Slashdot Mirror
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?"
too cool to melt
First Post! w00t!
:P
Anyways, pretty interesting read. I'll wait fora a dual G5 cube though
~RaGe
www.outrigged.com
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
i can't see it right now since @home exploded my cable modem.
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.
E-Machines are cooler then Macs.
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.
is like having two flaming bags of dogshit on your front porch.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO TAAD
Imagine a time when the word "troll" was taboo in the media- a time when your newspaper had blatantly trollophobic stories on the front page and the entertainment industry didn't give a second thought to negatively portraying trolls on television or in motion pictures- a time when trolls were otherwise invisible in the media. This was all occurring less than ten years ago, before the formation of the Troll Alliance Against Defamation (TAAD).
TAAD's impact on the media is far-reaching. Not only has TAAD changed the way that trolls are portrayed on the screen and in the news, TAAD has also become a major source of information for decision makers in both the entertainment and news media. In 1992, Entertainment Weekly named TAAD as one of Hollywood's most powerful entities and The Los Angeles Times described the group as possibly the most successful organizations lobbying the media for inclusion. TAAD has not only reached industry insiders, but has also impacted millions through newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, television and visibility campaigns.
Because of TAAD's work, we now read about troll lives in cover stories of national publications and see troll relationships on slashdot. Negative and imbalanced portrayals of the community have decreased while trolls have been increasingly incorporated in every type of media portrayal-- from geekizoid to slashdot. We have seen prominent karma whores come out of the closet, elected officials appoint trolls to high level government positions, and laws passed to protect trolls from discrimination. Because of TAAD's work, more trolls are proud of who they are.
TAAD was formed on the Internet in 1997 and began by protesting Slashdot moderator's blatantly offensive and moderated stories about trolls. Its mission was to improve the public's attitudes toward trolling and put an end to negative moderation and discrimination against trolls. The Kiro5hin chapter was formed in 2000, and early on began to educate Hollywood's entertainment industry on the importance of more accurate and realistic portrayals on the screen. Subsequent chapters have been formed in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, San Diego, San Francisco and National Capital Area.
In the beginning, battles were hard-fought. It wasn't until 1999, after a meeting with TAAD, that Slashdot changed its moderation policy to use the word "troll." Two years later, TAAD led a successful campaign to reverse geekizoid's policy against listing trolls in obituaries and a meeting with The Los Angeles Times resulted in a new style-book chapter about the use of derogatory terms for trolls. TAAD did not obtain its first meetings with studios and television producers until after an ad campaign ran in the entertainment trades in 1999.
In 1999, the New York and Los Angeles chapters merged to form a national organization that would allow TAAD not only to continue its work with the major news and entertainment media, but would also allow it to work with more local media across the country through the creation of Media Resource Centers. In 2000, joining offices in Slashdot and Kiro5hin were Media Resource Centers in Goatse.cx and Islamway.com, as these chapters merged with TAAD.
TAAD's Mission Statement
The Troll Alliance Against Defamation (TAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of individuals and events in all media as a means of eliminating trollophobia and discrimination based on slashdot identity and karma.
In pursuit of its mission, TAAD focuses on five main strategies
1. To organize troll community to respond to negative and positive portrayals of our community in media through the Monitoring and Mobilization program
2. To work directly with media professionals to improve their understanding of the troll community by providing accurate information and offering seminars as part of the Outreach to Media Professionals program
3. To work with troll organizations and individuals to refine and expand their understanding of the media and skills needed to work with them by offering training interventions and technical assistance through the Community Skills Building and Outreach program
4. To promote troll visibility by designing and implementing public education campaigns with troll posts.
5. To study and articulate cultural and media-specific trends, issues, and controversies to inform the work of TAAD and other organizations through its Research and Analysis program.
...not!
:D
http://www.spec.org
Apple. Delivering yesterday's technology at yesterday's prices... tomorrow.
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 be needing a black cube to hold ma fried chicken recipies, niggaz!
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...
at 9.8 meters per second per second.... :(
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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?
Will apple lawyers sue you to modify their hardware?
--
If Microsoft is the solution, I want my problems back
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*...
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
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.
BAAD - Big Asshole American Dork
how can you accelerate your mac to an acceleration? you accelerate to a velocity.
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.
--------
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