I am Dutch so I understand the German language quite well. I will have a go for it and let you knowIf you are interested: I have in some other forum made a complete two part documentation of all the upgrades i made to my Cube and a third part for an additional CPU-upgrade with an dual 1.6Ghz card. I think, by now it is somehow "maxed out". Here are the parts:
Part one
Part two
and the CPU-part
Only thing: All the stuff is in German. So i hope you understand.
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Upgrade G4 Cube
- Thread starter Wouter3
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Just searching "si4840" on ebay from that same link I found the newer version of the Si4840DY: https://www.ebay.nl/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=si4840&_sacat=0
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It should boot into OS 9. For overclocking, if it's a Sonnet, good luck OCing it, they use some magic to set the CPU clock or something. Only a few upgrades actually used PLL, like the MDD/Xserve Dual 1.8 upgrade, which can be OCed to 2.0 by removing a resistor.
I saw those as well, but which one of the three listed at your link would be the one that fits the Cube VRM
Anything that uses the same package as the stock MOSFETs. Basically whatever looks the same as the normal ones. They all use the same pinout.
Thanks, I will order those. In the mean time I am looking for "chip quick surface mount removal alloy" and chip quick flush" to start my first effort in removing and mounting components on the VRM. I also ordered the Artmix VRM, so I should be OK. Hopefully nothing sneaky (unnoticed damage) has happened to my logic board.
I read your articles 1, 2 and 3. Very interesting. Congratulations on documenting this work in a clear well written way, although for some of the German terms used I needed to stretch my imagination or look it up in a dictionary. It certainly is well suited as a reference and I would advise you to translate it into English to reach a wider audience.
You have the same mentality as I have. Try to upgrade it to the max without compromising the essence of the Cube. To rip all internals apart and put an Apple mini inside is not the way to go unless all existing electronics were gone in the first place.
Unfortunately many of the components you installed are probably no longer available.
I have some questions though. Your Geforce AGP card seams to have a different pin arrangement or is it exactly the same as the stock graphics card in the Cube? Also, does it have a ADC interface for the Apple display? It seems that all Geforce 6200 on eBay have a VGA and DVI interface, And does it have the same pin interfaces on the board for cable attaching as the original card has?
I am also very much interested in installing a different wifi-card. I have an Apple airport extreme card but that won't fit in the Cube. You installed the TP-link router, which sounds like a good option, but how was it connected inside? And is it recognized under Leopard in the same way as is the Apple airport card? I just read your elaborate story on the installation effort of the TP-link router. Quite a challenge. As I have ethernet on my desk I do not want to block it for the wifi-solution, so I need to look for a different option. Would internally connecting to the ethernet 10Base100 interface be an option? Otherwise I could live by connecting the TP-link externally, so I could unplug it if the ethernet cable is needed.
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Depends! I was able to overclock the dual card i have by a small amount. The card has been sold as 1.5Ghz and now runs stable at 1.6. But on the other hand, the single card i had before claimed 1.7 but in the cube causing hard freezes all the time running this clock. So i had to downclock it to 1.6Ghz to render usable.
Not a Cube, but I have a Giga Designs dual 7447A that has been passed around to a few members of this forum before I ended up with it. It has jumpers to both set the multiplier and the voltage. Officially, it was advertised at 1.8, but with jumper settings up to 2.0.
I have it running now at a nice, stable, reliable 1.6ghz, and got it there after polishing/lapping the heatsink(which had milling marks from the factory deep enough you could feel with your hand). I forget what the previous owner had it running at-I think maybe a bit faster than 1.6, but it was rather cantankerous and he also had a crazy cooling set up in his Quicksilver case to get it there. Initially, I had trouble going past 1.4(I actually found an undocumented 1.33 setting that was nice and stable) but there again lapping the heatsinks got it there without any trouble.
On the other hand, I have a Sonnet dual 1.8, and it's a totally different story. It's as rock stable as a factory processor. I've been known to call it "possibly the fastest OS 9 machine in existence" since I primarily run OS 9 on it. As it's in a tower with 4x AGP, I can take advantage of a lot of other GPU options, although it current has a Geforce 4Ti.
