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Indeed. Check out XLR8 Your Mac for details. (Reposted to make link clickable. We're nothing if not full-service here at Speechpoet, Inc.)

Since so far beyond is obviously not much difference here are some numbers:

Quake III with ATI 9800 Graphics Card:
1600x1200
G4 Dual 1.25GHz (notice this is slower than 1.42) 169.9 FPS
G5 Dual 2.0GHz 181.7 FPS

QuickTime 1.92GB Movie convert to MPEG4:
G4 Dual 1.25GHz Seconds: 565
G4 Dual 1.42GHz Seconds: 519
G5 Dual 2.0GHz Seconds: 396

There are a lot of examples herebut I'm sure they won't matter to your closed mind.

The G5 is better but not by that much. I do believe that it will improve significantly as the OS is tweaked for its abilities. The difference between 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 is far greater than any hardware improvement.

BTW I'm a huge apple fan and have a 180MHz G3 Beige Tower, a 333MHz Beige Desktop, a 733MHz G4 Tower (w/22" Cinema Display) and a 900MHz iBook. I will be buying a 15" Aluminum Powerbook next week and a G5 on the next revision. I don't let the reality that the current G5 setup isn't significantly better than a G4 Dual 1.42 get my pants in a wad (as it has apparently done to you).

A couple of people have reported to XLR8 Your Mac that their M-Audio Revolution 7.1 cards no longer work after the update. One mentions that M-Audio knows about it and is working on a fix.

That's the whole point of the PPC970's Altivec unit, isn't it?

Here, scroll down a little to see the CPU performance on RC5, and note how a dual GHz G4 is 2x as powerful as a dual 1.533GHz Athlon.

Extrapolate then to a dual 2.0GHz G5 vs a, I dunno, dual 2.0GHz Opteron... why wouldn't it be, if not 2x faster, at least as fast, if we want to be generous and assume that AMD somehow managed to figure out how to increase the performance of the Opteron over the Athlon by more than 2 (in order to take into account the fact that the G4->G5 increase is 1.0GHz, but the Athlon->Opteron increase is only 500MHz...)

The obvious ways this thing [the G5] should be different are huge memory moves: [snip]...the processor should be able to have multiple floating point commands being processed at once (in addition to altivec).

You are absolutely correct. Look at the benchmarks in this guys Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics caclulations... The 1.8 ghz G5 is more than 3 times faster than a G4 at small memory calculations and the G4 isnt even capable of being tested in the large memory calculations...

And he isnt even testing multiprocessors...or even the faster 2 Ghz G5.

Basically, the G5 and the motherboard its on solve all of the major problems the G4 had.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_fluid_dynamics_be nch/G5_fluid_dynamics_bench.html

You'll have to scroll down a lot to get to the actual interview.

Maximum amount of RAM you can fit in a Beige G3 is 768M.

The G3 will support 3x256M Dimms.

Have a look on Low End Mac or Accelerate Your Mac for some good pointers.

the radeon 9200 pci by visiontek (well, really any video card not manufactured by ati or nvidia expressly for apple's use - with notable exceptions like a few GF3/4 cards [see xlr8yourmac for details]) will not work in a mac. period. there are no roms, drivers, anything for said chipset that support the mac. a shame really - my b&w g3's radeon 7000 is getting a bit gimpy and i wouldn't mind a boost...

I just bought a Wallstreet Powerbook off ebay and I was afraid that it would run OS X reasonably because of this lawsuit. Well, apparently, the Powerbook that showed up at my door came with a ATI RageLT Pro card with 8MB of VRAM. I installed both 9 and X on the machine. 9 screamed, but with it's usual drawbacks (terrible multitasking and stability) and X performed surprisingly well. It installed, booted, and did everything I wanted it to (web, email, etc...) except Quicktime. Quicktime movies played atrociously! I guess that's what I get for not having hardware acceleration. But wait, there is a driver for the Rage LT Pro 8MB but Apple just never enabled in on Wallstreet Powerbooks you say?! Why yes there is! I headed over to Xlr8 Your Mac and edited a kernel extension to load my video card's drivers. It worked! Though there is still no 3D acceleration, now Quicktime playback is more than acceptable for a 266MHz machine and the entire OS is snappier. Apple could have just avoided this suit on several models had they just given a few minor tweaks to their graphics drivers. I don't understand why they didn't.

