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DEPARTMENTS      Newer G3 The software included with this upgrade card loads easily, as most Mac software does. Once software is installed, shut down the computer, pull the power plug and pop the top -- very easy on the low profile PowerCenter Pro, not so on the tower model from the now defunct Power Computing, Inc. as it requires one to remove the case cover as well as the bottom of the chassis to access the processor slot. Carefully, and making sure to observe basic static prevention guidelines (when in doubt, touch the power supply) and using the supplied antistatic wrist strap, remove the PCP's riser card stabilization bar and then carefully, but firmly pull the existing 604 processor card. Again, with great care, insert firmly into the processor slot the G3 upgrade card, locate & press the "cuda" reset switch. Without yet replacing the cover of your computer, reattach the power (keeping yourself and any foreign objects away from the "guts") and boot. You'll have to reset your date & time from the cuda reset once your system boots. Go to "About this Computer" or Apple System Profiler in the Apple Menu to visually check the new power in your computer. Actually, if the machine boots, the card is working. Once all of this is done, run some of the utilities included in the Newer software to check actual clock speed and bus rate.
For more info about the PowerCenter Pro and other PowerComputing machines, check these resources: |
h | h | Squeeze the most music from your aging Mac clone for less By: Editor, Cris Dunnam Newer Technology has given MacRocks.com a chance to test drive a 300Mhz. G3 upgrade card for one of our Lab Machines, a Power Computing PowerCenter Pro 180/604e. We found interesting results that could mean an excellent step up for those who aren't in the position to buy a new PowerMac G3 or G4 to make their music. We wanted not the top of the line 400+ Mhz. upgrades, but the ones that will be in a price range, at the time of this writing, that many older PowerMac owners could justify allocating a part of their limited upgrade budget -- you know, more bang for buck. Fortunately the 300 Mhz. cards are plummeting slowly in gray market cost making them more and more reasonable in cost. What we saw: Having said all of that, we proceed to evaluate what really matters: how many tracks does the G3 let you have over a 604 and how many third party software based synths & samplers can I run at once? Using an older version of Steinberg's Cubase (v. 3.5.2 VST) as well as software synths & samplers we encountered good & bad news. The good news, in this case, is in the majority. A somewhat remarkable increase in stability and track ability in Cubase was expected and we were glad to see we could double audio tracks available from 3-5 to 6-10 tracks, glitch free. That's to say audio tracks only, with no MIDI tracks in the mix. Feeling good about 8 tracks of digital audio, we proceeded to test the limits by adding a variety of software based synths and samplers into our mix; then quickly realized we needed to start deleting some of our prideful audio tracks. By the time we were done, there were no audio tracks left in our test mix. The Synths & Samplers we tested were Bitheadz Unity-1 & Retro-1, Koblo Stella, Vibra & Gamma. We found it difficult for any of the Koblo's products to appear in Cubase. This was because our version of Cubase doesn't fully support everything on the IAC bus. We did get it to intermittently get Vibra to lay down a killer track, but would frequently from the output mix. Running Koblo's full studio of Stella9000, Vibra9000 and Gamma9000 in stand alone mode via their Tokyo shell gave much better performance of their products. No glitches, no drop outs -- very cool. Bitheadz software all ran exceptionally on a stand alone basis -- that is, not in a sequencer program. There is no comparison in quality and sheer quantity of sounds from both Unity & Retro. Especially when utilizing the sound sets from Bitheadz' Black & Whites piano multisamples. These piano samples were nearly unrunable on the PowerComputing 604e stock power. The big stand out from Bitheadz arsenal was the use of Retro-1 in Cubase, I simply got tired of adding tracks after twelve. No drop outs, no glitches. It worked perfect. I have to qualify that previous statement to say that I did not put a lot of intricacy into each of the twelve Retro tracks; number of notes and how much use of modulation & pitch bending will tax the mix significantly. But overall, Retro-1 is hands down a better choice of synth over QuickTime's MIDI sound set. Bottom line:
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