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Powermac G4 Cube 450Mhz

Macman756

Macman756

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
544
0
Atlanta, GA
I have a G4 Cube, 450Mhz, with 256 RAM. I single 256 not two 128s. System Profiler says its PC100. I want to add two 512s for a total of 1.25GB. Should I get PC100 only? Or is PC133 OK? Also, it will be added to the PC100 256. And, Can leopard go on here? Thanks
 
PC 133 memory will do, as they "clock down" to 100 MHz.

Your memory won't be the problem regarding Leopard, but your CPU speed will be. Leopard needs 867 MHz G4.... but if you can Google you will find a *hack* to get it working on lower clocked CPU speeds.
However... that minimal clock speed isn't there just for the fun of it. Leopard simply needs more horsepower than Tiger. You might find Leopard ruing a bit too slow for you liking on a G4 @ 450 MHz. :apple:
 
OK, So no problem with PC100/PC133? OK, well the reason I wanted to know about Leopard is I am going to sell it and wanted the best OS on there. Any idea what this is worth? It is a 450Mhz, 20GB HD, 256MB RAM (or 1.25GB) Pro keyboard/mouse, Harmon Karden Speakers, and Apple Studio 15" LCD Display. All with original boxes. Thanks!
 
Oh how times change. I remember lusting after a Cube in John Lewis many years ago. Still an iconic computer.

But - any old Mini will destroy the Cube in all areas. Any value will be for the design not how fast you can make it run. Would be cool as a music server if it can handle iTunes :D Look real cool with my music set up.

You can fit a Mini inside the Cube. That is the best way to upgrade it.
 
Mac OS X 10.5 requires an 867MHz CPU to install off the DVD, but you could pull the hard drive, install it using another machine, then put the HD back in the Cube. There is a way to hack the installer, but you'll have to do a Google search for that.

Leopard will run, but you wont be happy.

10.4.11 is the best OS for a Cube, IMHO. I have it installed on my Cube - with a 1.7GHz PPC7447 (1MB L2), GeForce 6200 video card, a 120GB HD and 1GB of RAM. Runs well for basic web, email, office apps, etc., but things like Flash video will really show the age of the Cube as it'll get hung up on the measly 100MHz bus.
 
So if I can get PC100 or PC133 for the same price, which one should I get? (I have one 256mb pc100 in there now.
 
I'm not sure if you are planning to buy RAM to install in the Cube that you will get your money back when you sell.

I have a Cube with 1.25GB (could only scrape up two 512MB sticks) and it runs 10.4 OK.

With the Mini's performance the Cube is really more of a show piece so to speak.
I have mine setup and it always gets my PC friends attention.
 
I read once that it could happen that some PC133 lack the SPD timings for 100 MHz, so maybe PC133 would be riskier, but the Cube takes its timings from the first slot. If it's safe to leave original Apple RAM (which was CAS 2) on the first slot, depends on whether that PC133 memory behaves as CAS 2 at 100MHz, but I don't know how to tell for sure.
It's just easier to buy PC100 RAM and if it's CAS 3, put it in the first slot. If it's CAS 2, any of the sticks should be OK there (again, assuming the memory you have now is CAS 2).

PPCs Mac are picky about RAM. If it's not Apple-certified there's a nontrivial chance that it will not work.

And high-density RAM does not work at all in the Cube.
 
xraydoc said:
Mac OS X 10.5 requires an 867MHz CPU to install off the DVD, but you could pull the hard drive, install it using another machine, then put the HD back in the Cube. There is a way to hack the installer, but you'll have to do a Google search for that.

Leopard will run, but you wont be happy.

10.4.11 is the best OS for a Cube, IMHO. I have it installed on my Cube - with a 1.7GHz PPC7447 (1MB L2), GeForce 6200 video card, a 120GB HD and 1GB of RAM. Runs well for basic web, email, office apps, etc., but things like Flash video will really show the age of the Cube as it'll get hung up on the measly 100MHz bus.
Click to expand...

It's REALLY simple to install Leopard on sub-867 hardware using OpenFirmware to simply spoof the cpu speed during an install. I did it BEFORE I got my 1.8GHz 7448 G4 upgrade card when I still had a dual 533 G4 setup. The CPU is NOT the issue with Leopard performance for the most part. In fact, the CPU performance ratings with X-Bench are HIGHER in Leopard than Tiger. The problem is the graphics systems.

You need a decent GPU for Leopard to run smoothly. Leopard ran like crap even after I got the 1.8GHz CPU and 1.5GB of ram (with the ATI Rage128 still in it; although performance DOUBLED and became 'acceptable' once I copied over the KEXTS from Tiger to Leopard for the Rage 128, although it was still way slower than in Tiger which ran pretty decent for most 2D things with that ancient card). With an ATI 9800 Pro installed, Leopard runs pretty smooth now, although Tiger is still faster no matter how you dice and that's just as true with a Mac Pro as a Cube. It's just more noticeable on slower machines. But Apple's 867MHz check is dubious, at best, IMO. They'd be better off with a GPU check. And it's almost unforgivable that they didn't include a lot of fully working KEXTS from Tiger in Leopard for compatibility. Even the RAGE 128 ran acceptably once you copied the KEXTS over (the kext is the 'driver' for all intensive purposes). It ran 8x faster graphically at that point.

So you can try fooling Leopard to install, but do it on a different partition and/or at least copy/backup the Tiger kexts for whatever graphics card you are using and then paste them into Leopard and THAT will make it functional more than anything else.

However, I question the NEED for Leopard. While I have Leopard 10.5.5 installed on a different partition here, I don't really use it. Tiger is faster and has Classic support for older software and games and so unless Apple stops updating iTunes for Tiger or something, I'll probably keep on using it. Handbrake is the only software I have that won't run under Tiger and frankly, it's better off running on my PC anyway. With Leopard, I get no usable improvements (save maybe Spaces which isn't really all THAT great) and I lose Classic and get slower operation. I need a real REASON to use Leopard. Like I said, it'll probably happen when I can't get iTunes updates anymore (since I use that PowerMac for my whole house audio system). Usefulness wise, Leopard is overrated. What it loses (Classic) is a far larger loss than the few tiny improvements (noticeable in day-to-day use) that it gains, IMO.

I don't even like Time Machine; I find Carbon Copy Cloner to be VASTLY preferable for whole hard drive backups (it makes BOOTABLE clone duplicates for goodness sake; you don't get THAT with Time Machine; if my hard drive goes bad, I just boot off the backup drive and then copy the system back over to the new replacement and it's like it never happened and it can do incremental updates as well so a typical backup only takes 5-10 minutes once every week or two or after major system additions).
 
Macman756 said:
OK, So no problem with PC100/PC133? OK, well the reason I wanted to know about Leopard is I am going to sell it and wanted the best OS on there. Any idea what this is worth? It is a 450Mhz, 20GB HD, 256MB RAM (or 1.25GB) Pro keyboard/mouse, Harmon Karden Speakers, and Apple Studio 15" LCD Display. All with original boxes. Thanks!
Click to expand...
You might trick someone into paying $400 for it. Probably not really worth more than $300 to be honest. The cubes have come down A LOT in price over the past 2 years. Its easy to get one for around $200 on eBay. Your LCD probably adds $60 to that and then some more for the boxes and speakers. If you do a really nice writeup and post good pics, then you can get top dollar, but you'd better make it sound special. If you had a 120Gb hard drive in there, a top end graphics card, CPU upgrade, and the 17" or bigger LCD you would get a lot more.
 
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