CircuitBored's Overclocked eMac!

[Snial]

Hi folks,

I'm now the briefly and surprisingly honoured owner of @CircuitBored 's eMac, an 800MHz G4 machine with 1GB of RAM, overclocked to 1.27GHz. This makes it, in theory, slightly slower than my Mac mini G4, except that, I believe the eMac has a spinning HDD instead of the mSATA drive the Mac miniG4 does. OTOH, it has Wifi, which the Mac mini G4 doesn't (I use my Raspberry PI 3 as a Wifi-Ethernet bridge).

So, the natural thing to do once I started to play with it, is to get the InterwebPPC browser running on it and then log into the 68KMLA, just to prove it's usable. And it is, with a slight typing lag for a touch-typist like me.


It looks a bit ungainly and somewhat sacrilegious connected to my R-PI keyboard, but I prefer small keyboards, and this eMac doesn't have Bluetooth, so I'm forced to use a wired keyboard anyway - and of course, because it's running Mac OS X 10.4.11, the scroll bars work the opposite way round to a modern macOS and that takes a bit of getting used to!

A bit of a background: this eMac was bought by CircuitBored about a decade back and used as his main computer for a number of years until he could afford something better, so it has special significance. I'm glad it's not going to be junked. The display looks pretty sharp and my middle-aged eyes can cope with the 72Hz frequency for the benefit of a 1280 x 960 resolution (which oddly enough is just slightly less than my Intel Mac mini's 1280x1024, but keeps the 4:3 screen ratio).

I've just tried to watch a couple of my YouTube videos, but even with the Recommended InterTube, YouTube thinks the videos won't play (probably because of browser ID strings, but I've not tried to get YouTube to work on a PPC Mac for years).

Although this machine is nice to play with, I'm going to be selling it on eBay in the near future, primarily because, as before, I need the space and this baby is BIG! With 1GB of RAM and Tiger, it's capable of doing some surprisingly sophisticated video editing with Final Cut Express 2.0 (and 3.0 HD) as I know, but from using similar machines for that purpose in the noughties. Next up, I think involves installing MacPorts.

I'll probably post a few more updates as I progress, and if you have any advice on how to make the best of this eMac, feel free to let me know!

Cheers from Julz.

 

[Nixontheknight]

are you using a Pi 400 as the keyboard? How?

 

[Snial]

are you using a Pi 400 as the keyboard? How?

It might look like a Pi 400 (which is cool IMHO), but it's just the keyboard with nothing more than a HID controller inside!

 

[CircuitBored]

I'm going to miss that big old thing. That said, I'm glad that it's going back out into the world instead of into a skip.

 

[Snial]

I'm going to miss that big old thing.

So will I!

That said, I'm glad that it's going back out into the world instead of into a skip.

Indeed, it's like a Toy Story 3 plot ;-) !



PS. Of course, the top of the screen isn't really pink, it's just the 72Hz refresh rate vs my camera shutter-speed.

 

[Phipli]

PS. Of course, the top of the screen isn't really pink, it's just the 72Hz refresh rate vs my camera shutter-speed.

Man does my phone's video mode hate 67hz

I think it works out that it is approximately 60hz, and tries to sync with the 60hz it isn't.

Another thing I've found is that if I want a portrait picture, it is better to take a landscape picture and crop it, otherwise those bucket chains, they do cause the tearing!

 

[Snial]

Man does my phone's video mode hate 67hz

It will hate the 72Hz on the eMac screen too!

I think it works out that it is approximately 60hz, and tries to sync with the 60hz it isn't.

Another thing I've found is that if I want a portrait picture, it is better to take a landscape picture and crop it, otherwise those bucket chains, they do cause the tearing!

Tearing! I remember in the days of early Symbian OS phones and feature phones of that era where the VGA, CCD-based SPI camera interface would cause massive tearing. You just had to move the phone a bit and images would wobble like a cheesy 1980's video effect!

 

[Phipli]

Tearing! I remember in the days of early Symbian OS phones and feature phones of that era where the VGA, CCD-based SPI camera interface would cause massive tearing. You just had to move the phone a bit and images would wobble like a cheesy 1980's video effect!

Guess they're just faster now.

I'm not about to splash out for global shutter, just so I can take portrait pictures of my SE

 

[Snial]

Guess they're just faster now.

Early Symbian OS phones ran ARM7TDMI cores at 104MHz. The whole OS, apps and user storage initially fitted into 16MB of flash (5MB for the user). In that sense it's vaguely comparable with System 6, because although System 6's System Folder was smaller, and the Toolbox was built into ROM, Symbian OS was built upon a more factored DLL architecture: bigger OS and middleware, but smaller apps.

I'm not about to splash out for global shutter, just so I can take portrait pictures of my SE

Gosh, I don't know what a 'global' shutter is, but it must be pretty good! I just hope the SE doesn't take offence at not being considered worth it ;-) !

 

[Phipli]

Early Symbian OS phones ran ARM7TDMI cores at 104MHz. The whole OS, apps and user storage initially fitted into 16MB of flash (5MB for the user). In that sense it's vaguely comparable with System 6, because although System 6's System Folder was smaller, and the Toolbox was built into ROM, Symbian OS was built upon a more factored DLL architecture: bigger OS and middleware, but smaller apps.

Gosh, I don't know what a 'global' shutter is, but it must be pretty good! I just hope the SE doesn't take offence at not being considered worth it ;-) !

A global shutter captures all pixels in a single instant, rather than cascading through the sensing elements. It avoids time dependant distortion and is handy for high speed photography and scientific measurement...

But it requires more electronics going to every element of the sensor array... So I think has some disadvantages... But the big one is cost.

The common rolling shutter does this :



(Wikipedia)

 

[Phipli]

The names aren't physical descriptions, more names for the characteristic.

 

[alectrona2988]

Congrats on getting ahold of one of the greatest AIO macs of all time! I have 2 working eMacs, a 1.27GHz OC'd 2003 model running 10.4.11 and 9.2.2, and a 1.92GHz OC'd 2005 model running 10.4.11 and 10.5.8. Both of them are solid machines and I love using them!