Dual 500mhz Gigabit Tribute

This weekend I popped a hard drive with Leopard into my old 500mhz Dual Gigabit. I've contemplated installing Leopard on the machine's 'real' hard drive but I want to be sure Leopard will run like Tiger does. I really expected Leopard to be sluggish and irritating. Much to my surprise it runs great on Leopard! I think Leopard is designed to run best on dual processor setups, even if they are a scant 500mhz each. The running duties seem to be nicely distributed to each processor, allowing for even distribution of resources. Currently I have 1.5GB of RAM in it and it runs great so I think if I can do 2GB it will be that much better. I know Leopard loves RAM. I have to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for my Dual 500mhz Gigabit G4. It's an absolute pristine representation of a G4. Used by a local graphic designer for many years and then left for recycling at the university repair shop, it's virtually scratch free and in perfect working order. For being 8 years old it's still chugging away like a champ. I wouldn't run Photoshop or anything crazy like that on it but for surfing the internet and working office apps, it's just dandy. It's funny to think that it was originally released with OS 9 and still runs the most current OS without problems. For being 8 years old it also still has all the right features to keep you going, like a max of 2GB of RAM and 3 Firewire ports. Here's to you Dual 500mhz Gigabit, you Graphite Warrior of Digitalization.

Analogy

Yesterday at work someone was attempting to use one of our G5s to view video files. First they couldn't get the optical drive door open (no biggie), then they complained about not knowing how minimize a window (to which I responded, there are only 3 buttons, try one of them), and after that she just didn't like Macs. What really griped me about this comment is the fact that she made zero effort to TRY and expected things to work on their own. I don't get it. But this made me think about how to explain how a Mac works and why you should use one. Here it is:

A Mac is like the metric system and a PC is like the old standard measuring system. The metric system is much easier to use, it's more accurate, and you can figure out manipulations pretty easily. The standard system works but it's cumbersome, prone to error, and difficult to manipulate. Using the standard system you might have to measure twice. Both will get the job done but one is more logically based, easier to use, and more efficient. It's science :)

New Old Studio LCD Display

My old CRT Apple Studio Display that I picked up at a university auction 3 years ago finally gave up the ghost last week so I've been in the market for a new monitor. I guess I got my $10 out of it. I really didn't want to fork over a lot of cash for a new monitor and I was seriously considering a used 17" Apple Studio LCD. I was talking to the computer repair guys about my monitor situation and they informed me that the university shop might have some new old stock LCDs like the one I was looking at. After a quick chat with the manager he pulled one from their stock room and presented it to me. "$100", he said. The price floored me. I was amazed that I could purchase a monitor that originally retailed for $599.99 in 2004 for $100. He offered me a 22" for $350 but I had to pass. I don't know why, but for some reason I've always been fascinated with new old stock items. I finally got my chance to unbox a piece of my own. I forgot to upload the pictures last night but I will later. So far I love it!

Still no speed bus

I've typed the code in openfirmware to overclock the bus speed like 15 times and it still doesn't work! Does anyone have any advice or alternate code to use? I swear, I can't be that stupid. I tried the magic code into the openfirmware of my Dual 500mhz Gigabit multiple times but it made no difference on each restart. The system profiler still reads 100mhz and nothing changes. I even tried the code to overclock it to 167mhz. I think the issue might be the particular models I have. I wonder if certain revisions were able to do it and others not. Or maybe I'm just not that good at typing in code.

