M a c C P U : TAM G3 upgrade

24th February 1999 update here 300MHz from Sonnet for your TAM

Nov 1998
A year ago Apple Computer was on the ropes. The fastest machine they made sported a 350MHz 604e processor and cost $5500. MacCPU shoveled G3 250MHz processor upgrades out of the door faster than Newer could make them which made the 350MHz Mach 5 machine look both overpriced and underpowered.

Steve Jobs muscled his way into the top slot at Apple and took over a sinking ship. Leaders don't lead from the rear and often they are called upon to make tough decisions. Lots of times the decisions look crazy.

Steve halted First Class Air Fare travel by Apple employees. (Seemed like a good decision to me). And he told Apple employees to leave the iguanas and other pets at home. (I still would love to know the full story about the engineer who used to wear frilly dresses to work. Male engineer. But still a good decision on the pets) And he gave away thousands of 20th Anniversary Macs. (Are you flipping crazy, Steve?).

Apple released the 20th Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) in May of 1997. At that point in time it probably would have been more accurate to call it the 20th and Last Anniversary Mac. List price came to $7500 and potential customers had to jump through a hundred hoops just to find someone who might just know someone who could maybe sell them one. The award-winning design was years ahead of its time but you couldn't buy one for love nor money. We live in Miami and had a customer who wanted two. The nearest dealer hailed from Orlando and the whole purchase was supposed to be an "Experience" with the customer ending up with a custom-installed machine.

Apple made 10,000 machines and may have even sold a few prior to the changing of the guard in July. It's a beautiful machine, but $7500 proved a little higher than the market would bear.

So Steve ordered them to be sold at any price. Any questions in my mind about his sanity were laid to rest. We paid $2,000 apiece for ours. The TAM is worth $2,000 for the Bose sound system alone. In hindsight, maybe Steve Jobs just made one of those decisions tough to make that separate leaders from people who run companies but just collect a paycheck. He may have given them away but maybe giving away unsaleable computers makes more sense than hanging on to bloated inventory.

So Apple's making money hand over fist and we have a machine we love. Not a bad deal for any of us.

But the 250MHz 603e which wasn't any powerhouse a year ago seems slower every day. We have waited for many months for someone to come out with an upgrade. The TAM presented a problem regarding an upgrade path. The machine lacks both a PDS slot and a removable CPU which all of the upgrades up to now have required. Then Interware of Japan came up with the first Cache Card G3 upgrades. And like most products from Japan, this CPU screams quality and good design.

We got our first order of CPUs in Friday and immediately plugged one into our TAM. All I can say about the design is that it's cuter than a bug. The upgrade is tiny and well built.

Installation in the TAM takes maybe three minutes. The back cover comes off, the cache comes out and the CPU goes in. That's it. It took me longer to remove the standard heat sink and to replace it with the heat sink/fan assembly than to do the upgrade. Software installation required clicking on the install button, a real brain drainer, even for me.

Even though we have sold thousands of various-flavor G3 upgrades over the past 14 months, we didn't use them for day-to-day operation. I used a Quadra 650 and Barbara had her beloved TAM. Then Steve came out with the iMac on August 15th and for the first time ever we bought two new computers on the day of release. We use MYOB for our accounting and it's brilliant. But the network MYOB version makes glaciers look like real speed demons and pouring frozen molasses fun to watch. We didn't need the speed of the G3 but the speed of the 100BaseT network.

But G3s are speedy little critters, even the 233MHz of the iMac. Everything runs faster and has a feel of zippyness. We love the machines. And until they came out with the modem updater, hated the modems.

So we loved the idea of a speed bump for the TAM. The G3 Cache Card upgrade 225MHz runs a 512k backside cache bus speed of 112.5MHz. MacBench 4.0 showed a processor score of 357 before the upgrade and 702 afterwards. If you need to crank out filters on 200MB files the G3-upgraded TAM isn't a Photoshop machine for you, but it wasn't with the 603e either. This is a machine for Gentlemen and Refined Ladies not racehorses.

We ran the machine all weekend without any conflicts. Units are out on test at other sites and it seems to be a problem-free upgrade. That doesn't mean without any limitations. The very nature of computers mean compromise. Interware included the extra heat sink/fan assembly and I tested both configurations. The machine got as hot as 86 degrees C without the fan and ran at a steady 76 degrees with the fan. In my view, the fan is a must install even though it prevents use of the top memory slot.

The TAM comes with two memory slots and even though some vendors claim you can install two 128MB EDO DIMMs, you cannot. We tried both EDO and regular 128s. Apple engineered the motherboard so it will only recognize 64MB per slot. So while the machine may run up to 128MB of RAM, it must be in the form of two 64MB DIMMs. But while Apple calls for EDO memory, we ran with both FPM and EDO memory with no problems at all.

If you can live with a maximum of 64MB of memory and are satisfied with about a doubling of speed according to MB 4.0, it's a great upgrade. I suspect a 400MHz upgrade will be announced in the future. And I know prices are going to drop substantially between now and January as well. The copper-based 400MHz uses less power and I think it may create less heat than the 225MHz precluding the need for the extra cooling fan. With the smaller heat sink, it may be possible to use the top memory slot but for now, I cannot recommend use of the G3 225MHz without the fan.

Those with a need for memory in their TAM may want to hold off for both an increase in speed, and lower prices for G3 upgrades across the board, down the road.

November 2nd 1998