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Build Your Own Mac With CoreCrib Kit
Mark Dobie writes "I just put up a quick review of the CoreCrib kit I purchased. It is an inexpensive solution to building your own Mac." See our previous Core coverage.
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As always, links to pictures will be posted.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Why?
the popularity of these systems. I can get a emac 800Mgz/256MB/40GB for $849, and it comes with a monitor and better graphics, and the operating system. If I was going to build a linux system, you get better bang for the buck from x86 hardware. I don't understand. FP?
Well, /. effect aside, you've got to be some kind of super freak to submit an article to /. without being able to support even the smallest trickle of traffic.. Sheesh.. This one didn't even have a chance it seems..
A Do It Yourself Mac seems tantamount to a Do It Yourself Mercedes..
These will be popular among the geeks, but the Mac masses will stick to boxes from Cupertino.
Trolling is a art,
So, it's a G4/800 tower, for $775 plus extra hardware (hard drive, etc.) plus software (Mac OS X, applications). In contrast, the eMac is a G4/800 for $799 and includes a 17" monitor, 40GB hard drive, CD-ROM, Mac OS X, and a handful of software (AppleWorks, Quicken, World Book Encyclopedia, etc.). Oh, and a full 1-yr warranty from Apple.
Of course, the eMac isn't expandable (you can upgrade the RAM and add an AirPort card; everything else has to be external, and you can't run a split desktop on dual monitors). Still, compare to eBay...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
isn't endorsing this one. I don't think it'll do that well.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
And we just put it down.
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
"Connection refused"
Before it went KABAM, I made a quicky mirror
here
--sig fault--
Nice try, you subscribing dingus, but YOU FAIL IT! No FP for you!
I VOMIT ON FAILURES!
Personally I'm waiting to switch for the release of the PPC 970 to switch from my Windows box to a OSX box.
Can't wait to get away from x86 micro-ops translation to RISC and into the world of straight RISC.
Where the Music Matters
go to apples website.
spend $$$.
get box from Airborne.
open box and remove computer.
plug in computer.
turn on.
built your own...WTF?
don't mess with a good thing.
The whole point of buying from Apple is that it's NOT cheap crap like a PC, or worse my mom's Dell.
My mac has never had a problem, and even if you figure $1/hour for my time, it's still been a total steal compared to the PCs.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
You can build your own Ford by ordering all the parts from Ford and assembling them yourself.
...does it run Linux?
Hey.. maybe you could convince the people out of the earlier story to build you a cardboard case for your mac? =)
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Here is a mirror: Click here I couldnt get all of the images though.
There is no god
I have an aging B&W G3 and a bunch of old PC parts. I don't need a monitor. I already own Jaguar, and I'll still utilize the single user license by not running it on my G3 anymore. This looks like a good solution for me until the second generation Powermacs with the IBM 970's are available. (I doubt I'll be able to afford the first gen ones.)
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
With the sort of "previous generation" hardware that is supported on the Apple platform, who would want to do something like this? It's not as though you can just drop in your new AGP Geforce 3 you bought with all the money you saved downloading WaReZed pirate bootlegs on Kazaa. If it's not in one of Apple's all in one plug and go machines that freshman design majors drool over, you're just out of luck.
And we're talking primitive too. There's a reason why artists and musicians are trading in on PC's running XP in droves. Look up a supported hardware list for the newest Apple Computers OS. I think you'll wonder, as I did, whether they're getting parts from 2 to 3 generations ago at a discount.
What you're really paying for with an Apple is their support, their backwards-compatible-with-BSD operating system (for all you bearded terminal hackers), and the pleasure of doing business with a company like Apple that many here have deluded themselves into believing that they support open source.
You're much better off putting the same money into a Windows machine, or perhaps Solaris if you want a good workstation with firewalling capabilities.
But I'm very impressed by the website designer(desginer?) getting the spelling to 'Designed' wrong.
I love the PowerPC architecture and would gladly pay the apple tax to get my hands on a TiBook, but whats up with a DIY barebones kit that sticks you with only PCI options for video? If I'm putting the thing together I want more bandwidth to my video card.
Fnord.sig
Let's analyze the requirements:
1. Build it myself
2. Stable Unix-based OS
3. Very very few games to play on it
Save yourself some money and build a blazing Linux box!
WMB has released a kit that allows you to build a BMW for $200. However, the engine will be a go-kart motor, no windows, and no A-C. But hey, at least you have a BMW.
1. Bad signature
2. ?????
3. Profit
By the time you get done with it you are paying far more than just buying a good used G4 (yosemite) on eBay.
If you really want a deal on a mac, you just cant beat the eMac
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Damn.. 19 replies and it's slashdotted already?
:oP
This isn't hosted on a do-it-yourself mac, is it?
Otherwise, i don't want one
No x86 CPU is RISC; RISC refers to the ISA, ie. the part that is externally exposed to software.
Current x86 CPU's from AMD and Intel both convert from x86 CISC opcodes into smaller micro-ops, but it is incorrect to call these RISC. First, they are not exposed to software, and second, they are presumably tailored to a register-to-memory architecture, not a load-store architecture, and so would likely not be RISC, even if they were exposed.
