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Power Up That iMac
JimRay writes: "A company called powerlogix has announced that they are offering a G-3 upgrade for those fruity iMacs. For a mere US$500, you can have an iMac running at 500mhz with 1mb of backside cache. Throw linuxPPC on that thing and you're ready to rock and roll. The press release is here
and the specs are here."
It's great when you can make one of these little cuties go faster, but what about making one into an acqarium, has anyone done that yet? I'm just not ready to porr the $1000 down the drain, so to speak.
For a list of distros, check Apple's Linux page. Of course, NetBSD and OpenBSD are available as well.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Finally, now you can have your iFruit and eat it, too. With a nice processor and the ATI Rage card that they come with, you can play a decent game of Quake on them now. (Yeah, you could install LinuxPPC, too. How cool would that be?) Too bad they don't offer 500 MHz G4 upgrade cards!
Whilst the iMac was at the time a decently specced machine, that wasn't the reason people went and bought it, and it certainly wasn't what Apple were pushing in their advertising campaigns. After all, it was meant to appeal to the family rather than the geek, and in that respect it certainly succeeded.
But surely this kind of owner isn't really going to care one way or the other about upgrading their iMac so that it runs faster? After all, $500 is a fair bit of money to spend on something that intangible to most people, and there isn't quite the same situation on the Mac as on the PC where if you don't have the latest CPU/graphics card/whatever you can't run anything released within the last six months.
No, it's a good service, but I can't see there being that much demand for it.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I don't know where you guys get your mac info but it is about the oldest in the world. If I knew the slashdot community was interested in this I would have submitted it a long time ago.
And F.Y.I. there are two vendors of iMac upgrades the other one is Newer Technologies.
Except the way Newer Tech does is buy your old CPU/ROM combo card and replace the CPU.
Powerlogix, My favorite Mac Upgrade company, has figured out how to pull the ROM and place it on the hard drive and then when you install the new CPU it will flash it into the one on their chip. Pretty sweet idea if I do say so myself.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
so, you take out the old, 200 or 233 daughterboard from your imac, and what do you do with it? throw it out? no!
you send it back to powerlogix (and get a refund off your purchase), so they can pop the processor loose and make another 500 mhz daughterboard out of it. i read about this a while ago in the mac media, and the thing that took so long to get started was that powerlogix needed to get a critical density of the older imac boards.
that's the only way they can upgrade the imac's daughterboard without some serious reverse engineering of the apple proprietary boards. pretty smart, if you ask me.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Since the iMac's G3 just sits in a standard ol' ZIF socket, just like any other G3, this upgrade isn't terribly spectacular. The only change over a standard G3 that I can think of it that it's got to be multiplyer locked. The "jumpers" on the iMac that determine bus speed and CPU multipler require soldering to change, so this would be about the only obsticle to jump over. But then again, multiplyer locking is something that's pretty common place amugst other *coughIntelcough* manufactures, so R&D probably wasn't too big of a deal.
In other words, yea, you can upgrade an iMac's processor. It's not like it's soldered on the board or anything.
As IBM, Compaq, and HP move their PC business to a direct model, the promotional soft dollars that sustained corporate resellers have diminished dramatically and now jeopardize reseller channel viability. Since January 2000, major PC resellers (CompuCom, Inacom, MicroAge, Comark, GE Capital ITS) have suffered significant setbacks. For example, since selling its distribution arm to Compaq, Inacom has received numerous customer complaints about deteriorating service and poor morale. Therefore, most Component providers like PowerLogix must aggressively reposition themselves as higher-service-level providers (e.g., inventory financing) or face major business viability questions (e.g., MicroAge declared Chapter 11 in April). Bottom Line: Large PC buyers should quickly build direct relationships with component vendors like PowerLogix to insulate themselves from further (expected) reseller channel disruptions. This will allow products such as iForce to add true value to the market instead of merely providing parts.
