Documenting an Interware Booster G3 (Now with driver attached!)

[XodiumRetro]

Just posting this stuff before I forget since it seems like relatively little is known about this card. I plan on getting the drivers and cross posting them as well so we have our own copy as I had to search a bit to find the thread with the right drivers (Booster v1.2.2)

Anyway, photos along with my NewerTech G3/400. And benchmarks! (Using the 9600)

What’s interesting is this is branded as an Interware card but I thought in the US they were marketed under the Vimage brand.

 

[retr01]

Thank you for sharing with us! The Interware stuff is cool.

 

[This Does Not Compute]

What’s interesting is this is branded as an Interware card but I thought in the US they were marketed under the Vimage brand.

Vimage was a US-based subsidiary of Interware, and IIRC they didn't silkscreen their parts any different so most/all Vimage cards should say Interware on them (I don't think they tried to hide the relationship between the companies). I suspect they picked a different name for North American operations because "Interware" was already in use.

 

[XodiumRetro]

Vimage was a US-based subsidiary of Interware, and IIRC they didn't silkscreen their parts any different so most/all Vimage cards should say Interware on them (I don't think they tried to hide the relationship between the companies). I suspect they picked a different name for North American operations because "Interware" was already in use.

Ha, I actually just saw you put up a video about the Booster G3 for the 1400. Guessing you were in the Interware rabbit hole, too?

But that's good to know. The images out there of the PCI Power Mac-compatible Interware cards almost look like they COULD have said Vimage on them instead of Interware, but the images are VERY low-res and hard to read. Plus it looks like the Vpower cards shipped with fans on them whereas mine didn't. Really odd.

While I kinda say "really weird for this card to be here", I do live adjacent to the Bay Area and stuff coming in from all around the world isn't unheard of. So even if this is truly a card actually from Japan, wouldn't be terribly surprising to see it pop up here, either!

 

[Kay K.M.Mods]

Hi,
You don't need to do that because your card is fast enough, but here's some overclocking information.

This card was often slow, such as 233,266,300MHz, but it also has both 512K and 1M caches.
Pic is my old stock, 266MHz 1M-cache.

As with other accelerators, the CPU operating magnification and bus clock can be changed by swapping the resistor.

Bus Clock:
Resister locations R4,R5

47Mhz: R4-OFF, R5-ON
49MHz: R4-ON, R5-OFF
50Mhz: R4-OFF, R5-OFF

PLL Settings:
Resister locations R81, R82, R101, R102

x5 R81-OFF, R82-ON, R101-ON, R102-OFF
x5.5 R81-ON, R82-ON, R101-OFF, R102-OFF
x6 R81-ON, R82-OFF, R101-OFF, R102-ON
*Unconfirmed about other magnifications

Example:
50MHz x6 =300MHz