I completely blame the hobbyist website ARS-Technica for this confusion. The architecture guru there, who is somewhat ignorant, came up with this pap. His ignorance has propogated very far, as evidenced by your comment.
U can build a better AMD-system for the same money.
I know someone's going to hate me, mod me down for this, but here goes: This weekend, I bought an Asus motherboard (sorry, can't remember model), an AMD 2400+ processor, 512 megs of PC2700 RAM, a case, all necessary fans etc., and an Geforce FX 5200 based AGP card (I know, not the best but a lot better than my Geforce 3Ti) at a show for $405. Add in the 80 gig I stripped out of my old rig, and the CD-RW and floppy, it was probably $500-$525 worth of equipment. Had I wanted XP (which I didn't) it would have been a bit more. Oh, other necessary post: This is just what the Nazis would do. Someone had to say it. Someone always does.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
That's the bottom line here ... hardly anybody I know who owns a Mac is gonna want a case that looks like a PC. A fair amount of the fun of having a Mac is the wow factor when people come over and look at it. Superficial, yeah, but if you're gonna plunk down bucks to get a Mac you want it to LOOK like a Mac. My suggestion to whomever makes these cases: make it look cool and Mac like. Don't make it look like PC. Even them AlienWare designs ... not good enough. Make it a big globe or a cylinder ... anything but a copy of a PC case.
is a DIY Notebook kit!
mirror
Ever heard of Yellow Dog Linux? Why? Is Unix-based not good enough for you?
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Okay, someone explain this to me:
Porn models sucking on their own big toes.
Anyone into this sort of thing? Because I just don't get it. I'm guessing that it's supposed to show she's limber, and that having her sucking on something is supposed to be erotic... but I mean, come on - sucking on her own big toe? It just doesn't do it for me.
Anyone else got any thoughts, pro or con, on this matter?
http://www.sadistech.com/newbox/
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I just noticed these cases today, and they made me think of the Cube.
Useful for those who want to build a Mac-ish lookalike, I suppose.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
You know its going to be a good day when you find a Johnny Cash refrence on slashdot.
I mean, really, look at some of these responses.
/. of all places we see people crying "Why would you want to do this?". Or, "What's wrong with the eMac?"
On
This is only the first (or one of the first) homebuilt Macs. If enough people jump on the bandwagon prices will eventually drop. As it is now, the price is competitive with a brand new eMac, the comparable version of which was only introduced days ago.
I want to see PowerPC chips on PriceWatch. I want to see different people competing to do motherboards that will run these chips. I want to see more and different case designs. Competition is good. Choice is good. Apple doesn't want us to have either of these things.
And then, there's the thrill of building your own PC. I'm a former Mac person who is now running on my first homebuilt -- which dual-boots XP and Linux -- and the level of satisfaction I have with this machine surpasses anything I've ever owned from Apple (save, perhaps my Pismo PowerBook.)
This can only be a good thing. And if Apple were smart, they'd put the resources in place up front to help them deal with the complexity of supporting what is sure to be the thousand different configurations or more of Macs that are yet to come. Turn your back on these people and you risk making the same mistake that Microsoft made and that is driving so many people to Linux.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
But then i found out about this site: www.purchaseprogram.com. I haven't bought a system from there yet, but even after you pay the $250 fee, and tax, and shipping, you can still get a kick ass dual 1.25ghz powermac for less than the spare parts that corecrib offers.
- tristan
Hate to break it to the Mac-crowd... but those of us who has stuck to the open 'standard' that the ordinary* PC is has been able to do this for years. Got several OS's to choose from as well - even if I must say X looks sexier than most.
And another thing; having looked at the article and done the numbers, I can't help to think that the same amount of green would have gotten you a more powerfull PC - even if you choose to support the devil and put Windows on it. Get hold of a linux-distro however, and I feel you could get a more powerful PC cheaper.
*) By ordinary I mean a x86 based machine, with the CPU from Intel, AMD or another vendor who produces chips to the same spesifications. After all, PC means Personal Computer, which can include everything from a overclocked P4, via a Mac and down to, well, my old C64 for example.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
from the /. page:
My first Mac was a Beige G3 junked from work. I upgraded it to the max, but found it lacking the speed needed to run OS X. I started looking into buying a Power Mac but I was turned off by the inflated prices. $1500 for a box w/ no monitor? Insane. I like Apple's constant innovation but their prices are way too high. I finally came across this story about John Fraser, and his idea to sell a Mac kit aimed at do-it-yourselfers. I've built quite a few PC's but never a Mac. I decided this was the route for me.
My core crib arrived on Sat. May 3, 2003.
As you can see, it arrives in a non-descript brown box from USPS.
The packaging was done well. The CoreCrib was secure in the box and was not damaged. Contents include, power cable, tower case, Apple Gigabit Ethernet motherboard, Apple Power Supply and blue/pink LED case fan. This is a very barebones kit. Provide your own IDE cables, drives, processesor, memory, video card etc....
