G4 with PowerLogix 1.7 GHz CPU Upgrade

[Mike Richardson]

Picked up a Sawtooth G4 at the recycler for $20. I noticed the heatsink was all different with a fan and stuff.

Got it home and it has a PowerLogix 1.7 GHz G4 7447 upgrade that someone has overclocked to 2 GHz. It booted fine into OS X but I'm going to downclock it back to 1.7 GHz to be safe.

I'm going to move this card into a Digital Audio (for the 133 MHz bus) and make a permanent OS 9 machine - one of the fastest you can put together, short of a dual (and there's really no benefit to running a dual in OS 9 unless you are using one of a handful of programs).

 

[Mike Richardson]

Looks like the G4 also has these upgrades:

- AirPort Card

- ATI Radeon 8500 w/ 64 MB

- USB 2.0 5-port card

I'll carry the Radeon over to the Digital Audio, but the USB card would be worthless, and the AirPort card unused.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Fail on using a Digital Audio. It looks like the heatsink won't fit. There's no way to reconfigure it without obliterating all the memory. I tried two other G4 heatsinks I had lying around and those don't fit either.

This card is fully compatible with DA/QS and the 133 MHz bus but it's just a matter of the damn heatsink!

I guess I'll have to use a Gigabit, or dig up another heatsink.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Posting this using WamCom from my new OS 9 machine.

- Power Mac G4 "Gigabit"

- 1.7 GHz G4 (may experiment with overclocking to 1. 8)

- 1 GB RAM

- 20 GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive

- Zip Drive

- DVD-ROM Drive

I forgot how fast OS 9 was on fast hardware like this. YouTube runs perfectly in WamCom.

I'm gonna have to load Duke Nukem 3D, that will fly.

 

[Temetka]

Excellent score!

 

[Mike Richardson]

- 1.7 GHz G4 (may experiment with overclocking to 1. 8)

Perfect example of an inconvenience caused by the inability to edit posts older than 1 hour.

 

[John8520]

And had you previewed, you wouldn't have this problem. Nice score either way.

 

[Mike Richardson]

I just hooked this baby up where my G5 normally goes.

So it's running off my 20" Cinema Display, and my Tactile Pro keyboard.

This really is so swift. I could almost use this as my daily Mac. WamCom seems to work well enough. Bank of America loads and everything, I'm sure my other banks load too. I think every site I use probably loads.

I could use whatever e-mail client I felt like (my server has no odd requirements). I'm not sure if iTunes 2.0 plays AAC but I know QuickTime 6 does. Since Apple started taking off the DRM I could transfer all of my non-DRM music to OS 9. I would still need OS X to buy the music though.

AIM 4.7 still works fine, I could load up Fetch 3 or 4, and BBEdit Lite for coding. I could get serious shit done on here. You can even get the old DiVx and 3ivx for OS 9 and watch many common AVIs.

 

[Mike Richardson]

iTunes 2 still loads all of the internet radio stations you can get in iTunes 7/8. Audion is fairly broken though and only seems to load 16 stations.

Not one crash yet! I'm tempted to overclock!

 

[Christopher]

How much you selling your G5 for?