Its definately a serious pita to change the harddrive in a PowerBook G4, ram is fairly easy... I can't remember if it was a pain to do the airport card... probably not.
When doing dev work, its unlikely you'll crash OSX (although I have done it when I tripped over some CPU bugs^H^H^H^Herrata)
Use photoshop, under OS9, or quark, you will corrupt the filesystem... but its normally very easy to fix. The problem is that one time when it isn't:(
I have an OSX box which doesn't get along with firewire drives... this used to cause kernel panics... now it just causes pizza-death (which can be rememedied by unplugging the firewire chain)
That machine was prone to corruption through 10.0->10.1.5 (or was it.4?)
OSX uses a different method of detecting an improper shutdown to OS9.
Thus, when OS9 shuts down it doesn't make it so the drive is 'clean' from OSX's perspective
and when OSX shuts down it doesn't make the drive clean from OS9's perspective.
Soooo, if you're in OS9, set your startup disk to OSX and force a reboot, OSX will probably boot fine, no fsck etc, and when you restart to 9, you'll get the Disk First Aid.
I don't actually know how OSX tells that a volume is dirty:)
Basically the only real difference is in the details of some instructions, and the 64bit registers.
Since you're using 64 bit integer registers, you can now use 64 bit addressing (pointers), which means you can calculate addresses for 64bit address spaces, which yes, means more RAM.
Macs are currently limited to below 4GB of ram, which is actually a limit... I think the most significant reason to move to 64bit PPC is to go beyond 4GB of physical ram.
The other benefit will be the ability to handle 64bit integers fast. As used by databases;)
Another benefit will be 64bit load/stores which can happen in 1 cycle, rather than 2.
Of course, the Altivec unit has allowed 128bit load/stores for a while now (and the fpu allowed 64bit load/stores before)
Anywho, the big points of PPC64 are increased integer size and larger address space.
If you think about it, a quad is two triangles... and these game cards these days can output millions of triangles per second...
Most people aren't going to stress their video card that heavily:)
The biggest problem will be when you have more textures than will fit in the video cards VRAM (but that is a problem with games too)
BUT, once you get to that point, there might be some intelligence in the CPU side compositor so that it won't send the textures across the AGP bus if they're completely obscured (or is that already part of the OpenGL spec... I suppose it would be:))
The busy cursor is because the application is not responding to the OS
Actually, (at least in the classic MacOS API -- I don't know what happens under OS X) the busy cursor *only* appears and is animated if the application *is* responding to the OS. The application does the work of displaying the busy cursor.
I'm telling you what happens in OSX, the busy cursor (the spinning pizza wheel) appears when the Application is does not respond to the OS for a certain amount of time (it was 1 second in 10.1, I believe its 2 in 10.2). This is related to CarbonEvents, but calling WNE in an old-school mac app at least once every second would be enough to stop the pizza-wheel
Furthermore, this is very, very difficult to break away from. #FFFFFF has been used so long in standard UI elements that trying to convince everyone to use, say, #AAAAAA for paper means that people would have to set their monitors to either have old games/software be painfully bright or have their new software look dingy. It may someday be possible by having all windows passed through a realtime brightness/contrast/gamma filter on a per-application basis, but until then, our monitors are not capable of rendering a realistic-looking world.
Hmmm, sounds like exactly the job for QuartGL... erm... QuartzExtreme:)
You know, the technology where everywindow is rendered as a textured GL quad with GL transparency (and perhaps gamma correction)
The busy cursor is because the application is not responding to the OS.
This is an application issue. If the application was updated to do its heavy lifting in a thread and run the interface in a separate thread, then you wouldn't get the busy cursor.
The problem I think is that Sun sees Apple's market as somewhere they want to go, and Apple sees Sun's market as something they'd like a slice of...
I mean, If IBM's new mini Power4 chip comes out, and Apple migrates to it, then Apple will be squarely on a path which will lead them to seriously powerful unix servers... Sun class...
I know plenty of people who are (or will be) running the latest OSX operating system on their 4 year old macs.
I don't know anywhere near that many windows users who 1) use a 4 year machine as their primary machine or 2) are going to install Windows XP on it... they continue using Windows 98.
No, the other guy is interested in his connection to the internet.
From a layman's perspective the line is the internet connection.
