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rack-em

Marathon makes rack mounting hardware for the current G3/G4 cases, as well as many of the older Mac systems (mostly from Apple). With that, you can rack mount your G4 and then get other items as you want/need. They even have them from your monitor. You can find rackmount RAID systems, tape drives... jsut about anything either comes rackmountable, or can be made so with a little work.
 
Originally posted by mischief


ACK! I KILL YOU!!! AMD is an agent of the Dark Empire! May your Bong emit noxious black gunk- smoke!

If Apple drops Moto it would ONLY be appropriate if it was to IBM and Moto liscence Altivec to them for it.
Click to expand...


why is AMD such an evil agent???

i dont get it. motorola aint doing apple justice and you know it man. APPLE should be over 133mhz bus speed and over 2ghz sdram.


maybe im wrong but this motorola thing just pisses me off.
 
Personal Favourite:

IBM buys out AMD and Moto's PPC rites, splitting those rites with Apple. AMD becomes Power PC Inc. and exists solely for manufacturing the G4/G5/G6 series.
 
I agree, AMD is not evil... intel, now THEY are evil. Charging $300+ more for a chip with the same performance as one from AMD... the balls of some companies. Considering how the top processor from intel runs about $550-$700 when AMD lists their top processor for about $265.

I do agree about moto not doing justice to Apple though... By now, we should have 2GHz+ G5 processors in our towers. Instead of just now reaching the 1GHz G4 level.

Someone needs to b-slap the exec's over at moto to get on the ball again:D.
 
Screw AMD AND Moto.

If apple and IBM use some of their cash on hand to buy out Moto's PPC rites and IBM buys AMD for it's manufacturing,Power PC chips could be produced in truly rude quantities and AMD PC nuts would be left high and dry. M$ would s*** their collective eyes.:D
 
what makes you think ibm is going to in the least bit buy out anything from motorola? that might seem far fecthed...good for apple an us but not practicle. am i wrong?


or Apple needs to migrate their whole line to Altivec so developers have an incentive to add it to their software.
 
Originally posted by krossfyter
what makes you think ibm is going to in the least bit buy out anything from Motorola? that might seem far fetched...good for apple an us but not practicle. am i wrong?

Not particularly practical but devistatingly effective at shifting the market. AMD has been in the toilet since the economy tanked and Apple/IBM have stayed relatively unscathed. Most Wintel Geeks prefer AMD. If AMD ceased to exist, what would they buy? :D


or Apple needs to migrate their whole line to Altivec so developers have an incentive to add it to their software.
Click to expand...

Of course Apple needs to go all-Altivec, that's why you want to buy out Moto: They OWN Altivec. As long as they own it they make the chips. IBM and Apple are basically stuck unless Moto gets a clue or sell out to them. If Moto sold out it would only follow that IBM would take up the slack and acquire a Chip manufacturor like AMD to keep momentum.
 
Originally posted by mischief


ACK! I KILL YOU!!! AMD is an agent of the Dark Empire! May your Bong emit noxious black gunk- smoke!

If Apple drops Moto it would ONLY be appropriate if it was to IBM and Moto liscence Altivec to them for it.
Click to expand...

Apple and Motorola are working with AMD to a point already.. HyperTransport. That does have a direct bearing on the PPC line already.. G5s are almost guaranteed to be using AMD's brainchild.. and in this case, it's a good thing.
 
Modular.. COOL!

Reading this message gave me a slightly different idea...

Why doesn't Apple make truly modular systems? Imagine for a second:

You buy an iMac. It has the following "cards" which slide out the back (out the back because they won't be seen that way, won't "uglify the machine"):

Processor card.. all processors, coprocessors, caches.
Memory card.. DDR RAM, cache, slots for SmartMedia or whatever upgrades.
IO card.. all io chips (firewire,usb,ata, etc) and connectors on outside and also in the meat of the card is a hard drive.

These cards all slide out of the computer and simply insert into any Apple product you own.. want a laptop? You buy the case which has the screen, shell, keyboard, and battery stuff.. then just add your processor, memory, and i/o cards by sliding them into the back.. Voila! You have the same computing power and stored information that was in your desktop to go, and you have a laptop for only the price of a shell, battery, charger, keyboard, and LCD.. all the guts are supplied by you, the end user instead of having to buy them all twice. It would be more economical and would make it easier for users to be in sync.. since the desktop and the laptop are the same computer (sort of)..

Also, it would allow an upgrade path for each machine (laptops included) where when new processors come out, you simply replace the card instead of the computer.. more memory? Easy, slide out the card and replace or add the DIMM of choice. Hard drive upgrade? You don't have to tear apart the computer, just slide out the hard drive card, unclamp/unplug the drive and put the new one in place.. It's taking the modular ideas of servers and applying it to the home. Why not?
 
Mischief , you have a great idea!

I think its a great idea, yet if you really want to see it happen, I most certainly want it to.

You have to start the ball rollin in a more current manner.

Built a machine that out specs the current Mac's!
In a unique box, not a rack cause you want to attract attention
and Macs are all about design.

I could help there, i am a designer.

