Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Can my MDD handle This?

MatthewLTL

MatthewLTL

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 22, 2015
1,684
18
Rochester, MN
as most of you know, I plan to do heavy and extensive upgrades to my MDD. For $70 OBO i can get a Radeon X800 XT for my MDD (Which according to the seller is NOS G5 Cards and TESTED on the MDD to work and will include the power cable for the card.

But My PowerMac has one thing I don't see any other mac's ever have; A Powered USB 2.0 Card.

Part of my upgrade plans are mSATA SSD (as suggested and done by others on here) And i ill then buy a 500GB or larger HDD for external use storage so this will not be a issue at the later point but as of right now it is.

Since the DVI port on my stock GeForce 4MX has somehow died (Have to use a DVI-VGA adaptor to get video at all) the GPU is the top of the list at this point. So here is the point in this post:

My PowerMac has the CD-ROM Drive stock from my eMac as well as a SuperDrive (that the previous owner put in it), It has all four HDD bay filled and used, It has 2 fans in the rear behind the CPU heatsink (since it is rather pointless IMO the side ODD Fan in the case was move to the front and had the wire extended to power off the 12v PIN on the logic board) My USB 2.0 Card has a floppy drive style power plug on it. Although it will work without the power plug used i have it hooked up, (It wouldnt be there if it werent needed). I made a Molex Y connector and a Molex extension cable to power the USB Card. (The end where the extension plugs plugs into a Molex to LP4 (floppy) Connector is where i would power the GPU).

With 4 HDDs, 2 ODDs, 2 rear fans running at 12v as well as the fan in the front running 12v PLUS the USB 2 card also being powered, Would there be enough power left in the power supply to properly supply a X800 XT as well?

The reason this concerns me is this:

With all four HDDs powered up and used (with the USB Card being powered with the PSU) When i transfer LARGE files over USB 2.0 It will transfer say between 500MB and 1GB (Depending on file size) the transfer will just freeze and will sit there as the Estimated time evenentually climbs up to over 48 hrs. I have found 2 ways to remedy this. 1) Unplug the PSU Power from the USB 2 card. or 2) unplug 2 hard drives from power) Obviously the latter will not be a issue once i get a SSD however how much power DOES the X800 draw and in it's current state could the PSU actually give the GPU the power it needs?
 
I don't actually know how much power the X800 uses, but the MDD power supply would almost certainly be able to handle all of the upgrades you mention. Keep in mind that the PSU was designed to power an ADC monitor as well as all of the computer parts.

A much bigger problem will be heat and cable management. I've just finished rerouting all of the cabling in my MDD and it was a nightmare - cables getting pinched, the door not closing, you get the picture.
 
I don't think a "real" Mac edition x800(which has one ADC port and one DVI port) will work in a G4.

The usual source for the "hacked" X800s-which have dual DVI out-is the ATI FireGl X3. There's a thread running on here now with several of us who bought these and flashed them ourselves. I think that the unmodied FireGl was around $35. I flashed mine in my G5.

You will need to tape pins to make it G4 compatible, but otherwise reports in FW800 MDDs have been positive. This is a great card-one of the best you can put in a G4(or G5).
 
harrymatic said:
I don't actually know how much power the X800 uses, but the MDD power supply would almost certainly be able to handle all of the upgrades you mention. Keep in mind that the PSU was designed to power an ADC monitor as well as all of the computer parts.

A much bigger problem will be heat and cable management. I've just finished rerouting all of the cabling in my MDD and it was a nightmare - cables getting pinched, the door not closing, you get the picture.
Click to expand...

Yea, I know what you mean. I had fan wires all over the place so i removed the entire logic board and all drive cages an router all my fan wires under the logic board (held the wires to the metal via duct tape) I will do the same thing again once i get more upgrades (Such as the cables needed to use a SMA antenna with the internal AirPort card) And i will eventually do the same thing to the Molex power extension cable once i get the GPU. (Ill have to make a longer Extension cable of course)
 
bunnspecial said:
I don't think a "real" Mac edition x800(which has one ADC port and one DVI port) will work in a G4.