Now, it doesn't matter if he gets the full 1.5mbps to the ISP, if he doesn't get the full 1.5mbps (all the time) to the public internet.
Downloading a test file from the ISP will only check the provisioning and the functioning of the ISPs ftp server.
If you want to check that you're getting the internet connectivity that you're paying for then you have to download from the public internet. The trick is that you can't be sure that the bottleneck is not at the other end.
The solution is to download from hundreds of different servers, thus easily saturating your line.
Measure the utilization and if its not... 192KB/s then you are not getting a full T1 worth of internet connectivity...
To be valid you really need to do this test at all hours of the day... because an ISP can buy enough incoming bandwidth to cover his needs during most times... except the peak.
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Just one minor correction, The G3s do not have any vector instructions... none, nada, zip, zilch ;)
This is the big problem with G3s... they're fine until you want to do something slightly challenging... say play an MPEG-4 movie....
Or leave your mac on overnight sometimes ;)
The only problem I have with the operating system UI is the lack of window shading.
;)
You need.... WindowShade X
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/wsx/
That's right... now you can get WindowShade functionality in OSX... only better.
please note, I don't work for unsanity... I just like their stuff
The education market loves the things (old imacs)
They're practically indestructible, and work great as office/web machines.
Make sure your new ram works with your *new* ibook ;)
Its definately a serious pita to change the harddrive in a PowerBook G4, ram is fairly easy... I can't remember if it was a pain to do the airport card... probably not.
:)
That HD was a *BITCH* though
If Apple would ditch moto, they could have G3s running at 1.8Ghz today. They would most likely be faster than the G4 in just about every category
Except all of Apple's core markets, like science, video, film, audio, design, graphics, etc
And that name would be VMX :)
The original codename from when IBM, Apple and Moto hammered it out
I think the way to go for removable storage is definately a CD-R/CD-RW burner
;)
I wouldn't recommend the keychain doobies...
Main reason... you can't just give someone the disk
The eMac sounds like the perfect machine for her... A G4 has legs, a G3 doesn't
OSX comes with Acrobat Reader.
.pdfs from any app by printing to preview (which is a PDF).
.doc,.xls and .ppt like you say you do you will need Office X
.
It can create crude
If you use
That should be everything you need
If you find that the built in OSX CD burner software isn't what you want, then get Roxio Toast
That should about cover it for 'pay for' software.
I was under the impression that 2gbps FCAL *was* SCSI...
But then again, 'scsi' isn't the be all and end all, after all, FireWire is also *scsi*
HFS+ corruption is ONLY a problem if you crash.
:(
.4?)
When doing dev work, its unlikely you'll crash OSX (although I have done it when I tripped over some CPU bugs^H^H^H^Herrata)
Use photoshop, under OS9, or quark, you will corrupt the filesystem... but its normally very easy to fix. The problem is that one time when it isn't
I have an OSX box which doesn't get along with firewire drives... this used to cause kernel panics... now it just causes pizza-death (which can be rememedied by unplugging the firewire chain)
That machine was prone to corruption through 10.0->10.1.5 (or was it
Yes first point, no second point :)
;)
"Let me just turn off the set"
as she pushes the power button on her iMac (it promptly goes to sleep)
and promptly unplugs the computer, and plugs in a lamp
Ouch...
(true story)
I was actually over there to help her with her drive problems
Anywho, journelling will be fantastic for AOL grandmas... they get to treat their computer just like a TV (set)
Simple answer :
:)
OSX uses a different method of detecting an improper shutdown to OS9.
Thus, when OS9 shuts down it doesn't make it so the drive is 'clean' from OSX's perspective
and when OSX shuts down it doesn't make the drive clean from OS9's perspective.
Soooo, if you're in OS9, set your startup disk to OSX and force a reboot, OSX will probably boot fine, no fsck etc, and when you restart to 9, you'll get the Disk First Aid.
I don't actually know how OSX tells that a volume is dirty
The 64 bit PPC uses 32 bit instructions.
;)
Basically the only real difference is in the details of some instructions, and the 64bit registers.
Since you're using 64 bit integer registers, you can now use 64 bit addressing (pointers), which means you can calculate addresses for 64bit address spaces, which yes, means more RAM.
Macs are currently limited to below 4GB of ram, which is actually a limit... I think the most significant reason to move to 64bit PPC is to go beyond 4GB of physical ram.
