I visited everymac.com, site not working correctly
I visited Lowendmac.com, site not too clear
I then followed a link from LEM supposedly to apple specs for the cube, but ended up at apple older system downloads?
I clicked on specifications & there was a nice list, I clicked on cube & then was presented with a pdf download page, I needed adobe acrobat 4.0, well I think I may have version 3, it has been a while since I've needed to use it & that was on my 840av, so my browser dosn't know what to do & I wouldn't have the foggiest of how to go about finding adobe acrobat.

Well I have sent an email to someone selling a cube on ebay, but in the meantime anyone got any good info(ports specifically, but other good knowledge appreciated) which they could share?

shaktiman

It has 2 USB,2 Firewire, 10/100BaseT ethernet.
3 ram slots for 1.5GB total
Display connection: SVGA or ADC
450Mhz G4 or 500Mhz
100Mhz bus
20, 30, 40, or 60 GB HD
DVD-ROM or CD-RW

Is that all the info you need?

It's basically a 450 or 500 MHz Sawtooth (AGP Graphite) G4 minitower in a smaller package.

Ports:
2 USB
2 FireWire
ADC
VGA
Ethernet
Modem

1 AGP4x slot (some long and/or high cards require hacking)
3 DIMM slots (PC100)

It comes standard with a Rage128, Radeon or GeForce2 MX Graphics card (128 is widespread, the others are rare). Most have DVD-ROM drives, some were equipped with CD-RW drives.

More info: http://www.cubeowner.com/

800 MHz and 1.2 GHz G4 upgrades are available, and, with some hacking, dual 450 or 500 MHz CPU cards can be used, too.

,xtG
.tsooJ

it has NO internal speaker, not even a beeper like in PCs...
It will cost you MUCH more than a regular PowerMac of similar speed, you can get a faster, more expandable and possibly cooler looking PowerMac for less moneys.

but other than that I don't think that there's anything wrong with them at all and have heard no "stories" (of the bad nature)

Now if I could just find out how to get a G4 into my NeXT cube to show him up...

emaq123

others have already mentioned the ports and 1 AGP slot.

+ points
Silent <- cannot be over stressed!
Good looking <- Cory I can't really think of any PowerMac that looks better.
Small
Will hold it's value better than most Macs, point in case I bought mine refurbished for 1900 AUD 1 year ago. I could have bought a sawtooth for the same price. I year later i can get a sawtooth for 900 but Cubes still go for around 1900.

- points
USB Audio <- This sucks, no real alternatices and saps CPU cycles, not such a big deal with CPU upgrades
Only 1 PCI/AGP slot
Only 2 internal drives.
Case flaws.

I took this over the sawtooth because it's just as powerful, processor upgrades became available about a week before I bought it so it will last me a good while. After a processor upgrade a graphics card upgrade is the most important thing to me. I've just won a Radeon 8500 on eBay and with a bit of hacking it will fit nicely!

Long after the cube becomes underpowered for serious computing it will still make an excellent home entertainment center due to it's small size.

A lack of internal bays is not a big deal as it has firewire so I can just plug in external drives. This only becomes a problem with DVD burners as iDVD only supports internal burners. There are hacks but they are expensive or spoil the cubes good looks.

Cubes can be had for around 700 UKP in the UK which is quite a reasonable price, in some ways. Like I said one of the things about the Cube is it will always be a classic mac, in a simillar way to the 840 AV. The 840 AV is only really exciting for Mac people though where as even non computer people love the cube.

Now that I have a Radeon 8500 it's probably the best card that will be compatible with this machine for a long time. I'm saving up for a processor upgrade and I've already got quite a bit of RAM. After that I probably won't upgrade the machine again but I will certainly never part with it either and it will always have a use.

One minor minus point I almost forgot is the "scratches" that appear in most cubes. This is due to the way it was made but is not very noticeable unless you are looking for it or at certain angles.

Other good general purpose sites for mac software shareware/demos are
www.download.com
www.versiontracker.com

A cube is probablt not for me, not because I don't want one. I am a port person, the more ports you have the more you can do with a computer, bad port desiscions quite often cripple a computers success. But at the end of the day it is out of my price range.

