My PowerMac G4 Lucky Dip (Twins!)

[LightBulbFun]

IBM must have jumped in to help Motorola throughout late '99 to get Apple's demand out the door. I read that IBM's 7400 was later reused as the foundation for the 970.



A true end of the millennium Mac!



Nice collection. So, did you use one of these desktop 7410s for the Pismo's brain transplant?



Well that settles that, I can just dump Server from the Sawtooth with the 9700 and keep it on the other which has the Rage 128 Pro.

yeah from what I have seen IBM G4s are from Y2K, IBM used the altivec unit from the 7400 in the 970 design (clock for clock ignoring the crippling frontside bus a 7450-7448 is actually faster then a 970 due to this)

the 7410 I used for the Pismo and the one you see in the picture where from ebay, but I have a nice 533Mhz 7410 pillaged and reballed from a DA CPU card that im saving for when I do a Clamshell (I also have the 1MB of L2 cache from that DA CPU card as well that I plan to try and solder to a clamshell as well)

 

[AphoticD]

yeah from what I have seen IBM G4s are from Y2K, IBM used the altivec unit from the 7400 in the 970 design (clock for clock ignoring the crippling frontside bus a 7450-7448 is actually faster then a 970 due to this)

The G4 was a very capable and relatively low energy consuming processor for its time. It's amazing how cool these Sawooth CPUs run in a tower with only minimal cooling and a relatively small heatsink.

the 7410 I used for the Pismo and the one you see in the picture where from ebay, but I have a nice 533Mhz 7410 pillaged and reballed from a DA CPU card that im saving for when I do a Clamshell (I also have the 1MB of L2 cache from that DA CPU card as well that I plan to try and solder to a clamshell as well)

This is an ambitious project and could be the world's first G4 Clamshell iBook. Is there any room or possibility of a cooling fan in there?

The Pismo certainly has room to spare. Especially if the modem is removed on the left. That mini, rarely operational cooling fan could be replaced with something larger to draw more hot air away from the heatsink. Or if a small mSATA SSD-IDE adapter is used, the right side could accommodate a decent sized fan (power could piggyback off ...something...?)

I wonder if it would be better as an exhaust to extract heat or as an intake to blow cool air in...

 

[LightBulbFun]

The G4 was a very capable and relatively low energy consuming processor for its time. It's amazing how cool these Sawooth CPUs run in a tower with only minimal cooling and a relatively small heatsink.



This is an ambitious project and could be the world's first G4 Clamshell iBook. Is there any room or possibility of a cooling fan in there?

The Pismo certainly has room to spare. Especially if the modem is removed on the left. That mini, rarely operational cooling fan could be replaced with something larger to draw more hot air away from the heatsink. Or if a small mSATA SSD-IDE adapter is used, the right side could accommodate a decent sized fan (power could piggyback off ...something...?)

I wonder if it would be better as an exhaust to extract heat or as an intake to blow cool air in...

the 7400 esp (the 7410 was better in this regard and added some power saving features enabling Apple to build the TiBook) was a relatively hot running chip actually compared to other PPC CPUs, look at the tiny heatsink found on PowerPC 750 CPUs

@max¥¥ has actually fitted 7410s to a number of clamshell iBooks you can read all about it in this thread https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/28556-imac-g3-rev-a-c-g4-cpu-upgrade/ but no one has tried to upgrade the L2 cache, which is what I hope to do along side fitting a G4

in regards to cooling on the Pismo I have found the stock cooling in my Pismo to very good at cooling my highly overclocked 600Mhz 7410 even was stressed out with an intensive game of Quake 3

 

[AphoticD]

Yes, I guess compared to my C2D MacBook, which was designed to safely run core temps over 100°C, the G4's 26 - 42°C seems cool. But they do warm up the room when running in unison!

 

[Bug-Creator]

I have a 1GHz upgrade card in my Sawtooth and it is the same format that would fit all the way into an MDD. I think it was the lowly Yikes that required a ZIF card like its sibling the B/W.