Now, I am not the original purchaser of the machine or anything, but it would be nice if Apple would either issue a refund or upgrade the hardware rather than just say "it's broken and we don't care" which is exactly what their response amounts to. It would even be nice if the Apple driver would detect if it was running on a B&W G3's internal controller (triviality in itself) and set the DMA mode to Multi-Word mode 2, but they won't even do that and at this late date, the G3 is outdated enough to where they have an excuse.

Incidentally, Mac OS X 10.2.6 works great on that machine. It blew up badly with 10.2.3 but they seem to have the bugs ironed out since. 10.1 was pretty crashy too but I only ran it for a few minutes.

Have you actually tried this? I remember some flack a bit ago about Apple pouncing a vendor for providing an iDVD driver for said vendors' DVD drive... Several posts on also indicate compatibility issues with iDVD and third-party drives. For most of my needs, simply burning data will suffice...If you've found the magic firewire DVD burner with iDVD support, please speak up.

Hmm... the article seems to have been archived, the link is no longer accurate.

Read it here.

-j

Since Final Cut Pro 4 requires AGP, something my 550 MHz G4-equipped B&W G3 doesn't have, I'm looking to make my 450 MHz G4 Cube my video editing station. But with RT Extreme wanting at least 500 MHz, Shake 3 requiring at least 800 MHz, and who knows what DVD Studio Pro 2 will require, I've been looking at upgrading my Cube.

However, I still have worries. PowerLogix upgrades don't work well in conjunction with sleep mode (won't wake up unless booted from CD) and Sonnet 1.2 GHz upgrades have been reported as blowing the VRM (DC-DC board) and no comments on where replacements are available. (Also usual fate of systems with unapproved dual processor upgrades.) Though at least one such report for the PowerLogix as well.

So, either risk my G4 Cube for around $500 (how much will the replacement True Cube 10" case cost?), or get either a dual 1.25 GHz G4 or a 1.6 GHz G5 with the rest of the optional features more-or-less equal for $1970 (no modems). Sure, the G4 only has 4X AGP and no S/PDIF I/O (tasty), and if I go faster on the G5 I get PCI-X, but the G4 does have twice as many drive bays (4 and 2 optical) compared to the G5 (2 and 1). That just may be my deciding factor, seeing as I've modded my B&W G3's interior with a PC's cage for more drive space (externalizing the power switch module) and want to bring over the video on its drives.

Have the G4s dropped in price since the G5 release?

iDVD 3 recognizes the Pioneer drives as "Superdrives" according to this.

I purchased my Mac with a DVD-RAM drive before the DVD-R was available. I swapped the DVD-RAM for a Pioneer DVR-103 and purchased iDVD 2. The Pioneer drive is recognized by iDVD, iTunes, andToast.

Unfortunately the more egregious benchmark was the Quake benchmark.

1. Tom's was using Q3A 1.16 instead of 1.32 (PunkBuster code is thought to be a little slower)
2. Tom's used set s_initsound 0 to disable sound while Apple noted default settings, which would imply sound was left on.
3. Tom's used demo_001 while Apple used demo_4

I wish Apple would be more specific about what systems this is actually for.

The firmware update is for newer Powerbooks and Xserves that use the Matshita CW-8122 combo drive. It updates the firmware to version BA21. Previously used combo drives are not affected by the update.

Check out xlr8yourmac for further info and reports about the firmware update.

Take a look at the Drive Compatibilty Database at XLR8YourMac which has a number of user entries on drives people have tried.

Mac OS X Version 10.2 requires a Power Mac G3, G4, G4 Cube; iMac; PowerBook G3, G4; iBook; or eMac computer; at least 128MB of physical RAM and a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card. Mac OS X does not support the original PowerBook G3 or processor upgrade cards. Verify your hardware is supported from the list below

Well, have you taken a look at xlr8yourmac.com?

They happen to have a huge drive compatibility database which lists tons of drives people have managed to get to work with Finder disk burning and iTunes by modifying configuration files. I have an *officially unsupported* Samsung 32x CD-R/DVD which now works fine with both, thanks to some minor tweaking.