Last thing I forgot to mention was that when I got to apple's website & it said did you find this page helpful, well I clicked no & then it said this link is invalid!, now thats good press management.

shaktiman

Of course the sawtooth is now half the price. At the time I was buying the Cube as a "classic" machine, it's something I'll keep forever and about as close as I can get to owning a TAM. Work also owed me an obscene abmount of money which helped out!

Of course the sawtooth is now half the price. At the time I was buying the Cube as a "classic" machine, it's something I'll keep forever and about as close as I can get to owning a TAM. Work also owed me an obscene abmount of money which helped out!

Sawtooths are great machines though, I'm actually planning on building a custom one probably early next year, I've a few other projects to finish first, and use it as a video recorder.

emaq123

Getting a cube is just a matter of a bit of saving up, they're quite easy to get hold of unlike the TAM, Cubes are also a fair bit cheaper. Of course you can't put a 1.4 GHz chip in a TAM.

Do TAMs make the great home entertainment centers I imagine they do? TV, stereo, shame there aren't quite enough slots to get a decent DVD setup. You could use a wired4DVD and firewire card with an external drive, as the Wired card has TV out but you wouldn't be able to put much else in.

were I to have a TAM...

:drool:

that'ts it... "drool"

TAM can have 2 PCI slots... but other than that it'd be a system for the coolness factor rather than for upgradeability...

were I to have a g4 Cube... it'd be one of those things that's good enough already

quote:

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Only 1 PCI/AGP slot

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Of course if we were being really picky it appears that the cube has 1 PCI slot with a 90 degree adaptor board that turns it in to an AGP slot. It has a lot of circuitry and I doubt you could use a board like this in any Mac that was not already designed with AGP in mind, probably only works in Cubes. But technically speaking it does have 1 PCI and AGP slot. Of course I wasn't actually thinking of this at the time!

quote:

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Of course if we were being really picky it appears that the cube has 1 PCI slot with a 90 degree adaptor board that turns it in to an AGP slot. It has a lot of circuitry and I doubt you could use a board like this in any Mac that was not already designed with AGP in mind, probably only works in Cubes. But technically speaking it does have 1 PCI and AGP slot. Of course I wasn't actually thinking of this at the time!

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who | grep -i blonde | date
cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger
mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount
sleep

If the thing I think is a PCI slot is an AGP slot (if that's what you are suggesting) then why does it need all the extra circuitry on the right angle adaptor, I know some of it's probably for ADC but does it need that much? If the adaptor is just for ADC why doesn't it use an AGP slot on both boards, why does it change from one connector to another?

Either way the result is you have one useable AGP slot.

quote:

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OK so if it's not a PCI slot what is it? It's not an AGP slot either (although the right angle adaptor turns it in to one). I'm about to go to work so I'm not taking it apart now but I'll see if I can get some pics when I get home.

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quote:

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The TAM and the cube are all style over substance. I like the expandible workhorses like the 840av, IIfx, Q950 and the powermac 7500/8500 (I have 1 of each).

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SE/30 and system 6.0.8 Now we're talking POWER!

quote:

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emaq233 that's exactly what I thought. I figured as long as I could upgrade the processor RAM storage and graphics card I would be OK. Firewire is fast enough for any extra storage, and IIRC if I want raid I just get a Raid firewire case, you can also get firewire analogue to digital video convertors etc etc. The only time I've ever need to add many expansions cards was in my 9600 but most were just to give it the missing features that newer powermacs had, USB, DVD capability, IDE controller so I could buy cheaper drives.

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SE/30 and system 6.0.8 Now we're talking POWER!

She will fit in if it's done right, I will have to replace the power supply etc., but all in all, it will make for a fine project.

After all it's for fun. I want to take it into the Mac store and see how much they will give me for it as a joke. :P

They will surely notice when it boots that something isn't quite normal.

Can somebody explain to me how my posts keep disappearing?
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I liked the Cube, it looked small, it looked interesting, it looked extremely stylish! It really looked good with that nice flatscreen monitor they had, man, i hogged that display model the whole time my parents were shopping at that store, heh, there were some games on it too. I liked it, but i wound up never getting one because I had no money, lol.

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Can somebody explain to me how my posts keep disappearing?

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