Would this card be ok for my 1.42GHz DP MDD? Quick search said yes, using the pin taping technique.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/332178382010
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/332178382010
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G4 Digital Audio Sonnet Upgrade
- Thread starter benwild_33
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So it's been a while since I last uploaded, I've been away a couple of times as well as had issues getting some things I bought to work. First update is that I found a Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 Card on ebay for a really cheap price. I already had a 250GB IDE drive sat about so I put that in the G4. The sonnet card is plug and play and bootable.
The second change is that I got a Radeon 9800 Pro, I was looking for a 9700 but I lost out on a couple on ebay and this 9800 came up for a really good price. I had a lot of trouble flashing it, turns out I needed to use the -sst command in Atiflash when flashing it due to the type of Bios chip it had. After I got this worked out and got the pins taped it worked first time.
It really is a massive difference over the radeon 7000, it seems to cope with the heat so far but it is really loud. I've avoided using it on really hot days. I need to get a molex extension too as the stock right angle plug is a bit of a tight fit. Gaming performance is decent, it plays Halo and Doom 3 without too many issues, Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs great at max settings in 1600x1200 too.
I'm still not overly impressed with internet browsing performance, I'm on OSX 10.4.11 and I'm using Tenfourfox with performance tweaks but my CPU usage is really high, especially when downloading things. I've used more powerful PowerPC machines on the web in the past (G5 Dual 1.8, Dual 2.5, DC 2.0) and none struggled anywhere near this much. Obviously my G4 is a bit less powerful but any suggestions to improve performance would be appreciated. It's not my main browsing machine but it's sometimes a bit painful trying to find something online.
The second change is that I got a Radeon 9800 Pro, I was looking for a 9700 but I lost out on a couple on ebay and this 9800 came up for a really good price. I had a lot of trouble flashing it, turns out I needed to use the -sst command in Atiflash when flashing it due to the type of Bios chip it had. After I got this worked out and got the pins taped it worked first time.
It really is a massive difference over the radeon 7000, it seems to cope with the heat so far but it is really loud. I've avoided using it on really hot days. I need to get a molex extension too as the stock right angle plug is a bit of a tight fit. Gaming performance is decent, it plays Halo and Doom 3 without too many issues, Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs great at max settings in 1600x1200 too.
I'm still not overly impressed with internet browsing performance, I'm on OSX 10.4.11 and I'm using Tenfourfox with performance tweaks but my CPU usage is really high, especially when downloading things. I've used more powerful PowerPC machines on the web in the past (G5 Dual 1.8, Dual 2.5, DC 2.0) and none struggled anywhere near this much. Obviously my G4 is a bit less powerful but any suggestions to improve performance would be appreciated. It's not my main browsing machine but it's sometimes a bit painful trying to find something online.
Congrats on the GPU find! That is a nice card and should work well with games. You can run up the clock speed with ATIcellerator to see where it starts to have problems then back it off a reasonable amount. I've seen some people put heatsinks on the VRAM chips and upgrade the cooler.
For TenFourFox, I've found that it's pretty memory hungry. So max out the RAM and maybe add an SSD. If you have other programs running at the same time that use a lot of RAM/CPU, then quitting those should help. Have you tried TenFourFoxBox?
For TenFourFox, I've found that it's pretty memory hungry. So max out the RAM and maybe add an SSD. If you have other programs running at the same time that use a lot of RAM/CPU, then quitting those should help. Have you tried TenFourFoxBox?
I think I'm gonna avoid overclocking the 9800, I see a lot of them going for parts on ebay as I understand they are from a time when the solder had a habit of going bad. I reckon my CPU would bottleneck much more performance anyway. I am watching a card with an arctic cooler at the minute so I may pick one up just to keep it a bit cooler.
I am maxed out in terms of ram (1.5GB), I've thought about an SSD although I'd need a SATA card, I kind of want to keep to roughly period correct components too. I do have a 120GB SSD sat on my desk doing nothing so it is tempting. I may pick up a second 80GB WD800 drive and make my boot drives a raid 0 array, would only cost me about £5.
I am maxed out in terms of ram (1.5GB), I've thought about an SSD although I'd need a SATA card, I kind of want to keep to roughly period correct components too. I do have a 120GB SSD sat on my desk doing nothing so it is tempting. I may pick up a second 80GB WD800 drive and make my boot drives a raid 0 array, would only cost me about £5.
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Is there anything special about running raid 0 on g4s? I tried to clone my OS drive on to a pair of WD800 drives running off my Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 IDE card but when I try to boot from the raid array it gets stuck at the apple logo. I'm going to try a fresh install on the raid array, is there anything else I should try?
I know about the risks of losing data but this is more of a project build than anything, I'm currently running tiger but I may move to leopard and get time machine set up.
I know about the risks of losing data but this is more of a project build than anything, I'm currently running tiger but I may move to leopard and get time machine set up.
Time Machine restores can be a problem if not impossible because raid0 will not allow for the creation of a Recovery partition needed for the restore.
More Updates:
Got a Dual 1.8GHz Sonnet in a Quicksilver (was pretty beaten up) so decided to swap it in to this. One of the fans on the new Sonnet has bad bearings so I'll need to swap it at some point but it was a plug and play swap and booted third time (boot looped twice at first).
