"
Hi,
I came across something interesting during the last couple of weeks, and I
thought I'd share the experiences.
I work for a school district fixing Macs. I was having trouble loading
system 9.1 into a 333 Mhz Strawberry tray loading iMac, because it was not
letting me upgrade the machine's firmware. I just happened to have a copy
of a backup system folder from a Titanium Powerbook stored on a hard
drive, so for the heck of it, I reformatted the iMac and loaded it on,
then added some software. Was I shocked! Everything seemed to be running
much faster than I've ever seen on a 333 Mhz iMac!
Because this particular System Folder had some quirky add-ons like Action
Utilities, I installed 9.1 on an empty hard drive on another G3, put it on
the iMac, then discovered that all the software was pokey as ever. So as
an experiment, I copied the MAC OS ROM from the Titanium System folder,
rebooted, and watched the machine fly through tasks!
Later, my friend Chris and I installed the ROM on two iBooks, two indigo
iMacs, and two more tray loaders (Tangerine and Lime), and a B&W G3. We
discovered that this ONLY worked with System 9.1 Anything else would crash
the machine.
We also did some benchmarking, running tests on non-enhanced machines and
ones with the new ROM (we're calling this the "Evry ROM Hack" around the
lab).
Some examples include:
MS Word 98 Load time:
iBook 5 seconds old, 4 seconds new Tray loader Imac: 3 seconds new
MS Word 2001 Load time:
Indigo imac 13 seconds old 4 seconds new
Generally, there is a snappier "feel" to the systems with the new Rom, especially with the older iMacs. We experimented with Virtual PC running Windows 98 on a Lime iMac, and it seemed to make the program run quite acceptable. We could boot off Word 97 in it in about four seconds.
Now we're not sure if this experiment is repeatable with the ROM off ANY G4 or not. The systems are quite stable, and have been running for about a
week without a crash. The Ti Book we took the ROM off of had come equipped
with 9.1 out of the factory, refused to boot after a failed install of OS
X, then was sent back to Apple and returned with OS X removed and
everything else intact, so it may be that we have a Mutant ROM file.
Who knows?
Best,
-=-Ron Evry-=-
Author of Witzworx, the Shareware Comic Book Font!
Available at http://www.reuben.org/evry/witzworx.html
[he later wrote]
Undoubtedly, Apple would say this:
a) Isn't supposed to work
b) Will not be supported
and possibly
c) Violates their copyright"
Other Reader Test Results:
(added 5/11, 5/14, and 5/16/2001, most recent reports first)
Some of the most recent reports didn't have the detailed test comparisons of earlier reports.
"
Hi, Last night I placed the install CD from my PB G4 and though caution to the
wind and replaced
the ROM with the G4 ROM to my upgraded imac.
here's my setup
imac upgraded to 256mb ram and a PowerLogix G3 400mhz card. System is 9.1
PhotoShop loads faster by 2 sec.
MS Word loads way faster down to 6 seconds
Computer is running fine, no stability problems so far.
Dennis
"
"
Tried it (Ver. 7.5.1) on my 400Mhz SLiMac (not the latest rev) -
Things did perhaps seem noticably snappier, but tough to tell without
a good automated test. I started getting a few random freezes a day,
switched back. I installed it on my G4 @ home a day or two ago. I've
seen one freeze that seemed similar, have to test a bit more. (These
were full freezes - no mouse/keyboard, couldn't drop to macsbug, etc.)
--Matthew
"
"
Waking up from sleep is much faster now on my 450 MHz G4 Cube. Always welcome!
Tomas
"
Here's a problem report from someone using the MacOS ROM v7.5.1 from a recent PB G4 on a G4/500 AGP system:
"
Mike,
Just thought I'd pass a note to tell you I tried the ROM file from my 1/2
week old PBG4. The ROM version is 7.5.1, and upon replacing my PowerMac G4
AGPs ROM file I had nothing but troubles. Not a single app would launch and
the finder froze or quit several times. Needless to say I reverted ASAP.
Don't know if it's the difference in the version 6 and version 7 ROM files
but I don't recommend anyone try the v7. I took the G4 about a minute
sitting at the initial gray screen to even pop up the happy mac face, and
then it booted realy slowly.
Just thought I'd pass my experiences on.
Good Day, and thanks for the great site/information.