I had an old Beige G3 I decided I'd rob parts out of. Most of what was in that box was old PC hardware I had laying around. At first, I could not get the Crib to boot, I checked the support forums and noticed that the only other person who had received a CoreCrib kit said you "HAD" to update the firmware on the motherboard. I assumed this was my problem. So I put the Crib aside and tried to track down an older G4 processor.
On Tues. May 6 another post arrived in the forums that the firmware was not needed to run newer CPUs. I then decided to investigate on my own. After an hour of testing, my problem was solved. The PC100 memory I tried to use from the Beige G3 did not like the faster G4 800 Giga Designs processor. I put a stick of PC133 memory in and the Crib instantly booted.
Here are some pictures of the box itself.
Here are some photos after my parts were installed:
Back plane is missing. Personally I don't care, I push it under a desk.
The Crib has changed colors and price. It is now available as Pro model and comes in a nice gmono white case. http://www.2khappyware.com/corecrib.html
My current expense list:
CoreCrib kit: $379, Gigadesigns G4 800 cpu, $275, 256mb pc133 $20, ATI Radeon PCI 7000, $100 The other parts I installed were extras from upgrading PC's. I've spent $775 on this machine and it runs OS X smoothly and without problems. I did purchase OS 10.2. I forgot to include that in the price. 2khappyware also sells complete and custom systems, you can add whatever parts you want if you don't want to buy them on your own. This case is expandable, you can add up to 5 hard-drives and multiple optical drives. Which is much different than the new Mirrored Power Macs. My next stop is to add the Radeon 8500 AGP card, the PCI card doesn't do Quartz Graphics.
Overall I'm extremely happy with the Crib. The noise level is very low. No windtunnel noise going on here. It is upgradable to dual CPU's if you want to spend the cash. A new Support Forum has started flourishing, so help is available. I highly recommend buying this kit.
Parts purchasing:
http://www.macsales.com
Information:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
- Permalink
Posted by Mark Dobie on 5/7/03; 11:36:45 AM
Even if I could get an apple system for the same price, I don't want it. I like OSX and want to use it put want to be able to put what ever combination of CD/DVD/Hard drives. Also most of the extra parts that are needed, I have laying around collecting dust. It about choice and personal preference and if you don't like/understand it, go bitch about it on Slashdot.
Keynux :
. ph p
:
:
b me nu_id=16&function_id=13
:
:
http://www.keynux.com/default_zone/fr/html/home
Storever
http://www.storever.com
ECS
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/notebooks.htm?su
RJtech
http://www.rjtech.com/
mobileperipherals
http://www.mobileperipherals.com
They invented this nice thing called internet where you can use this nicer thing called google and type notebook and you get tons of real link , truely nice !
> Well I'm glad that you're able to play your games on your Apple, but there's people with serious work to do with their machines.
Hmmm.... like running M$ Office apps? Yep. Java/C++ development? Yep. M$ Access is missing from MacOS, but for what *most* people (in the WORKplace) use computers for it's all there. Are there apps that are Win-only without equivalent MacOS/Linux counterparts? Yep. Do they account for what *most* people use their computers for? Nope. (Check me out, I'm Rumsfeld!)
> I've found that running a legitimate copy of XP with proper signed drivers gives perfectly fine stability.
Not here it hasn't. I've got a new (and fully licensed) XP box sitting on my work desk here, just the usual M$ apps installed. All the latest signed M$ updates. It freezes at least once a week. Not tied to any particular task. It can be sitting idle and seize up.
My co-worker recently bought one for home use (Dell). Fully licensed XP. Constant crashes.
Two years ago I bought a Gateway. Regular crashes. Win2000 and XP.
Today while I was on the phone with a friend in Seattle, he got the BSOD.
Meanwhile my MacOS X box spins happily away.
Glad XP is rock-stable for you, but it's hardly a universal experience.
Hell, it isn't even an iBook, but here's about as close as you can get. Barebones kit counts as DIY right?
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
It's silly to compare these kits to a brand new Mac when Apple themselves sell refurbished products.Keep in mind that the refurb'ed PowerMacs already come with ram, an hd, graphics, a superdrive, an os, etc. Oh yeah, they also have a one year warranty from Apple and are still eligible for their AppleCare Protection Plan. Two things that I doubt these kits have.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
The CoreCrib will only interest ./ build-your-own-PC types.
First off, anybody who uses a Mac uses it because they don't want the agg of PCs and all of the various config problems with hardware.
Anybody who "switched" sure as heck isn't going to suddenly decide they want to experiment by building a Mac. Heck, the whole reason they switched was to just use their damn computer!
I just don't see this ever going any further than the techno inclined... and only to those who really want to run OS X. And let's face it, a Mac capble of running OS X nicely can be had for 500 bucks now! Anybody who runs *nix is going to build a blow-em-away x86 box for the same price as the Core and not deal with the "finding compatible hardware problem". Besides that, at least for Linux, you basically have a choice between YDL, Mandrake (and Suse?)... you got four times the distros for x86!
I think this is a great idea, but for the price and maybe more importantly the warranty offered, I'd rather buy a used Mac from say Macofalltrades.com. I may not get a brand new machine, but I can get a system that is equal or better than the Core machine with a 30 day warranty (and an option of a one year warranty).