I prefer Toast for these functions, but I didn't like the *Unsupported* label I saw by my drive in the System Profiler.

xlr8yourmac.com is probably the place to go for something like this. They've got articles on converting a Beige G3 and converting a Blue & White G3.

Apple's machines seem to use different voltages than what's on a standard ATX power supply, at least in some machines.

xlr8yourmac.com is probably the place to go for something like this. They've got articles on converting a Beige G3 and converting a Blue & White G3.

Apple's machines seem to use different voltages than what's on a standard ATX power supply, at least in some machines.

Step #3 - ATX Power supply

[Reminder: The ATX supply does not have 28VDC used on Gigabit G4 and later Towers for ADC. The pinout of the power supply connector/motherboard connector on the Gigabit and later G4s is not the same as earlier Sawtooth models. See my notes above.-Mike]

But if anyone can point towards any hacks to get iBooks dual displayin' please do :)

Here you go!

Here's the link to the XPostFacto page at Other World Computing. I haven't had any experience installing OS X on anything other than my 7600 (and an Indigo iMac at work), but according to the documentation, the following systems should work:

Apple PowerMac 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 9500, 9600, plus clone systems based on one of these systems, including Umax S900 and J700, PowerComputing PowerWave, PowerTower Pro, Daystar Genesis and Daystar Millenium.

Also check out xlr8yourmac.com, as the forums and boards there have lots of information about people doing strange and unsupported things to their Macs (and clones).

From xlr8yourmac.com come a few benchmarks.

Straight benchmarks
"Real-world" apps
Quake 3 and friends

I think you can follow links to the rest of the review as easily I as I can paste them. :^)

I believe the most interesting bit is how well the dual processor 533 G4 holds up against the 800 MHz and 1 GHz G4 upgrades with many tasks. In Quake 3 and many other tasks that can take advantage of multiprocessing, the 533 DP comes out ahead of one or both of the two upgrades (depending on how efficient the DP support is).

Apple has not done the entry level any favors taking out the second processor, I'm afraid.

From xlr8yourmac.com come a few benchmarks.

Straight benchmarks
"Real-world" apps
Quake 3 and friends

I think you can follow links to the rest of the review as easily I as I can paste them. :^)

I believe the most interesting bit is how well the dual processor 533 G4 holds up against the 800 MHz and 1 GHz G4 upgrades with many tasks. In Quake 3 and many other tasks that can take advantage of multiprocessing, the 533 DP comes out ahead of one or both of the two upgrades (depending on how efficient the DP support is).

Apple has not done the entry level any favors taking out the second processor, I'm afraid.

From xlr8yourmac.com come a few benchmarks.

Straight benchmarks
"Real-world" apps
Quake 3 and friends

I think you can follow links to the rest of the review as easily I as I can paste them. :^)

I believe the most interesting bit is how well the dual processor 533 G4 holds up against the 800 MHz and 1 GHz G4 upgrades with many tasks. In Quake 3 and many other tasks that can take advantage of multiprocessing, the 533 DP comes out ahead of one or both of the two upgrades (depending on how efficient the DP support is).

Apple has not done the entry level any favors taking out the second processor, I'm afraid.

I don't use iMovie. Apple disables some G4 realtime effects in FCP if you only have a 733 MHz G4. FCP also drops frames once in a while during playback. It works almost all of the time and the overall experience is pleasant, but I wouldn't describe it as "a lot more than sufficient".

mp4 is video.

For those not familiar, or trying to respond to others in this forum and don't know what to say: =)

IDE vs. SCSI article at PcMech.

SCSI & IDE Overview Good, informative, classroom materials for a university.

IDE to SCSI Adaptor Review of the ACard ARS-2000FW

ACARD Tech. - Makes SCSI to IDE converters.

I believe that the Lite-On was the first 52x on the market. Thanks to Xlr8yourMac.com, these things have had support in OS X since October.

I just installed the Carbon Sound Manager Update and when I reboot was unable to produce sound via my M-Audio Audiophile 2496. I was initially hoping this would fix some minor glitches that OS 10.2 re-introduced to the Audiophile. To my dismay, it cut sound entirely. I've already tried using the analog out as well to make sure it didn't break the SPDIF out only. I tried reinstalling the drivers as well with little luck. As of right now, I'm unaware of any way to remove the update. I'll test my other Jag install just to confirm that this indeed is isolated to the Carbon Sound Manager.