Get in line on MDD upgrades
Unlike Sawtooth-Quicksilver upgrade cards(and ZIFs for the Yikes! and G3 towers), MDD cards are few and far between.
Truth be told, provided that you have a 167mhz system bus, the factory dual 1.42 card packs a pretty decent punch. The 2mb L3/CPU somewhat offsets the lower clock speed vs. a faster 7447A without L3. Of course, a 7448 with 1mb of full speed on-die L2 smokes them both
Also, OS 9 itself won't use both CPUs, but some programs can. Photoshop 7 is the classic, stereotypical example(Photoshop 6 can also with the MP extension installed-it's actually the only program I know of that can do asymetric multi-processing on something like a 9600/200MP). I know that I've handled big image files in Photoshop 7/OS 9, and while it likes RAM more than anything, stuff like distortion correction is a lot faster with two CPUs than a similarly clocked single.
I woudn’t see it this bad! The only thing that should be close to impossible to find today could be the dual CPU card, cube version, meaning including the VRM-bypass cable as well as the special heatsink-plate, needed to make contact to the cube's big heatsink (no, the stock one does not fit!). The more thankful i am that i recieved this as a gift (!) from some member of the other forum. But you found a decent CPU too. And for the other hard to find item you seem to have found some nice (150$) replacement.
All the rest, if patiently searching, can be found sooner or later. And in some cases for very reasonable prices. I.e. the last of the special, higly overclockable Club 3D GeForce 6200 i came across left ebay for less than 15 euros!
For the WiFi: There is no internal recognition needed, as from the cube's point of view this is a simple (external) ethernet connection to some router or repeater. If you take a close look to the pictures, you can see a thin black patch-cable coming out of the (empty) modem hole and making it's way to the ethernet port. But yes! This was indeed the hardest, most complicated of all the upgrades beeing made! You can find it step by step staring here. The hardest part was the "antenna case" as the TP-Link only comes with PCB-antenna and doesn't even have a port to attach something external. And the cube casing makes a perfect shield for WiFi. So it had to somehow be connected to the cube's AirPort antenna, which included ordering some cable only available at Ali Express and some resoldering of the stock antenna. But after all is done, you get rewarded with a stable 30Mbit link in a 5Ghz WiFi. Looks somehow nice against the 2 point something the AirPort card can offer.
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You seem to have a very nice one as at least the PowerLogix-boards already came factory-overclocked, compared to the printouts on the CPU-dies. My first single "1.7" CPU was labeled 1.450Mhz on die and the dual "1.5" even only 1.333. But in the end both of them run fine @ 1.6Ghz. So, as we all know, overclocking is a "per chip" thing: One can take it, the other does not.
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I don't know if I'd call the Giga "very nice." It seems to have been made not too long before they closed up shop, and there are some things that are just not quite up to par on it. The terrible finish on the heatsink was one of those-I have older Gigas(including a nice 7450 based one from @LightBulbFun that I think is at 1.2ghz now) that are nicer, and Sonnet is really in a league of its own.
This CPUs on this particular card are 1.25ghz, which from what I've seen is pretty typical for a lot of the 7447A-based upgrades. From what I understand, Apple was pretty much the only one able to get the 1.67ghz rated ones. Sonnet apparently twisted some arms, since I think my dual 1.8 from them uses 1.4ghz CPUs, and knowing Sonnet they were probably stress-tested like crazy to make sure they'd actually hold up at that clock speed.
Hardly anything for last century computers is “for sale” any more. eBay or Marktplaats is your best source right now.
"Nice" i meant, regarding it's overclocking potential. 2.0Ghz sounds fine for some 7447a.
Your Geforce AGP card seams to have a different pin arrangement or is it exactly the same as the stock graphics card in the Cube? Also, does it have a ADC interface for the Apple display? It seems that all Geforce 6200 on eBay have a VGA and DVI interface, and does it have the same pin interfaces on the board for cable attaching as the original card has?