Modifying the Frontside Bus Speed on a G4 using Open Firmware

Well I've done CPU overclocking so now it's on to other types, like front side bus overclocking!! I've found various articles on www.XLR8yourmac.com and other places on how to change the bus speed on older 100mhz systems (like the Power Mac G4 Yikes!, PCI Graphics, Gigabit Ethernet) and I've really been wondering if that truly works. Basically you boot into open firmware (Apple-Option-O-F) and you type in a bunch of code. (I'll have to posts the links later as they're on a different computer). The code basically tells the computer to run a script to bypass the ROM and read from it to adjust the bus speed. Since I really wanted to try this but didn't want to mess up the Gigabit Dual 500mhz that my wife always uses I decided to give it a shot on my already modified Digital Audio 800mhz. But since this system is already running a 133mhz front side bus I decided to go to 167mhz, like what's found in later Mirror Door models. So I opened things in openfirmware, typed the code in, rebooted and crossed my fingers. It started fine, everything looked good. I opened system profiler for the moment of truth and.....it still read 133mhz. HMMM. I ran Geekbench and Xbench to be sure it just wasn't registering. Sure enough, no difference from previous runs. But I have to say, and maybe it's just a mental thing, it did feel a little faster. But that might also be the difference from the 733mhz to 800mhz overclocking. I haven't had much use with it since I modified it. But we'll see. Maybe later this week I'll change the bus speed on the Dual 500mhz Gigabit. I think I might have better luck with that. I have a feeling the modified Digital Audio doesn't register the changed bus speed because the memory isn't fast enough (SDRAM 133mhz). Problem is, the next step up is DDR RAM which won't physically fit in the slots. Maybe, maybe not.

update: I talked with the apple repair guys and they believe this might be try. They think it's plausible.
Helpful links if you want to try this (for 100mhz-133mhz):
http://xlr8yourmac.com/G4ZONE/sawtooth/SawtoothCPUdesign.html
http://xlr8yourmac.com/systems/sawtooth_bus_overclock/sawtooth_bus_overclock.html
http://jonathanrenaud.g.googlepages.com/home2

Turbocharged

Well tonight I tried my hand at overclocking, with mixed success. I've been looking up a lot of info on the internet on how to overclock the 733mhz Quicksilver processor that I put in my Digital Audio. Since it doesn't have an L3 cache, it needs it. There's a lot of info out there on how to boost it to anywhere from 800mhz to 933mhz. The best info I found was on this site.
It took me a while to wrap my head around it but it's pretty easy. Basically you need to pull off one of the connecting tabs between two of the lines on the processor. Depending on which ones you modify, by either pulling it off or soldering one shut, you modify the multiplier which in turn modifies the speed. Since I knew I wanted to make the 733mhz processor the end product I decided to practice on the stock 533mhz that came with it. I got a little greedy on this one and went for 667mhz. This also was the easiest modification to do, just clip off one resistor. Well I clipped off one resistor and booted it up. IT RAN!!! For a while. After I put Geekbench on it froze and had to be restarted. On each subsequent restart it would think for along time, then flash a message saying it needed to restart. Rats. So I decided to back it off to a more reasonable 600mhz. This required soldering a resistor bridge. Well my soldering skills aren't the greatest and I ended up making a big mess. I still put it all back together and gave it a shot. Nothing. Wouldn't even boot. I think I soldered it to another resistor.
So with this failure under my belt I decided not to get greedy and keep things simple with the 733mhz. Although I've seen these processors on ebay clocked to 933mhz I decided that a modest boost to 800mhz would be safe enough. I desoldered the resistor and, after putting things back together, it ran! Surprisingly the extra 67mhz DOES make a difference. I ran xbench and geekbench in both Tiger and Leopard. Below are the scores. I'm really surprised that there's almost no difference on the geekbench scores between Leopard and Tiger. I think if I ever try overclocking again it will only be in cases where removing a resistor is necessary. Soldering sucks.

800mhz Quicksilver (in Digital Audio) 768MB RAM
Xbench
Leopard - 22.02
Tiger - 28.56

Geekbench
Leopard - 433
Tiger - 430

Proof

Here's proof that you CAN get Leopard running on a non-supported machine. I think the easiest way to do it is open the computer in open firmware, type in a few lines of code that make it think there's a bigger processor inside and bam, you've got Leopard. Here's the link to the procedure I used from Lowendmac.com
http://lowendmac.com/osx/leopard/openfirmware.html