I hope it catches on though and I hope Apple maybe throws these guys a little help!
The eMac screen is a cheap, crappy triangular dot mask CRT, not even a Trinitron. Using it for 20 minutes gives me a headache. Hence my only option was to pay more for an iMac.
Now, as it happened, I could afford to pay the extra. However, many other people can't or won't pay more for a flat panel, and would quite happily get by with a $100 Trinitron CRT or a monitor they already have. Except the cheapest Apple machine that'll let them do that is $1500.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.
Yeah, I like Apple but I'd rather find a loophole in their buisness plan and avoid paying for all that messy R&D.
Can you spell lawsuit?
Prices are controlled by Apple for this kit. The Mobo is a stock apple unit, and it wouldnt run a MacOS if it werent.
Prices wont drop because Apple isn't lowering the prices on a bare Mobo.
All anyone has said is that if it's about saving money on a mac, the eMac is more bang-for-buck. That's not thin-skinned, its miserly!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
http://www.wiredvideo.com/av/avclips/applegamer.w
Posted by smudge on Fri 09, 14:17
from the apple-lawyers-strike-again dept
Mark Dobie writes "I just put up a quick protest page against Apple's lawyers who demanded that the CoreCrib kit website be taken down. It's too bad that a company that makes such good products has such a fear of open hardware. [ed: see this story for more information.]
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
a 300mHz 604e PPC chip is a reasonable performer, but you are running OS 9 (possibly lower). If you would like to get into NT is better than OS 9 then I counter that Beta is superior to VHS.
OS 9 had is good points, especially where the deisgner was concerned (back in the day when Win95/98fe were the alternative). And also, back in that day, Macs were sometimes marginally faster than PC's (meaning x86).
Today, macs lag in performance, and are more expensive (initial cost). That looks to change soon with the next round this fall. Besides, when you spend all day working in BBEdit, Vi, Emacs, or Notepad, do you really need the fastest machine you can buy?
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
It's hard to beat having a G4 Tower, Apple Cinema Display (22") and an all wireless setup.
Everytime I forget someone hasn't seen my apple setup they always say "Damn, what the hell is that thing? A TV?" I just have to laugh.
I got the new iBook 900 and I'm waiting on the new 15" Powerbooks and the 970's. Until then I'm set.
Because on PCC, the decode stage is also the dispatch stage. And any superscalar processor needs a dispatcher. Also the PPC does branch folding there too.
As to it not being a true RISC chip. No, according to the old old definitions it is not. But RISC doesn't mean "reduced" instruction set anymore, it means "reasonable".
RISC was created to conserve transistors. If you had very few, you wanted to use each one on every cycle. Now, we have so many transistors and chips are so far apart that using them all each cycle isn't that important anymore (besides, how would you get rid of that heat!). So now the key is to make a instruction set that it is still easy to decode and fast to execute, but not so much super-simple anymore.
After I was done, this was the only case I could afford to house it in.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Great, now I can use the my penny ram sinks and paper cooling system on a new dual G4.
Why would you want to spend that amount of time and money getting old hardware when you can get a brand new Dell for $400 every other year?
People wouldn't be going to such desperate measures as to build these special kits if Apple would simply sell their hardware at a more reasonable price. Yes, I'm aware that there are warranties, AppleCare, build quality, etc., but the fact is that the alternative - PCs - are a much better value overall. You can buy a PC with virtually all the features of a Mac that is far more powerful for less money.
One of my current conundrums is whether I buy a Mac-based or PC-based video editing solution. Apple's Final Cut Pro is the video editor's dream from an overall cost/benefit perspective, but the render speeds for apps like Adobe After Effects are dreadfully slow relative to the PC equivalents. In addition, I would frequently need to encode using different CODECs. A 3GHz P4 will whip any dual G4 Mac into the ground in raw speed, but the PC-based solutions doesn't have the visibility or legitimacy which some clients require. Still, for someone just starting out and doing small jobs like editing commercials and training videos, I don't think that there's a reason to go with a Mac. I'll get along just fine with Adobe Premiere 7 until I can get the funds to buy a better solution like would exist on a Mac. All MHO of course.
I dont understand, the home page has a cool looking slim machine pictured, but it just says its a "concept drawing".
Then, when you go to click "purchase", it looks like any old clunky PC box.
Whats the deal?
The whole point of buying from Apple is that it's NOT cheap crap like a PC, or worse my mom's Dell.
You realize, of course, that Apples are built of the same "cheap crap" as PCs (RAM, IDE drives, etc), and that same "cheap crap" is assembled for Apple by the same company that assembles computers for Dell, HP, and Compaq.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
CoreCrib Dual 1200 Computer for $1799.99
.05 ghz of speed (like you'll notice) but gaining ram and hd space for $200 cheaper
CoreCrib Fully Assebled System
G4 Dual 1200Mhz 2MB cache
1024MB Memory
52x CD-RW
120GB Harddrive
Geforce4MX 32MB ADC DVI and DVI-> VGA Adapter
2 Firewire, 2 USB Ports, 10/10/1000 Ethernet, Audio in/out
Front Firewire, 2xUSB and Audio OUT
Just Add keyboard, mouse, and OS
ATA, Power Cable and Fans/Heatsink are included.
