PowerMac G4 Fun! Part 2!

[LightBulbFun]

so those who have been following me over the past few years know that I have a PowerMac G4 Sawtooth, it is/was my first PowerPC Mac in fact

that many years ago I had upgraded somewhat, well I had moved those upgrades on a few years ago (where they ended up in another sawtooth funnily enough, which has been posted on this forum fairly recently, wonder if anyone made the connection!)

but recently I managed to my hands on the holy grail of PPC CPU upgrades a 7448 CPU upgrade, it is "only" a single CPU card, but my Sawtooth is an early one with a Rev 3 Uninorth 1 Northbridge so it cant handle dual CPU sadly, but this does mean I now have the fastest CPU I can physically fit into this machine

the CPU was sold as a 1.8Ghz upgrade but I have had no issues overclocking it to 2Ghz heres a couple geekbench results, Leopard 10.5.8 GB 2.2.7 https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2688060 and Tiger 10.4.11 GB 2.2.0 https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2688059

as you can see its impressively fast beating my DLSD's quite well!

so yeah im very pleased to finally get a 7448 and look forward to messing with it and posting about my findings on it over the next while



heres a picture of the CPU card, I plan to figure out the core voltage dip switches and see just how far I can clock this puppy! the CPU itself is rated for 1600Mhz and was made on the 29th week 2008

the card installed with heatsink

and stability testing with Cinebench

here are some screen shots from Mac OS I do plan to throw some more obscure and older OSs at it, look forward to seeing if I can get Mac OS 8.6 booting on it for example

I also treated my sawtooth to 4 matching 512MB RAM sticks (as the original 2GB this machine came to me with got tied up in other machines and the CPU upgrade made my sawooth hate all my other SDRAM sticks LOL)

I also have a Quicksilver hopefully arriving (if the ebay seller ever dispatches it) that im quite looking forward to, as I have Uninorth 1.0 machines and Uninorth 2.0 machines, but I dont have any Uninorth 1.5 machines like the DA/QS so im looking forward to getting one and messing with it

(it will be very interesting to see what my modified FireGL X3 does in one)

I hope you enjoy this post/thread and if you have any questions feel free to ask

 

[LightBulbFun]

yay got it booting 8.6 and yes it is stupidly quick LOL was actually pretty easy to get it booting 8.6, the sawtooth itself already natively supports 8.6, all I had to do was fake the cpu PVR in OF to that of a 7400 and then the Mac OS ROM image was happy to boot (and swap the GeForce 6200 out for a Radeon 9000, the Mac OS 8.6 ROM image is rather pick about what GPUs it wants to work with)

 

[Amethyst1]

What about e. g. 10.1? Would love to see it fly for a change

 

[LightBulbFun]

What about e. g. 10.1? Would love to see it fly for a change

here ya go Think its even quicker then when I booted it on my Dual 1.42Ghz MDD, however that was off a mechanical HDD where as this is off a relatively quick 16GB CF card, so I want to shove the CF card into the MDD and see how it compares, worth noting the Radeon 9000 Pro has no drivers in 10.1.5 but its NDRV works fine at least so you get proper rez change and monitor detection at least (I will have to look at the XServe build of 10.1.5 see if that has any drivers for it since the RackMac1,1 did ship with a Radeon 8500 as an option)

it says PowerPC G3 because thats the early OS X's default name for an Unknown CPU (its running in PPC generic mode) I do wonder if I can futz with the PowerLogix OS X 7448 NVRAMRC script to get it to make the CPU pretend to be a 7445 rather then a 7447A as it normally does, but i need to figure out how said script works/what it does exactly first!

