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Dual G4 Mac Cube
ijx writes: "Those of you with a hardware-hacking bent should enjoy this - a Mac Cube modded to accomodate dual processors, courtesy of AccelerateYourMac. It seems that it uses the same dual-proc module as a Sawtooth G4 Tower. My question: will it melt?"
If you put enough fans in the Dual Athlons ....
they don't melt , should work for this too
and double as a desktop hair dryer
Now you can set how brown you want your CD/DVDs betfore it pops them out the top!
But seriously, a nice hack. Sounds blazingly fast. Maybe it would have sold better in this configuration?
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
No, it's RISC-based. You ought to try one. No heat problems that a small fan can't handle. Unlike x86/CISC machines, there's not a huge chip with (around) 100 million transistors generating heat.
CISC chip do put off heat, but it's VERY easy to control, and the wattage is lower than CISC. That's why RISC technology is used in many hand helds.
Modifying a machine to be dual processor without swapping out the motherboard? Anyone have any more info on this? The article was kinda skimpy on the details, it assumed we knew already.
RISC and CISC aren't technologies, they're design ideologies. And like political ideologies, they have been strayed from in the interests of practicality. Intel/AMD chips all use RISC-ish designs with instruction translation stages. And the PPC architecture has some very complex instructions (alti-vec?)
The reason risc is more common nowadays is because it's easier to design and write optimizing compilers for. Software issues, not hardware ones.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Given the rumoured low-heatness of the coming G5 processors I wonder if Apple's going to revive the Cubes or if Sonet could make an upgrade card?
Well, you can't really stick two CPUs in one CPU socket. From the pictures it looks like the chips are on cards that can be swapped out.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
So your latest UltraSPARC or Alpha does not have heat problems that a small fan can't handle. Right.
In case you didn't know, Pentium Pro and upwards are actually pretty much RISC designs with an additional x86-to-micro-op converter. So there. Crank your G4 up to 1GHz and beyond and you will have much the same heat problems.
I seem to remember a 'build your own computer project' (Byte mag?) that worked similarly. Imagine a CPU bus. Add as many CPU's as YOU need. Just stack as many as needed in a box. Well maybe not THAT many.
Ok where can I get a quad CPU board... Hell with that! Give me a 2^8 mod - would have to rename thou. Hmm.. Beo,G4,256...BfG2k anyone?
With all that artic silver thou, I would think that it would be difficult to remove.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Mig Mac a-stack
... Groans start in the lobby please
McDonalds would sue thou
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
I use a G4 cube as my primary development workstation, and I love the silence. If I can upgrade it to dual G4's, I'm there!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Notice the huge heat sinks he stuck in there? That's because it's HOT! Also, you do know that the G4 Cubes HAVE NO FAN right?
----- The problem with browsing at +5 is that everyone thinks you're being redundant
No way is Apple going to bring back the Cube: it didn't sell well before and it won't sell well again. And there are probably too few Cubes out there to justify Sonnet making an upgrade, unfortunately.
Apple's will be on to other stuff soon anyways.
..."The peak power consumption of the UltraSPARC IIe is 13W at 500 MHz, which minimizes cooling requirements for the chip and in turn a potential threat to server stability should the datacenter cooling/environmental equipment malfunction.
In fact, one of the primary barriers to broad acceptance of the Itanium by OEMs is its large 130W power appetite -- literally 10 times that of our own UltraSPARC IIe."
I am aware that cisc vs risc is a flamebait in alot of areas but risc was specifically designed to have less complexity in the chip in exchange for higher clock speeds. In many ( not all ) situations risc is usually %25-%40 faster on equilivant megahertz basis or can run at a slower megahertz and consume less power for a similar speed. X86 has alot of baggage in it and consumes alot more power then powerpc's, sparcs, and even alpha's and offers less performance or the same if its clocked ridiculously high. This would make it less hot then x86 cpu's running. I think the pentium4 and the athlon are almost an embarrassment to the electrical engineering community.
http://saveie6.com/
The G4/450's that are in this Cube only use 7-11 watts each. Compare to 50-70 watt Athlons and Pentiums, and you can get an idea of why this works without a fan. Standard Cubes run cool, so there was some room there. He plainly states that he is monitoring the CPU temperature with a utility app and it's cool enough. It may not work in Florida if you don't have air conditioning, but that's why he checked with the CPU temperature utility.