Do people actually upgrade Macs?

Drive/CPU/graphics card upgrade compatibility databases, and very detailed hardware upgrade and review articles with benchmarks are the real gems here. Front page has daily news updates for upgraders. The forums are good, but closed to newcomers.

The general feeing is that the drivers aren't up to snuff yet, but it's a neat idea and a relatively nice to work with.

BBK

You can setup a swapdisk under OSX, XLR8YourMac has had blurbs numerous times about how to accomplish this under 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. As I recall there weren't any major performance boosts.

Since you're performing an unsupported change to the OS, it's possible that something will break by doing this. The swapdisk code isn't being actively updated (NeXTStep era code), etc. while the swapfile code is, at least in theory.

I could be completely off-base on the last though - the swapdisk/swapfile code probably falls under the domain of Darwin, and people are probably actively updating both systems... Apple is just supporting the swapfile-based system. In theory they're doing it for a good reason, though it may just be simplicity's sake.

Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.

Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.

Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.

Even some of the G4s (cube) keep the fan off unless critical.

Most of the fan noise in the DP QS 2002 machine is in the power supply. This also appears to be true for the MDD PowerMac G4s, although their main fan is variable-speed and can get loud, like the PowerBook G4's CPU fan.

With a journaling filesystem, it may become more of an issue. It would still be a performance vs. disk space trade off though.

Well for starters there's this

and this

or these

these too

this too along with this

and this

Had enough yet?

http://www.micromac.com
http://www.powerlogix.com
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
http://www.sonnettech.com

I won't post in Apple threads anymore, since I can't keep up with the Mac bigots.

Whatever ......

Darn, did it again... here are clickable links. :)

Configuring cups for SMB:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/cups_printing_in_ja guar.html

Additional good quality drivers for CUPS:
http://www.allosx.com/1030154694/index_html

I just like plain text... easier to type stuff in.

Cheers,
-Alex

I beleive there is a util to enable Quartz Extreme on PCI Macs available. You could look on XLR8, that's where I read the article on it.

" How to use iDVD2 without an internal Apple SuperDrive :
I am unaware how many different version of iDVD2 are circulating, but I have already listed 3 versions. This is why I have provided three different patches to cover at least these 3 versions of iDVD2.
A quick reminder on how to apply one of those patches to iDVD2:
- download the patch file
- Make a copy of the iDVD.app package and open it within MacOS 9.
- Move the file "iDVD" to the desktop. The file can be found in Contents/MacOS
- Doubleclick the patch application and patch that iDVD App.
- Once applied, you'll find the file patched and the original file renamed to "iDVDOld"
- Move the file "iDVD" back into the folder "Contents/MacOS"
- close the (MacOS X) Package again and reboot into MacOS X to try it out "

I got these instructions from here.

-A.

The nice thing about this mounting scheme is it allows you to change your drive's id (SCSI here/or ATA master/slave setting) at will and still be able to boot unlike many UNIX systems I'm familiar with.

...but it's unfortunately true. Both Rage 128 Mobility and Radeon Mobility have built-in support for dual display. And it really can be done.

Apple does this from time to time. For example, they underclocked the Mac IIse so that it wouldn't compete with the more expensive IIci.

• info at xlr8
• info at PBZone
• info on Usenet

I have full support with my Yamaha 8424SZ (or whatever the letters are). It's a stock PC version that "just works" in 10.1.5. Very nice integration.

A good source for scsi compatibility is: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/scsi_.html

Three quick notes: 1. I'm not sure why people are telling you to wait until MWNY to buy. It's been announced by reputible sources that there will not be new towers announced there. They will most likely be coming in August. 2. For information on the upgradability of Macs (and excellent information on Mac performance), check out xlr8yourmac.com. It's a very informative website. 3. Unless it comes with an Apple Care warranty, I wouldn't reccomend getting your computer off of eBay. Try any Mac Authorised Reseller (an excellent list has already been posted above). Apple service is very, very good, imho.