(no public OS X version supports the 7448 natively, while earlier OS X versions up to 10.2.8 will boot on an unknown CPU later versions wont, so PowerLogix needed an NVRAM script to get those later OS X versions booting)


here it is for those wondering (note its diffrent to simple just changing the cpu-version property in Open Firmware, as OS X actually checks the PVR it seems rather then just looking at the OF device tree like the Mac OS 8.6/9.x ROM does)

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dup -rot alloc-mem dup 2swap -rot move 1 byte-load \

it is interestingly partly some sort of hex string

 

[LightBulbFun]

Yeah id say 10.1.5 is quicker on the MDD, im not sure if on the sawtooth with its 7448 if the L2 cache is getting used/enabled or not in 10.1.5 (I know its not in the OF device tree and since 10.1.5 does not recognise the CPU to enable the L2 by itself like 10.4/10.5 does then im not sure if its being used or not)

its weird to see 10.1.5 running so fast/relatively fluid, im use to OS X versions this old being quite clunky LOL

 

[Amethyst1]

its weird to see 10.1.5 running so fast/relatively fluid, im use to OS X versions this old being quite clunky LOL

... which is why I love running old OSes on ridiculously fast/overpowered machines.

 

[LightBulbFun]

... which is why I love running old OSes on ridiculously fast/overpowered machines.

exactly, same

now to throw 10.2.8 and a Radeon 9600 PC Mac edition into the MDD, but thats for another thread!

next up on sending old OS's off their tits, I think ill try OS X Sever 1.2v3 this ones going to be interesting because from experimentation booting it in QEMU and on my MDD in the past

I think it does have a physical CPU clock ceiling ie above a certain clock speed it just gets utterly confused, so it will be interesting to see where that lies exactly which is where the multiplier dip switches on the 7448 card will come in very handy for figuring that out

 

[Amethyst1]

worth noting the Radeon 9000 Pro has no drivers in 10.1.5 but its NDRV works fine at least so you get proper rez change and monitor detection at least (I will have to look at the XServe build of 10.1.5 see if that has any drivers for it since the RackMac1,1 did ship with a Radeon 8500 as an option)

I gotta try 10.1.5 Server 5T114 on my 867 MHz TiBook with the Mobility Radeon 9000 someday.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I also have a Quicksilver hopefully arriving (if the ebay seller ever dispatches it) that im quite looking forward to, as I have Uninorth 1.0 machines and Uninorth 2.0 machines, but I dont have any Uninorth 1.5 machines like the DA/QS so im looking forward to getting one and messing with it

pleased to report that the Quicksilver showed up today finally

twas a bit of a gamble as the seller described a Sawtooth/GigE in the description, but showed pictures of a QS, and I could just about make out what looked like 1Ghz DP on the spec sticker so decided to take that gamble

and as you can see it payed off it is indeed a Dual 1Ghz QS, came to me with 2x512MB sticks and its stock GeForce4MX Graphics card but sadly its been stored somewhere damp and theres quite a bit of tarnishing on the rear IO etc, but the machine does work

however it seems this has taken down the L3 cache, it refuses to show up, but whats odd about that, is normally when L3 cache vanishes, it gets vanishes because it fails POST for some reason and you can see that so by going to the diagnostics tab in system profiler where it will say POST failed on external cache and the machine will disable the external cache to let the machine continue booting

however here its not failing POST, the machine is acting as if theres no L3 cache at all in the first place, I had wondered if maybe someone swapped the logic board with one from a lower end Quicksilver (Lower end quicksilvers where not equipped with L3 cache and when you fit an Apple CPU card to them that is equipped with L3 cache it is not detected/enabled) however I verified the logic board is original (if anyone here has a 733/800Mhz single CPU QS if you could post a sys profiler shot that would help, it would be interesting to compare BootROM versions)

but while taking things apart (to reseat re-paste the CPU card etc) I noticed there is some corrosion on the CPU card's connector pins, thankfully the logic board's connector seems to be fine, but I do wonder if this is why the L3 cache wont show up

normally this should not matter as the L3 cache does not talk to the logic board, just directly to the CPUs however external L2/L3 cache is detected via SPD type EEPROM on the CPU card just like on RAM sticks

so if the motherboard cant talk to the "SPD" EEPROM then it wont know that there is supposed to be an external cache in the first place (this SPD EEPROM is how the machine knows there is an external cache and also what size it is and what speed/ratio to run it at etc)

