Software for Sonnet Crescendo 604e?

bakkus

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 18, 2022
86
61
18
Greetings all!
Buried in a 7100 I ran across this thing:
PXL_20230712_170022484.jpg


After some research, it turns out this is a Sonnet 604e processor upgrade for the x100 series PDS slot.

I now have it mounted in my 8100, and it didn't blow up!
Unfortunately it's not working either.

I might be mistaken, but from what I gather the Sonnet Crescendo/Encore software such as 2.3.1 only contains extensions for their G3 series.
Even 1.4.2 which is the oldest I could find only mentions G3s.

I see old whispers on the Internet talking about using Sonnet Crescendo v1.0.3 - but where to find it?
I've checked the Garden, Mac Driver Museum and around archive.org.

Any clues?
 

David Cook

New Tinkerer
Jul 20, 2023
24
22
3
Had another go at the Wayback Machine, and was able to find a copy version 1.2.4 which works!
I've uploaded it to the Garden along with some information.
Documenting here too, so that others might struggle less than I did.

That's pretty cool. Based on the picture, I thought it was a 7300/7600 card. It should just pop in and work. Upon reading, I understood it was more interesting and it needs software to kick in.
 

bakkus

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 18, 2022
86
61
18
That's pretty cool. Based on the picture, I thought it was a 7300/7600 card. It should just pop in and work. Upon reading, I understood it was more interesting and it needs software to kick in.
These PDS accelerators are a bit more involved than the 7x00-series, since here we're not actually replacing the CPU - we're adding an additional one.
That requires special software trickery to make the OS switch to that CPU during boot.