Just plug in, add keyboard/mouse, boot from OS Install CD and install your OS. No hardware Installation!
you're losing
Buy the box and motherboard and throw in all of your drives and PCI cards from your other macs.
I am looking at turning a beige G3 into a G4 tower. This mod gets me a case and mobo. I then add G4/800-DP1200, and throw in ram. I would start with a G4/800/2mb cache/512mb, so basic cost is less than $800 for a loaded G4/800 tower.
I can reuse my DVD-R, CD-RW, old 24X CD-ROM,and zip drives, plus I can add two IDE drives on the IDE chain, and throw my PCI IDE card and add two more 100B drives (video stuff). Then I also have space for a second video card.
Apple doesn't make a tower that does that!
This is what PC users love, flexibility to build towers that hold too much and get really hot inside ; )
Using the prices the author posts in the review, adding in $120 for Mac OS X and $50 for labor the real cost for hardware for this machine comes to $944, and that doesn't include shipping. Let's assume $5 per item and that's another $20 for a total of $964 for this "low cost Mac"
Okay, but Apple sells a spiffy new machine for $1,500. That's a difference of $536. Now the question is this:
Are the "extras" you get with the new Apple Mac worth the extra $536? Lets look at the "extras":
(numbers in parenthesis are estimated upgrade costs)
1. Support and warranty. You have someone to point the finger at with hardware failures (priceless??)
2. 200Mhz faster CPU speed ($225 assumes purchasing 1Ghz instead of 800)
3. 33Mhz?? faster bus speed (can't upgrade)
4. 2x faster memory (can't upgrade)
5. 32MB more Video RAM ( $65 more than the 7000 for the Radeon 8500)
6. GPU is about 2x more powerful
7. FireWire 800 ($100 includes USB2)
8. USB 2.0
9. Built-in AirPort antenna
10. AGP port is 2x faster (can't upgrade)
11. A better looking case
The things that can be upgraded will cost $390 to do so, and a total build-it-yourself cost of $1,356.
And this machine still doesn't perform as well as the new system will, and would cost only $140 less than the new Apple PowerMac.
I'll take the Apple eqipment for the extra $140.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I wonder if Apple would do something like this?
Basically, for those of you who don't know, Dinan is an aftermarket part supplier for BMW... they sell chips, exhaust, suspension kits, clutches, even superchargers for BMW. A couple of years ago, BMW (I guess) decided that enough people were installing Dinan's stuff on cars to allow certain Dinan parts to be sold/installed by BMW dealers and not void the factory warranty.
Would it be possible for Apple to establish a similar relationship? How would it work?
-A
I think this is a great idea; the G4 is an awesome processor. I have my doubts that this is going to work out, but I think it's a great idea, and I wish the company all the best. It's certainly cool to see it done. I thought about this a little, and it's nice to be able to get away from the PC architecture and move over to some other hardware once in a while. Maybe one option that can compete with this in coolness is the FreeBSD 5.0 on UltraSparc - I haven't tried it yet, but it's something to consider, as far as upgrading systems, reusing old hardware, and it's probably within a similar price range with what is being done here with the Mac. Yes, there are less Linux distributions for the Apple hardware, but it would be interesting to try and build one yourself. I think this is a great idea.
The best reason for doing it is to get a case that holds more that the 1 or 2 externally accesible bays that Apple thinks is enough. I've done this before myself, but even cheaper. PC case for $30. Apple AGP logic board for $100 from ebay. Apple power supply from ebay $100(you can also modify a plain old PC PS) and a Sonnet 800mhz G4 new for $299. And mine has 2 Pioneer DVD-R drives, a 52x CD-R a Sony 5.2 gig MO drive, and, ready for this?...A 200mb Syquest drive!!!!
All internally mounted-that is why this makes sense.
How long is it going to be before Jobs buys THIS company up and closes it like he did the LAST one that made cheap macs, thereby assuring I'll always be a PC guy. Thanks Steve.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I'm sure you always refer to old PC CGA graphics adapters as Color Graphics Arrays too. And you know, CGAs don't display pixels, they display pels. (IBM's official pixel designation). And don't forget your IBM PC with its "fixed disk" (as opposed to hard disk).
Good thing we got all that important hair-splitting done. It could have lead to serious problems down the road.
Pipeline depth is not a good indicator of the complexity of an instruction set. Pipeline depth simply increases as the speed of the chip increases.
Lets test the theories:
Pipeline depth relates to simplicity of instruction set:
Well, the 68000 and 8086 had no pipelines, so the depth was 1. But they both have complex instruction sets.
P4 and PPC970 both have deep pipelines even though the instructions in PPC970 are clearly simpler (despite all the bitching on here, it is at LEAST load/store, unlike P4).
G4 has a short pipeline even though it runs the same instructions as PPC970.
Pipeline depth relates to speed of processor:
68K and 8086 had 1 stage pipes and ran at slow speeds.
G4 has a (relatively) short pipeline and is moderate speed.
PPC970 and P4 have long pipelines and are quite fast.