so I am curious if thats whats going on here, that the corrosion is preventing proper communication between the CPU card's "SPD" EEPROM and the motherboard hopefully I can figure out how to clean up the corrosion on the connector and see if it gets L3 cache going again

but L3 cache issues aside, the machine does seem to work fine thankfully

I look forward to playing with it, making it run OS's and hardware it was not made to run etc (this is my first Uninorth 1.5 machine )

and heres a few bonus photos

die shot of course

and a general overview shot, I noticed after taking the photo just how alarmingly bent the graphics card is! not something I have done as I have not touched it, hopefully it will spring back into shape when I reseat it (and hopefully not fracture all its BGA solder balls LOL)

for those curious the shiny hard drive is a 10GB seagate drive with OS 9 on it that I installed for testing (the machine came to me with a non factory 40GB drive still with all the previous owners stuff on it! running 10.5.8)

 

[LightBulbFun]

stuck one of the known good 512MB RAM sticks pulled from my sawtooth when I maxed that out to 2GB with 4 new sticks, into the Quicksilver and pleased to say it seems to be working so now its maxed out

shown here in 10.1.5 Server because of Radeon 9000 Pro experiments

but looking at things online it looks like ATI did include 10.1.5 drivers for the 9000 Pro, with its retail 9000 Pro Mac edition https://drivers.amd.com/manuals/RADEON9000ProMacEdUserGuide.pdf

so will grab those (from here https://gona.mactar.hu/ATI_Mac/#CQ ) and install them to a client 10.1.5 install and see how they work with my 9000 Pro from one of my MDD's

(the Retail 9000 Pro I think is pretty much identical to the OEM Apple one so hopefully it will work!)

(I install 10.1.5 Server as I knew it had at least Radeon 8500 drivers for the Xserve's Radeon 8500 BTO, so wondered if I could add the 9000 Pro's device ID to em since the 9000 Pro uses the 8500's driver in later OS X versions, but that did not work, I can see the kext loading but I dont get any acceleration)


the Quicksilver also came with one of those generic ebay Airport compatible PCI wifi cards installed and I was amused to find its just a PCI to Mini PCI adapter in a party frock LOL

 

[Amethyst1]

(I install 10.1.5 Server as I knew it had at least Radeon 8500 drivers for the Xserve's Radeon 8500 BTO, so wondered if I could add the 9000 Pro's device ID to em since the 9000 Pro uses the 8500's driver in later OS X versions, but that did not work, I can see the kext loading but I dont get any acceleration)

It also has kexts for the MDD's/AlBooks' ATA-100 bus (whose name eludes me) fwiw.

 

[LightBulbFun]

those who have been here a while know what im attempting here

and just how particularly awesome this screen shot is

(if you listen closely you can hear @eyoungren flip his coffee table over 😄 )


as a side note I ran GB on the QS and curiously enough my score seems to be comparable to that of DP 1Ghz QS's that do have L3 cache that shows up

Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver) GB2.2.7 10.5.8 L3? - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver) with a PowerPC G4 (7445/7455) processor.

browser.geekbench.com

is L3 cache actually enabled and just weirdly not being reported ANYWHERE?

 

[LightBulbFun]

for @Amethyst1 it looks like the X850 XT's (well flashed and EEPROM swapped FireGL X3) built in ROM NDRV and Dual link DVI port works with 10.1.5

no graphics acceleration of course but its still very neat to see, interesting how it only gives me the one Rez, on my normal 1080p test monitor it gave me plenty of options and the Dell hooked up via the SL DVI port also gave me plenty of options (only up to 2048x1152 of course tho)

the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro PC Mac edition does not work in 10.1.5 as it lacks a built in NDRV and OS X versions this early require an NDRV for the GUI to load (I may at some point see if I can manually install the external NDRV from ATI Displays 4.5.7 into 10.1.5)

 

[LightBulbFun]

re-imaged 10.1.5 client back to the CF card and installed the November 2002 ATI drivers and happily it does indeed work with the OEM Apple Radeon 9000 Pro from an MDD and gives it full support/acceleration under 10.1.5

