San Jose Mercury News

Sunday's San Jose Mercury News has a feature article by Dr. Gil Amelio, former Apple CEO, on the current state of Apple Computer, Inc. Dr. Amelio talks about all the changes that he made at Apple, including the latest deal with Microsoft before resigning. I read between the lines that Dr. Amelio was canned by the old Board of Directors and Steve Jobs and he is articulating for all of us outsiders what he accomplished and set in motion before leaving to set the record straight as to who should get credit for what. As I stated several times on this page, Dr. Amelio should get all the credit for doing exactly what needed to be done and he did save Apple for the time being. Since he is such an advocate for licensing the Mac OS, unfortunately he is silent on the current Mac OS licensing negotiations that either threaten to undo all that Dr. Amelio did or opens the door for a greater Apple recovery--we're all hoping for the latter.

Here's a pertinent graphic from MacCentral:

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Mini-Review: PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 225

I recently installed a PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 225 CPU card in my PowerMac 8500/120. The PLPBP 225 replaced the original Apple 604/120 Mhz daughter card. The PLPBP 225 has a 225 Mhz 604e CPU and it allows one to adjust independently the ratio between the CPU speed and the actual system bus speed and the bus speed to achieve the best performance from one's system. I also installed a PowerLogix 1 MB Rapid RAM L2 Cache card which replaced the Apple 256 Mhz L2 cache card. Here are the MacUser MacBench 4.0 results for the best bus setting for each ratio on my computer:

CPU/Bus Ratio--Bus Speed--CPU Speed--CPU Score--FPU Score--Disk

----4:1-------------54.33Mhz---217.33Mhz-----577------------713-------206
----5:1-------------51.33Mhz---256.67Mhz-----606------------823-------208
----6:1-------------43.00Mhz---258.00Mhz-----548------------803-------204

The best performance on the MacBench tests is with a 5:1 CPU/Bus speed ratio and a 51.33 Mhz system bus speed. These scores are better than double those of a stock 8500/120. The best that my motherboard's system bus will do is 54.33 Mhz. The best that the 225 Mhz CPU will do is 258 Mhz. For more information on other CPU daughter cards and how to install them, visit Mike Breeden's site on how to Accelerate Your Mac.