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Cube question

cube said:
If you buy a TV tuner, make sure it has hardware compression, like the discontinued EyeTV 200.

Formac Studio DV/TV M-JPEG files are too big (but it also has hardware compression).

It must also be FireWire, of course.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I already have the eyetv that does this hooked up to my mac pro...it is in a room without the satellite hookup and I use it with an antenna I built for about 10 bucks to get all my local HD channels except for one, which will be gettable once the switchover occurs. It's pretty cool to get that stuff for free, and if I weren't married I would've ditched Dish by now...but the wife has to have her 24 hr news channels...and the new channel podcasts on the apple tv aren't good enough for her. :rolleyes:
 
Before you try major surgery.... You have mentioned that if the files are local, they seem to stream fine. Perhaps the bottleneck is the wireless connection to the MacPro. Try running an ethernet cable from the Mac Pro to the router. Not likely a solution, but it should be cheap - and then you can eliminate it as a source of the problem. Always try the easiest solution first. Also try a direct wired connection from the Mac Pro to the Cube.

Good Luck
 
OlBlueHair said:
Yes it definitely is a flashed card because those Apple Macanix people sell other flashed pc cards. My question is - for the same price, will a 64 mb flashed card do better than a 32 mb apple card? Is there a risk? If it were some random guy flashing a card, I might think so, but this "company" seems to do this all the time with a lot of cards.

Who knows?
Click to expand...

I just don't trust people who fail to disclose.
 
The other question is why he would want to upgrade to a card providing no additional video acceleration.
 
snberk103 said:
Before you try major surgery.... You have mentioned that if the files are local, they seem to stream fine. Perhaps the bottleneck is the wireless connection to the MacPro. Try running an ethernet cable from the Mac Pro to the router. Not likely a solution, but it should be cheap - and then you can eliminate it as a source of the problem. Always try the easiest solution first. Also try a direct wired connection from the Mac Pro to the Cube.

Good Luck
Click to expand...

Good idea, I'll try it to see what happens. I had my mind set on upgrading the cube anyway, so I'll probably still do the major surgery just for fun. :)
 
cube said:
The other question is why he would want to upgrade to a card providing no additional video acceleration.
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It has double the RAM? I don't know, I was asking to see if it would be any better.
 
I mean I don't think any of those cards are going to provide anything else in terms of video decoding hardware.

Graphics card memory will have no impact for watching video.
 
cube said:
I mean I don't think any of those cards are going to provide anything else in terms of video decoding hardware.

Graphics card memory will have no impact for watching video.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Video cards are probably one of the areas in macs where I'm most ignorant. I've done just about every upgrade except those in the last 10 years over 7 macs.

I pulled the trigger on the 6200. I figured that if I was going to go to the trouble of doing this, I may as well get one of the more powerful ones so that I wouldn't have to do it again in the future. True it was double the price of the 7500 but it also can handle core image and is more advanced so, I guess 90 bucks isn't so much.

Thanks for all your advice everybody. Once it comes I may bump this...or perhaps since cubeowner is dead we could keep a single thread about cube discussion going here?
 
The 6200 is definitely the way to go if you don't need ADC. I did and first went from the Rage 128 to a 7500, then was lucky enough to get a GF3. My Cube also has a single 1.5 GHz Powerlogix processors and has been running very well in this configuration for over a year now.

I currently use my Cube to encode DVD's and as an iTunes server. I frequently watch movies and video podcasts on it and, although they are not HD, it still plays them back very well.

Congratulations on sticking with the Cube and good luck with it. It is an uphill struggle but well worth the journey.
 
Cubit said:
Congratulations on sticking with the Cube and good luck with it. It is an uphill struggle but well worth the journey.
Click to expand...

Cubes are just so awesome.

I ordered the Titan TTC-CUV3 Copper VGA Heatsink & Fan for the card.

Next move is save some pennies for the cpu upgrade, a base fan, then finally the black powerlogix cube enclosure. :D
 
All the CPU upgrades will come with a base fan, but you might want to read up on some of the quieter fan options.

And those enclosures? Forgedaboudit! The original Cube case is so lovely, why spoil it?
 
There were some issues with the 6200 after all, have they finally been solved?
 
IJ Reilly said:
And those enclosures? Forgedaboudit! The original Cube case is so lovely, why spoil it?
Click to expand...

The enclosure is the only thing I may not do, as I agree with you about how awesome the Cube case already is. The main reason I may do it, is if I find that I need better airflow with the cpu and video card upgrade. Also, and this is not as important, but the bedroom that the cube is in has a black lcd tv sitting on a black cabinet, against very dark raisin colored walls, so I feel the black case would look great there. If it weren't going in that room and were going in my office, I'd def keep the original case.

