Not at all. You get a "PDS" G3 upgrade to give your Nubus PowerMac a shot of adrenaline!
Here is my real situation that I had to face: A PowerMac 6100/60 with 16mb RAM, a 250mb hard drive, and a 2x CD-ROM drive. Sounds pretty bleak, huh? Well, the 6100 isn't very expandable at all, but that doesn't mean that its life is over quite yet. I upgraded the cd-rom to 4x, upgraded the hard drive to 1gb, loaded up with max 72mb RAM, and added a 250 mHz G3 PDS upgrade from Newertech. And I must say, this machine suddenly feels more like a Beige G3 than a 5 year old PowerPC 601!!!
The Newertech Processor fits into your one PDS expansion slot in your computer, and unfortunately takes the place of the AV card in the 6100's case, if present. Still, a good trade. the processor installs easily, and the documented manual is fairly detailed enough to help you through it if this is your first time upgrading something other than RAM. However, the task goes much quicker if you an experienced at doing hardware upgrades. Once the processor PDS card is installed, your work isn't quite done yet...you still need to install the software to run the new G3 upgrade. The one advantage in this case for the Nubus macs is since the 601 processor is soldered onto the motherboard, it is always there. So if you lost the software extensions or you have to reinstall your OS for whatever reason, you can at least boot up the computer and it will have the 601 processor there to get you going until you reinstall.
The software enables the NewerTech processor to be recognized, and the same software supercedes the older processor, effectively disabling it. The software install for me went well without incident, and the manual was by my side in case I needed it, though if you have done software installations before don't be too worried. The result? By the second bootup, you are running a G3 processor with backside cache that will leave you wondering if this is the same computer you always had.
Of course, this particular G3 upgrade is not a guarantee to bring your Nubus PowerMac up to the standards of the Apple PowerMac G3's or G4's for several reasons, the main one being that your motherboard bus speed will not be improved as a result of this upgrade. However, even with a slow bus (30-40 mHz depending on you model) the G3 will help out the rest of your system immensely, with faster bootup times, less wait for big applications to load, and a general speedup to you Finder interface.
The bottom line: If you must keep that Nubus PowerMac going, whether at home, in the office, or at school, Newertech can be fully trusted to do just that with their PDS upgrades. Although you won't ever quite have a screaming machine with those older PowerPC models, it will be zippy enough to serve you for quite few more years before it is time to "pass the torch" onto a newer Power Macintosh computer.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
estoke61
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Member: Eric Stokes
Location: Gorham, ME
Reviews written: 54
Trusted by: 42 members
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