Allmost correct:

Yikes was just a PowerMac G3 with a G4 CPU card and a bit less fancy case

Sawtooth to Quicksilver all share the same CPU card format, 3rd party option are quite common

MDD/FW800 use a different one, those are harder to find

 

[AphoticD]

733GHz would take it up to DA levels and should be doable as long as you avoid the crippled QS card.

I’ve been looking around and see a lot of cheap quicksilver cards. What do you mean by crippled? Would I be better off with a DA card?

 

[weckart]

QS version lacked an L3 cache unlike the DA.

 

[AphoticD]

QS version lacked an L3 cache unlike the DA.

I found a 733Mhz DA [CPU Card] with 1MB L3 cache but the price was too high (~AU$85 shipped), so instead I settled for an US$8.00 (+ $12 ship to Aus) 533Mhz DA CPU

Here are photos of the CPU card I just bought. Does this have the 1M L2 cache?




Mactracker vaguely states for the DA models:

Cache 64 KB L1, 256 KB (1:1) or 1 MB (1:2) L2, 1 MB L3 (733MHz)

However, EveryMac says the 533 DA had:

L1 Cache: 64k L2/L3 Cache: 1 MB (backside)
Details: The 1 MB of backside cache has a 266 MHz bus.

With a Geekbench score of 356, the 533Mhz CPU should still make a generous improvement on the stock 350Mhz Sawtooth G4 which had a recorded score of 232. But a percentage of that score may be simply due to the increased bus speed on the DA.

I also just bought 4x WD Blue 160GB SATA 7200rpm HDDs (late 2010 stock) for AU$15 each (Free ship). Plus a few $6 SATA to 3.5" IDE adapters. I decided to keep things simple and not over-complicate with mSATA SSD ->SATA->3.5 IDE. For the ATA/66 bus, I don't think SSDs are worth the added cost here considering the towers have plenty of internal room, no power saving concerns and any newer stock HDDs are certainly going to run quieter and faster than the old turn-of-the-century clunkers that are installed now.

I understand there is a 128GB limit on HDDs in the Sawtooth due to hardware limitations. If I (software) RAID stripe 2x 160GB drives on the same ATA bus, does this result in a single, faster 256GB volume?

Also, LowEndMac was a little vague on how the different Operating Systems handled this. From what I read, Jaguar and up could see the HDD, but only allocate 128GB of it. But, OS8/9, Kodiak DPs, Server 1.x, Cheetah, Puma, etc won't see the drives at all? Can anyone confirm this?

The curse of the PowerPC money pit strikes again!

(hmm.. come to think of it, I might just make a low ball offer on the 733 card as well, I don't think I'll see this one again.)

 

[weckart]

With a Geekbench score of 356, the 533Mhz CPU should still make a generous improvement on the stock 350Mhz Sawtooth G4 which had a recorded score of 232. But a percentage of that score may be simply due to the increased bus speed on the DA.

To give you some comparison, the Cube scores an average 282 on GB with its stock 450MHz processor. After I ramped up the speed to 1.6GHz, this is what I got all other things being equal



There are other bottlenecks to overcome: Bus speed, GPU, hard drive speeds etc.

With regard to the hard drives, the earlier OSes will see the physical hard drive as will OF. On my Cube, the boot selector screen shows all installations from 9.0.4 to Puma Server but no further and I have to use StartDisk to boot the others.

You can get a driver to make use of the post-128GB portion. I think SpeedTools had one and maybe another hard disk utility or two did. Macintoshgarden may help you further with this. Just bear in mind that these drivers are a bit like Stacker on DOS was. If it falls down, things get interesting. Just to make things clear, you will need the driver for Tiger/Leopard. The hard drive access limitation is a physical one and the OS alone will not compensate for it.

My advice is to make sure the earlier OSes are kept in volumes within the first 128GB and then either only use Tiger/Leopard on the remaining space or better still, allocate them as data drives.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I found a 733Mhz DA [CPU Card] with 1MB L3 cache but the price was too high (~AU$85 shipped), so instead I settled for an US$8.00 (+ $12 ship to Aus) 533Mhz DA CPU

Here are photos of the CPU card I just bought. Does this have the 1M L2 cache?

