Upgrading my G4 MDD with a SONNET Encore/Crescendo MDX G4 Duet 1.8GHz Dual CPU Upgrade

[Phipli]

Even in the 8600 I was testing last night, Norton System Info was managing 30MB/s read and write with a SIL3112 card. Remembering that fast SCSI was theoretically 10MB/s, but good luck finding a disk that gets close to that.

 

[Irinikus]

Here's the Schematic for the AcBel Power Supply that's in My machine: (The Power Supplies in MDD's are prone to failure due to bad caps. So it will be a wise move to re-cap my system's power supply.)



Here's list of capacitors required to re-cap the AcBel MDD Power Supply:



I don't want do go the way of the ATX Power Supply mod in this machine!

 

[Irinikus]

There's a bit of goop, but these units appear to be relatively service friendly:

 

[Irinikus]

I installed the SSD into the system today:







It took 1 hour and 10 minutes to copy across 50.91GB!





Here's the new drive speed test result:



It's a significant improvement over the original mechanical drive: (Especially in the random read and write department!)

 

[herd]

I also have this Firewire 800 Dual 1.42GHz machine which I'll have to put up against the Dual 1.8GHz at some point...

I'd be interested in seeing your results. Those are nice computers; thanks for posting about them!

 

[Irinikus]

Today I got OS9.2 onto the MDD Machine, which uses a Radeon 9200 Mac Edition for its display. (The machine now has both the 9800 Pro and 9200 PCI Mac Editions installed!)





Because the MDD has the SONNET installed, I couldn't install OS9 directly onto it, as it needs a special driver to work with the SONNET, which needs to be installed before the SONNET's installed into the system.

In order to get OS9 onto a disk with the necessary SONNET and ATI drivers installed, I turned to my QuickSilver, as it's not upgraded as yet:



This is what the MDD looks like inside now: (It's pretty much as MAXED out as it can possibly be)





The reason why the 9200's installed is because OS9 doesn't work with the 9800 Pro, and the 9200's the absolute best card I can fit into the machine which supports OS9 and runs together with the 9800 Pro in the machine.

So it's the 9800 Pro for OSX and the 9200 for OS9.2

 

[Irinikus]

I'd be interested in seeing your results. Those are nice computers; thanks for posting about them!

Thanks! It's a pleasure!

 

[Irinikus]

I’ve also slotted the SONNET TEMPO PCI SATA card to really get things cooking!

I’ll have to get another SAMSUNG 870 EVO SSD along with another Erico Bracket.

This drive will replace my current storage drive with high speed, more energy efficient storage and also allow me to carry out a direct comparison between the PCI SATA setup and the ATA to SATA converter adapter.



I’ve raided my G3 B&W (9200 and SONNET TEMPO), my G4 Digital Audio (9800 Pro ) and my G5 (2GB DDR RAM) to complete this system, so I’m going to have to purchase replacement parts in the future!

The Mac edition’s and SONNET PCI SATA cards unfortunately don’t come cheap! This is why a complete G4 collection will bankrupt you!

 

[s_pupp]

Except for the SSD (I had an ancient pre-TRIM Patriot Warp), I had a similar setup, and loved it.

For the sake of convenience, I ended up replacing a ebay sourced hacked 9800 AGP/hacked 9200 PCI combination with an OEM Radeon 7500 AGP; some of my OS9 software did better with the 7500 AGP than with the 9000 series cards (or even the NVidia holy grail AGP for dual boot machines, surprisingly enough). I was spending most of my time in OS9, so didn't miss the 9800.

The only reason I'm not still using my MDD G4 is that it became unreliable about 6 or 7 years ago. Still, 14 to 15 years of daily use was a pretty good run.

I wish you years of trouble-free computing with the MDD. It's a noble beast, and deserving of the love you are bestowing upon it.

 

[Irinikus]

Except for the SSD (I had an ancient pre-TRIM Patriot Warp), I had a similar setup, and loved it.

Cool!

For the sake of convenience, I ended up replacing a ebay sourced hacked 9800 AGP/hacked 9200 PCI combination with an OEM Radeon 7500 AGP; some of my OS9 software did better with the 7500 AGP than with the 9000 series cards (or even the NVidia holy grail AGP for dual boot machines, surprisingly enough). I was spending most of my time in OS9, so didn't miss the 9800.

Cool I'm more OSX heavy, so the 9800 Pro's a necessary feature. Most of the games that I have installed in OS9 are 2D, so the 9200 works for me there.

I don't like duplication, and seeing that the 9800 Pro and the 9200 have been moved into this machine, the Digital Audio will get a GeForce TI 4600 Mac Edition in place of the 9800 Pro and the G3 B&W will get a Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edition in place of the 9200.

I may eventually put a flashed Nvidia 7800 GS SuperClocked card into my QuickSliver system, along with a SONNET 1.8GHz Duet

The only reason I'm not still using my MDD G4 is that it became unreliable about 6 or 7 years ago. Still, 14 to 15 years of daily use was a pretty good run.

That's a pity! Do you have any idea as to what's causing the instability?

I wish you years of trouble-free computing with the MDD. It's a noble beast, and deserving of the love you are bestowing upon it.

Thanks! I hope so too!

Today I spent the whole day trying to get the PCI SATA setup going in the MDD, and for the life of me, I simply couldn't get the SONNET Tempo to play nicely !? (It works perfectly in the G3 B&W! So it'd back in the B&W)

OSX could see the drive, but couldn't write to it??? (And Disk Utility couldn't partition it.)

The G5 just scored itself another 250GB SSD!!!

 

[Irinikus]

I've installed the following games in OS9 on the MDD so far: (It takes forever with my USB 2.0 card running at USB 1.0 speeds under OS9!)

 

[s_pupp]

That's a pity! Do you have any idea as to what's causing the instability?

None at all. Somewhere here I believe I documented the workup of both this MDD G4 and my backup MDD G4, which became unstable at the same time.