For $300, you get a 400MHz board with 512k of cache - a much better deal for most. $500 to upgrade an older Rev. A through D iMac isn't such a big whoop, when you're constrained to Rage Pro graphics and a 66 MHz system bus. But for $300 (OK, $299), it's a nice way to kick a little life into the old iMac. I may get one for my wife's iMac, and then set her up with ViaVoice once she has the processor to chew through it properly.
Just to point it out, the current 2.0 iMacs run at 350 and 400 MHz, but with a 100 MHz system bus and the ability to use standard SDRAM DIMMs (not the laptop SO-DIMMs the older ones use). This processor upgrade is only for the older ones.
The one other thing to keep in mind is that Apple is almost a lock to announce new iMacs at Macworld next month, given that the current line dates back to October with no changes since then. At the very least, expect a speed bump in the current models, with possibly more RAM added, and maybe things like a DVD added to the low end model and price cuts as well. Apple makes a lot of profit on iMacs, relative to most low-end systems.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
When did the iMac come out? I thought it was just last year, but then again, I have this 10 year old running around the house calling himself my son! Where the hell did that come from??
If it was just a year ago, it seems awfully fast for it to be *so slow*. However maybe if it's 2 years ago, it's about time. Goes to show that the release of the iMac was all show & style (not necessarily a bad thing, i guess) but not much ooomph.
I'm glad to have a cheaper PC solution, and allowed to buy any component I need to play the upgrade game. Certainly beats higher Mac prices, and mostly purchases that must include the whole kabang. It's certainly the deciding factor on my choice of platforms. Not only that, but if someone was willing to spend more, we can build & buy PC's that are server status and for business solutions... We've got SCSI solutions, RAID, multiple CPU's, GB of RAM, and more cache solutions. However, without a doubt, I could make arguments that IBM's miniframes could eat PC's for lunch...
Rader
I'm sorry but Powerlogix doesn't do that with the daughter cards, you are thinking of Newer Technologies. They do that with the daughter cards, this post is incorrect. PowerLogix pulls the ROM off the original board and flashes it onto their upgrade board.
CPU upgrades for the iMac have been around for a long time, the one from Powerlogix is actually semi-normal, instead of mailing off your daughter baord to be used in another upgrade.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
my mistake. that was newer tech that was doing that daughterboard swap. nevermind.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Apple will probably (sue them/modify future Imacs so this modification is not possible/otherwise behave in a fashion considered anti-social by the geek culture at large.) Pick one.
Well, if history has its way, none of the above will happen. Powerlogix (and a handfull of other companies) have been making Apple processor upgrades for a rather long time. No sueing, no odd modifications, no underhanded tricks. Is it really odd to think that Apple might actually *want* you to be able to upgrade your computer without buying a new one? Apple offered accelerators like this for quite a while, I'm not entirly sure why they stopped, but they certainly aren't making any moves trying to stop others.
It's not like they're Microsoft.
With one o' them, those lil' gumdrops would certainly need some cooling, wouldn't they.
So much for fanless Imacs.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
OK, sorry to reply to myself, but I think I have my iMac revisions crossed up -- I can't keep track anymore.
rev A - original 233Mhz
rev B - still 233Mhz, VRAM upgraded to 6MB
rev C - 266Mhz, no more mezzanine slot
rev D - 333Mhz
rev E - current 350/400Mhz, fanless models
I probably forgot something, but I *think* this is correct. The upgrade cards work in revs A-D.
iMacs are cute. I'd like one as a decorator, and if it ran Linux I could justify if as having some sort of useful function, even just as a web client.
But make me use a monitor that size ? That's Cruel and Unusual Punishment in my book.
It's called a Mezzanine slot, and is no longer part of the iMac's motherboard. It was there for the first 2 generations.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Over at MacSlash we covered the news last week in this story. We've got some more details, and some good links for more information.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Newer Technologies makes a pretty sweet iMac upgrade, too. Their videotape installation makes it easy to pop in and go, although it's only 466 mhz, as opposed to the 500 discussed in the article above.