View attachment 723286
View attachment 723285

Mactracker vaguely states for the DA models:


However, EveryMac says the 533 DA had:


With a Geekbench score of 356, the 533Mhz CPU should still make a generous improvement on the stock 350Mhz Sawtooth G4 which had a recorded score of 232. But a percentage of that score may be simply due to the increased bus speed on the DA.

I also just bought 4x WD Blue 160GB SATA 7200rpm HDDs (late 2010 stock) for AU$15 each (Free ship). Plus a few $6 SATA to 3.5" IDE adapters. I decided to keep things simple and not over-complicate with mSATA SSD ->SATA->3.5 IDE. For the ATA/66 bus, I don't think SSDs are worth the added cost here considering the towers have plenty of internal room, no power saving concerns and any newer stock HDDs are certainly going to run quieter and faster than the old turn-of-the-century clunkers that are installed now.

I understand there is a 128GB limit on HDDs in the Sawtooth due to hardware limitations. If I (software) RAID stripe 2x 160GB drives on the same ATA bus, does this result in a single, faster 256GB volume?

Also, LowEndMac was a little vague on how the different Operating Systems handled this. From what I read, Jaguar and up could see the HDD, but only allocate 128GB of it. But, OS8/9, Kodiak DPs, Server 1.x, Cheetah, Puma, etc won't see the drives at all? Can anyone confirm this?

The curse of the PowerPC money pit strikes again!

(hmm.. come to think of it, I might just make a low ball offer on the 733 card as well, I don't think I'll see this one again.)

a few things to note

the 733 and 800Mhz low end quicksilvers had no L3 cache hence crippled, the higher clocked ones did have L3 cache (apart from the 867ED)

when it comes to DAs, the 466-533Mhz models used 7400/7410s with L2 backside cache, the 667Mhz and faster models used 7450s with external L3 cache

also keep in mind with the 533Mhz CPU (and any DA/QS CPU) you will have to adjust its multiplier as the DA had a 133Mhz bus but the sawtooth is 100MHz, if you just plugged it in stock to your sawtooth, it would run at 400Mhz (100*4), being a nice 7410 you should be able to hit 600Mhz maybe even 650Mhz if your lucky

 

[AphoticD]

To give you some comparison, the Cube scores an average 282 on GB with its stock 450MHz processor. After I ramped up the speed to 1.6GHz, this is what I got all other things being equal

View attachment 723346

That is an impressive score and practically in-line with the top-end PowerBook G4s, even with the bus speed limitations.

How does the cube handle the heat from the 1.6Ghz CPU? And I guess more importantly, considering manufacturing advancements, die sizes and energy efficiency, etc, does the 1.6Ghz CPU actually run any hotter than the stock 450 did?

I think thermal health has to be priority with any PowerPC Mac given their age. The last thing I want to do is run a perfectly fine, stock-standard 19 year old Mac into the ground due to pushing it past it's comfort zone.

With regard to the hard drives, the earlier OSes will see the physical hard drive as will OF. On my Cube, the boot selector screen shows all installations from 9.0.4 to Puma Server but no further and I have to use StartDisk to boot the others.

You can get a driver to make use of the post-128GB portion. I think SpeedTools had one and maybe another hard disk utility or two did. Macintoshgarden may help you further with this. Just bear in mind that these drivers are a bit like Stacker on DOS was. If it falls down, things get interesting. Just to make things clear, you will need the driver for Tiger/Leopard. The hard drive access limitation is a physical one and the OS alone will not compensate for it.

My advice is to make sure the earlier OSes are kept in volumes within the first 128GB and then either only use Tiger/Leopard on the remaining space or better still, allocate them as data drives.

Well at least it's not an 8GB juggle like on some older Macs. If I choose to partition only 128GB and forfeit the 32GB difference, will it just work as normal? Or does the HiCap driver still need to be in place?