The G4 towers have a fan, but they are there at least partially because the box has room for three more hard drives, one more removable drive, and four PCI cards in addition to the stock stuff, so you have to leave a big margin for error. The fan switches off when the machine sleeps, though, and the boxes don't run hot. Also, the power supply is inside a G4 tower, but it is outside on the Cube.
Would this be a potential solution for the cracks that were supposed to be in the Cube cases? Get it just warm enough to meld them together again...
You're a moron.
Ok, enough of the boring stuff. Here are some links to keep you guys semi-entertained. The Cube goes into the Museum of Modern Art. For those without a NYTimes subscription, MacObserver summarizes the article.
Now for the fun stuff. Case mods! Check out the Kleenex Cube and the Blue Smoke Cube. Also, here's an All American Cube.
Apple stopped using ZIF a few years ago.
In the tower machines, pre-cube, it went like this:
G3 Yosemite - zif G3 processor, Blue and White minitower.
G4 Yikes! - Zif G4 processor, Graphite and clear, PCI graphics.
G4 Sawtooth - no zif, Apple used a large D shaped white connector and used screws to stabilise the board that carries the processor. AGP graphics.
G4 Mystic - same processor interface as Sawtooth, first of the DP series, with 450DP and 500DP. Also known as Gigabit ethernet.
G4 V'Ger - 466, 533DP, 667, 733. Same as gigabit ethernet, with 133mhz system bus.
G4 - Quicksilver - 733, 800DP, 867. Same as gigabit ethernet model with 133mhz system bus.
G4's from Mystic or newer won't work on Yikes!.
G4's from V-Ger and newer won't work on Mystic (133mhz bus versus the 100mhz bus...other differences..)
XLr8.com sells a dual G4 upgrade card, but it only works on Yikes! and Yosemite (ZIF).
I wish I had better details on where the modifier of the Cube got the extra processor card from a Mystic, and how he added the extra pad to match the dual processors. Was it just held in place with thermal goo and pressure from the retention of the heatsink?
of course it won't melt! Just to make sure though, Apple could reissue it with all the Alu parts cast in Copper, a 133Mhz bus, AGP 4x and a pair of 533Mhz 7410s. The ULTIMATE Cube...
That was classic intercourse!
Will apple lawyers sue you to modify their hardware?
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If Microsoft is the solution, I want my problems back
Technically, you mean...
"at negative 9.8 meters per second squared"
which makes it a lot clearer.
Hiya. I work for a company that works with Linux in embedded systems (Sun is, or at least was, a customer/partner/something at one time, so I don't want to name who we are out loud right here). We've dealt with Sparcs a bit, and can say quite emphatically that they are *not* (even close to) low-powered chips. Even their "embedded" reference board that we tested took something in the area of *80 watts*. Compared to the embedded x86 boards we work with (never mind the PPC, MIPS, SuperHitachi and StrongARM boards, almost all of which best the x86s by far in power consumption), that's absolutely hideous -- and perhaps part of why Sun's handhelds are using Intel's StrongARM chips rather than their own "embedded" sparcs.
Saying that many CISC chips are lower power than many RISC chips is certainly true. Citing Sun as an example -- bad call.
(Now, the system that my coworker was dealing with was evidently not the same one aceshardware reviewed -- but even 13W for the chip is way, way too much in embedded space. If you're looking for something to hold up as an architecture conducive to low-power chips, consider one of the examples I gave above).
Saying that many CISC chips are lower power than many RISC chips is certainly true.