Get a motherboard that will support ddr etc with dual 1 ghz.
After the newer chips come out the 1 ghz will be cheaper.
Build a killa computer and sell it under ground and a mint and freak out Apple , that will get their heads swimming!

The only hard part about this is getting a motherboard with DDR specs. If there is such a thing why doesnt Apple use it!

I live in on the Oregon, california border, and am ready to drive , hook me up! :)
 
only one problem with your mobo item.. Apple is the only people to produce the motherboards.. you can't take a peecee one and try to use it. Who has the resources ($$$$$$) to get a new motherboard produced like that?? Companies do it and chock it up under R&D expenses. That is one reason it can take so long for new ones to be produced.

I can see Apple doing the DDR and such, maybe even as soon as the next revision to the G4 line. Definately by the time the G5 comes out. I would hope that they won't go with the 266MHz memory bus, but rather the 333MHz (allows for even faster DDR). By that time, the video cards with 128MB of DDR on board should be in production long enough for them to be stock.

Only time will tell what Apple does to the Mac line, and where to moves to. I just hope that in 20 years, they will be teaching about m$ in schools as a company that went out with a wimper, or is that a temper tantrum???
 
A bit off target?

All this talk about computer parts etc .
Has brought up my ire in a particular area that may be a bit off target, but i would love to get a good understanding of this subject.

WHy, WHY, Do the Ti powerbooks have 4200 rpm drives in them and not a 5400? I mean even a 5400 drive is SOoo slow, why put such a pitiful drdive in Powerbook and then claim that they are the super fast laptopms of the world? Freaking Wintel have fast drives, its not an impossible order like getting motherboards that run DDr ram after years of them being on the market. Because of Moto, etc.

Hard drives are plentiful and cheap!
Does Apple really have to gouge us this way?
THey have the Ti upgrade for a 5400 rpm drive at a huge additional cost, and its not even a 7200 rpm drive.

As you can tell this really gets my goat, can anyone tell me why this is, what am I missing>? Save me from myself!

:confused:
 
laptop hard drives

The reason for the 4200 rpm drives is that is all that is available in those sizes. Until VERY recently only the IBM 48GB drives were at 5400 rpm. They have released the 60GB in 5400 rpm, and only VERY recently offered smaller sizes in the 5400rpm drives.

For most daily tasks, people would rather have a virtually silent drive, over one that spins a bit faster.

Have you seen what the 5400 drives cost?? Buy one from a third party vendor and you will see why Apple has to charge extra. Go and price the 48 or 60GB drives either as internal models or as external firewire drives and then get back to me if you think that Apple is charging too much.

They are simply charging the difference in price between the drive sizes. Granted, it might take them a little time to update to the newest prices, but get real.

My 60GB IBM Travelstar hard drive should be arriving on Tuesday for me to install into my TiBook. Between tax and such, it is coming to about $450, which is cheap compared to many other places where you can purchase drives. Many either want more money for the same drive, or don't have it in stock. I haven't decided yet as to what I will be doing with the 20GB that currently is inside my system, but I am sure I will find an use for it. In a couple of months, I will find a firewire external enclosure that I like and put the drive in that.
 
Re: Mischief , you have a great idea!

Originally posted by Grokgod
I think its a great idea, yet if you really want to see it happen, I most certainly want it to.

You have to start the ball rollin in a more current manner.

Built a machine that out specs the current Mac's!
In a unique box, not a rack cause you want to attract attention
and Macs are all about design.

I could help there, i am a designer.

Get a motherboard that will support ddr etc with dual 1 ghz.
After the newer chips come out the 1 ghz will be cheaper.
Build a killa computer and sell it under ground and a mint and freak out Apple , that will get their heads swimming!

The only hard part about this is getting a motherboard with DDR specs. If there is such a thing why doesnt Apple use it!

I live in on the Oregon, california border, and am ready to drive , hook me up! :)
Click to expand...

Okay, let's do it. The world's first Open Source PPC!

First step:

For those electrical Engineers out there: Get the spec for Apollo, it's gonna set the bar for G5. Let's start with the processor daughter card. On the card: 2-4 PPC chips. Card must have a ZIF like socket for connecting to the next card down: the RAM daughter card. What's the highest data-throughput tech for the dollar spent? The whole machine should be designed from the processor out as wide as possible.We will use this thread and E-mail for debating and sharing ideas and "publishing" results.
 
$$$/hour

When Apple, Motorola, IBM, AMD and whoever else sues for copyright, patent, licensing and industrial espionage violations, I'm sure your good intentions and macrumors membership will be a complete defense.

Before you go off half cocked and build your own supercomputer based on someone elses technology, spend the money and hire an attorney to explain to you the legal ramifications of your actions.

Some things you can use without a problem. Others, you may need to license. Still others, you may license, but not resell. Finally, there are some tech owners who will bar you from your goals merely to stop you.

You are about to navigate a minefield, hire an attorney before you spend a bunch of money on new motherboards or whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've seen or heard of people with "great ideas" get in trouble due to poor foresight.

Good luck if you choose to build a new computer.
 
If we don't reverse engineer, or sell what we come up with......

No problem.

Worst case: it goes nowhere.

Best case: Apple quietly buys out the contributors.:D
 
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