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Upgrade Your G4 Cube to a Pentium M Processor

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-so-desire dept.

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."

50 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Whatever by aendeuryu · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm holding out for x86-yaddayadda compatibility. You early adopters can go nuts.

    1. Re:Whatever by absinthminded64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Kind of makes you wonder how long Apple has been planning on their x86 compatibility.. I dont think they would already be kicking this stuff out for the G4s without serious hardware modifications or even a total replacement of the mainboard if it hadn't been on the horizon for some time. I've never seen or opened one of these up. Maybe the processor is on it's own daughterboard? I also see the word 'Upgrade' but not sure if they are referring to an upgrade of their own product line or an upgrade for existing users.

      Quick scan of TFA says it uses a bit of emulation and 'Glue Logic' to pull this off.

      Hmm Glue Logic. . Mr Owl. . How many rolls of duct tape does it take to get to the center of the G4 Cube/PCube.. . .

  2. why bother? by Loconut1389 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    why bother, i mean really.. You're not really upgrading so much as shoving a bunch of pc parts in a g4 box, in the end you've still just got a pc, and ultimately one without openprom so you wont be able to run os x.

    1. Re:why bother? by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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)..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:why bother? by njcoder · · Score: 5, Funny
      There are a whole lot of other cool G4 upgrades.

      For instance, you can upgrade the G4 cube to a candy dish. I haven't finished the website and powerpoint presentation but in the meantime just follow the article's directions to the point where you remove the old motherboard. Then remove anything else and fill with candy.

      Next week I'll share my procedure for turning an old full tower case into a phone stand.

      --
      Open Source Java DAO Generator
    3. Re:why bother? by hyeh · · Score: 3, Informative

      x86 Macs will not use OpenFirmware.

    4. Re:why bother? by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think he meant not upgrading as in just making a totally different PC and using a case , as opposed to its not an upgrade of components.
      It may be a nice case mod , but have you seen how much the g4 cubes cost , they are still regularly being sold at around the same price of the MacMini

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    5. Re:why bother? by Wdomburg · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm not the original poster, but how about Apple as a source?

    6. Re:why bother? by Yakman · · Score: 2, Informative

      No Open Firmware on x86 Macs

      Source: Apple, Universal Binary Guidelines.

    7. Re:why bother? by samkass · · Score: 2, Informative


      Actually, Apple hasn't decided yet. It sounds to me like the front-runner is EFI.

      (The devkits will be BIOS, but that's apparently not the final word.)

      --
      E pluribus unum
  3. Stage 5 of the switch? by nigham · · Score: 5, Funny

    See here.

    --
    I don't want to read /. I want to go home and re-think my life.
    1. Re:Stage 5 of the switch? by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yesterday I got banned from a macintosh channel for defending powerpc against Intel.

      Speechless...

    2. Re:Stage 5 of the switch? by Ilgaz · · Score: 2, Informative

      This one is interesting.

      I went there again as I don't care IRC serious but it turns out to be, its not a joke at all.

      Its "toby" at irc.freenode.net which is said to be from Apple itself being chanop on excellent open source projects not-so-excellent official support channels.

      Its a normal thing which is a problem for any opensource projects IRC channel.

  4. What a waste of $$$ by ankhcraft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    ...
  5. Upgrade.... by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
    1. Re:Upgrade.... by mcc · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --
      Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    2. Re:Upgrade.... by ajs318 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. All the electricity you feed into an air conditioner gets turned into heat as well. It's just that most of that heat -- and all the heat extracted from the room -- gets blasted outside.

      An air conditioner appears to chuck out more watts of heat from the discharge pipe {if you can measure it; it's actually quite difficult} than you are feeding it in electricity. The difference is how much heat the air conditioner is extracting from the room. Small air conditioners aren't terribly efficient: I have a unit that draws about 1kW and only does about 2kW of cooling {so puts out 3kW of heat from flue}.

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  6. So ****ing what? by onlyjoking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What the **** is all the noise about? So I start with a G4 running the wonderful OS X and I'm given the option of spending money to destroy it and put an Intel chip in the box so that I can ...... run Windoze or Linux? Someone hit me on the head, please, and let me in on this one coz I just don't get it.

    1. Re:So ****ing what? by Errtu76 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, just for Windows since there are PPC flavors of Linux already available. So i'm wondering how many people that specificly buy a Mac would even consider losing this feature to 'gain' windows?

