Joining the 1.8 Club | PowerPC Macintosh Liberation Army

#1 Fri Feb 5, 2010 9:26 pm Joining the 1.8 Club

Well, I gritted my teeth, got out my MasterCard and paid Sonnet for a brand new dual 1.8GHz G4 7447A upgrade for my OS 9 MDD. It arrived today and I threw it in the box and put it through its paces. And while CodeWarrior is diskbound enough that Classilla builds only speed up modestly, apps like Virtual PC and MacShogo absolutely scream. Shocked

(This Mac was originally a dual 1.25GHz).

That said, this is not for everyone. First, it ain't cheap (I am fortunate enough to have a reasonably secure profession and be a slovenly bachelor). Second, installation is a minor pain and I was sweating bullets as I tried to click the CPU connectors together without bending any pins. Third, the speed improvement is best appreciated only in certain apps. Fourth, it gets HOT. Fifth, if you're running 10.0 through 10.3.4, you need to upgrade because it won't even boot those (only 9.2.2 and 10.3.5+ are supported).

But, life certainly does begin at 1833 MHz per CPU. And it sure is nice.

#2 Fri Feb 5, 2010 9:31 pm

Wow. I'd love to see some benchmarks comparing it to a dual 1.8GHz G5...

Power to the PowerPC!

#3 Fri Feb 5, 2010 10:50 pm

I'd also like to see some benchmarks to compare to my MDD 1.42 DP.

#4 Sat Feb 6, 2010 12:37 am

That takes a lot of courage in light of the fact that the performance difference you would see buying a dual core G5 would be a lot bigger. In fact you're only about $200 away from a quad core G5 for the price of a dual G4 upgrade.

#5 Sat Feb 6, 2010 9:07 am

It does, but not if you have to run OS 9 natively. A G5 can't boot OS 9. Unless you can track down that vaporware firmware patch which supposedly allows you to downgrade a G5...

Peace,
Drew

Power to the PowerPC!

#6 Sat Feb 6, 2010 10:09 am

The patch announced by a third party with no connection to anybody with any real info about the G5... on April 1st, 2003 or 2004? Wink

I also would be very interested in seeing some performance numbers.

CineBench (if you have OS X installed on the machine) would be a very good place to start for comparisons between Macs, PCs, and the different types thereof. It does a graphics and a CPU test, which would be the things I'd most be interested in seeing (and which would be most effected by a CPU upgrade, or a swap in the graphics card...)

[Insert Cool Signature here!]

#7 Sat Feb 6, 2010 12:06 pm

#8 Sat Feb 6, 2010 2:08 pm

OS X is no longer on this box. It originally booted 10.2.8 and I never bothered to upgrade, but it will not boot 10.2.8 with the 7447As installed (10.2 and 10.3-10.3.4 don't know how to initialize them), so while I'd be delighted to post benchmarks it will have to be OS 9 only. Just say which benchmark you'd like me to run. I think I have MacBench and SpeedRun around here somewhere.

Also, Quadraman, point me to these $800 quad G5s and I will buy one. Smile

(I'm not kidding around, I need a spare.)

#9 Sat Feb 6, 2010 3:48 pm

I actually got somewhat close to booting OS 9 on my G5.

I put a full OS 9.2.2 install with the newest ROM I could find onto an IDE drive attached where the CD drive normally goes. I used Open Firmware to direct the G5 to boot from that system folder.

At this point you could even hold down Option and the Mac would report the OS 9 system as a valid boot system. If you tried to boot, the screen would turn a particular shade of grey for just a second, and then it would dump you back at the Option screen.

I believe that particular shade of grey may have been OS 9 attempting to boot.

Of course, the G5 is just too different for OS 9 to boot from, but it was an interesting experiment. I believe it's possible to get some of the first OS X only (non-G5) Macs to boot OS 9 using similar techniques.

Stop being so Complicated. Take a RISC.

http://www.adoptamac.com

#10 Sat Feb 6, 2010 4:43 pm

#11 Sat Feb 6, 2010 4:47 pm

Ugh, those look pretty beat-up. I appreciate the link, but the pictures alone make me leery. I can replace the case easily enough, but it makes me wonder what kind of not-so-visible damage they've sustained, especially since the liquid cooling system is notorious for not tolerating abuse well. Thanks for the thought, however.

Mike's flash of grey implies that Open Firmware was trying to find the Toolbox file. I bet there needs to be some firmware patching to get any further, however. That would be really dicey territory.

#12 Sat Feb 6, 2010 6:20 pm

#13 Sat Feb 6, 2010 6:42 pm

I'm sure experiences do vary. Wink