[CUBE] Radeon 7500 long term in Cube? (Sonnet comments)

[Julian Tracy]

> What Sonnet Upgrade? Wake from sleep problems? How fast does it feel?
> Quiet variable speed fan?
> 

It's the Sonnet 1.2.  No wake from sleep problems.  Seems quite a bit
faster, almost to the point that the stock 450 feels crippled for just about
any use.  Ripping in Itunes with a firewire cdrw is averaging at 15x-18x.
The fan at the base is the Panaflo L, and is, to my ear, not noticeable at
all.

I did run into a difficulty with the upgrade however; when running the Apple
hardware test cd, I was getting a "failed logic board" result.  The end
result was that I had both a bad 512mb chip of memory and the Sonnet upgrade
seemed to be defective.  I've since received a new memory chip and a new
Sonnet 1.2 and have yet to re-install them (which is why the OE 450 is
seeming quite in-adequate right now).

The only reason I realized I was having problems was some bizarre system
behavior and some corrupting of jpeg files from within iPhoto and Iview
Media Pro - not at all good!

At first, I kept thinking I had a bad OS install, and tried a complete
format and re-install (twice!), and finally I tried the Apple hardware test,
and then took it to an Applecare provider (covered till 01/04) who
determined it was just fine when the OE 450mhz board was installed.

So aside from the defective 1.2 board that I started with (and I hope I
won't re-experience the problem), I'd say the upgrade was a great thing as
it's allowed for quite a bit multi-tasking that could not be done when the
Cube was at 450mhz.

Regards,

Julian Tracy