The usual source for the "hacked" X800s-which have dual DVI out-is the ATI FireGl X3. There's a thread running on here now with several of us who bought these and flashed them ourselves. I think that the unmodied FireGl was around $35. I flashed mine in my G5.

You will need to tape pins to make it G4 compatible, but otherwise reports in FW800 MDDs have been positive. This is a great card-one of the best you can put in a G4(or G5).
Click to expand...

The FireGL X3 is the exact card I am talking about. $70 OBO (Already flashed for Mac by the seller) I dont have any AGP computers to flash one myself and obviously i cannot use my mac to do it because i would have to buy a PCI GPU to do that
 
The pins that make an AGP 8X card work in 8X mode are pins 3 and 11. However, Apple used those pins for power on and standby in their AGP 2X/4X ADC slots as they were unused in AGP 2X/4X slots. If those pins are not taped, then the machine will not power on as it thinks its power button is being held down.
 
Intell said:
The pins that make an AGP 8X card work in 8X mode are pins 3 and 11. However, Apple used those pins for power on and standby in their AGP 2X/4X ADC slots as they were unused in AGP 2X/4X slots. If those pins are not taped, then the machine will not power on as it thinks its power button is being held down.
Click to expand...

althogh more work than probably needed, couldn't one just unsolder pins 3 and 11 on the AGP slot of the logic board itself?

What about just taking a sharpie to pins 3 and 11? I have done sharpies to PCI cards in the past (just to see what happens) and the result was usually the card wasn't detected by the computer
 
I find taping the pins a lot more difficult than just cutting the traces. As long as you have a steady hand, a sharp blade and a magnifier then it's not hard. That way you don't need to worry about bits of tape coming off.

The only time you would ever need to reverse the modification is if you had a flashed nVidia GeForce 6800 that you wanted to use in a G5, having previously disabled AGP 8X. (for some reason this card doesn't like running as AGP 4X in a G5)
 
harrymatic said:
I find taping the pins a lot more difficult than just cutting the traces. As long as you have a steady hand, a sharp blade and a magnifier then it's not hard. That way you don't need to worry about bits of tape coming off.

The only time you would ever need to reverse the modification is if you had a flashed nVidia GeForce 6800 that you wanted to use in a G5, having previously disabled AGP 8X. (for some reason this card doesn't like running as AGP 4X in a G5)
Click to expand...

That is part of the reason I asked where the 3 and 11 pins are on the AGP socket itself so i can just yank the logic board and unsolder the 3 and 11 pins of the entire socket itself. I dont need nor do i ever plan to use ADC so it dont matter.

Would a tiny flat bladed screw driver work to brake the traces? or perhaps something like taking a sharpie over the pins or perhaps some whiteout or nail polish something of the like?
 
do any of you happen to know what made the "Digital" part of my 4MX fail? The fact the card works fine if i use a DVI-VGA adapter makes me wonder if the problem is the card itself or just the DVI port if i used a ADC-DVI adapter would DVI work? not sure, and since a GPU upgrade was always a thing to be done to it anyway i dont see the point in buying a ADC-DVI adaptor when any card id get would either be DVI/VGA or Dual DVI.
 
Taping and the sharpie both act as an insulator. Taping would be more permanent - I expect the sharpie layer would wear off after a couple of insertions.
 
MatthewLTL said:
That is part of the reason I asked where the 3 and 11 pins are on the AGP socket itself so i can just yank the logic board and unsolder the 3 and 11 pins of the entire socket itself. I dont need nor do i ever plan to use ADC so it dont matter.

Would a tiny flat bladed screw driver work to brake the traces? or perhaps something like taking a sharpie over the pins or perhaps some whiteout or nail polish something of the like?
Click to expand...

If the sharpie trick works, then that's a really nice way of doing it - no danger of bits coming off yet easily reversible. I've heard of people using nail polish before but it tends to flake off quite easily. In the past when I've cut traces I used a scalpel as it offers much better precision.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back