That 2GB limit always annoyed me. Especially on the later G4s.
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G5 Quad - 32GB possible?
- Thread starter Joshuarocks
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Very enlightening! Will definitely delve into this. I thought I had read somewhere that there was an OF hack but couldn't put my finger on it and thought I must have dreamt it until your post, thanks a lot!
Out of curiosity if you don't do the OF hack, do your 4Gb Samsung sticks get detected at all? Did you try anything else other than M395T5160FB4-CE7? Those are low density chips, did you try high density ones? That's what I've tried so far
Cheers,
Ah so they are slow by nature then? Well then that's all sorted out.
No actually even with the OF hack the slots shows empty in the HW info from OS X (if that's what you're asking).
You need to execute the commands I've shown in OF to see if they are spitting up model number like mine (because I had some cheap ones that didn't even do that).
I hadn't been keeping up with this great post, my bad!
Yes they are PC2-5300. I had tried Samsung low-density ones too as those seem to be working out of the box in the very last iteration of the iMac G5 - even though they won't show up in ASP on those either
So if I understand this correctly you put this in your ofboot.b file too for Gentoo? I will switch to this post as it's where the action seems to be happening!
yaboot and grub both use small HFS partitions on Apple platforms (1 Mb in my case but can be more especially if they are made to include /boot) so that they are seen (even though yaboot requires ext2 or ext3 for boot for recent linux distros in my hands, won't work with ext4 on debian 11, Ubuntu 16.10 or OpenSUSE for some reason, even though it works with Ubuntu 16.04) and both use ofboot.b to boot in which I guess the of script can either be pasted in directly in or called, it will be visible in OF as HFS.
interesting, very strange. i wonder how much extra it would cost to add that 1 extra bit
The datasheet indicates a maximum of two memory modules, so I wonder what happens if two 2 GB DDR2 modules are installed…
Especially on later G4s for which there is only one DIMM slot available.
By chance, do you have an idea how to try fixing this? https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...bootable.2368659/?post=31726881#post-31726881
The Mac Mini comes to mind but I suppose that could be rationalised on the basis of space constraints. It was bemusing to discover that the Quicksilver has less RAM capacity than the Sawtooth with 1.5GB vs 2GB. I can imagine many Sawtooth users who at the time sold their machine to upgrade to the Quicksilver being annoyed at this odd downgrade in expansion.
I wonder if two SO-DIMM slots (like on the 2006…2012 minis) could have been fitted in the G4 mini.
Come to think of it, that probably could've been implemented and is a sensible idea - which is why it never happened...
Admittedly, when I posted that I was thinking categorically of the 2005 12-inch PowerBook G4 with its whopping, professional-level max of 1.25GB…
Insufficient RAM on laptops and then in more recent years, insufficient non-upgradeable RAM on laptops. At least they've been consistent with the short sighted decisions.
And its poor excuse for a GPU… As much as I hate to say it, the final 12” iBook is the better 12” PowerBook.
Well I might buy a pci-e card to experiment as well at some point - but I'm not sure if it'll be worth it - other than that I believe there was an kernel option to ignore specific pci-e slot IRC?
How to do that? Not something I’m knowledgeable about
(And this is a kernel problem, not kext one? With kexts I had some hope of an easy fix by swapping some.)
P. S. If by being worth you meant gains in performance in 10.5.8, it should be definitely worth it, as you can have x3 faster SSD, and use newer and better ones. It may not be worth with a single machine and dual boot with 10A190, unless a fix is found, of course.
The GeForce FX Go5200, with 64MB VRAM, for a 2005 Mac pro-level laptop, was embarrassing. It used the same GPU as the 12-inch PowerBook in 2003, with its only refinement, in 2004, when VRAM was bumped from 32MB to 64. Its G5 desktop counterpart, the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, in the 2003 and 2004 Power Mac G5s, was no less disappointing.
The only demerit for the 2005 iBooks having a Mobility Radeon 9550 is Apple only configured it with 32MB VRAM — ostensibly to distinguish the iBooks as being “inferior” to the 12-inch PowerBook. As I’ve written elsewhere on here, the 12-inch PowerBook is basically the 12-inch iBook in terms of chassis, development, design, and core features (like 10/100 Ethernet, FW400, and no more than 512MB onboard RAM), but kitted out differently (cosmetically, and also in terms of updated components like GPU and RAM) than the iBook G4 counterparts and sold at a higher price point.
Like, I’m not a PPC video expert by any metric, but even I could see the GeForce FX 5200 series in Apple products, unless offered as a base model-only option in, say, 2003–04, was a hot mess — especially given how the Mobility Radeon 9200 and 9550 were bundled with the 2005-era iBook G4 and Mac mini G4, respectively.
Any idea why was that the case?
P. S. Myself I kept wondering why Apple used 256 MB in ATI 1900 when there was a 512 MB version for PC.
That was my hunch too.
Also...
As we all know, it has not been above Apple to commit shady behaviour in terms of restricting the capabilities and potential of their products. In the case of PPC video hardware, they blocked the ability of iBooks, iMacs and eMacs to use an external display in dual or "extended desktop mode" in their firmware to push consumers towards the more costly PowerMac range instead. This shady practice was exposed by hacks which enabled the functionality on many of those machines.