Needless to say, I got that backwards. *sigh*...
generally true, but you might want to take a look at Distributed.net live client speed database before you write off the G4 in MP configs. There's a lot of performance to be had in the right applications. As a general purpose CPU, that Athlon XP is certainly faster - I have recently built a 1900+ system (overclocked to 1680MHz) which runs at a staggering 72.5 degrees C even WITH it's (extremely loud) Alpha cooler. It IS, however, a solid 50% faster than my (admittedly 9 month old) 733Mhz G4 DA...
That was classic intercourse!
It is related to Cisc vs Risc but that is not the main reasoning. Risc and Cisc processor may run hot but Intel and AMD are not making Cisc processors but rather RISC-like procesors with MicroOps that allow them to convert x86 instructions into internal instructions, this extra baggage along with the units and added hardware so the performance is good brings up the heat. So it is like super fast to counter it's instruction set so Risc Processor certainly can be built cooler. Cisc does not exist anymore, complex ISAs exist but the processors themselves are not, straight up CISC simply cannot scale.
This has been an easy thing to do with Macs for years.
Unlike PCs, which are instaled in ZIF sockets, Macs have had a few diferent ways of connecting the processors, but with one unique, and very advantageous difference.
Since the PCI powermacs came out, the PPC processors have been on daughtercards (except a rare few consumer class machines which had it soldered onto the mobo, but thats a different story).
These daughtercards can have several proicessors on it, and can easily be interchanged.
Unlike PCs, which have the entire processor bus on teh mobo itself, with separate traces for each possible CPU, powemacs usually have the processor bus itself as a daughtercard connector, so there is no difference between a mobo for a 1 cpu machine and a 4-way machine (Such as the Daystar Digital mac clones, which used the same mobo as the PowerMac 9500 of the time, just a 4-way 604e CPU)
These daughtercards have seen a few different formats over the past few generations. The original PCI powermacs had a slotted daughtercard which was simply inserted like any expansion card, and could be used to upgrade any of those machines with up to a G4 cpu, made by some upgrade manufacturers. Then with the Beige G3 machines, came the Zif socket, but which also supported multiple CPUs if necessary, although not many upgrade companies made them.
Then, with the Sawtooth G4 machine (the one which finally brought AGP to the mac) the CPU went onto a daughtercard which was connected via a 423(?) pin rectangular socket, which can accomodate several CPUs.
This socket is what was used in the MP G4 machines, making it possible to use the same Motherboard in all their desktop G4s, simplifying the product line.
The iMacs also use a similar, but incompatible socket, which could theoretically support multiple CPUs.
-=-=-=-
Also, for information on how to Overclock these daughtercards, and several different Macs in general, visit http://violet.berkeley.edu/~schrier/mhz.html
for instructions and some interesting reading.
And for those wanting to overclock a Mac....
beware: you need to make motherboard/daughtercard modifications to do so.
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
negative acceleration would mean slowing down, which doesn't make sense. a negative velocity would.
Dipshit.
No, negative acceleration means accelerating opposite to the direction that by convention is positive. Since 'up' is positive by convention, Gravity accelerates an object at -9.8 meters per second per second.
The effect we call "slowing down" is actually deceleration.
Negative acceleration indicates the direction it is accelerating. Since they guy is talking about 9.8m/s^2, you can assume he's talking about acceleartion due to gravity. Gravity pulls objects "down" to the ground, and this direction is most commonly considered negative.
Stay away from inteligence and quality, you've got that right.
BAAD - Big Asshole American Dork
yeah, that took guts.
how can you accelerate your mac to an acceleration? you accelerate to a velocity.
Well, I'll see your "dipshit", and raise you a "stupid cunt". Except - damn! - I didn't log in as AC. Suck my cock.
That was classic intercourse!
Mike has run xlr8yourmac for years with the same plain format. More websites should take their cue from him and keep it simple. Hyperlinks and simple graphics make for quick pageloads. His is an excellent example of a site with huge amounts of content and a simple format. You don't need massive loads of graphics to make a excellent site.
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get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
If it does get hot, will it self-repair the cracks and bubbles in the Cube's casing?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello