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What PPC Mac do you recommend?

zen.state said:
I mistook your first line for sarcasm. :)
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Im not that inventive at 1am UK time xD

MacHamster68 said:
yes i did read that , but the OP said only he got a eMac (usb 2.0 ) and there are 3 of them the 1.0ghz , tha 1.25ghz both with the ati 9200 (32mb vram)
and the 1.42ghz with the ati 9600 (64 vram )

he also said what the computer will be used for


and for his usage of light video editing the1.42 with ati 9600 with 64mb vram is better suited definitely
as i know it i run the full AVID suit on 2 of mine without trouble or hickups

so i cant see anything here listed that a eMac 1.42ghz with 2gb ram and the ati 9600 could not manage even without overclocking
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For any form of video editing, I would recommend against an eMac, even the last gen, just as a cheaper MDD will get the job done "Just as well" (A Dual 867/1Ghz MDD will do as good a job as a 1.42 eMac, and provides room for expansion should the OP want to do more complex video editing by adding used PCI Video Input cards, which can be had used very cheaply nowadays).
 
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I am not a fan at all of all in one computers but I do have a soft spot for the emac. To me it's very aesthetic and balanced.

Problem is that is the display goes then you're basically stuff with a useless computer. Does anyone know if you can use an external display only on it? Meaning in the same sense of how you dock a laptop at a desk and close it.
 
zen.state said:
I am not a fan at all of all in one computers but I do have a soft spot for the emac. To me it's very aesthetic and balanced.

Problem is that is the display goes then you're basically stuff with a useless computer. Does anyone know if you can use an external display only on it? Meaning in the same sense of how you dock a laptop at a desk and close it.
Click to expand...

If the display goes but the video circuitry is fine, the external display port should work just fine as a "Display Mirror" of the internal display, but I think you have to have it connected internally to work, as in the iMac G3, but Im not totally sure of that.
 
zen.state said:
I am not a fan at all of all in one computers but I do have a soft spot for the emac. To me it's very aesthetic and balanced.

Problem is that is the display goes then you're basically stuff with a useless computer. Does anyone know if you can use an external display only on it? Meaning in the same sense of how you dock a laptop at a desk and close it.
Click to expand...

The emac only supports display mirroring. So, if the display dies, you can use an external one. Though, through open firmware modifications, you can make it extend the display. This was Apple's way of making users who want extended desktops buy higher end systems.
 
I will cast my vote for a Dual 2.0 G5. The PowerPC 970FX G5 (codename Niagra) has had a great track record at my previous job's graphics department. I would avoid the Liquid cooled (as others have said) 2.5 models of this range, however the Dual 2.0 was really a good system.

They actually have been more reliable than early Mac Pro computers within that division. Many of them were plagued with logic board, and processor failures. Many of the G5 systems were resold to people within the company, and are still used in many of their homes as primary Macs.

I really miss mine, I want to get one to add back to my personal collection.
 
chrismacguy said:
If the display goes but the video circuitry is fine, the external display port should work just fine as a "Display Mirror" of the internal display, but I think you have to have it connected internally to work, as in the iMac G3, but Im not totally sure of that.
Click to expand...

The mini-VGA on the side connection panel wouldn't work as a sole display? I bet a master of Apple firmware could make that happen.

Man I am typing like I'm drunk. Writing stuff instead of stuck. haha
 
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zen.state said:
I am not a fan at all of all in one computers but I do have a soft spot for the emac. To me it's very aesthetic and balanced.

Problem is that is the display goes then you're basically stuff with a useless computer. Does anyone know if you can use an external display only on it? Meaning in the same sense of how you dock a laptop at a desk and close it.
Click to expand...


yes the eMac can work with external dispaly only as long as the GPU still works
see headless eMac mod's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1IU-QGnftE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z7Z1MvCIQg
 
MacHamster68 said:
yes the eMac can work with external dispaly only as long as the GPU still works
see headless eMac mod's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z7Z1MvCIQg
Click to expand...

If the CRT was dead it would be great to remove it and add much better cooling. Even add some clear plexiglass over the empty display hole with a custom fan mount for exhaust. If you used A good LED fan it could also double as a cool lamp.

The extra cooling would make over-clocking them an even better experience. Seems the 800MHz is over-clocked the most for some reason.
 
adcx64 said:
The emac only supports display mirroring. So, if the display dies, you can use an external one. Though, through open firmware modifications, you can make it extend the display. This was Apple's way of making users who want extended desktops buy higher end systems.
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thats the party piece of the eMac ...screen spanning doctor
and if i have to recommend a ideal monitor ..samsung sync master 760BF 17" hight adjustable and tilt and swivel and landscape and portrait turnable ,supports the same resolution as the eMac 1280x960 and its white too yes its dvi in but suports analogue input so just a vga to dvi adapter needed
 
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zen.state said:
If the CRT was dead it would be great to remove it and add much better cooling. Even add some clear plexiglass over the empty display hole with a custom fan mount for exhaust. If you used A good LED fan it could also double as a cool lamp.

The extra cooling would make over-clocking them an even better experience. Seems the 800MHz is over-clocked the most for some reason.
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the eMac 1.42 can safely be overclocked to 1.8ghz without added cooling , the original fan and heapipe are over-engineered especially the fan ,it had to get rid of all the heat from the crt too so apple fitted a massive fan to make sure the eMac stays cool even in the middle of death valley in the summer at full workload
and because of that i tried it you can add a zalman fan controller and get the eMac even more quiet as a iMac G5 without any risk of overheating and on one occasion ..sorry eMac , i forgot to switch the fan controller on and the eMac worked for full 3 hours without fan at all and its still working (ok now with fan again )
thats why i always say they are bulletproof and withstand any kind of abuse
but sadly i guess that was the reason apple had to discontinue them..they never did build again such reliable workhorses as the eMac 1.42's :(
 
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I have two questions out of personal interest.

Someone (I think MacHamster) brought up the argument, that the better graphics card and bigger VRAM of the eMac 1,42GHz are needed/useful for "light video editing". I heard that video editing and rendering on Macs is totally CPU based and the graphics card gets allmost nothing to do. (I read that somewhere and was happy that artefacts, blocks I experienced on EyeTV250 while importing videos, was not due to the 32MB ATI 9550 in my iBook, but more caused by the A/D-box. I went for a ADVC-300, which now does the job even on my iMac G3, 400MHz without artefacts. That said about importing.

What I am more curious about is, what would be the total system minima for converting DV to h.264 on a PPC-Mac. I read on the apple page, that iMovie HD 5 needs at least a G3 500MHz (nothing said about graphics card), but iMovieHD 6 seems to be more demanding (I did not keep that in mind, since I do only have version 1 (OS9), 3 and HD5. I have a copy of OS 10.5, where HD6/8 should be in, but I like using 10.4 on my ibook more and so am stuck with version 5).

Summing it up: is video editing graphics card dependant? What are the absolute sys. minima for this task, including converting to h.264 (no matter how long it takes. Though I experienced, that I sometimes need to do the converting again, because the files tend to get a bigger bitrate, then I chose. Since I learned some that use mpegstreamclip 1.9.2 have the same problems and others don't, I wondered, whether the CPU-power is guilty of breaking up complex convertings.)

PS: about the Mod. I am sure more of us had the idea to do it (me too with an iMac), but it's interesting to see such a mod done.
 
Cox Orange said:
I have two questions out of personal interest.

Someone (I think MacHamster) brought up the argument, that the better graphics card and bigger VRAM of the eMac 1,42GHz are needed/useful for "light video editing". I heard that video editing and rendering on Macs is totally CPU based and the graphics card gets allmost nothing to do. (I read that somewhere and was happy that artefacts, blocks I experienced on EyeTV250 while importing videos, was not due to the 32MB ATI 9550 in my iBook, but more caused by the A/D-box. I went for a ADVC-300, which now does the job even on my iMac G3, 400MHz without artefacts. That said about importing.

What I am more curious about is, what would be the total system minima for converting DV to h.264 on a PPC-Mac. I read on the apple page, that iMovie HD 5 needs at least a G3 500MHz (nothing said about graphics card), but iMovieHD 6 seems to be more demanding (I did not keep that in mind, since I do only have version 1 (OS9), 3 and HD5. I have a copy of OS 10.5, where HD6/8 should be in, but I like using 10.4 on my ibook more and so am stuck with version 5).

Summing it up: is video editing graphics card dependant? What are the absolute sys. minima for this task, including converting to h.264 (no matter how long it takes. Though I experienced, that I sometimes need to do the converting again, because the files tend to get a bigger bitrate, then I chose. Since I learned some that use mpegstreamclip 1.9.2 have the same problems and others don't, I wondered, whether the CPU-power is guilty of breaking up complex convertings.)

PS: about the Mod. I am sure more of us had the idea to do it (me too with an iMac), but it's interesting to see such a mod done.
Click to expand...

