Twice the Mac for the Price of None.

[iMac600]

One of the customers at work called yesterday, told us to dispose of his old machine since it was to be too expensive to repair. It officially went off to the dump today.

I don't appreciate my co-workers calling me "the dump" but hey, free machine.

Power Macintosh G4 Digital Audio

Dual 533MHz Processors

640MB RAM

No HD

GeForce 2 MX Graphics

AirPort Wireless Networking

USB 2.0 (Expansion Card)

Which is not a bad machine, and certainly worth the price for even the USB 2.0 card alone. The Power Supply is dead, not even putting out a trickle charge, but i've converted QuickSilvers in the past and this is otherwise the same. After that it couldn't hurt to replace the 128mb stick and get it up to at least 768mb, stick in a decent sized HD and let it fly.

Of course, I have no purpose for such a machine. As a matter of fact, I don't have the space either. I know though that someone, somewhere will want a Dual processor G4 and that's why I saved it from the bin. Down the track i'll probably resell it or donate it.

Until then, i'll be playing around with my first multi-processor Mac ever. Let the good times roll.

 

[Bunsen]

Re: ATX conversion

 

[Paralel]

It cost me hardly anything to get the pins and plug I needed from digi-key in order to make the adapter for the atx conversation I did on my MDD. A word to the wise though, it will take a ridiculous amount of time to get it right if you don't have one of the molex crimping tools.

 

[iMac600]

I want to take the ATX PSU from my old QuickSilver first and see how the machine runs. if it works properly, i'll do the same thing I did with the G4 and just grab a 20 to 24 pin adapter and rewire it. The QuickSilver PSU doesn't even have a 24-28v rail in place, it just uses the standard trickle charge from the ATX's TRKL line to start it up. It's been running solid like that for about 12 months, however ADC on that machine no longer works. FireWire still does if I recall correctly, although I wasn't able to make it go into target disk mode a few weeks ago (which is a little odd and probably an unrelated issue).

 

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

Hey,

This website also sells pre-made converter cables to hook up ATX power supplies to G4's. The price seems reasonable. I bought one for my G4 Sawtooth, but haven't had a chance to use it yet, as the PSU is still running!

http://atxg4.com/

 

[olePigeon]

Dual 533 is in my top 5 of favorite Macs. I'm jealous.

 

[Paralel]

The website for cables listed above no longer appears to be in business. The order page, http://atxg4.com/order.html, has had the statement below on it since Sept 2009:

Ordering is unavailable due to problems with my Paypal account.
There is currently no estimate to when I will be accepting orders again.

 

[iMac600]

Just for fun, I took the Dual 533 processor out of the Digital Audio and fitted it in the QuickSilver (making sure to disconnect the QS CPU 12v Rail, not needed for the DA chip) which normally has an overclocked 733MHz Single at 800MHz. I'm surprised at how well it crunches, cutting through 320 and 480p YouTube Flash video with ease and generally just being awesome.

If it was a Dual 700 or something I could see that chip really taking that QuickSilver to new levels.

What surprises me is the speed of some of the MDD Dual processors, up to 1160 in Geekbench at 1.42GHz (and that doesn't count any RAM, HD or video upgrades). We have a couple of dead MDD's at work, if any of those were to become available for the taking...

 

[Bunsen]

The 2x533 was the high end option for DAs, with bags of cache. The 733 was the entry-level QS, and had less cache. That'll make a big difference.