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Powerbook G4 15" 1.67+compact flash

N

Naavanka

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2011
13
0
Hey!
I was thinking about some mods to my "new" G4 1.67 powerbook.
Main thing is the hard drive wich grunts and growls from time to time, so i was thinking about a compact flash card with a proper 2.5 ide adapter replacing the soon-to-be-broken drive.
Will it be worth the trouble and money?
Some IDE ssd would also do the trick.
Halp please:)
 
You can try CF, many people puts them in Clamshells or iBooks.
PATA SSD is also an option, but I've recently found better solution.

This + 1.8" SATA SSD. Although didn't test it yet. I want to upgrade my PB 1.67 with Intel G2 1.8" using this adapter. 2.5" with regular adapter won't fit, but this one + 1.8" SSD will do.

From financial POV it makes no sense OFC, but I love my PB (if it's possible to love the computer) and love is blind and it doesn't look at the costs ;)

So, if you want to be my guinea pig, you welcome :D
 
666sheep said:
You can try CF, many people puts them in Clamshells or iBooks.
PATA SSD is also an option, but I've recently found better solution.

This + 1.8" SATA SSD. Although didn't test it yet. I want to upgrade my PB 1.67 with Intel G2 1.8" using this adapter. 2.5" with regular adapter won't fit, but this one + 1.8" SSD will do.

From financial POV it makes no sense OFC, but I love my PB (if it's possible to love the computer) and love is blind and it doesn't look at the costs ;)

So, if you want to be my guinea pig, you welcome :D
Click to expand...

Heh, thats one more possibility.
I´ll look for the CF card next week, hopefully even to get it in the ´book:)
Oh, im getting a new battery for this too, and pram would probably need a change too.
 
Performance-wise you would be much better off just getting a 2.5" SSD. It's low power consumption will also help out the aging battery in the PowerBook.

I have some experience with the 15" G4 1.67GHz and love it. A lady I do random tech work for owns one and I often use it.
 
zen.state said:
Performance-wise you would be much better off just getting a 2.5" SSD. It's low power consumption will also help out the aging battery in the PowerBook.

I have some experience with the 15" G4 1.67GHz and love it. A lady I do random tech work for owns one and I often use it.
Click to expand...

But that does depend in the SSD, there are some cheaper not so fast SSDs in the market too and i am, of course, in a budget here:)
http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?LangNo=0&ModNo=164This one is about 91€ here (in finland) and performance wise its better than the cheaper CF cards.
Next week i´ll know my complete budget for this project:)
Ebay is not completely off the chart but its hard (and slow) to deal with.
 
Naavanka said:
http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?LangNo=0&ModNo=164
Click to expand...

I have one of those in my Clamshell (32GB). Compared to its original 4200 rpm drive it's darn fast... but I would never buy it again, because of crappy JMicron controller.
My Clamshell is used only for iTunes and light web browsing. Small amount of writes, so I do not see any speed decrease after about a year now.

I use my PB much more everyday (Adobe CS, files transfer etc). I'm sure that any JMicron based SSD would have heavy "wear traces" after a year of frequent writes. That's why I'll go for G2.
 
666sheep said:
I have one of those in my Clamshell (32GB). Compared to its original 4200 rpm drive it's darn fast... but I would never buy it again, because of crappy JMicron controller.
My Clamshell is used only for iTunes and light web browsing. Small amount of writes, so I do not see any speed decrease after about a year now.

I use my PB much more everyday (Adobe CS, files transfer etc). I'm sure that any JMicron based SSD would have heavy "wear traces" after a year of frequent writes. That's why I'll go for G2.
Click to expand...

Ok, im going to record some guitars and rehearsals with the machine so it´ll probably wear out quite fast:/
Can you recommend me another one for that kind of a usage?
About 100€ will be the budget.
32Gb is not a must, 16gb could do the trick also
 
Naavanka said:
Ok, im going to record some guitars and rehearsals with the machine so it´ll probably wear out quite fast:/
Can you recommend me another one for that kind of a usage?
About 100€ will be the budget.
32Gb is not a must, 16gb could do the trick also
Click to expand...

AFAIK, most of (if not all) IDE SSDs are JMicron based. Their R/W specs differs depending on NAND chips used, but basically it's all the same crap :(
 
666sheep said:
AFAIK, most of (if not all) IDE SSDs are JMicron based. Their R/W specs differs depending on NAND chips used, but basically it's all the same crap :(
Click to expand...

Ok, but what about SLC and MLC, how do they differ?

Aint SLC the longer lasting and whatnot?

Should i go for a good CF card then?