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MacSlash: Your Daily Dose of Mac News and Discussion.
Seemed to me Apple didn't like other companies monkeying with their hardware. And as sue happy as the industry is these days, nothing would surprise me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
The new generation has a different case design than the first to allow for convection cooling. I beleive the kicker was adding RF shielding into the plastic so you could get rid of those big aluminium shields that block circulation.
So if you've got a first gen iMac (tray loading), you'll still need the fan in there (case fan, NOT a CPU fan) to allow adaquate circulation. But if you're talkin about the current generation (slot loading) you won't need a fan any more than you do now.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Will I retire or break 10K?
a PC of that 'class' would cost like, $400
A lot of the "$400" computers require you to pay $800 for three years of AOL or some other online service. This is especially ridiculous considering that even M$N is only about $10 a month now and that there is free DSL.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Then consider the goodwill that Apple customers usually hold for Apple as their machines last them around twice what a PC would. And how much more an accerator card adds to that.
Yes, this is true. Until recently, I was using an old PowerCenter 132 (132 MHz 604 clone of the 7[5|6]00 architecture. It ran well, but eventually I added a Voodoo 3, a newer harddrive (10 gig SCSI), and topped it off a G3-250 card (that I clocked to 270 MHz, and upped the bus from 40 to 60 MHz). Upgrade cost: $500 (half of that for the SCSI drive).
Suddenly, Unreal Tournament, SimCity 3K, and Descent 3 were playable!
Now this PowerCenter cost me $3000-some, when it was an upper-mid-range (or lower-high-end) model. The only things that have gone wrong with it are a bad fan at one point (easily replaced for $10), and the floppy drive died after about 3 years (no big deal; it barely ever got used). Over time I also added more memory (from initial 16, to 148 once it became cheaper), and upped the CD rom from 4x to 24x with an off the shelf one at Best Buy.
Now, why am i telling you all this? Because the machine is still useful. It still chugs along nicely, and it still outperforms my friends 2 year old P2-300 Acer at everyday tasks (and UT framerates). Nowadays I dont use it for much, but its still a reasonable system for everyday usage. It'd make a nice server, if I wanted to use it for that.
I dont know anyone who can upgrade a 4 year old PC, to someting that can still play some of the newer games.
- MaineCoon
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
One of the cool things about the Mac Shareware community is that there's *tons* of stuff out there that a lot of people don't know about. (Try PureMac.com).
IP masquarading takes about 2 minutes to set up with a cool utility called IPNetRouter avaiable from Sustworks for pretty cheap. (Shareware).
There's a solution for pretty much everything out there on the Mac, if you just know where to look.
(Also, do a search for Virtual on the pure-mac site... you'll find virtual desktops, too!)
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"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
That's my question. And the answer? No.
Will you be able to? Maybe. But not likely.
LinuxPPC 2000? Heck yeah! ftp.linuxppc.org, baybee!
-- haaz.
Thanks, I'll update the engine.
(I hope this isn't "another" post -- I was on a Windoze box earlier, which has the unstable and unreliable Internet Exploder.. bleh!)
:) LinuxPPC always _has_ been available that way, and always will be! Enjoy.
It's good stuff. We've been doing it for years. It used to be the only native Linux on the PowerPC. (MkLinux goes through the Mach microkernel, which slows it down. I think OS X does, too.)
We've been at it for years, as I've said, and we've done generally good work. We just released a new version of Netscape Communicator, which should improve user's security and general experiences.
And if you knew how badly Apple treated us, you'd probably feel better about supporting us -- and mad at Apple! (It's just a few people, really. but still...)
LinuxPPC simply rocks. It's faster than the MacOS, and more stable. And it can run the Mac OS now.
I just have one question: will Mac OS X be available as a free download? I doubt it.
-- haaz.
we have a pair of them here at the mucow residence -- very happy with them indeed. They are fine tools for many purposes.
I would be even happier to see the Bondi blue iMac souped up, and probably will cough up $500.