    2. Re:So ****ing what? by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 2, Informative

      We can say "fuck" on /. you know. Self-censoring yourself only makes you look silly.

    3. Re:So ****ing what? by punkass · · Score: 2, Funny

      So your wife hates it...sounds like empirical data to me. I guess apple should just close their doors...

      --
      "Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
  7. But by hobotron · · Score: 4, Funny


    Did they give it a fruit name?
    Guess they dont teach you fancy pants marketing people like they used to.

    --
    There is truth in humor.
    1. Re:But by eclectro · · Score: 4, Funny

      Did they give it a fruit name?

      You mean like "lemon".

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  8. I, for one, call bullshit on that one... by fifirebel · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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...

    1. Re:I, for one, call bullshit on that one... by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

      Old, fake news too, from the same Dana as has done various Visual Hacks on assorted Macintoshes.

      The site's somewhat dead at the moment, but it's a great read when it's up and running - so long as one's tongue is kept firmly in cheek... ;-)

      (Off-topic: there's a spider currently walking across my iBook's screen. It started near the bottom and now it's sat at the top, just under the 'Window' menu. Oooer!)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    2. Re:I, for one, call bullshit on that one... by douglips · · Score: 4, Funny
      (Off-topic: there's a spider currently walking across my iBook's screen. It started near the bottom and now it's sat at the top, just under the 'Window' menu. Oooer!)

      To discourage spiders, make sure you have a proper robots.txt file.
      --
      My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
    3. Re:I, for one, call bullshit on that one... by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There's always the possibility of closing that lid...

      The aforementioned spider has since moved away from my iBook, and is currently sat on a wound-up ethernet patch cable that's also on my desk. It's been there for the last hour or so.

      Ooh! It just wiggled its pedipalps around, and it's on the move again!

      (I can't believe I'm writing a spider-blog, but it's already got more factual content than The Fabled Article... ;-) )

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  9. But does it run OS X? by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just asking.

  10. Uhhh... by mdxi · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    Posted with Mozilla
  11. What I don't understand is... by nmb3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
    1. Re:What I don't understand is... by jhdevos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Keep in mind that Apple probably won't sell MacOS on general pc's -- the sell a package, not just harware or software. That means they only have to support the machines they themselves sell, just like they do now. There won't be much of a change there.

      Jan

    2. Re:What I don't understand is... by Com2Kid · · Score: 4, Insightful
      • 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)


      This actually is not TOO huge of a problem.

      Since Apple switched over to PCI and AGP ports quite some time ago, there already exists a large hardware base designed around those two industry standards.

      Next, since the actual OSX kernel compiles against both the PowerPC and x86 platforms, any kernel calls in the drivers will not have to be rewritten.

      Indeed depending on how Apple handles their BIOS calls, very little may need to be rewritten at all. Many hardware devices now days are CPU assisted, (sound cards, network cards, modems, and so on) which may help Apple a great deal as the heart of these types of devices drivers essentially boils down to Kernel calls and a basic software app, both of which should port over easily.

      Basically anything that already has an OSX driver on the PowerPC platform should, with not too much work, and often times maybe with no work at all, have an equivilent driver on an OSX release on x86.

      A dream goal for Apple of course would be drivers needing no porting at all, since it is very unlikely that venders will put even the slightest effort in porting over drivers for older hardware. Heck even in the world of Windows, hardware support often times falls to the wayside after only 3 or 4 years! (In other words a lot of hardware that was released for 98, ME, and Windows 2000 ended up without Windows XP support! Ouch!)
      --
      Need help treating your acne? Come here!
    3. Re:What I don't understand is... by ciroknight · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As I'm sure 8 million people will tell you, Apple's not in the market for OS dominance. They're in it for an awesome platform. This means both hardware AND software superiority.

      In other words, device drivers for your generic Intel hardware --WONT BE MADE-- *shock and amazement*.

      But, that probably won't stop the hackers from trying their best to boot it on Whiteboxen. And I'm sure they'll succeed, but the lengths they go at to succeed won't be worth it to the average user.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    4. Re:What I don't understand is... by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hate to buzz you incorrect but.. **BUZZ**.

      Darwin's an interesting animal. It's a hybrid of FreeBSD and the Mach micro-kernel. I'd almost go as far as saying FreeBSD is a module *within* Mach, but that's not entirely true.

      Darwin drivers, as they exist, should work for Mac OS X, but not many exist. And I wouldn't look for this to change as time goes on either.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    5. Re:What I don't understand is... by ciroknight · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would doubt if most drivers take anything more than an Endian switch and a few tweaks here and there to deal with the register differences, most of which can be done by a good compiler.

      Most companies who haven't released their specs to Apple, on the other hand, will be out in the dark when it comes to writing new device drivers. Apple's gone out of their way to make it easy two switch between the platforms, device drivers are not going to be something to slow them down.

      That's one of the advantages of running a microkernel like Mach; *everything* plugs in to it, so making a driver work shouldn't take much mucking around inside of the kernel wondering why something completely doesn't work.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    6. Re:What I don't understand is... by NoodleSlayer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As it stands Mac OS X runs on Apple Production hardware because its just that, production, produced by apple, so they know that users won't be using anything but a small hardware set. Even internally within Apple you can get some interesting prototypes lying around with interesting issues associated with them.

      In short part of the strength of the Mac is that developers, including Apple, can assume that it will only be run on a very small set of hardware, and thus anything that is not within that set will not only be untested, assuming you do have drivers for it, but even then those drivers will probably not work as well as Mac OS X, as it exists now is not made to handle any piece of hardware you possibly could throw at it, and the OS might not be as stable as it would running real production Apple hardware.

      However when it comes to many external devices, eg. DVD/CD Burners, Printers, Scanners, Digital Cameras, etc. many of those tend to Just Work (TM). I have a PowerBook running Tiger and it detects my Sony Cybershot W5 no problem, no futzing with drivers or anything. Similarly I have a media reader that I picked up in Japan that works like a charm with my mac, it recently has been having issues with my Windows box, largely because of how Windows detects it. Similarly at this moment my digital camera does not work with my Windows 2000 box because I've yet to install the right driver. In all fairness the OS I'm running on my mac is six weeks old, closer to three months though if you count from the time it went GM. Compared to Windows 2000 which is over five years old.

      My Epson 777, and 1200U scanner both work just fine with Mac OS X. In fact I've yet to find some USB or Firewire device that doesn't work, but I haven't looked all that hard, I'm sure if brought to the challenge someone could find something.

    7. Re:What I don't understand is... by toddestan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But how else are they going to get people to buy Macs, if they don't make sure the buyer gets a feeling of superiority? Why would you buy a weird system that's different from what everybody else is using, if not for the ability to gloat and scorn the "sheeple" ?

      The same way the big auto makers get people to buy SUVs. Put huge premiums on them, making them expensive so they become a status symbol.

  12. I can see applications for this by hey! · · Score: 2, Funny

    For example, this would be handy if you want to export that warehouse full of G4 cubes nobody wants to take off of your hands to a country that's on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  13. Mirror... by Currawong · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...here

    --

    What is the point of the internet?
  14. I see the steps! by Aldric · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Post an article about turning a Mac into a PC.
    2. Watch the Mac zealots go apeshit.
    3. Profit from ad revenue!

  15. it's all about the functionality... by aaronrp · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I had two G4 cubes at one time (one for home, one for work). If somebody can make one of these near-obsolete machines be useful for them, who am I to complain? Better that than the landfill or sitting on a shelf.

    --
    Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
  16. FAKE by hector_uk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    this is a fake, other than the fact that the pentium M is COMPLETElY incompatible with the cubes motherboard, i know someone who knows the person that runs this site and it's fake u-power probably dose not even exist (impossible to find on google) i'll probably hack a P-M motherboard with a yonah in my cube when the x86 version of OS X comes out and hack that into running on it.

  17. Yeah right by sjofi · · Score: 2, Funny

    cube owners did get their cubes in the first place just to save money :)

  18. ....in the form of ..... by k_stamour · · Score: 2, Funny

    "....in the form of a Pentium M......." Ok off topic, but when I read that I had a 70s flash back of a cartoon of the "Wonder twins". I would run around ad a kid yelling their signature "Super Wonder Twins....in the form of a (insert counter threat)!"........These days I mostly run around mumbling "....Super Wonder Twins.....in the form of a ...... Budwiser!"

