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Finally-A Quad!

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,360
6,498
Kentucky
A few weeks back, member California PMed me and asked if I'd be interested in a Quad for a very reasonable price. She had not tested it as it was missing the air deflector, but I decided to take a gamble on it.

The computer arrived at work today, and I wasted no time in setting it up. I pulled the hard drives and air deflector out of my Dual Core 2.0 that I use daily, stuck them in the Quad, and it booted right up!

I haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces yet(partially because I don't-yet-have an internet connection), but so far I'm happy as can be to have a working Quad.

BTW, I did run Geekbench on it and it scored 3431. Temperatures are very reasonable and there are no visible leaks, so I think the LCS is good to go on it.

Here's the temporary set-up.
 

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Congratulations! I would replace the thermal paste just due to age on there and let it roll! Are you using it as your work computer or for personal usage?
 
I'm trying to buy a Mac Pro also, and if I do the Mac Pro might become my work computer. So really I don't know.

I'm waiting on a permanent office at work, so at least for the time being the Quad is going to go home with me and stay there.

If I do end up sticking with PPC for work, the Quad will definitely be it.

My issue now is that a lot of the university systems are deprecating support for older versions of OS X. I can't even print to the main department printer unless I'm running 10.9 or 10.10. Tegrity, another software package that I rarely use but do have some need for, is deprecating support for 10.7.

So, I have to keep some sort of Intel Mac around. It would be nice to have a Mac Pro that can do it all, but I can also keep my current set-up and use one of my Macbook Pros for stuff that requires a newer version of OS X.
 
I remember when I got my Quad, a local pickup from 20 miles away - I couldn't drive back quick enough! Once I'd got it up and running (and fitted more memory and a SSD), I told my daughter, "it doesn't have one, it doesn't have two, it doesn't have three...it has four processors!!!"
She smiled and humoured me ;)
 
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Dronecatcher said:
I remember when I got my Quad, a local pickup from 20 miles away - I couldn't drive back quick enough! Once I'd got it up and running (and fitted more memory and a SSD), I told my daughter, "it doesn't have one, it doesn't have two, it doesn't have three...it has four processors!!!"
She smiled and humoured me ;)
Click to expand...

Well, it's still technically only two processors, but close enough :) . "About this Mac" at least calls it four.

BTW, I've wanted one of these ever since the perennial favorite of photographers, the infamous Ken Rockwell, got one back in 2006. Even though I wasn't a Mac guy at the time, if I'd had $3500(or however much they were) to drop on a computer back then, I'd have bought one.
 
Altemose said:
Congratulations! I would replace the thermal paste just due to age on there and let it roll! Are you using it as your work computer or for personal usage?
Click to expand...

Speaking of repasting, aren't you supposed to recalibrate the thermal sensors after doing that?

If so, is the correct AHT disk available somewhere online?

I might dig into it tonight.
 
bunnspecial said:
Well, it's still technically only two processors, but close enough :) . "About this Mac" at least calls it four.

BTW, I've wanted one of these ever since the perennial favorite of photographers, the infamous Ken Rockwell, got one back in 2006. Even though I wasn't a Mac guy at the time, if I'd had $3500(or however much they were) to drop on a computer back then, I'd have bought one.
Click to expand...

I remember when they were announced and a lot of reviewers were asking, "who needs this amount of power?"...how times have changed :)
At my workplace we had Dual 1.8 G5s at the time and we thought we had it good!
In a matter of months, talk moved to Intel 8 cores and all things PPC seemed passe...
 
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Altemose said:
Shoot 128keaton a PM about a Mac Pro! He can either help you get one or help you get an older model running OS X Yosemite!
Click to expand...

I shot him a PM-I'm really looking for a 4,1, so I'll see if he can come up with one. Thanks for the tip!
 
Altemose said:
@bunnspecial I think he just purchased a 4,1 to replace his upgraded 1,1. I think the 1,1 is for sale!
Click to expand...

