I am not all all pleased with Powerlogix. Here is my story...

Early in 2003, I thought up the idea of buying a used Power Mac G4 AGP/Sawtooth, upgrade it, and have myself a pretty respectable machine. I opted for a 450 mhz model from Macofalltrades.com. I built it up with a Radeon 8500, USB 2 card, Linksys 802.11G pci card, a Western Digital 7200 rpm drive, and a Powerlogix Powerforce series 100 daughtercard at 1.4 ghz. I got the card as a birthday present on October of 2003. Mac OS X.3 at the time.

It suffered from the coma condition, and would not wake from sleep. With the original card it was fine. I asked Powerlogix about it through their online support, and they said they didn't have a fix yet. I kept asking them about every month, and eventually by July 2004, they said they had a fix, and I could ship my card in to them.

By August 23, 2004, they received my card. They said that there was about a 2 week wait, and apologized. To make it short, they shipped a card back out to me on 2-28-2005. That's around 6 months. A computer without a brain. I wasn't relying on my Power Mac or anything, since I have a PowerBook G3 PDQ, a 500 mhz Tibook, and an iMac G4. But still...I kept after them about it too. The bad thing was that they kept saying next week, or in a few weeks, or in two weeks, etc. See it for yourself below...

[url=[url]http://plx.crmdesk.net/index.php?_a=tickets&_m=listview&_i=JWW-97852][url]http://plx.crmdesk.net/index.php?_a=tickets&_m=listview&_i=JWW-97852[/url] [/url]

So I finally get this new card. 1.5 ghz this time. With the programmer's button I installed the patches provided by Powerlogix to work with the new processor card. This processor card ran fine for a week, but is now locking up hard. Sometimes it'll kernel panic and sometimes just lock up hard enough to stop the clock. It would reboot fine though, but now, it's dead. Upon pressing the power button, the light turns on, the fans turn on, and the hard drive spins up but nothing displayed, no startup tone, and no hard drive activity at all. I put the old 450 mhz card in and it boots fine. I switched back to the old card (maybe it needed to be re-seated or something) but still wouldn't boot at all. I swapped both card several times, and the Powerlogix card always had the fault.

I've zapped the PRAM and pressed the little button on the motherboard by the backup battery, which itself was replaced a couple weeks ago. Just preventive maintenance.

I'm not an idiot with computers either. My first OS was Windows 3.1 when I was about 6, and that was current software back then. I have the other Macs now, am trained in general electronics repair, and am going into A+ certification training.

So, I am sending this dead card back. I don't want to. With my awful experiences with Powerlogix, I would much rather them give me my money back so I can give it to Sonnet or Gigadesigns or Newer tech. The customer service shown by Powerlogix is not acceptable at all. I have created a new case number with them to ship my card back. I will keep you posted on it.

Any questions or comments on this situation? Thank you.

I would yell till you get your money back, and go out and get wither a sonnet card ( http://www.sonnettech.com ) or an OWC card ( http://www.macsales.com ). Both of these company's have good reps in my book and offer great products.

Check this out. If they start lying again, I'll take it to another level

http://www.centraltx.bbb.org/commonreport.html?bid=52486

sorry to hear of your problems. there are many powerlogix horror stories (especially with their G3 zif upgrades) and many others sadly feel your pain. I would do what ubergeek said and demand your money back. I have a sonnet upgrade and have never had one issue ever. owc also makes great stuff.

best of luck.

Bummer. I to have heard stories of Pwrlgx. I have also heard them about every other
manufacturer. Its just part of hardware modding. Sometimes things just dont work right. With that in mind, it is the manufacturers responsiblity to fix the problem. Asking
for a refund will probably be difficult, but its worth a try. I like OWC for buying stuff. They are the main reseller for Pwrlgx though and you need to ask yourself, who makes
their cpu upgrades? Its a tough call. Buzz over to XLR8yourmac and look through their
cpu reports, that should help you decide what company to go with.
-maestro

i would go with what ubergeek said and get ur money back and run off to the nearest store and get a Sonnet i got a sonnet G4 and i have never had a problem with it. it was the only upgrade card i baught and so far the best.

I don't know if this helps but some of us have been there and certainly feel your pain. (I hope that wasn't too Clintonesk of me.) I bought a PowerWave from Power Computers, anybody remember those? the stories i could tell you, but I digress. Ninety percent of your story is about customer service and I must give you a BIG THANK YOU. I was seriously looking at the new PowerLogix Dual upgrade, which has some positive attributes specifically the newer chips with power efficiency and cooler temps. But after reading about one limitation it has and your story of bad customer service it has certainly given me pause.

The only thing I might add, which by no means is intended to advise you to do anything other than run as fast as you can, is that third party cards can possibly be the source of much of your problems. The PCI card and whatever else you mentioned, which might have worked with the original processor, could then cause problems when the new processor is added. I'm certainly no expert but I had a Graphics PCI card that would lock up my computer until I disabled the "sleep mode" function. Kinda obvious 'cause it was a card that no longer had updated drivers for newer OS versions.

But all that is irrelevant for you at this point. You should never have been treated that way.