I don't plan to run anything critical on the G4s, I guess I'm just trying to make the most of them.
[doublepost=1507117470][/doublepost]

a few things to note

the 733 and 800Mhz low end quicksilvers had no L3 cache hence crippled, the higher clocked ones did have L3 cache (apart from the 867ED)

when it comes to DAs, the 466-533Mhz models used 7400/7410s with L2 backside cache, the 667Mhz and faster models used 7450s with external L3 cache

also keep in mind with the 533Mhz CPU (and any DA/QS CPU) you will have to adjust its multiplier as the DA had a 133Mhz bus but the sawtooth is 100MHz, if you just plugged it in stock to your sawtooth, it would run at 400Mhz (100*4), being a nice 7410 you should be able to hit 600Mhz maybe even 650Mhz if your lucky

Great. This is what I needed to know. I'll have some fun learning all about adjusting the multiplier then!

Does this refer back to increasing the bus speed by soldering in a dip switch as per the afforementioned xlr8yourmac page? Or is it a mod on the CPU card?

 

[weckart]

That is an impressive score and practically in-line with the top-end PowerBook G4s, even with the bus speed limitations.

How does the cube handle the heat from the 1.6Ghz CPU? And I guess more importantly, considering manufacturing advancements, die sizes and energy efficiency, etc, does the 1.6Ghz CPU actually run any hotter than the stock 450 did?

I think thermal health has to be priority with

To be honest I never checked temps with the stock CPU. I got the upgrade boxed with all the trimmings. It came with its own heatsink and a fan to slot in the space behind the CPU. Idle temps are around 52°C so not far off MacBook temps. I haven't caned it since I have a G5 and some G4s for that sort of thing.

 

[LightBulbFun]

That is an impressive score and practically in-line with the top-end PowerBook G4s, even with the bus speed limitations.

How does the cube handle the heat from the 1.6Ghz CPU? And I guess more importantly, considering manufacturing advancements, die sizes and energy efficiency, etc, does the 1.6Ghz CPU actually run any hotter than the stock 450 did?

I think thermal health has to be priority with any PowerPC Mac given their age. The last thing I want to do is run a perfectly fine, stock-standard 19 year old Mac into the ground due to pushing it past it's comfort zone.



Well at least it's not an 8GB juggle like on some older Macs. If I choose to partition only 128GB and forfeit the 32GB difference, will it just work as normal? Or does the HiCap driver still need to be in place?

I don't plan to run anything critical on the G4s, I guess I'm just trying to make the most of them.
[doublepost=1507117470][/doublepost]

Great. This is what I needed to know. I'll have some fun learning all about adjusting the multiplier then!

Does this refer back to increasing the bus speed by soldering in a dip switch as per the afforementioned xlr8yourmac page? Or is it a mod on the CPU card?

its a mod on the CPU Card. theres some small resistors on the card that set the PLL multiplier, theres plenty of guides on the internet on how to adjust these (how do you think i got my Pismo G4 to run at 600Mhz )

(Sawtooths are uninorth 1 machines, id be very surprised if you could get the machine stable at 133Mhz FSB)

 

[AphoticD]

its a mod on the CPU Card. theres some small resistors on the card that set the PLL multiplier, theres plenty of guides on the internet on how to adjust these (how do you think i got my Pismo G4 to run at 600Mhz )

(Sawtooths are uninorth 1 machines, id be very surprised if you could get the machine stable at 133Mhz FSB)

Thanks for another useful heads up.

I’ve just read through this guide:
http://power-mac-g4.com/g4digitalaudioclockup.html

The process seem straight forward enough:
Desolder R9 and R13 (4x multiplier), then trace in R11 (6x multiplier).

I have never done this before, so it should be entertaining to say the least. Would you recommended to use a standard resistor (100 ohm?) or just a circuit tracer pen as described in the page above?

Will the 1:2 L2 cache automatically clock up to 300Mhz without any problem (or modification?)

So I imagine this CPU card I’ve bought hosts the same 7410 that you used for the Pismo?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Thanks for another useful heads up.

I’ve just read through this guide:
http://power-mac-g4.com/g4digitalaudioclockup.html

The process seem straight forward enough:
Desolder R9 and R13 (4x multiplier), then trace in R11 (6x multiplier).

I have never done this before, so it should be entertaining to say the least. Would you recommended to use a standard resistor (100 ohm?) or just a circuit tracer pen as described in the page above?

Will the 1:2 L2 cache automatically clock up to 300Mhz without any problem (or modification?)

