New PowerMac G4 MDD

[sgrddy]

I always wanted one of these. I bought one off of eBay for $49. It's a single core 1Ghz G4 with 1Gb of RAM. It is def faster than my 1.25Ghz Mac Mini that I bought in 2005 or so. It's totally fast enough for 90% of what I do with my computers anymore. I have a Core i7 self-built PC, which for gaming is become more irrelevant by the day, SC2 or not.

This machine has a lot of life left in it. I am happy to give it a new home. I think I'll have to buy a G5 quad core. I can feel the itch already.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Good price. Congratulations on the purchase. The power supply alone is easily worth double that .

Now up the ram to 2gb and you'll be all set.

 

[bobbytomorow]

$49 bones? Wow nice buy dude!

I have never owned a MDD, I had a Quicksilver 800MHz DP but it was super loud I ended up changed ALL of the fans in the case and even the power supply. Took out the little speaker so it could breathe a little better and one of the fans I used (120mm) had blue LED's so the speaker hole at the front gave out a blue glow

...I'm rambling, but how is the MDD for noise?

 

[sgrddy]

@bobbytomorrow

It's definitely quieter than my Core i7 PC, but that can get loud because of the GTX260 and the *cough* stock Intel fan. I know I know, I am going to replace it - maybe with a self contained Corsair or Cool-it water unit.

The PowerMac does make some sort of brief, loud noise when it starts. I wasn't sure if it was a fan or the optical drive. It's totally fun though. I played with the thing until almost 1am.

 

[666sheep]

If you're good in soldering, you can boost it a little. You can OC system bus from 133 to 167 MHz by removing one resistor on logic board. PC2700 or 3200 memory is required after this mod.
http://www.macbidouille.com/articles/89/page3 - for pics ->page 1.
It also requires a little adjustment of CPU multiplier, see here for "why and how".

 

[sgrddy]

Overclocking the FSB on a G4! That reminds me of turning the FSB up to 100 from 66 on an Celeron years ago.

I really wish I could stick some off-the-shelf AGP graphics card into the thing. I've read about people flashing the ROMs on PC Radeons and such. I dont suppose such a thing is possible using a newer Radeon card like the 4650 or something?

You know what's odd is that I don't need to flash the ROMs on my GTX 260 to run Ubuntu or AROS. I wonder if a standard PC AGP card would work on the power mac if it was running YDL or some other OS other than OSX. I'll have to check on that.

 

[666sheep]

I really wish I could stick some off-the-shelf AGP graphics card into the thing. I've read about people flashing the ROMs on PC Radeons and such. I dont suppose such a thing is possible using a newer Radeon card like the 4650 or something?

You know what's odd is that I don't need to flash the ROMs on my GTX 260 to run Ubuntu or AROS. I wonder if a standard PC AGP card would work on the power mac if it was running YDL or some other OS other than OSX. I'll have to check on that.

I'm afraid that it won't work. In general (for PPC) card needs to have Mac PPC ROM to give video output on PPC Macs (OS independent, it's firmware thing). You don't need to have OS installed to get video on screen.

Max what you can toss into this G4 is 7800GS or ATI X800XT/FireGL X3 (X800 after flash gives analog signal only, Fire is Dual DVI and both work).
Best "bang for buck" flashed card is Radeon 9800.

Again, if soldering doesn't scare you, consider OCing this FW800 a little.
If you'll need any help or directions - just ask

 

[sgrddy]

It's got the max ram now. I almost forgot about my old Athlon64 machine that had some OCZ 184-pin sticks. Nice shiny copper ones too. So I stuck 2 of those in the Mac along side its original sticks - 2Gb now!

I can't say that I've noticed any performance jump, but I haven't done much other than web-surfing and iTunes, etc with it. Any situations which this additional ram would be especially helpful? I don't use Photoshop or anything like that. Would it make any difference with Open Office or MS Office 2008?

 

[raysfan81]

Very nice! I got my single 1.25 for about that price and I love it! I would recommend increasing the bus speed because a 1.42 or 1.25 dual is a significantly faster than a single processor. Have fun.