Simply put, making the pipeline longer and increasing the clock speed makes it possible to run more instructions at the same time (even if each one runs no quicker end to end).
Thus pipeline length goes up as chip speeds go up, despite the instruction set.
Oh, and frankly, your argument that the ISA of PPC isn't RISC (and did you really say P4-like?) is false on its face.
All PPC instructions are the same size. This is a RISC feature. This is not true of P4.
PPC has many registers and is a true register-based architecture. This is a RISC feature P4 is a juiced-up accululator architecture.
PPC is a load/store architecture. This is a RISC feature. This is not true of P4.
I know it's cool to knock "tainted" architectures, but your argument is more entertaining than convincing.
So, how much you give for computer like this?
>> I don't know $20?
Oh come on! This is expensive computer the fastest in the world.
>> $35
Oh this is ridiculous! It's a good computer, it's an Apple!
>> It doesn't look like an Apple computer...
It's Apple-like.
>> What do you mean?
Its got Apple guts, ya know?
- Danny
Which could use the speed.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Your example is so fictitous as to be meaningless.
At work I run a Xeon (whatever that is). At home I have an Atlon 1600 and a K6-2. These are all used 5 days per week, plus, typically 5-8 hours per day.
Typically they run www, spreadsheets and engineering programs, and the fast machine at home runs games and demos.
I don't log downtime or lost productivity, generally, but I know I have lost 4 hours to a RAM failure in the last year. That's it.
As far as software and reboots go the Xeon, running W2k, gets rebooted once per week as a matter of course, and has maybe fallen over once in the year. The K2 runs NT4 and has chucked me out of a few programs, but ha snot 'crashed'. It gets turned off overnight.
The Athlon runs win 98 SE and has a pretty gruesome life running game demos and so on. I have had to re-install windows once. I would guess it falls over in such a way as to lose work in progress perhaps once every couple of months.
That is not 50 minutes of productivity loss per day, more like 1
And of course Macs never crash, do they? I've got a couple of those hanging around, but they don't run often enough for me to get a picture of software reliability. But the sad Mac appears remarkably often, in my experience.
Lowest eMac just dropped to $799.
....what's next in 10.3 or even 10.2.7?
Have you tried just going out and buying a vanilla CD-ROM drive? Most won't work. They're software driven.
Have you tried to get Retrospect 5, the leading Mac OS software backup vendor, to support (whatever you install in the way of drives)?
You guys are great. Fun experiment. So it supports 10.2. What about 10.2.6, 10.3?
PC types don't get it. Apple hardware is tuned to run with Mac software, Apple software, and 3rd party components are often specially designed and tuned solely for Apple.
Replace the power supply in an Apple built Mac with an OEM? Been there and tried that twice myself. Doesn't work.
OSX is designed to run on a mobo built by Apple, for Apple, and enuff said. Glad you got 10.2 up. Good luck, even if you buy it from Apple, in getting your video to do Quartz or....
Using canabalized *Apple* G3 parts? What if eBay doesn't have what you want for those who don't have them handy.
Look at the real cost of what is described + cost of OSX. Look at what you *don't* have and then look at a one year guarantee from Apple that the Tower you buy from them *will* work, *will* come with a G4 DP setup.
(shakes head, wanders off mumbling, has dealt with a dozen Apple clones circa 1997 and all their woes even when Apple built the mobo)
Won't work guys. The End. (as in "the end is in sight" just unknown at present as to all the limitations)
Buy an Apple Mac. They work.
Exactly! Which is the reason I bought a CoreCrib. Apple isn't making a tower case below $1500. Everyone says "look at ebay", I've looked at ebay. You can spend $700 for a Yikes! B&W with a G4 500 CPU and a bunch of other drives you don't want, why not buy a Crib instead?
We use a Dual 450 Powermac in a professional video production environment.
This is 4 or 5 year old tech and it performs flawlessly! Render times in Final Cut Pro are perfectly satisfactory, although we don't use After Effects so I can't comment on that.
We encode in mpeg2 using Cleaner 5, then make DVDs with DVD Studio Pro and it doesn't take a long enough time that we start cursing its slowness.
Remember, this is a Dual 450, not the current Dual 1/1.2/1.42Ghz machines available at the moment.
I would strongly suggest you go to an Apple store and try out Final Cut Pro before making your final decision. If you phone ahead they will install it for you ahead of time and have it ready for you to try.
If you can wait for the PPC970, Final Cut Pro will be even better still.
I can't believe I read this whole fucking thread. It's definitely time to end my life for jesus.
Pictures |
I'm more on the graphics side of things than most posters here, but I did start to play around with Solaris and LinuxPPC before Mac OS X, and I've noticed since the release of OS X that Apple has a growing contingent of people who want to be users but can't deal with their hardware restrictions. My thoughts on how they might feasibly begin to encroach on Windows/Intel/AMD/Linux.
.edu (losing battle) and home users
The need to address a new market. Currently their hardware appeals mainly to:
1. Professional graphics dorks
2.
