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Dual CPU in iMac G3?

Schtumple said:
I'm from south Somerset, but I'll be travelling back to Portsmouth on Sunday, if that's closer?

I can't remember the spec off the top of my head, but I believe its a 400mhz one like the one you have, I'll go check a bit later, it's up in the attic behind a few boxes :p
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Hi there,
No, I'm afraid it's all to far to collect. I don't know if I have £25... I will have to see - I won't have much for a month or two. I should have £20 though next week. Could you send me some pictures of the computer - I'll send you my email address through PM.
Thanks,
John.
 
That's fair enough, I'll get some shots of it tomorrow, bit too late now. We can call it £20 really, I just want to get rid of it, paid £50 for it originally :p

I wanted to do a project like yours with it, but never found the time, I'll take it with me to portsmouth and post it from there if you like? But please bare in mind I don't move back till Sunday and I'm moving there, so I'll need a day or 2 just to get everything sorted out, as well as going and finding all the bits needed in order to package it securely :p
 
MacintoshMaster said:
Whatever... Whatever... Whatever... Whatever...
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Such skilled and mature debating/reasoning skills you have...

Obviously, you've formed your opinion and have no desire to hear what others have to say. That's fine, just don't bother asking the question if you don't actually want an answer.

None of what I said was a criticism, just a statement of fact.

Good luck in your project. If you can pull it off it'll certainly be impressive!
 
Giuly said:
Doesn't the iMac G3 has an ADC connector inside to connect the Monitor? And a G4,G5 or Intel Mac Mini without it's case should fit in there somehow instead of the logic board assembly and the power supply. Just use a DisplayPort-to-ADC adapter, and some USB externders and glue them in place where the logic board assembly had theirs.
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The oringal tray locading G3 iMacs hand connectors on the insides. But nothing worked without the logic board hooked up to them. The newer G3 iMacs do not have any such connections.
 
Such skilled and mature debating/reasoning skills you have...

Obviously, you've formed your opinion and have no desire to hear what others have to say. That's fine, just don't bother asking the question if you don't actually want an answer.
Click to expand...

Whatever...



Good luck in your project. If you can pull it off it'll certainly be impressive!
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Thanks! I should have the money in a few months to do it.
 
Schtumple said:
That's fair enough, I'll get some shots of it tomorrow, bit too late now. We can call it £20 really, I just want to get rid of it, paid £50 for it originally :p

I wanted to do a project like yours with it, but never found the time, I'll take it with me to portsmouth and post it from there if you like? But please bare in mind I don't move back till Sunday and I'm moving there, so I'll need a day or 2 just to get everything sorted out, as well as going and finding all the bits needed in order to package it securely :p
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eMail sent.
No problem, just take your time, there's no hurry. I think that I should have the £20 by next week! I earn about £20 - £30 a week and I am saving up for a business which should be up and running in a month.
Thanks,
John.
 
It's not ancient, it's oldschool. Like a 199x car.

Nothing worked without the logic board hooked up to them
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Hook the Mini up to the Yellow (12V) and Black (0V) cables of an Molex from the iMacs PSU. (I don't know exactly about the iMac PSU, but if it has more then 1 Lane (It may have a sticker that state the characteristics), you want to bundle 2 or more Yellow and Black cables together and hook the Mini up to that)

Get one of these cables to make the modifications needed, so you don't need to cut the wire of the Minis original PSU. It even comes with a pigtail for the power button, hook it up to the iMacs front power button.

Informations about the iMacs internal connectors
Convert iMacs PSU to ATX (Informations about the wiring)
Informations about the Video Connector

You need to implement a simple separate 110/230V on/off switch for the PSU, if not already present - or use the original Mini PSU and find a way to power-on the Monitor and PSU(connect brown wire to +5V), like over the 5V cables of the internal SATA/Molex connectors of the Mini.