    --
    Julius Caesar - Act I, Scene i: "What mean'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!"
  19. Yes! by NRAdude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And I distinctly remember no less than two years ago, an independent author of a GUI theme was sued by Apple to remove circulation of a certain WindowMaker theme (not KDE, not Gnome, not IceWM) because it completely aroused the end-users perspective to the GUI that it justified not buying a Apple Mac OSX machine. Seriously, if that is all the division between an OS can be, I welcome free software allowing people to move to any architecture they see capable to their needs.

    Many people do not realize that Apple is actually a worse corporate proprietor than Microsoft. Considering all these years that Microsoft has been unable to migrate x86 hardware design away from its legacy XT closet, Apple is jumping into the world with a completely new and recent re-implementation with Intel -- perhaps a feat Microsoft couldn't attempt without someone waving monopoly flames. Remember when Microsoft donated USD 160 million to Apple? Was that to keep the smallest competitor out of bankrupty and far from the predatory grips of anti-monopoly laws?

    The trend to migrate from the legacy XT PC design has been as recent as when Intel started marketing the beleagured "Plug 'N' Play" API. 3DLabs, no more than three years ago when disclosing its VP graphics chipset to compete with nVidia's GeForce vertex and pixel technology we see today, exclaimed to be migrating away from the VGA BIOS compatibility; none else would be compatible to post in VGA text modes! Of'course, the plan is postponed because freedom can be a stubborn mule... It's all just one big software ploy shadowed by the tempting of advertisers to push new trends and remove competition to a select few supra-corporations with closed intelect -- all to compete with the theory "progress." This is all real! Old, but open standards, are being replaced with proprietary solutions that are clearly not in the interests of the people and companies buying the property.

    Yeah, I've looked at computer software the same way as the parent poster had summarized. It's just a struggle between gifted people to press their ideas in codified form onto various competing subdomains of software; criticized by the most calculated, unethical, inconsistent, and undeserving interpretations of data known as the GUI: this + that + this theme + this scheme >= closed_proprietary_solution(TM).

    Hello TCPA, you're in the BIOS as an option that can be disabled! When will that option become an unconditional statement or command that serves none but quash the living trust and will? I see Apple and Intel positioning with a hidden Microsoft to perform a corporate sneek.

    --
    without prejudice
  20. G4 CubeQuarium by sc00ch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I personally think the cubequarium is a much better use of the little box...

    http://home.comcast.net/~jleblanc77/cube/

  21. Re:XP plug and play by man_ls · · Score: 2, Informative

    Generally, that would be every device that is not of a "standard class" (mass storage, generally) released after the OS was shipped.

    Unless people are willing to download hundreds of megabytes of driver additions via Windows Update the OS is just not going to have the modules to talk to the newest hardware out of the box.

  22. Be more credible if it was a casemod. by argent · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeh, I know, DEC put an x86 emulator on the BIOS of the Alpha so it could run intel card firmware during boot, so it's almost beleivable...

    But it would be a lot easier to replace the whole cube motherboard, not just the ZIF.

  23. Hoax by tji · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a hoax.. and not even a very good one. They didn't even include photoshopped pictures of the CPU board with the Pentium-M.

    Basically, they are claiming to make a CPU board that plugs into the Cube's main board. With a few BIOS tweaks they can run x86 software.

    This is, of course, bullshit. It will take much more than plugging a board in, and some BIOS mods, to get a Mac/PowerPC system to be able to use an x86 processor.

  24. what's so wrong with the upgrade? by dionysian.mind · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I don't really understand why there is such adamant opposition to this idea. Jesus. Like a 450 mhz G4 is really THAT useful anymore? 10.4 runs great on my g4 ibook, and sort of well on my eMac 700mhz... but on my 600 mhz G3 iMac it runs like crap. I don't have a g4 cube, but the specs on them aren't the greatest anymore -- my iMac is roughly equivalent to the G4 cube (sans altivec). Personally, I would love to have a G4 cube with this upgrade because the G4 cubes look cool. I would rather have a functional linux box with a Pentium M in it than a less-than-functional G4 that won't even run the current Mac OS properly.

    This strangely violent opposition is why most people are turned off by mac users. "PENTIUM IN MAC IS EVIL!!!11" Get over yourselves. I love OS X just as much, if not more, than the next person -- but I am still more interested in functionality than some religious adherence to any OS. Hardware that works well and the OS that is the best tool for the job / best fit for the hardware is what is important.