Technically if you want to wait for ever, any CPU is technically capable of performing that conversion, but personally I wouldnt want to try it on anything below a Dual G4, just for the time factor as the machines are so cheap. Also, iMovie '06 comes as part of iLife '06 which can be installed on any version of Mac OS from 10.3.9 and up, including on Tiger 10.4.11.
 
Cox Orange said:
I have two questions out of personal interest.

Someone (I think MacHamster) brought up the argument, that the better graphics card and bigger VRAM of the eMac 1,42GHz are needed/useful for "light video editing". I heard that video editing and rendering on Macs is totally CPU based and the graphics card gets allmost nothing to do. (I read that somewhere and was happy that artefacts, blocks I experienced on EyeTV250 while importing videos, was not due to the 32MB ATI 9550 in my iBook, but more caused by the A/D-box. I went for a ADVC-300, which now does the job even on my iMac G3, 400MHz without artefacts. That said about importing.

What I am more curious about is, what would be the total system minima for converting DV to h.264 on a PPC-Mac. I read on the apple page, that iMovie HD 5 needs at least a G3 500MHz (nothing said about graphics card), but iMovieHD 6 seems to be more demanding (I did not keep that in mind, since I do only have version 1 (OS9), 3 and HD5. I have a copy of OS 10.5, where HD6/8 should be in, but I like using 10.4 on my ibook more and so am stuck with version 5).

Summing it up: is video editing graphics card dependant? What are the absolute sys. minima for this task, including converting to h.264 (no matter how long it takes. Though I experienced, that I sometimes need to do the converting again, because the files tend to get a bigger bitrate, then I chose. Since I learned some that use mpegstreamclip 1.9.2 have the same problems and others don't, I wondered, whether the CPU-power is guilty of breaking up complex convertings.)

PS: about the Mod. I am sure more of us had the idea to do it (me too with an iMac), but it's interesting to see such a mod done.
Click to expand...

i had a eye tv thingy too sorry can't remember which one it was (silver aluminum box dvbt capable ) on my eMac 1.42 while using it as TV and did not experience any kind of artefacts or similar things just perfect tv watching experience and recordings
 
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MacHamster68 said:
i had a eye tv thingy too sorry can't remember which one it was (silver aluminum box dvbt capable ) on my eMac 1.42 while using it as TV and did not experience any kind of artefacts or similar things just perfect tv watching experience and recordings
Click to expand...

watching and converting are different beasts though, My PowerBook G4 struggles to convert to h.264 from DV, and it outspecs your eMac (1.67Ghz G4, 1.5GB RAM, Hi-Res model with 128MB VRAM)
 
I have an eyetv 250 which is a tiny aluminium box like MacHamster68 mentions. It has hardware encoding and decoding in it. This means it can run on an older Mac because it doesn't use the CPU very much. The small dongle one has no hardware encode/decode so it is 100% reliant on the CPU.

All the current eyetv tuners are Intel only. The last one to work on PowerPC is the "250 plus" which is an HD capable version of what I have. You can still find them on ebay for around 100.
 
Well, I do have the same EyeTV250 box like both of you (unless they did not do minor changes to it and kept the name). I know that it records in a mpeg2 transportstream (which can afterwards be converted to a diverse set of different formats). In my case I have an analogue Satelite-TV-Receiver or my VCR connected to it via SCART.
I have the artefacts, when you see grass moving in the wind or people running (this is also reported from others on the Elgato Forum, who capture NFL games and there the ball in flight causes artefacts).

Actually it is a nice product, but when it comes to those few moments I mentioned, I can see a difference to the image that ADVC-300 produces.

Oh, wait. Mine is named EyeTV250, but shows up as Cynergy something on the screen, but that is also reported as normal in the Elgato Forum.

OK, I will stop here. I did not want to high-jack the thread, I am getting to much off-topic now.
 
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Damn! :eek:

Looks like it'll be a while longer until I get this PowerMac. Plugged in the iBook charger today and nothin, dead charger. So far I have allotted $65 towards the PowerMac, and now need to spend 30 for the charger!
 
I have my MDD next to me. Even after 4 fans have been swapped for much quieter ones, even with some of the extensive tasks i put mine through, mine still roars. And that's the PSU fans. As i said, that's even after fans swaps and a PSU swap.

Tomorrow i am getting a scrap G5 to rebuild mine, then i will be working in silence and pure speed.

As for "Wind Tunnel" check some MDD videos on youtube to see what people mean. Sure they are great machines and they will almost beat out a Quicksilver hands down in sheer specs, but the noise will kill you.

Wind Tunnel video one
 
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