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What to do with a Quad?

DearthnVader said:
It's an AMD A9-9420e with a Radeon R5 1.8Ghz with turbo to 2.7Ghz.
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That's only two cores without SMT - no wonder the Quad can still have a (slight) edge in multi-threaded workloads. Single-/dual-threaded performance is a totally different chapter tho.
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DearthnVader said:
With a modern video card the Quad would still run Catalina just fine on 16GB of ram, it has the raw CPU power and enough bandwidth.
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Given that Catalina can be coaxed to run on a 2010 11in MBA with a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB RAM, I'd say you're on to something there :) However, it's all purely academic since there's no PPC build of Catalina.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
That's two cores without SMT - no wonder the Quad can still have a (slight) edge in multi-threaded workloads. Single-/dual-threaded performance is a totally different chapter tho.
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Given that Catalina can be coaxed to run on a 2010 11in MBA with a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB RAM, I'd say you're on to something there :)
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If someone could make an x86_64 Mac emulator that could run with some semblance of speed on a G5, then that would be pretty epic. :D
 
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Amethyst1 said:
IIRC @Lastic got Windows 10 to run in QEMU's x86_64 emulation on a G5. Unusably slow doesn't even begin to describe it.
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Yeah, I don't know the first thing about emulation and how to make it run better. All I really know is that any form of x86 emulation on the PPC architecture is slow beyond an unusable degree

smirking said:
Apparently, it is also good as an epic laptop stand!
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You have a good point ;)
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Not so - check out Virtual PC and DosBox - Virtual PC even works great on humble G3s if you're looking no further than Windows 2000.
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Ah, ok! I remember playing around with those a little, but not a whole lot. I would like to play around with them more when I get time. :D

Would my DA 733 or my Mini be more suited to the task? The DA has more memory but the Mini has a faster G4.
 
smirking said:
Apparently, it is also good as an epic laptop stand!
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:)

That actually worked out pretty well. I have a small block of wood underneath it, which is why it's angled like that. For cooling purposes. Lastly, and you can't see it from that angle, but there's a 3TB external drive behind the laptop.

EDIT: There we go, that shows it better.

2019-07-20 14.30.41.jpg
 
Clock for clock, VirtualPC was better on a G4, as the G5 doesn't do Little Endian.

Modern Qumu-system-x84 can do multi-threaded TGC, so that would speed things up a bit, maybe Windows XP would be useable on a multi core G5.
 
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DearthnVader said:
Thanks for everyone's replies.

I decided to sell them on, the Quad and the late 2005 Dual Core 2.3Ghz.

They sold pretty quick, $250+ Shipping for the Quad, and $100 sold local for the DC.

Hope the new users can get more use out of them than I did, I had not even powered on the Quad before today since Oct. 19th 2019, and the Dual Core long before that.

Don't worry tho, I still have a Dual 1Ghz QuickSilver, a 1Ghz iMac G4, and two iBook G4's, so I have not abandoned PPC.
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Are you located in the US? From what I've seen locally, people tend to have a hard time selling anything PPC. I have two Powermac G5's that have been sitting in a corner collecting dust for roughly a year now.
 
sparty411 said:
Are you located in the US? From what I've seen locally, people tend to have a hard time selling anything PPC. I have two Powermac G5's that have been sitting in a corner collecting dust for roughly a year now.
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I know this feeling. Until a couple of months ago I had all kinds of PPC (and earlier Intel Macs) sitting mostly unused. I decided to see if I could find people who could put them to use and found new homes for them.
 
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sparty411 said:
Are you located in the US? From what I've seen locally, people tend to have a hard time selling anything PPC. I have two Powermac G5's that have been sitting in a corner collecting dust for roughly a year now.
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Yes Red Springs, NC

Both sold within hours, one on Ebay the other on FB Marketplace.
 
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As far as PPC goes, eBay can command higher prices I think because of the layers of protection & recourse should there be an issue.

CL is full of PITA tire kickers & local sellers doing sold as-is cash biz. With life sucking buyers everywhere to waste your time, you’d think this would drive up asking prices & I think it does initially. None the less, CL has zero buyer protections and as such, drives down selling prices buyers will actually hit on. Would I buy a QS for 40 or 50 bucks? No probably not. Would I for 10 or 20? Absolutely.

Anyhoo, CL is such an endless PITA seller experience, I only deal with eBay. Glad you sold your quad for a nice price & you know it is going to someone who values it enough to pay 100+ for it.

Yanno the old saying “money talks & BS walks” rings true here, especially when securing a nice home for a nice quad.
 
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RhianB said:
As far as PPC goes, eBay can command higher prices I think because of the layers of protection & recourse should there be an issue.

CL is full of PITA tire kickers & local sellers doing sold as-is cash biz. With life sucking buyers everywhere to waste your time, you’d think this would drive up asking prices & I think it does initially. None the less, CL has zero buyer protections and as such, drives down selling prices buyers will actually hit on. Would I buy a QS for 40 or 50 bucks? No probably not. Would I for 10 or 20? Absolutely.

Anyhoo, CL is such an endless PITA seller experience, I only deal with eBay. Glad you sold your quad for a nice price & you know it is going to someone who values it enough to pay 100+ for it.

Yanno the old saying “money talks & BS walks” rings true here, especially when securing a nice home for a nice quad.
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I am becoming more annoyed with Ebay sellers. Especially those who are "accepting offers". I've made numerous, fair offers which were responded to with ridiculous counter offers. Two examples: I made an offer for a new MBP battery. Seller countered with nine cents off the $36.09 BIN price. The other was a Mac keyboard, seller countered with twenty-five cents off the $23.50 BIN price. These were ridiculous counter offers (as an FYI I offered $35.00 for the battery and $21.00 for the keyboard).

Another issue was shadow bidding where the seller bids up an item. I was bidding on a Magic Mouse 2 and was out bid. Fine, I decided I'd move on an used BIN to purchase an a different one. Seller for the auction cancelled the bids of the highest bidder thus bring me back into the auction as the highest bidder. Ridiculous.

I much prefer CL over Ebay. While Ebay offers buyer protection it's necessary as you don't have an opportunity to inspect an item before purchase, there's a risk the seller will send you something different (or not at all), etc. There's a lot more risk conducting transactions remotely. Situations that don't exist with in person meetings. Likewise all my sales are "as-is" as I give a buyer every opportunity to fully inspect and test anything I sell.
 
RhianB said:
As far as PPC goes, eBay can command higher prices I think because of the layers of protection & recourse should there be an issue.

CL is full of PITA tire kickers & local sellers doing sold as-is cash biz. With life sucking buyers everywhere to waste your time, you’d think this would drive up asking prices & I think it does initially. None the less, CL has zero buyer protections and as such, drives down selling prices buyers will actually hit on. Would I buy a QS for 40 or 50 bucks? No probably not. Would I for 10 or 20? Absolutely.

Anyhoo, CL is such an endless PITA seller experience, I only deal with eBay. Glad you sold your quad for a nice price & you know it is going to someone who values it enough to pay 100+ for it.

Yanno the old saying “money talks & BS walks” rings true here, especially when securing a nice home for a nice quad.
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I actually sell on eBay full time, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna put these behemoth's in a box, and ship them anywhere. Far too fragile IMHO. Craigslist can be a pain in the butt, no doubt, but it's the easiest way to sell larger items if you don't mind brushing off the hagglers and tire kickers.
 
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sparty411 said:
I actually sell on eBay full time, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna put these behemoth's in a box, and ship them anywhere. Far too fragile IMHO. Craigslist can be a pain in the butt, no doubt, but it's the easiest way to sell larger items if you don't mind brushing off the hagglers and tire kickers.
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I typically am selling parts, not the machines themselves, making shipping pretty easy for me. Unless you have the original box, shipping one is indeed a tough proposition - something I’d not farm out. I wouldn’t trust anyone except myself to pack one properly if I were to sell a whole machine.

CL has been such a bad experience, I just ignore it completely as a seller. As always YMMV.
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
Yeah, I don't know the first thing about emulation and how to make it run better. All I really know is that any form of x86 emulation on the PPC architecture is slow beyond an unusable degree

tried Win 2000 and it’s fast on a quad, XP somewhat slower, windows 7 ?


You have a good point ;)
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