So I imagine this CPU card I’ve bought hosts the same 7410 that you used for the Pismo?

you can just bridge the pads with a solder blob or thin copper wire strand if you want, or hell even use a graphite pencil and draw a thick conductive trace, i did that to overclock my Mac mini G4 (for the pismo tho I jumped the pads with a solder blob & copper wire)

the L2 cache will automatically clock up yeah

a 7410 is a 7410 the one in your CPU might be a slightly older revision but otherwise yea same CPU I used in my pismo

 

[AphoticD]

you can just bridge the pads with a solder blob or thin copper wire strand if you want, or hell even use a graphite pencil and draw a thick conductive trace, i did that to overclock my Mac mini G4 (for the pismo tho I jumped the pads with a solder blob & copper wire)

the L2 cache will automatically clock up yeah

a 7410 is a 7410 the one in your CPU might be a slightly older revision but otherwise yea same CPU I used in my pismo

Now there’s the perfect DIY approach!

I’m interested in “enhancing” a few other Macs here now. I have the mini 1.42, so what’s that 167Mhz x8.5? Does it clock up to 10x?

These original 350mhz 7400 cards should clock up to 400mhz with just a bridge/trace on the R9 jumper and likely run as stable as 350.

My last rev TiBook 867 might go up 1ghz too? I imagine that a lot of these minor speed variations which Apple shipped were nothing more than a marketing / price point difference to upsell customers by that extra notch ($$$).

The actual CPU hardware within the same machine revision would be identical in many cases, just in restricted/unrestricted jumper settings, right?

EDIT: Or in Apple Sales-speak, should that be “Good”, “Better” and “Best” jumper settings?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Now there’s the perfect DIY approach!

I’m interested in “enhancing” a few other Macs here now. I have the mini 1.42, so what’s that 167Mhz x8.5? Does it clock up to 10x?

These original 350mhz 7400 cards should clock up to 400mhz with just a bridge/trace on the R9 jumper and likely run as stable as 350.

My last rev TiBook 867 might go up 1ghz too? I imagine that a lot of these minor speed variations which Apple shipped were nothing more than a marketing / price point difference to upsell customers by that extra notch ($$$).

The actual CPU hardware within the same machine revision would be identical in many cases, just in restricted/unrestricted jumper settings, right?

in regards to the Mac Mini G4, mines a 1.42Ghz happily running at 1.67Ghz but was not stable at 1.75Ghz, yours might only hit 1.5 or might hit 1.75Ghz (if your up for tweaking voltage regulators you can even push to 1.83Ghz)

when it comes to overclocking your playing the silicon lottery so YMMV a lot sometimes, generally the 7447B in the Mac Mini G4 does overclock quite well, esp if you lucked out and got the beefier heatsink.

but dont expect more then a 50Mhz bump out of your 7400s they dont overclock well at all sadly (id be quite impressed if you managed to hit 450, I have never been able to get a 100Mhz overclock on an early 7400) I was surprised to see my 500Mhz 7410 be stable at 600 (maybe some day ill try my luck at 650)

 

[AphoticD]

Status update:

• Pack of 8 untested PC133 SDRAM sticks arrived;
• Installed and tested the unmarked sticks as 3x 256MB, 3x 128MB, 2x 64MB - not bad for less than $20 (shipped).
  
• I've now setup the two G4s with 768MB on the unit with the Radeon 9700 and 512MB on the unit with the Rage 128 Pro.
• 4x 160GB 7200rpm WD Blue SATA II HDDs arrived. Tested, formatted (APM) and benchmarked. One was a dud (to be refunded). They are nearly inaudible compared to the original IDE drives. Just waiting on the SATA-IDE adapters and then I'll have a play with setting up two HDDs as a RAID on the ATA bus and see how much we can squeeze out of the stock hardware.
• Waiting on the 533Mhz D/A CPU.

Once the drive adapters come in and now that I have enough RAM, I'll have a play with Leopard Assist (never had to use it before) to get Leopard installed and running on a 350Mhz G4

Tiger is running beautifully now with a little elbow room. Booting is quick. Just need to replace that noisy old 20GB 5400rpm HDD!