 

[Amethyst1]

for @Amethyst1 it looks like the X850 XT's (well flashed and EEPROM swapped FireGL X3) built in ROM NDRV and Dual link DVI port works with 10.1.5

Awesome, thanks for checking this on my account Now I'm half-tempted to send you a 4K display to see if it works too (at 30 Hz of course) LOL!
[automerge]1595520547[/automerge]

re-imaged 10.1.5 client back to the CF card and installed the November 2002 ATI drivers and happily it does indeed work with the OEM Apple Radeon 9000 Pro from an MDD and gives it full support/acceleration under 10.1.5

Presumably this means the Mobility Radeon 9000 might also work in 10.1.5, after adding its device ID to the kext if necessary?

Edit - if you want to treat your 10.1.5 to the (AFAIK) newest kernel out there:

Mac OS X 10.1.5 Puma on original 12in PowerBook: GeForce 4 MX kexts

A little tidbit: There's an iMac Update 1.0, exclusive to 17in iMac's running "their" build of 10.1.5 (5T91). It's been archived - https://web.archive.org/web/20021010172152/http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120130 - but as the description says, the package doesn't contain any...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[LightBulbFun]

Awesome, thanks for checking this on my account Now I'm half-tempted to send you a 4K display to see if it works too (at 30 Hz of course) LOL!

haha I would not complain about a free 4K monitor LOL! and yeah Np, I was curious myself as well to see what it would do (and yeah I was thinking if this works then theoretically 4K30Hz should work too)

also need to revisit 8.6 with it, because I know 8.6 will boot with the X850 XT, but back then I did not have the AT-DP400 for full rez experimentation

Presumably this means the Mobility Radeon 9000 might also work in 10.1.5, after adding its device ID to the kext if necessary?

Edit - if you want to treat your 10.1.5 to the (AFAIK) newest kernel out there:

that reminds me, the 10.1.5 Server shot of the QS with 1.5GB of RAM was with its Factory GeForce4 MX for what thats worth

also reminds me yeah need to see what device ID's are in the November 2002 "Radeon 8500" driver

 

[Amethyst1]

that reminds me, the 10.1.5 Server shot of the QS with 1.5GB of RAM was with its Factory GeForce4 MX for what thats worth

Why didn't it work on the original 12" PB then? Mysteries...

 

[LightBulbFun]

Presumably this means the Mobility Radeon 9000 might also work in 10.1.5, after adding its device ID to the kext if necessary?

it looks like the ATI Radeon Mobility Radeon 9000's Device ID is already in the Radeon 9000 Pro November 2002 drivers so in theory with these drivers installed it may work OOB? (sadly as much as I want one, I dont have a PowerBook3,5 to test this with)

 

[Amethyst1]

it looks like the ATI Radeon Mobility Radeon 9000's Device ID is already in the Radeon 9000 Pro November 2002 drivers so in theory with these drivers installed it may work OOB? (sadly as much as I want one, I dont have a PowerBook3,5 to test this with)

View attachment 937353

I'll give it a whirl

 

[LightBulbFun]

so after I bought the QS it was taking its sweet time to get dispatched by the seller

and I was worried the sale might fall through, so I went on the prowl for another machine to buy just in case (espically given how hard it was to find a suitable Uninorth 1.5 machine for sale, with shipping)

and I came across a 733Mhz DA for a good price, now the QS sale thankfully did not fall through as above and it did

but I decided to jump on it, as it still had some hardware I did not have in the collection and that I was curious to experiment with

plus I could just not resist having a high end DA to go with my high end QS (and I figured it would be worth getting to try and mix and match with the QS and see if I can get to the bottom of the QS's weird L3 issues, which I do plan to do eventually)

so it arrived a good few weeks ago now, but has taken me a while to write up on it as other things got in the way

but now its no longer 1000c outside I have finally decided I should do so

heres its main specifications, unlike the QS this ones L3 cache actually shows up! also shown in the screenshot is the DA's 4th phantom RAM slot such a shame they never did include a 4th RAM slot for a full max RAM of 2GB

it also has a GeForce2 MX which has been fun to play with as its one of the few cards with a fully functional TMDS transmitter that works with some of the more obscure/older OSs like 10.0 and OS X Server 1.2v3

as seen in this screen shot however, it came to me with quite an old ROM revision which was incompatible with my 1080p screen, Apple issued a ROM update for high res screens (bout when their 23 inch cinema out) so I applied that and now I had reliable boot screen