The other benefit will be the ability to handle 64bit integers fast. As used by databases
Another benefit will be 64bit load/stores which can happen in 1 cycle, rather than 2.
Of course, the Altivec unit has allowed 128bit load/stores for a while now (and the fpu allowed 64bit load/stores before)
Anywho, the big points of PPC64 are increased integer size and larger address space.
PPC does not use segment hacks like x86
IOW make it so that users encourage developers to fix their apps :)
:)
Which is really the best way to get the problem fixed fastest
I believe its every window.
:)
:))
If you think about it, a quad is two triangles... and these game cards these days can output millions of triangles per second...
Most people aren't going to stress their video card that heavily
The biggest problem will be when you have more textures than will fit in the video cards VRAM (but that is a problem with games too)
BUT, once you get to that point, there might be some intelligence in the CPU side compositor so that it won't send the textures across the AGP bus if they're completely obscured (or is that already part of the OpenGL spec... I suppose it would be
The busy cursor is because the application is not responding to the OS
Actually, (at least in the classic MacOS API -- I don't know what happens under OS X) the busy cursor *only* appears and is animated if the application *is* responding to the OS. The application does the work of displaying the busy cursor.
I'm telling you what happens in OSX, the busy cursor (the spinning pizza wheel) appears when the Application is does not respond to the OS for a certain amount of time (it was 1 second in 10.1, I believe its 2 in 10.2). This is related to CarbonEvents, but calling WNE in an old-school mac app at least once every second would be enough to stop the pizza-wheel
-- reluctant Carbon programmer
I think you'll find the right ternm for 16bit "density" is 48 bpp
:))
That's 16 bits per component (there being 3 components if you don't count alpha... otherwise you'd probably have 64bpp)
Anywho, I deal with a lot of uncompressed video... I'll take 8 of these drives
Uncompressed (or even DV) video will easily bring any current HD to its knees
Furthermore, this is very, very difficult to break away from. #FFFFFF has been used so long in standard UI elements that trying to convince everyone to use, say, #AAAAAA for paper means that people would have to set their monitors to either have old games/software be painfully bright or have their new software look dingy. It may someday be possible by having all windows passed through a realtime brightness/contrast/gamma filter on a per-application basis, but until then, our monitors are not capable of rendering a realistic-looking world.
:)
Hmmm, sounds like exactly the job for QuartGL... erm... QuartzExtreme
You know, the technology where everywindow is rendered as a textured GL quad with GL transparency (and perhaps gamma correction)
The busy cursor is because the application is not responding to the OS.
This is an application issue. If the application was updated to do its heavy lifting in a thread and run the interface in a separate thread, then you wouldn't get the busy cursor.
The problem I think is that Sun sees Apple's market as somewhere they want to go, and Apple sees Sun's market as something they'd like a slice of...
;))
I mean, If IBM's new mini Power4 chip comes out, and Apple migrates to it, then Apple will be squarely on a path which will lead them to seriously powerful unix servers... Sun class...
(well, maybe not
But you're probably not running Windows XP on it.
I know plenty of people who are (or will be) running the latest OSX operating system on their 4 year old macs.
I don't know anywhere near that many windows users who 1) use a 4 year machine as their primary machine or 2) are going to install Windows XP on it... they continue using Windows 98.
No, the other guy is interested in his connection to the internet.
... 192KB/s then you are not getting a full T1 worth of internet connectivity...
From a layman's perspective the line is the internet connection.
Now, it doesn't matter if he gets the full 1.5mbps to the ISP, if he doesn't get the full 1.5mbps (all the time) to the public internet.
Downloading a test file from the ISP will only check the provisioning and the functioning of the ISPs ftp server.
If you want to check that you're getting the internet connectivity that you're paying for then you have to download from the public internet. The trick is that you can't be sure that the bottleneck is not at the other end.
The solution is to download from hundreds of different servers, thus easily saturating your line.
Measure the utilization and if its not
To be valid you really need to do this test at all hours of the day... because an ISP can buy enough incoming bandwidth to cover his needs during most times... except the peak.
You don't know when the ISPs peak is.
Or perhaps its a lump of hardened shit from when someone flushed the toilet on a 747... ...
Yes, I've seen Joe Dirt