Also, once you do all these upgrades it's like you might as well go all the way and do everything, I don't know, we'll see.
 
cube said:
There were some issues with the 6200 after all, have they finally been solved?
Click to expand...

From the reading I've been doing at cubeowner I can't get an answer. It seems some have problems, then they disappear, or some don't etc. I'm not sure.
 
I would have to agree about keeping the standard enclosure. I find it much more attractive than the Powerlogix item and, even with the GF3 (which is notoriously hot) and the CPU upgrade, mine has been absolutely fine with the standard casing.
 
OlBlueHair said:
Perfect use for the ol' cube. Gotta love that small, fanless design!:D
Click to expand...

That's how I've got mine set up since I bought the iMac. I set it up headless with screen sharing enabled so I can use it whenever I need access to Classic applications.

I have to tell you, I really don't like the enclosure idea. The Cube is such a cool design -- that's at least half the reason for owning one today. I also get prickly when people talk about carving out the insides of a Cube and replacing it with Mac mini guts. Yech.
 
Hey guys...

I installed the G4 1.5ghz upgrade which comes with a fan, and it is running nice and cool at 19C.

I was kind of pissed because it arrived with the fan wires too short to fit, so I had to run out and buy another fan and use the wires from that to make the cube's wire reach, by splicing them on.

So now I have a question please...I have the flashed 6200 ready to go. I have a titan copper vga cooler fan ready to be put on the card.

Has anyone done this, or can you point me to a tutorial on the web? I searched and all I could find was a blog post where a guy put a base fan in when he put in his 6200...I thought I read somewhere that it was best to put this titan on the card.

I am going to wait a couple days before I tackle this just to try to get more info, thanks!
 
Ok, I spoke too soon wondering about how to attach the fan to the video card. It is super easy. The fan is copper, so it is also a heatsink. What you do is remove the heatsink, and place the fan on top of the gpu (with a new dose of thermal paste, included) and it pins in place with included pins.

Now tomorrow I just have to figure out how to power the fan...I believe from a thread at cubeowner that it can be done off the optical drive. We'll see!
 
Success!

I ran the power for the titan fan (the one on top of the gpu) from the optical drive, no problems...then I took off the bracket and the card attaches to the vga monitor and sits fine.

The temp program I have only sees the hard drive....before it was 15c...now it is 30c, and it saw the gpu one time for a bit, and it was also nice and low, though I forget the exact number.

As far as streaming goes - if I connect via the network to a movie directly sitting on the external attached to my mac pro, it will play just fine. If I share the mac pro's library through iTunes and stream the movie, it now is watchable with a few jitters now and then. I am also now able to watch youtube, which I was not able to do at all before.

I think the solution is to you this as a server for iTunes and that way the videos will be local and will play great.

So -
I now have this cube as follows:
1.5 gig ram - 100 bucks
120 gig hard drive - already had it, took it out of an external enclosure.
1.5 Ghz CPU - 222 bucks including shipping.
Radeon 6200 256 MB video card - 90 w/shipping because I bought one pre flashed and pre taped. They are like 50 if you want to do the flashing.
titan fan for card 20 w/shipping
USB solution for speakers - already had it.
Cube price itself - 99 bucks "broken, good for parts" on ebay (not really broken, the guy was just ignorant of the problem).
Tiger (already had it)
32 in LCD TV as monitor (already had it)

Total price - 531 dollars.

So, the question is, is a g4 1.5Ghz, 1.5 RAM, 120 HD, 256 MB Video card worth 500 bucks?

Maybe not when a 600 dollar mini is 599 with Bluetooth and USB 2.

However - for a Cube, which is a collector's item since only 150k were ever made, I feel it is worth it. I had a blast tearing it apart and learning, and I also think the looks, the small form factor and the specs make it great for a HTPC. Also, with 2 fans, (at least the 2 I have) she is very quiet.

The only other thing I want to get for it is 30 bucks. It's an IR reciever and software named Mira that lets you control front row with an apple remote (of which I have an extra). This would be great for the bedroom.

With this front row setup, I feel this will be a great bedroom PC to watch video and iTunes, and also to serve up video via an attached firewire drive to the appletv in the other room.

I am very happy with this experiment! Long live the cube!
 
Just to report for anyone interested...the gpu idled at 53C and after a few minutes of iTunes visualizer it was 63C...so I think that's safe.
 
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