Whatever your Mini and iMac use to connect CD/DVD and hard drive - there's an adapter for that. And you could even put a 2TB 3.5" SATA drive inside, if the Mini has SATA.

The Video connector needs to be adapted to VGA, and then to the strange ADB-connector of the Monitor plus power-on over SATA/Molex. If the monitor is connected directly to 110/230V, you can rip out the PSU.

If you like to screw around with hardware and are familiar with a solder iron, this is possible, and even reversible by only disconnecting some plugs. If not, forget about the iMac and hook up a 17" CRT Studio Display to the Mini.
 
That sounds like one hell of a idea however you would NOT be able to do this.

First off, the threading would have to be changed, that and your motherboard was not set power wise and circuitry wise, if you managed some miracle of god way to do this, your processor would suck up so much energy it could cold fry everything else on the motherboard and or potentionaly heat up so bad it could either...

A:cause a circuit fire
B:cause a fire through your electrical outlet due to spikes in electricity because the correct circuity would not be present to tell "which processors to do what and when"
or C: processor A would be fighting processor B to the rights of the information control going within the computer causing a severe slow down in CPU performance and most likely freezing your MAC tons of times.

I have a G3 at my house and it's a 333mhz, it runs fine with a decent ram upgrade and if you can find a slightly more powerful graphics card to put in it.
Hell, if you have eBay I have a few parts i'd be willing to sell you from my G3 that I do not use, let me know.
But trust me, do not attempt this man..you will only do more harm then good.
Besides, more ram and GPU power will give you the boost you are looking for. :p
 
*updated reply*


I mean, if you think about it like this...the power you would be getting out of it would be too raw than refined...why would you want raw power over refined? It's like buying the cheap bottle of clear whiskey when you could buy the premium aged whiskey for more, it all does the same job but effects you differently and goes down a whole lot easier vs harsher.

If you did get 2 processor's onto it (and you CAN, it's just stupid and nearly impossible unless done 101% right and you need to be thinking out of the "box")
With 2 processors soldered together you need to think of it as a reverse domino effect...
Sure, you'll get a increase in power but it could result to way more negatives than pro's, mainly because you're not getting the "hemi-effect" of actual duo-core processors now.
I mean unless you have a 800mhz+ processor sitting in that g3 it's really not worth it.
The "hemi" effect that I am talking about has to do with processors activating and de-activating. It's like this, you have program A using X amount of processing power and program B using X amount of processing power with Y amount of ram, the processor is unable to differentiate the difference between a(x) and b(x) there for causing a unstable environment for the CPU and it's unable to correctly process as a "dual" core processor but instead is acting like a single core in which all programs are feeding off of a single CPU and not two as intended. It goes back to what I said, it goes to raw power VS refined power, a GPU upgrade as well as a RAM upgrade would be much much much more significant. That and the capacitors on your mother board would not be able to handle the additional data flow without additional upgrades. The bottom line is, it's smarter just getting a new motherboard that is intel based and putting a old OS on there and stuffing everything into that G3. If your G3 is a tower that should be very easy.
But if it's the iMac model like I have, then it might be tricky. There are a lot of variabls that go into play here and I could talk for forever and I'd be happy to chat with anyone that knows what they're talking about as well to debate facts over "this might work" to compare and to even help out as much as I can the making this work, but the only thing I ask is to make a youtube video for us to watch the progress of the work and to see the final product inside the computer and then it working, you should do a before and after.:apple:


p.s. for the love of god, buy a HUGE heatsink and fan to put on that thing if you do it as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:eek:
 
old-wiz said:
Meh.. You simply cannot solder two processors together. how in the world would you even connect it to the logic board? There's far more to it; memory access/firmware/cache.
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^This.

Even if you managed to solder two processors together, daisy chaining the pins, it would not work. The G3 architecture is not meant for double CPU use, only teh G5 does, and you still need a specific motherboard (with two CPU slots) in order to have a dual-CPU system.
 
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