Mac OS 8.6 flies with 512MB of RAM on this G4. Here I have a few heavier apps running and it still has 422MB of RAM to spare!

-AphoticD

 

[eyoungren]

View attachment 724657
Mac OS 8.6 flies with 512MB of RAM on this G4. Here I have a few heavier apps running and it still has 422MB of RAM to spare!

QuarkXPress 4.1



The first app I was paid to use.

 

[swamprock]

in regards to the Mac Mini G4, mines a 1.42Ghz happily running at 1.67Ghz but was not stable at 1.75Ghz, yours might only hit 1.5 or might hit 1.75Ghz (if your up for tweaking voltage regulators you can even push to 1.83Ghz)

when it comes to overclocking your playing the silicon lottery so YMMV a lot sometimes, generally the 7447B in the Mac Mini G4 does overclock quite well, esp if you lucked out and got the beefier heatsink.

I can attest to this. My 1.25ghz Mini runs at a very stable 1.42ghz after overclocking. While researching this, I found that those who have overclocked them just one step up had no issues, but going higher caused system instabilities and/or a no-boot condition.

To broach an earlier subject, I read somewhere (forget where) that running an SSD in a Firewire enclosure is actually faster than running one using the on-board IDE in a Cube. I've never actually tested that theory, but it'd be an interesting one to test...

 

[Intell]

To broach an earlier subject, I read somewhere (forget where) that running an SSD in a Firewire enclosure is actually faster than running one using the on-board IDE in a Cube. I've never actually tested that theory, but it'd be an interesting one to test...

This is not accurate. FireWire 400 has a top speed of around 38MB/s. While the internal PATA bus is rated for a top speed of 66MB/s.

 

[swamprock]

This is not accurate. FireWire 400 has a top speed of around 38MB/s. While the internal PATA bus is rated for a top speed of 66MB/s.

Yeah... I looked around for a bit and couldn't find where I read that before. It could have been someone talking out of their rear end...

 

[AphoticD]

So, the SATA->PATA adapters came in today and I set some time aside to put them to use in SawtoothAlpha, the G4 with the Radeon 9700 + 768MB RAM.

Out came the noisy, original 20GB IBM 5400rpm HDD and I began to answer some of my own questions about the capabilities of the Sawtooth with SATA drives.


1. Here is the PATA/IDE to SATA adapter. An AU$6 no-name eBay product out of HK. There is one jumper on the unit which changes between master and slave configuration (no cable-select option). I purchased the 2010 stock 160GB, 7200rpm SATA-II WD 3Gbps Caviar Blue HDDs (model WD1600AJS) for AU$15 each. There was no need to set any jumpers on the drive.



2. One shortcoming of the cheap adapter is that the backside of the 4-pin power connection makes contact with the steel top-cover of the HDDs. Not a very wise design choice and something that will short and quickly end the life of my 19 year old G4.



3. A couple of layers of gaffer tape for insulation and we have a usable product.



4. I have two of the drives adapted and mounted on a dual-mount HDD caddy. I tried a few configurations for screwing it down with a second plate, but nothing fit neatly, so I abandoned the idea and simply wedged the drives under the PSU fan. I just need to keep this in mind next time I turn the machine upside-down...



5. The dual-HDD caddy is installed snug inside the G4. I had to turn them around like this because the SATA drives when combined with the adapters are longer and prevent the door from closing when set in the standard orientation. The standard master/slave IDE cable was not long enough to accommodate this change, so I swapped it out with these tidy old cables which were salvaged from a dead Pentium 4 Hackintosh many, many years ago. In fact, this was also where the G4's flashed Radeon 9700 card came from.



6. An unexpected feature of the cheap adapter is a bright-green LED. There is also a flashing red status indicator LED. Pretty... But not visible at all during normal operation.



7. With both drives installed and jumpers set, I booted into the Panther installation CD and setup the software RAID in Disk Utility. Regardless of the 160GB capacity, the drives are recognized as 128GB. We combine the two in a Striped (faster) scheme for a total of 256GB of pure 7200rpm speed.