I'll see what he says...at least he's close enough that if his 1,1 is cheap enough, I'd still consider it!

As I said, I really need current OS compatibility. 10.9 is what I'm putting on every Intel Mac that supports it with the exception of my mid-09 MacBook(bought for experimenting with Yosemite back during the public beta period), although eventually I'm going to(grudgingly) have to upgrade everything.
 
I just ran into sort of an interesting problem, although I'm not sure if the computer is necessarily to blame.

I brought it home to hook up, and the only displays I really had handy(i.e. not in use) were a 15" ADC Studio and a 20" ADC Cinema. I grabbed the 20", along with an A1006. I hooked everything up, only to find that the 20" was seemingly dead. I could hit the power button and it would glow, but go off. The mouse LED also never came on, telling me that the USB ports weren't doing anything.

In any case, I grabbed the 22" ADC display off a Cube, hooked everything up, and it worked perfectly.

I then put the 20" on the same Cube, and it worked perfectly-USB and all.

Not sure what happened there. I do need to get the 15" out to put on the Cube-all of my Cubes have upgraded video cards that can handle a 20" Cinema(or 23" if I was nuts) but the 22" is really a reasonable max even with a 2MX or 7500. Those cards get hot enough anyway even with a 15" or 17" display that I don't want to make them drive any more pixels than they need to.
 
Here's an "about this Mac" screenshot. As I mentioned, I just pulled the HDD out of my work computer, so please excuse the messy desktop.

I can't get over how fast this thing is.

BTW, the 4gb of RAM is factory per the sticker. It's 4x1gb, which means that I need to dig into my RAM drawer and find some more 1gb DDR-2 sticks.
 

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bunnspecial said:
A few weeks back, member California PMed me and asked if I'd be interested in a Quad for a very reasonable price. She had not tested it as it was missing the air deflector, but I decided to take a gamble on it.

The computer arrived at work today, and I wasted no time in setting it up. I pulled the hard drives and air deflector out of my Dual Core 2.0 that I use daily, stuck them in the Quad, and it booted right up!

I haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces yet(partially because I don't-yet-have an internet connection), but so far I'm happy as can be to have a working Quad.

BTW, I did run Geekbench on it and it scored 3431. Temperatures are very reasonable and there are no visible leaks, so I think the LCS is good to go on it.

Here's the temporary set-up.
Click to expand...

Happy for you. I just remembered I have DVD one of the Powermac Quad discs (I might have disc two - applications). I should have sent it. Do you want it? It's 10.4.2 or 10.4.3 of course.

I also have the Powerbook DLHD OEM discs. Let me know if you want these, too.
 
California said:
Happy for you. I just remembered I have DVD one of the Powermac Quad discs (I might have disc two - applications). I should have sent it. Do you want it? It's 10.4.2 or 10.4.3 of course.

I also have the Powerbook DLHD OEM discs. Let me know if you want these, too.
Click to expand...

Absolutely to both!

Let me know the details on what you need.
 
Well, I at least started digging into it to remove the LCS and get at the CPUs for a repaste. There's no sign of leaking from the LCS. I figure if it's gone 10 years without leaking, it's probably at least in decent shape. I got the metal cover off, but that's as far as I've gone.

This thing is an incredible dust magnet, though. When I pulled the metal cap off, I got the vacuum out-and I mean the real vacuum, not a computer vacuum-to clean both it and as much as I could get to around the CPUs. When I unpacked it at work the other day, I also blasted the front fans with compressed air, but I think they may need physical scrubbing on the blades to get the crud off.

Not only is it going to get a repaste, but also a thorough cleaning-and likely with Qtips, rags, and alcohol for a lot of it. I'll probably pop the bottom floor plate out to clean around the PSU also.
 
Nice!

Would love to get a quad but the LCS is the only thing I am worried about, I plan to replace it with something newer. Like Corsair H100.
 
Admittedly my experience is limited to one example, but I've never heard of a leaky LCS on a quad.

The DP 2.5 and DP 2.7 are another story.
 
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