Clearly it's not my week for getting upgrade CPUs working! After all the trouble with the Sonnet Encore/ST Duet, now I'm working on putting a Sonnet Encore/ZIF G4 1GHz back into service and hitting a firmware-related wall.
The history - Many years ago I had one of these upgrades running in a particular B&W G3. After a while it quit working to the point of not even chiming at power up. The upgrade was pulled and the machine was restored to a G3. I tried it in another B&W and it didn't work there either so I assumed the Sonnet was dead and gave up on it. Later I managed to get a replacement Sonnet from eBay but never got around to installing it, until now.
Today I pulled a different B&W out of storage (the original one is gone now). The motherboard firmware is up to date (v1.1) according to Apple's 1.1 updater. I booted OS 9.2.2 and attempted to run the firmware patch from the Crescendo 3.1 installer. It claims it doesn't recognize the motherboard's firmware. Crescendo 2.3.1 failed with a similar message claiming the motherboard firmware was damaged. Booting 10.3.9 and running the OS X 3.1 version failed. I even tried the NewerTech patcher but got the same result.
Okay, so the motherboard firmware is somehow weird or corrupt - Great, now what? It seems to be working fine otherwise. Much like my problem with Sawtooth boards with strange firmware that Apple's software won't update, how the heck are you supposed to re-flash the B&W firmware? This is a standard-issue Rev.2 motherboard. There shouldn't be an issue. I've read a couple of user reports on the internet where they experienced the same problem, but they made no mention of a remedy. Before anyone asks, yes, I know how to unlock the flash at power-up, and the software has no problem with that.
It's frustrating because I can't even get past the first step to even try installing the upgrade. If the patch won't run then it's a no-go. The process worked perfectly years ago on the original motherboard I don't have any longer. Any ideas?
Topic: Sonnet Encore/ZIF G4 1GHz - problem with patching B&W G3 firmware (Read 4685 times)