Joe Simenstad
PBG4 500 256MB RAM
PMG4 500 512MB RAM, 10G&40G HDs, WiredDVD, Adaptect ULTRA SCSI Card"
Another reader sent test results, this time with an even later version of the PB G4 MacOS ROM perhaps (my PB G4/400 built in Feb. 2001 has Mac OS ROM v6.6.1, the latest PB G4s have v7.5.1):
"
Mike,
Read the TiBook ROM article yesterday so out of curiousity I obtained the
ROM file from a TiBook and gave it a spin. I'm using a dual 533Mhz G4
(1152Mb RAM, 60 and 27gig IDE drives, and an internal Zip 250, everything
else stock) running OS 9.1.
First thing, the TiBook's ROM file is very different (and newer than your
other reader's report):
Old | New
Mac OS CPU Software 2.8 | Mac OS CPU Software 3.2
v6.7.1 | v7.5.1
3.4Mbs | 4.6Mbs
Also, the copyright runs up to 2001 for the TiBook ROM, only 2000 for the
G4 desktop..weird.
As for performance..
I ran a quick and dirty test opening Director, Premier, After Effects and
Dreamweaver at the same time.. Old ROM finished in 34 seconds, new
finished in 31-32seconds. No biggie. But, opening Netscape, IE and
Emailer (yep, I still use Claris :) felt MUCH quicker..particularly
Netscape. I barely got a chance to see the splash screen for Netscape.
But get this, at startup when the new ROM file loaded, my G4's power
light turned off. No more white light. Other than that, it seems to be
stable enough but I haven't run it much yet.
And now for some more official benchmarks:
Throughput 1.5 - Old ROM:
CPU - 60.3
FPU - 204.5
AltiVec - 204.5
CopyBits - 178.2
Throughput 1.5 - New ROM:
CPU - 61.8
FPU - 210.2
AltiVec - 210.2
CopyBits - 184.1
Not a bad increase overall.. the weird thing is, I just ran that test
with 10 huge apps open to test the new ROM.. Should be even faster if I
test right after a reboot (as the old test was run).
Cinebench 2000 showed a more slight increase in speed overall, but a
slight decrease in speed for the dual processor render.
Overall, it's a nice little speed boost but it's probably not at all
optimized for this system and its dual processors. I'm betting the 9.2
update will show some very nice speed boosts for everyone..
Thanks for the great site,
-Peter Roman,
http://peter.neophiliadesign.com/"
Another reader that saw this article last week sent his test results with the PB G4 MacOS ROM file on other Macs:
"
Hi Mike
Thanks for the site, the most informative site of Mac.
We guys are hosting a Mac site in Taiwan, OIKOS. http://www.oikos.com.tw ....
Since I read the article about switching Mac OS ROM, I got a copy of it and give it a try on my Pismo/400...the result of increasing the fluency was noticeable. Besides that, nothing really significant.
Here are some result that we post the ROMs( One was copied from 9.1 North American and another was copied from OS 9.1 TC) on our web site letting the readers do their own experiment.
iMac graphite: G3 400/128MB/13GB/OS9.1 TC
(Traditional Chinese)
Word2001 23sec -> 6sec
Entourage 11sec -> 12sec
Photoshop 5.02 24sec -> 13sec
iBook 300 6G: Unable using the blessed folder as startup disk.
PowerBook G3/250 WallStreet: AppleWorks , Word startup time were decreased significantly.
5 Pismo/500, 400: Fluency increasing
1 PowerBook Firewire/500: Bus error during startup
( mum....a particular result).
G4 mini tower w/ Zip: System operating fluency was increased.
iBook 366 graphite:
1. OS Startup
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 2min 54sec
6.6.7 ROM 2min 56sec
2. Photoshop 6.1
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 30sec
6.6.7 ROM 27sec
3. Word 2001
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 30sec
6.6.7 ROM 10sec
4. Dreamweaver UD4
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 20sec
6.6.7 ROM 19sec
5. AppleWorks 6.04 TC version
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 34sec
6.6.7 ROM 15sec
6. Entourage
ta-6.1 ROM (previous) 12sec
6.6.7 ROM 12sec
There are still many have not reported yet.
Thought you may want to know the result as reference.
Again, thanks for your the greatest site of Mac
Sincerely
Tom
=========
because the box labeled " required Window 98 or higher", so I bought a Mac."
I welcome other reports on this tip.
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