Upgrade Your G4 Cube to a Pentium M Processor

reklusband writes "This report tells of a company that has released a processor upgrade for G4 cubes; this upgrade is in the form of a Pentium M. The cube becomes Windows + Linux, x86-blah compatible."

Comments

What a waste of $$$

[ankhcraft]

For the bottom-end of the same price ($399), you would have more than enough to buy a similarly equipped PC133 bus computer, used. And since your G4 is probably used as well, why have one machine when you can have two? Honestly, old PC-compatible machines running w/ a 133 Mhz FSB (*no* DDR, etc.) are fairly cheap these days.

Upgrade....

[MosesJones]

So in other words you take your Mac, that in G4 form probably still works fine with OSX, put in a new motherboard and processor. And now you can use the same BOX as a PC and run Linux.

Not so much an upgrade as using a G4 case, and in terms of an upgrade... So sort of like taking a PDP-11 box, keeping the disc controller and network controller, putting in a Pentium processor, rolling your own Linux and saying "I've upgraded a PDP-11".

NO YOU HAVEN'T because it DOESN'T WORK with the old software.

I would dare try and get my Wife to switch from a Mac onto Linux, that would hugely downgrade my quality of life.

Re:Upgrade....

[mcc]

So basically it's not an upgrade, it's a casemod in reverse.

I, for one, call bullshit on that one...

[fifirebel]

An unknown korean company does a board plus an OF to BIOS translation layer for the huuuge untapped market of PC users who admire the G4 Cube's design but don't want to run PowerPC software.

And that's old news, look at the post date: Monday, February 28 2005 @ 10:27 AM EST.

Bullshit...

Re:why bother?

[gl4ss]

not upgrading? it's a speed upgrade. whatever you think g4's in cubes are not faster than pentium-m's available now, as such, if you intend to run linux or even winxp it is an upgrade.

and the case of g4 cube is cool - which is why you would do this upgrade(when you've deemed that it's too slow to act as your desktop anyways and would like a linux/windows box with some beef)..

But does it run OS X?

[alan_dershowitz]

Just asking.

Uhhh...

[mdxi]

...the G4 Cube is already capable of running Linux.

What I don't understand is...

[nmb3000]

Two words: device drivers.

We've seen lots in the last few days about Apple and Intel and some blurring of the lines, but in all this I haven't seen much related to drivers. Think about it for a second. Whether you install Windows on a Mac or OS X on an x86 system, is anything (besides the very basics maybe) going to work?

In order to get OS X as popular on x86 as Windows or Linux it's going to require a LOT of driver writing by both Apple and other vendors. Unless Apple comes up with a way to get Windows-native drivers to work (or Linux I suppose, but Windows has a better full-support native driver base) OS X is going to suffer many of the same problems Linux does with hardware support, specifically products that are not mainstream.

Or am I wrong and is there a quick and easy way to build a native "plug-'n-pray" driver base such as Windows XP has? Love it or hate it, you have to admit that XP really does have great native support for tons of stuff, a feature which is a huge plus for a lot of people. Usually, it really does Just Work (TM)