On ebay there are many Geforce card available, but for PC only
If only it could meet its advertised 1.8ghz
solder a couple 7448s to it in place of the 7447As and it might
So this is what i completely missunderstood!
At the first reading i thought you operated it at this speed. Yes, dipswitches can be set to a multiplier of 20. But i think no 7447a can run this high. And if the CPUs on the card are indeed labeled 1.250Mhz, than even advertising 1.8 is a very keen suggestion. As said: My single "1.7" also did not reach it's nominal speed, even labeled 1.450 on the CPU itself.
So this is what i completely missunderstood!
At the first reading i thought you operated it at this speed. Yes, dipswitches can be set to a multiplier of 20. But i think no 7447a can run this high. And if the CPUs on the card are indeed labeled 1.250Mhz, than even advertising 1.8 is a very keen suggestion. As said: My single "1.7" also did not reach it's nominal speed, even labeled 1.450 on the CPU itself.
I have seen a few 7447Bs hit 2Ghz but its not common and they get quite toasty at that speed
generally only 1.67Ghz 7447Bs can hit 2Ghz and as @bunnspecial mentioned they were not very common on 3rd party upgrades, I suspected because apple was using up Motorola's supply of 1.67Ghz chips for themselves
me and @dosdude1 did manage to put together a 2Ghz iMac G4 using a 1.67Ghz 7447B tho
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/worlds-fastest-imac-g4-2-ghz-imac-g4-cpu-upgrade.2125765/BTW do you have a picture of your single "1.7" ? I have seen PPC CPUs marked 1420Mhz but none as 1450Mhz so it would be pretty interesting to see
A couple?solder a couple 7448s to it in place of the 7447As and it might
Oops! In this point i can be mistaken. I have no pics and it is build in somewhere else at the moment. But it possibly was indeed only 1.420.BTW do you have a picture of your single "1.7" ? I have seen PPC CPUs marked 1420Mhz but none as 1450Mhz so it would be pretty interesting to see
Pin arrangement is slightly different. It's an AGP 8x Card, using the 3rd and 11th Pin on the backside of the card for other purposes than the Cube which, as far as i know, delivers USB power over them. But this can be cured by covering them with tape or cutting the traces to them. Cube is AGP 2x only anyway.
Other modification having to be made is cuting the bracket to make it fit into the Cube’s case. But, as it is a small low-profile card, the rest will fit nicely.
No. See next answer.
Yes, also my 6200 is a (flashed) PC card. A 6200 "Mac Version" never existed. But this is not much of a problem, as they can easily be flashed. Most of them run the publicly available ROM. For this particular one i have a custom ROM patched, which, among other modifications, runs the card at much higher clocks: 430 / 450Mhz for GPU and Ram instead of the 350 / 266 most other 6200s run. This results in the card beeing nearly twice as fast as any "usual" 6200. Made possible by very fast Ram-chips, beeing only used on this particular 6200 by Club 3D. It's not that easy to find, as even Club 3D has three different breeds of low-profile 6200s in their lineup. But it's easy to recognize, beeing the only one with an active cooling solution. Further it has to be the 256 (not 512) Mb version. But, if one likes to max out a Cube, it’s absolutely worth looking/waiting for!
As i am not MVC, the ROM will be available for free, if you find one of these cards.
Actually I’m using a G4 cube with PL 7448 Dual 1.8 GHz, GF6200(has the wake up issue), SSD. I tried overclocking to 2.0Ghz but wasn’t stable, just 1,2 minutes after booting, it would be frozen...
[doublepost=1567177821][/doublepost]And as you someone knows another CPU, also tested Newertech 7448 Single 2.0ghz but failed to be stable. At 1.6-1.7ghz it was stable, though
[doublepost=1567177821][/doublepost]And as you someone knows another CPU, also tested Newertech 7448 Single 2.0ghz but failed to be stable. At 1.6-1.7ghz it was stable, though