(before while the old ROM revision worked fine once booted into an OS, it would either not give me any picture at all or only a 640x480 picture when in OF)

however with the Video ROM update all works well now at full rez

however its interesting to note that older/more obscure OS's like 10.0.x and OS X Server 1.2v3 only work with the card, if I manually set the OF rez to something like 1024x768 and 1080p is not an option in any of those OS's (and if OF is set to 1080p the OS's dont boot properly)

I was able to boot OS X Server 1.2v3 on the DA itself (once I tweaked the required things in OF) as well along with its GeForce2 MX (predictably OS X Server 1.2v3 is running in PPC generic mode as it has no idea what the 733Mhz DA's 7450 CPU is) it is a shame that these older OS's wont work with my 1080p monitor at full rez, I was hoping to see OS X Server 1.2v3 at 1080p but at least I can see it with DVI Clarity

it would be interesting to get ahold of an original ATI Radeon, its the only other video card I know of with a fully functional TMDS transmistter that may be compatible with the older/more obscure OS's, so it would be interesting to see if i can get 1080p out of one under 10.0 or OS X Server 1.2v3 I should also dig out another monitor some time, im curious if the bug is because the monitor is a 1080p one rather then a 1920x1200 one or the such like (as 1080p, not 1920x1080, works that little bit differently that it can cause certain things to fall over, looking at you Mac Mini G4 LOL)


and yes

I did get lucky a 2nd time!

(for those who dont know the FireGL X3 is known to be very picky about working, when it comes to DAs and QS, with most members on here reporting no success sadly, hence 2nd time lucky as by some small miracle mine seems to work fine in both my QS and DA)

 

[r6mile]

so after I bought the QS it was taking its sweet time to get dispatched by the seller

and I was worried the sale might fall through, so I went on the prowl for another machine to buy just in case (espically given how hard it was to find a suitable Uninorth 1.5 machine for sale, with shipping)

and I came across a 733Mhz DA for a good price, now the QS sale thankfully did not fall through as above and it did

but I decided to jump on it, as it still had some hardware I did not have in the collection and that I was curious to experiment with

plus I could just not resist having a high end DA to go with my high end QS (and I figured it would be worth getting to try and mix and match with the QS and see if I can get to the bottom of the QS's weird L3 issues)

so it arrived a good few weeks ago now, but has taken me a while to write up on it as other things got in the way

but now its no longer 1000c outside I have finally decided I should do so

heres its main specifications, unlike the QS this ones L3 cache actually shows up! also shown in the screenshot is the DA's 4th phantom RAM slot such a shame they never did include a 4th RAM slot for a full max RAM of 2GB

it also has a GeForce2 MX which has been fun to play with as its one of the few cards with a fully functional TMDS transmitter that works with some of the more obscure/older OSs like 10.0 and OS X Server 1.2v3

View attachment 944968

as seen in this screen shot however, it came to me with quite an old ROM revision which was incompatible with my 1080p screen, Apple issued a ROM update for high res screens (bout when their 23 inch cinema out) so I applied that and now I had reliable boot screen

(before while the old ROM revision worked fine once booted into an OS, it would either not give me any picture at all or only a 640x480 picture when in OF)

however with the Video ROM all works well now at full rez

View attachment 944971

however its interesting to note that older/more obscure OS's like 10.0.x and OS X Server 1.2v3 only work with the card, if I manually set the OF rez to something like 1024x768 and 1080p is not an option in any of those OS's (and if OF is set to 1080p the OS's dont boot properly)