I then tried to simply do a Firewire "Restore" from the existing 20GB Tiger installation across to the RAID. This took about an hour to transfer. On first boot, all looked to be going well, but once the kernel loaded and it looked like the OS was about to boot, it would drop into the console view with a "missing media: disk2" error. I tried a few different things to make this boot and although single-user mode worked fine, it would fail when getting past the early stages.

I decided that Tiger must need to do some trickery to properly boot from the RAID. So, I erased the RAID and set it up again for a clean install from the Tiger DVD. Installation was quick (about 25 mins) and I was pleasantly welcomed with the Tiger first-boot tune. Everything felt fast and responsive. I went through and configured, then ran all of the Tiger updates and installed all of my regular apps.

I can confirm that the faster boot device makes everything feel snappy. There are no more lags and delays between clicking apps in the dock, opening pref panes, viewing folders, etc. Apps and windows launch and move around almost instantaneously, much like my Aluminum PowerBooks. Everything is beautifully accelerated with the Core-Image and Quartz Extreme enabled Radeon 9700.

Overall, the system feels quick(er). It does not feel like a 0.35Ghz Mac from 1999. Or at least not as you might expect.

Photoshop 7.0 takes 25 seconds to launch. The faster HDDs are great, but they are not going to work miracles; TenFourFox still takes a long time to get started and is heavy (slow) to use. TenFourKit is usable though and Camino is snappy as always.

Here is the Xbench results against the RAID:

As you can see, it doesn't blow anything out of the water, but it has made a substantial improvement and the ATA/66 bus is managing to push around a maximum of 52MB/sec on uncached 256k block sequential reads.

Here are the same test results against the original, late 1999 stock-standard 20GB IBM branded 5400rpm HDD:

For reference, the early 1999 stock 6GB Maxtor HDD, which was installed on the Beta (2nd) Sawtooth resulted in an Xbench disk test score of 18.32.

Overall, the operating noise is down and temps are good. The twin-2010 stock SATA drives are silent compared to the original 20GB (single) clunker. The reported temps are about the same as the older drives, but I can say that they feel cooler. There is no build-up of heat on the drive cases. They are cool to touch, even when Temperature Monitor says they are running at 41°C. In comparison, the older IDE drives (and SCSI for that matter) seem to generate a lot more heat.


In conclusion...

I am happy with the drives in this configuration. So far, I have experienced stability, increased performance and reduced running noise, all at a very low cost. A grand total of AU$42.00 for a 256GB striped 7200rpm RAID array, with PATA interfaces.

Considering the limitations of the ATA/66 interface, I can't imagine an SSD being vastly superior in this machine. I would have paid about AU$50 for a 64GB mSATA SSD, plus a SATA adapter, plus an IDE 3.5" adapter.

The only downside is I couldn't see how to use Disk Utility to partition the RAID volume, at least not in Panther or Tiger. There may be a way to do this from the command line, but I didn't look any deeper. I'm happy with Tiger on this G4, so a single volume, single OS Mac is what it is.

The original 20GB, plus the 6GB HDD are now in SawtoothBeta, which brings Mac OS X Server 1.2v3 back to life (using the supported Rage 128 Pro GPU) and I can use this G4 to switch between Server, Panther, Tiger, OS 9.2.2 and OS 8.6.

All in all, I saved a couple of perfectly fine SATA HDDs from going to landfill and put them to use in a way which they were never intended. And it works!

 

[weckart]

Interesting that you got temps on your SATA drive. I used this adapter



on a SATA drive in my MDD and get no temp reading. I am using iStat, so maybe Temp Monitor is the way to go.

 

[AphoticD]

Interesting that you got temps on your SATA drive. I used this adapter

View attachment 725247

on a SATA drive in my MDD and get no temp reading. I am using iStat, so maybe Temp Monitor is the way to go.

I just installed the iStat Pro 4.92 widget and can confirm that the temps are not available, but temperature monitor appears to probe the S.M.A.R.T status OK.

....

And then it crashed and I'm getting the "disk2: media not present" error on startup again. Oh well. I'll scrap the software RAID idea and just reinstall with a single HDD in each. I'll post some xbench results to compare when I'm done. I'm going to fathom a guess here and say it probably won't be much different