3. Some small business professionals - music, a few lawyers, etc.
3. Servers meant for Pro use, but too pricey for pro-sumer or consumer use.
But their new OS appeals to computer professionals, higher end educational and scientific professionals, and anybody else who wants to experiment with and learn about an OS from the ground up. The robustness of the OS is going to be fairly transparent to their current hardware purchasers, manifested by the fact that it doesn't crash and is easy to use (two things which should be expected). But the people who are attracted to the OS by its capability and flexibility expect the same from the hardware and Apple doesn't currently offer that.
I say reconfigure the product line and the store. Keep the beautiful professional and entry level laptops. Keep the readymade economic and powerful desktop options. But give us one more category. The Tinker-Mac.
-Appealing yet super-functional case. Easy to open. Designed more to the aesthetic of the Xserve than a desktop. Sleek, basic, tough looking.
-"Apple" processors in several grades.
-The option to add another processor.
-Optional HD's. Space for 2-3.
-Optional optical media.
-Optional video board.
-One Enet card + slot for at least one more.
-As many open PCI slots as possible
-Firewire, USB, etc (optional?) preferably on the front
-Feel free to contribute what I'm forgetting.
~$400-500
Apple needs to capitalize on the fact that many people who like to tinker with the OS and box love their OS, and want a box that's affordable enough to truly personalize. And I think they'd make a ton of dough by offering this option. They give us the option of an empty case with that's capable of running their OS on their processor spec, and accept that the people buying it are capable of researching compatible components on their own will not only sell a boatload of boxes, but persuade more HW developers to write drivers for OS X. Or the open source community will.
Screw all this "port to Intel" crapola. Apple needs to accept that there are people who want to run their OS in a build-your-own manner, and they can build the bare bones machines for that crowd, make it a unique selling point, and still make their margins.
I use Linux all the time I am a confirmed masochist, and love it! I have fun with not having a working sound card because the old working CMI8X38 linux drivers which worked fine with 2.2 Debian got hosed by the 2.4 kernel, and the new ones just do not work. Bsd will not config my onboard SIS 620 correctly so I cannot use X at anything greater than 640x480 in BSD, so I do have some experience with these things. I am sure that if I do discover the right settings for these devices I will
become sadistic to other seekers of Unix wisdom, by writing a man page!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Which G4 has USB 2.0?
d a v e
"Hmmm...upgrades."
The cost savings of my PC hasn't been in the fact that it was cheap when I purchased it.
It's the fact that it is UPGRADABLE. i.e. every year or so I dump a small amount of money in it.
In addition, I already have a number of my peripherals in external 1394 cases (shared between laptop and desktop). Since Macs can supposedly boot off of Firewire drives - No need for an optical drive, already have one. No need for a monitor either - Already have one, WITH a spare unused input.
These kits aren't for people looking for a new computer - These are for people looking to upgrade their box or add a box that shares hardware with their existing setup.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Built-in 17" - What do I care?
It's a waste when I already have an 18" flat-panel with a spare input and NO ROOM for another 17"-monitor-sized device anywhere.
If Apple had stuff in the eMac's price range WITHOUT the built-in monitor (total waste for me), I'd bite. But they want $1500 minimum if I don't want to waste money on a 17" CRT.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A longer pipeline allows for a higher clockrate, but usually decreases performance per MHz.
This is why the P4 is significantly slower than the P3 at a given clockrate, and the Athlon can keep up with the P4 in benchmarks despite being clocked at 2/3 the clockrate. The P4's big advantage is that it can scale WAY up in clockrate.
Unfortunately for Apple, the G4 isn't efficient enough MHz for MHz to compensate for the fact that for the same price you can get an Athlon running at twice the clockrate of a G4. 10-20% more efficient MHz for MHz, maybe. But not 100% more efficient.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
But are these any Cheaper than just buying a complete 2nd hand Apple Mac G4 system, sans monitor?
I wouldn't call Dell cheap crap. MAYBE if you order their dirt-cheap systems, but their slightly better systems are excellent.
I have an Inspiron 8200 laptop, and my dad has an I8000. Both are rock-solid, excellent systems.
At work, we use Dell machines almost exclusively. Their business machines are built EXTREMELY well. Newer ones are COMPLETELY screwless - Not only the case, but the PCI cards too. (Neato latch-down mechanism.) Yes, the Mac's case itself is screwless, but not the PCI cards, and it also seems flimsier than the construction of the OptiPlexes and Precisions at work.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
nt
X86 PCs are Little Endian while Macs are big-endian.
This means PC graphics cards won't work unless they are bi-endian.
Voodoo cards, the GeForce MX & some GeForce 3s are bi-endian, meaning a simple flashing of the firmware would make them Mac compatible.
However ATI makes their Radeon cards either exclusively little endian for the PC, or exclusively big endian for the Mac, meaning simply flashing the firmware will make sweet fuckall differance, the PC card still won't work in the Mac, & vice-a-versa
X86 PCs are Little Endian while Macs are big-endian.
This means PC graphics cards won't work unless they are bi-endian.
Voodoo cards, the GeForce MX & some GeForce 3s are bi-endian, meaning a simple flashing of the firmware would make them Mac compatible.