View attachment 944973

I was able to boot OS X Server 1.2v3 on the DA itself (once I tweaked the required things in OF) as well along with its GeForce2 MX (predictably OS X Server 1.2v3 is running in PPC generic mode as it has no idea what the 733Mhz DA's 7450 CPU is) it is a shame that these older OS's wont work with my 1080p monitor at full rez, I was hoping to see OS X Server 1.2v3 at 1080p but at least I can see it with DVI Clarity

View attachment 944974

it would be interesting to get ahold of an original ATI Radeon, its the only other video card I know of with a fully functional TMDS transmistter that may be compatible with the older/more obscure OS's, so it would be interesting to see if i can get 1080p out of one under 10.0 or OS X Server 1.2v3 I should also dig out another monitor some time, im curious if the bug is because the monitor is a 1080p one rather then a 1920x1200 one or the such like (as 1080p, not 1920x1080, works that little bit differently that it can cause certain things to fall over, looking at you Mac Mini G4 LOL)


and yes

View attachment 944976

I did get lucky a 2nd time!

View attachment 944975

(for those who dont know the FireGL X3 is known to be very picky about working, when it comes to DAs and QS, with most members on here reporting no success sadly)

A X850XT! Very very nice - jealous

 

[LightBulbFun]

A X850XT! Very very nice - jealous

Kind of its a FireGL X3 I got many years ago now

ATI fireGL X3 NOS on ebay

while I was browsing eBay for graphics cards to flash for one of my G4s I came across this http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-FireGL-X3-256-256MB-GDDR3-AGP-4X-8X-Dual-DVI-Video-Card-w-Stereo-3D-Output-/371194233061?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item566ce680e5 and as some of you guys know the ATI fireGL X3...

forums.macrumors.com

ahh memories

and then modified a little

EEPROM replacement and flashing X850 XT ROM on FireGL X3

So a few days ago a bunch of new soldering equipment i ordered arrived (mostly for another big project that ill be undertaking once that main part for that arrives) and one of the things i wanted to do with this was solder a larger (128K) ROM chip to my FireGL X3 and flash it with an X850XT ROM...

forums.macrumors.com

(the got lucky part was refering to the fact it works in my DA (and my QS) often times they dont sadly)

 

[Amethyst1]

it would be interesting to get ahold of an original ATI Radeon, its the only other video card I know of with a fully functional TMDS transmistter that may be compatible with the older/more obscure OS's, so it would be interesting to see if i can get 1080p out of one under 10.0 or OS X Server 1.2v3

I can't find the screenshot right now but a friend of mine did get 1920×1080 out of an original Radeon on OS X 10.0.

 

[r6mile]

Kind of its a FireGL X3 I got many years ago now

ATI fireGL X3 NOS on ebay

while I was browsing eBay for graphics cards to flash for one of my G4s I came across this http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-FireGL-X3-256-256MB-GDDR3-AGP-4X-8X-Dual-DVI-Video-Card-w-Stereo-3D-Output-/371194233061?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item566ce680e5 and as some of you guys know the ATI fireGL X3...

forums.macrumors.com

ahh memories

and then modified a little

EEPROM replacement and flashing X850 XT ROM on FireGL X3

So a few days ago a bunch of new soldering equipment i ordered arrived (mostly for another big project that ill be undertaking once that main part for that arrives) and one of the things i wanted to do with this was solder a larger (128K) ROM chip to my FireGL X3 and flash it with an X850XT ROM...

forums.macrumors.com

(the got lucky part was refering to the fact it works in my DA (and my QS) often times they dont sadly)

Oh I see! Sorry, I misunderstood. I assumed you just 'found' one inside your new purchase!

 

[LightBulbFun]

I can't find the screenshot right now but a friend of mine did get 1920×1080 out of an original Radeon on OS X 10.0.

oh neat! what machine was that on? and do ya recall if it was a retail or apple OEM ATI Radeon?

(as a side note, its interesting to note 10.0.4 wont boot on my Dual 1Ghz QS, for whatever weird reason it just wont find root device, no matter what I boot from, go figure! although I should try build 4S10 before writing it off)