Also went with a raid boot drive setup just to experiment, wouldn't work in 10.4 (got stuck at boot) but worked first time in 10.5. So I now have 2 x WD800 as a 160GB OS Array and then a Single WD2500 as 250GB of storage.
I also got a Sonnet USB 2.0 card, probably one of the most expensive things I've bought for this but I wanted a Sonnet one to match the CPU and IDE Controller. Got a nice selection of ports on the back now, I'm hoping I don't push the power supply too far.
Got a Dual 1.8GHz Sonnet in a Quicksilver (was pretty beaten up) so decided to swap it in to this. One of the fans on the new Sonnet has bad bearings so I'll need to swap it at some point but it was a plug and play swap and booted third time (boot looped twice at first).
Also went with a raid boot drive setup just to experiment, wouldn't work in 10.4 (got stuck at boot) but worked first time in 10.5. So I now have 2 x WD800 as a 160GB OS Array and then a Single WD2500 as 250GB of storage.
I also got a Sonnet USB 2.0 card, probably one of the most expensive things I've bought for this but I wanted a Sonnet one to match the CPU and IDE Controller. Got a nice selection of ports on the back now, I'm hoping I don't push the power supply too far.
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That was my problem. My power issues kept killing PCI-SATA cards. I was simply asking too much for the system.
My Digital Audio has been out of action for quite a while now due to a bad fan on the Sonnet chip. I finally got around to replacing it today. Luckily after googling the fan model number, I found a UK electronics supplier (Farnell) stocked the exact model.
Before Pic:
The fans and their replacements:
Took the heat sink off to reapply the thermal paste:
All sorted (I moved the sonnet stickers over to the new fans):
Hopefully now I'll be able to get more use out of this Mac. It's a lot quieter. I'm just looking for an aftermarket GPU cooler for the 9800Pro now but they're rare and expensive.
Before Pic:
The fans and their replacements:
Took the heat sink off to reapply the thermal paste:
All sorted (I moved the sonnet stickers over to the new fans):
Hopefully now I'll be able to get more use out of this Mac. It's a lot quieter. I'm just looking for an aftermarket GPU cooler for the 9800Pro now but they're rare and expensive.
When I had my first 9800 Pro it came with a Thermaltake Fanless VGA Cooler. I sent it off to a member here.
Here's a different one on eBay. It has a fan, my old one didnt'.
MODS! NOT MY AUCTION!!!!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltak...563503&hash=item2ccb044ff8:g:SDAAAOSwbw1aI87I
Be warned though. Adding the cooler will block a PCI slot.
Here's a different one on eBay. It has a fan, my old one didnt'.
MODS! NOT MY AUCTION!!!!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltak...563503&hash=item2ccb044ff8:g:SDAAAOSwbw1aI87I
Be warned though. Adding the cooler will block a PCI slot.
Thanks for the recommendations, not sure what the shipping would be like on the linked one as I'm based in the UK. Until now I only knew about the Arctic Silencer so that's a few more to keep an eye out for on ebay.
Well, you are actually closer to it than I am. The auction details say that the location of the cooler is in Latvia.
I’m in the UK too. I paid £10 including delivery for the Zalman. The AS was my first choice, as they exhaust hot air, but they were all too expensive and/or were missing mounting hardware.
Dunno, on QuickSilver the PSU has to run the following:
- 1.8GHz Sonnet (single)
- Radeon9000
- 22" Apple Display
- USB2
- SBLive!
- Voodoo3000
- SIL3112 SATA
- DVD-RW
- CF-Card (in IDE)
- SATA-SSD
No issues so far.
I had…
• 1.8Ghz Sonnet Duet (Dual CPUs)
• Radeon 7000
• Radeon 9200
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT <-- Requires a Molex Cable for supplemental power
• 4 Port PCI SATA Card
• 3x 1TB Hard drives
• SATA DVD Burner (Dual Layer)
• USB 2.0 Card
• Firewire Card (FW400 and FW800)
• Bluetooth 2.0 USB stick
• 1x 120mm fan
• 1x 80mm fan
• 1x 60mm intake fan
• Apple Pro Speakers
Plus incidentals, such as keyboard, FW devices, PSU fan and main 120mm fan
Radeon 7000, Radeon 9200 and NVIDIA cards drove six displays
• 20" Cinema Display
• 17" Cinema Display
• 17" Cinema Display
• 2x 18" Gateway monitors
• 1x 20" HDTV
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/quicksilver-beautification-project.1953562/
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If you are referring to what's hanging on the wall in my picture, that's the back lid of the display to a 17" PowerBook G4 (A1013). Someday I intend to put a light with a switch behind the panel so that the logo will light up and the edges of the panel will have a soft backlit glow.Is this a Macbook on your wall?
awesome!
Also... I recently acquired a 466 MHz Digital Audio that I am slowly upgrading with a Radeon 9600 pro, maxed-out RAM, SATA... Should I pull the trigger on a specced-out 1.42Ghz FW800 MDD for $70? Am tempted but isn't it a bit silly?
This is the wrong sub-forum if you're looking for someone to agree that picking up another PPC Mac is silly.
Gooo for it.
I don't think $70 is a bad price for all that.
But, I'm really not the one to ask when it comes to 'silly' or not.