However ATI makes their Radeon cards either exclusively little endian for the PC, or exclusively big endian for the Mac, meaning simply flashing the firmware will make sweet fuckall differance, the PC card still won't work in the Mac, & vice-a-versa
I do magazine design work, which involves mostly working at home but then visiting client's offices. The imac is surprisingly well adapted to this lifestyle. LCD is right out, because the colors are too inaccurate, especially when you have 2-4 people looking at the screen at once from different angles.. Anything bigger than 15" would be tough to carry in one hand while you carry everything else in the other one. Anyway, don't be so snooty. Plenty of people who use their computers all the time are perfectly satisfied with 15".. or even 13" *gasp* monitors!
So you can buy a cheap barebones system + CPU in the US. But shipping such a system to Europe costs hundreds of dollars, price depending on weight and volume. Does anyone know where to buy the same stuff in Europe, eg. Norway/Scandinavia?
I thought it was confirmed that Apple's most recent systems have USB2 chipset on them, and that a driver change would enable it. Similar to the way a prefeene fil edit enables Quartz Extreme on PCI Radeon cards.
Slashdot article
Quoted MacNN report
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Dell is like Linux in that way. Great as a server solution, awkard on the desktop.
Let's see, 3 Slashdot articles in just over a month! How many millions of hits must that be?
/.'d 3 times in a month?
You've probably increases his profits 1000x or more..... hey, I have a small business and I could use 1000x more profits, what do I have to do to get
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
http://www.2khappyware.com/order/
And this is after thousands of people have complained about losing millions to paypal:
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
If you give him money DO NOT expect to recieve a system. From paypalwarning.com
"Merchants finding themselves on the wrong end of a frozen Paypal account will still have to find some way to pay their obligations and fill orders for the weeks and months while the account is restricted. A domino effect occurs when a merchant's account is frozen, leaving them with no means to fill orders. Those orders are then disputed by customers, creating more chargebacks and the illusion of fraudulent activity on the part of the merchant."
What this means is WHEN PAYPAL FREEZES HIS ACCOUNT, HE WILL NOT HAVE THE MONEY TO PURCHASE MERCHANDISE TO BUILD YOUR SYSTEM, so in the end you'll be out hundreds of dollars with no system, and he'll be flat broke and probably jailed for alleged fraud.
And if you don't think this really happens think again. Just go read the forums at PaypalSucks.com and you'll realize Paypal routinely steals money from users and nothing can stop them.
sad, isn't it?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
trying to compare an emac to a Crib is like comparing a emac to a G4 Tower. yes you get a nice bundled solution but: emac: no dual option later no 2048GB memory no choice to upgrade video past 32MB no choice to add anything bigger than 1280x1024 no more than 1 internal harddrive no more than 1 internal optical drive. The $799 price is great on the emac but lets face it. You purchase it and your limited to upgrading the memory or spending 2 hours to take apart the emac and swap harddrives or optical drives out. I thought slash dotters would figure that out?
Or you could be a smart business man.... not piss off your customers *AND* be smart enough to empty your paypal account twice a day. The only problem with paypal is that it gives credit card processing ability to the masses (think people who can't run a business). The whole paypal hate thing is just a little out of hand started by a few people who are just lazy and pissed off a few too many customers.
Your numbers sound good in theory but the 33Mhz bus difference is maybe a 2-3% speed increase.... the 2x memory is a marketing scheme (no difference) Firewire 800 is just for nothing right now.... since when did you use a 4x AGP card? Even "4x" Agp cards work great and no loss of frame rates on the macintosh platform can be proven. where do you get built in USB 2.0? sad sad
The higher-end these components are the less likely you are to neeed upgrading ot a new machine in the future. I've finally decided that my G3/333 needs replacement after about 4 years. I just DLed the new UT2003 demo. I get about .5 frames per second. Mind you, each frame is rendered beautifully and with stunning detail (even of the lowest settings).
The speed imrovements of the bus and memory speed increases I can not debate as I have not seen any benchmarks that attempt to quantify that difference alone (throttling down/up CPUs, etc). Game slike UT2003 and beyond will start making 2x AGP look sluggish rather soon now.
the USB2 I answered in another reply. There was a thread on Slashdot and on another site where users had confirmed that the new MoBo has a USB2 chipset and that different drivers intalled will enable it. Not having access to a new G4 (donations welcomed) I can not verify the information myself and trust (haha) the posters.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
The idea of having a computer, for you, is obviously to have something to play with. That's fine, if you like toys. But don't look down at the people who don't WANT to spend their days and nights learning how to recompile kernels, dick with video card drivers, try to figure out why the install floppy can't find their ethernet card, et al.
If you postulate that there are some people that want to get a Mac on the cheap, and who are willing to spend a day putting together their computer, but who don't then want to spend the rest of their lives screwing around with it... who might, ohmygod, actually want to get something useful done on it and NOT have to worry about dicking around with it, your argument goes right on our the window. Linux and BSD aren't hard to get, but they're a decision that a person like that will regret for a long time to come.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
The eMac is 16x16x17. I'd say twice the volume of a G4 tower is pretty huge, yes.
Even on top of the desk it would be problematic. 16" + 24" from nose to screen + space for cables = 4' deep desk. Not everyone has that kind of space.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak