[geeks] The ol' trusty G4...

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: nate at portents.com
>Date: 2007/09/10 Mon PM 05:17:34 CDT
>To: geeks at sunhelp.org
>Subject: [geeks] The ol' trusty G4...

>I've noticed from time to time people here have made mention of their
>older G4 Macs, and I just thought I'd mention some of the upgrades I've
>done recently to a Digital Audio G4 to upgrade it, and if anyone would
>like any more information about what I've done feel free to ask since some
>of the stuff is kind of obscure:
>
>Original machine was a 466Mhz G4 "Digital Audio", specs here:
>
>http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=g4da&performa=off&sort=processor&order=DESC
>
>- power supply upgraded to a Sparkle (FSP) 400W ATX standard power supply
>by creating a special 24-pin to 22-pin adapter by disassembling and
>re-wiring a 20 to 24-pin and a 24 to 20-pin ATX adapter (only side-effects
>are no ADC power and no Firewire bus power during deep sleep)
>- processor upgraded to a dual 1.6Ghz G4 7448 (1MB on-chip L2, no L3
>cache, i.e. the heavily delayed G4 CPU from Motorola/Freescale that Apple
>never got to use)
>- video card upgraded to a GeForce 6800GT 256MB, firmware flashed to be
>Mac compatible (AGP slotted PC with the ability to boot into DOS needed
>for the flashing process, patience needed to mask out AGP pins 3 and 11
>with scotch tape, nail polish, or something equivalent to prevent the AGP
>8x lines from being used for ADC purposes by the motherboard)
>- 1.5GB RAM
>- FirmTek SATA card, fully OpenFirmware bootable (I'm using a 10k RPM
>Raptor drive and a 7200RPM Barracuda)
>- Firewire 1394b (FW800) 64-bit PCI card
>- USB 2.0 card (NEC chipset, supported by OS)
>
>All in all, makes for quite a snappy machine that gives both lower end G5
>and Core 2 Duo systems a run for their money.  I only wish Apple made a
>relatively inexpensive modern system as upgradable as the old G4 desktops!

Nate,

So all you kept were the MB, RAM, and optical drive?

I am curious about the CPU and video card upgrades:

 - was the CPU upgrade very expensive?

 - What sort of benefit are you seeing from the upgraded video card compared to the cost of the upgrade?

I've gotten a bootab;e SATA card for my DA 466 MHz G4 (but not yet upgraded) - did it make a big difference (from IDE -> SATA) for user experience?

Lionel