MDD Ultimate OS9 Machine Upgrades

[senrew]

Started playing around with my 1.25ghz (single) 2003 MDD and after looking at it's specs, it occurred to me that I *might* have the fastest (stock) OS9 machine Apple sold. This machine has the Geforce4 installed too. Now, I'm calling this one the fastest as the dual CPU machines aren't really generally useful for OS9 duties unless it's for specific tasks, and this machine is pretty much just going to be running games for me. It also has (almost) max RAM, 1.75GB. I had a 512 stick die on me and only had a spare 256 that worked in the machine.

Are there any other common upgrades I could do for this machine that would benefit game playing in any way? Were there 3rd party sound cards for instance that added anything?

Since this is a MDD, and we all know one day it'll just up and murder it's own PSU at some point, would a 867mhz quicksilver be good enough as a gaming machine as a backup?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

http://atxg4.com/ [] ]'>

I'll be looking into ordering his adapters for several machines even though the only one I "need"  ATM is for my bare B&W G3 mobo. So far I've bought a DA and QS as PSU donors, but that supply is drying up and I don't want to part another one out.

Found that link over at MacS9lives. As far as putting together the ultimate OS9 machine goes, check out DieHard's efforts in that regard. I'm on a QS now and setting up the '03 special edition upgrade of the MDD as my backup machine. [] ]'>

 

[omidimo]

The AcBel power supply is the worst thing ever, even worst than the IIsi fish stink power supply. I swapped mine out with Samsung version, which runs better well until that dies.

I also replaced the main fan with a Papst model which is much quieter than the Delta model, it is Apple OEM, but they are rarer. Finally the last major change I did was put in a copper heatsink as it does a better job than the aluminum one. I am only using one hard drive in it, a 128GB OWC Legacy PATA SSD, which is wicked fast and generates no heat. 

I am debating removing one of the media drives to allow more airflow.

 

[waynestewart]

I'm using a MDD to play a few games. For gaming I found mechanical hard drives to be a pain. I tried various hard drive setups but right now I'm using a Compact Flash with ide adapter. Fast and inexpensive

 

[ArmorAlley]

My ultimate Mac OS 9 spec for the gamers' MDD:

Graphics card: nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and a full HD monitor.

Storage card: SeriTek SATA card (PCI-X version) although any SATA card will do. This card will drive SATA SSDs - less noise from hard drives and more speed from SSDs.

Sound card: referencing a previous thread, if there is a sound card that allows 5,1 Surround sound, this would be good. M-Audio seemed to have had one, the SoundBlaster Live!. Not that many, or probably any support 5,1 surround sound, but sound from behind is anyway nice.

Mouse / HID: not sure. Anybody with the best HID for gaming?

Accelerator Card: Sonnet Encore 1.8GHz G4. Not sure if it runs Mac OS 9. I don't see why it shouldn't and I am open to correction on it.

 

[senrew]

The machine does have a seritek sata card in it, and i've got a 250gb drive connected to it now.

As for the Soundblaster Live! thing...are there drivers for one of those for OS9?

 

[ArmorAlley]

The machine does have a seritek sata card in it, and i've got a 250gb drive connected to it now.

As for the Soundblaster Live! thing...are there drivers for one of those for OS9?

It came out in 2000, so must do. It is the mac version of the card, so the drivers would come with the card.

The m-audio Revolution 5.1 seems to be a better bet. That requires a G4 or better.

 

[waynestewart]

I've used a Sonnet SATA card in a MDD with both SSD and mechanical hard drive. They benchmarked the same. The only advantage was that the SSD didn't spin down.

I liked the Kensington Turbomouse Pro trackball

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

MacWorld 10/1/2001  Sound Blaster Live:

This PCI card sports two analog outputs, for both two- and four-channel speaker systems; a digital output, for digital audio tape (DAT) drives or digital speakers; a line input; a microphone input; a MIDI connector; and a EMU10K1 synthesizer chip, for playing sampled wave-table sounds from a MIDI sequencer or via MIDI input.

 

[senrew]

Followed the trail of links and google results and found a way to stick a PC Live! card in and get it to work with the Mac drivers. I'll totally be trying this out when I get a chance as I have one of the specific models of SB card that are known to work. Awesome.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nice, definitely document your progress in a peripherals thread!

 

[AlpineRaven]

My Monster G4 MDD - which I adore to pieces...

Its FW400 model, with dual 1.42ghz G4

2x 1gb sticks PC3200 (that I pinched it from G5) but it steps down to what it needs

Sonnet SATA card installed running 128gb mSATA out of it which it flies in MacOS9.2.2 and MacOSX4.11

Also has SCSI Card that is also bootable, just sitting there as I used to use it but not in these days.

Has Samsung PSU swap - oh god its so much quieter, replaced main fan to quieter one.

Has nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 video card

I used it as middle mac or processing Mac or gaming - love it!

Cheers

AP

 

[Dimitris1980]

Very nice post! I have also the single 1,25 ghz Powermac G4. I bought it some years before because i was looking the last machine that can boot from mac os 9. I have increased the ram to 1,768mb if i remember correctly and i can also remember that mac os 9 was really fast! I would like to upgrade it with better graphics card (now i have a geforce 32mb ram) and a sonnet encore accelerator for mac os leopard but it is really hard and expensive to find one.

 

[Brett B.]

Out of curiosity - what games are you guys playing in OS9 that require that level of processing power?

I am a little out of date now but I played a ton of games back in the OS7, 8, 9, and very early OS X era.  I just don't recall not being able to play ANY OS9 compatible games on my tricked out G3 simply because it wasn't fast enough... the only road block I ever ran into was simply lack of OS 9 support.  IIRC even fairly graphic intense games like Quake 3, Warcraft III, Unreal Tournament, etc ran great even with every setting maxed out.

I may be forgetting something since I switched to gaming on the PC sometime around 2004 or so... I just don't remember my old hardware ever being a limiting factor, and if had a fast G4 at that point that was OS X supported, I would have been using it and not OS9.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

MDD OS9 Special edition here too, why would you want to move yours to Leopard?

I'm in an OS9 Graphics/CAD/CAM bubble. OSX horrid at first release and pretty much useless to me without upgrading literally tens of thousands worth of dongled software for little or no gain at all in function. I've stuck with OS9 on G4 ever since and I'm really happy in my own little corner of the retro world. Only a dedicated, quarantined Firefox server is relatively current.

I don't think these machines are a gaming kind of addiction. The power users wringing every drop of performance for OS9 are doing Digital Audio with Pro Gear and Applications that were ultra high end in the OS9 era.  http://www.macos9lives.com/smforum/