This shait getting serious:)
I actually Xbenched my HDD in the mourning with the following results:

Disk Test 26.17
Sequential 45.23
Uncached Write 41.23 25.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 36.81 20.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 65.97 19.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 45.76 23.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 18.42
Uncached Write 6.54 0.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 36.87 11.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 46.06 0.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 64.64 11.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]

:rolleyes:

OR, go for that micro sata->ide thingie:)
 
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I just got an ide -> double CF adapter and now i am waiting for a Sandisk Extreme 32Gb 400x Cf card:)

Should be a bit faster than the og hdd:)
 
I think you are going to be sorely disappointed with the performance of an CF in a semi-modern machine. They are fine on older machines that have incredibly slow drive buses and have far less read/write going on at a time (because of the obviously less sophisticated and complex operating systems they run) but a Powerbook is at least modern enough that it's not going to be much of an improvement at all. The only thing that'll be fast is the speed in which the drive performance degrades.
 
bizzle said:
I think you are going to be sorely disappointed with the performance of an CF in a semi-modern machine. They are fine on older machines that have incredibly slow drive buses and have far less read/write going on at a time (because of the obviously less sophisticated and complex operating systems they run) but a Powerbook is at least modern enough that it's not going to be much of an improvement at all. The only thing that'll be fast is the speed in which the drive performance degrades.
Click to expand...

It doesnt have to be much faster, i was more concerned about the noise, heat and battery life.

I´ll post the results next week:)

If its not ok, then i may get that ide->1.8 sada adapter and a 1.8 sata ssd drive.
 
got the card today.

Results 26.70
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,8
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type SanDisk SDCFX-032G SanDisk SDCFX-032G
CPU Test 55.75
GCD Loop 157.10 8.28 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 28.59 679.40 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 328.69 13.10 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 67.71 2.23 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 32.74 5.70 Mops/sec
Thread Test 54.29
Computation 66.23 1.34 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 46.00 1.98 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 29.57
System 24.65
Allocate 180.84 664.12 Kalloc/sec
Fill 27.87 1355.05 MB/sec
Copy 12.45 257.18 MB/sec
Stream 36.96
Copy 39.02 805.86 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 38.57 796.93 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 36.54 778.44 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 34.14 730.27 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 58.14
Line 48.61 3.24 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 61.92 18.49 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 57.74 4.71 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 56.80 1.43 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 69.65 4.36 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 37.88
Spinning Squares 37.88 48.05 frames/sec
User Interface Test 18.05
Elements 18.05 82.84 refresh/sec
Disk Test 10.75
Sequential 46.29
Uncached Write 68.10 41.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 77.47 43.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 19.82 5.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 119.50 60.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 6.08
Uncached Write 5.51 0.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 2.15 0.69 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 331.45 2.35 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 126.23 23.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
26.70 is far too low for the hardware you have. A 1.67 G4 PowerBook should score at least 40 on xbench. One of my clients has the same machine with the stock hard drive and it scored a 43 last time I ran it.

Also, 10.75 is really really slow for a drive score. You would get faster performance from a magnetic drive. My HD score is about 82.

Were you running other apps when you ran it? You must have been..
 
zen.state said:
26.70 is far too low for the hardware you have. A 1.67 G4 PowerBook should score at least 40 on xbench. One of my clients has the same machine with the stock hard drive and it scored a 43 last time I ran it.

Also, 10.75 is really really slow for a drive score. You would get faster performance from a magnetic drive. My HD score is about 82.

Were you running other apps when you ran it? You must have been..
Click to expand...

No, no apps running at the time at all.

What can i do to make it faster because the stock drive were slower?

Just for teh lulz i gave the Xbench another go with the following results:

Results 36.25
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,8
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type SanDisk SDCFX-032G SanDisk SDCFX-032G
CPU Test 87.99
GCD Loop 158.66 8.36 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 57.31 1.36 Gflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 306.41 12.21 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 95.83 3.16 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 51.61 8.99 Mops/sec
Thread Test 60.16
Computation 70.82 1.43 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 52.29 2.25 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 39.79
System 37.69
Allocate 295.23 1.08 Malloc/sec
Fill 38.18 1856.31 MB/sec
Copy 19.99 412.97 MB/sec
Stream 42.15
Copy 46.65 963.47 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 47.34 978.09 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 40.48 862.30 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 36.17 773.79 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 77.57
Line 64.25 4.28 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 80.07 23.91 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 70.38 5.74 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 79.34 2.00 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 104.22 6.52 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 79.01
Spinning Squares 79.01 100.23 frames/sec
User Interface Test 29.66
Elements 29.66 136.13 refresh/sec
Disk Test 12.39
Sequential 42.79
Uncached Write 61.18 37.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 56.09 31.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 19.66 5.75 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 118.43 59.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 7.24
Uncached Write 5.73 0.61 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 2.68 0.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 748.20 5.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 315.86 58.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]

How can it vary so much?

First time it tested i had just booted the machine, now its been on for about 5 hours:/
 
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