1GHz G3 CPUs on eBay for $10: Anyone Make CPU Upgrade Cards?

[im_to_hyper]

Hey everyone,

A few years back, I picked up a reflow station with plans to upgrade my dual MDD to 1.8GHz 7448 CPUs (possibly 2GHz?), inspired by the webernet then discovered Macrumors' very own DosDude1. Fast forward three years, and now I’m looking to upgrade my Wallstreet PowerBook G3.

I’ve come across 1GHz G3 750 CPUs for around $8, and 1.6GHz G4 7447 CPUs for about $10. I’m wondering if it’s worth going for the G4 7447, or should I stick with the G3 for this upgrade? (7448 would be overkill; even though that cache tho...)

Also, does anyone know of a service that still offers custom mail-in CPU upgrades for these old machines: even if it is "just" individuals?

Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Raging Dufus]

Really stretching the grey matter here, but IIRC the higher-spec'd G3's were never offered as an upgrade for the Wallstreet. Time for a history lesson - please note most of the links I post below are obsolete and come from the Wayback Machine.

There was for a brief time a 900 MHz G3 upgrade for the Pismo PB (more about that here). I think it's pin-compatible with the Wallstreet; if I'm right about that, I don't know why you wouldn't be able to put one of those, or a 1 GHz, onto a Wallstreet's processor daughtercard. The key takeaway from that sentence should be "I don't know" because I don't, I'm simply speculating. The fastest I was ever aware of for the Wallstreet was a 500 MHz G3.

I'm a bit more sure you won't be able to put a G4/7447 in a Wallstreet, because no processor upgrade manufacturer ever offered such a thing. All that was offered was the 7400 or 7410, maxing out at ~ 500 MHz, because those were pin-compatible with the G3 daughtercards of the Wallstreet/Lombard/Pismo. Here's an example. Here's another one (for the Pismo). And, pin compatibility is not the only problem: there's no firmware update available to allow anything later than the 7410 to work in a Wallstreet, because no manufacturer ever offered one. I'm not saying it's impossible, just AFAIK it's never been done.

If I were you, and had your equipment and what I presume is a matching skillset, I'd grab the fastest G3 I could get and give that a try. Might want to see if you can get hold of a few spare Wallstreets - or at least their processor daughtercards - before you try it though. Would be a shame to trash a running Wallstreet on an experiment!

 

[swamprock]

Really stretching the grey matter here, but IIRC the higher-spec'd G3's were never offered as an upgrade for the Wallstreet. Time for a history lesson - please note most of the links I post below are obsolete and come from the Wayback Machine.

There was for a brief time a 900 MHz G3 upgrade for the Pismo PB (more about that here). I think it's pin-compatible with the Wallstreet; if I'm right about that, I don't know why you wouldn't be able to put one of those, or a 1 GHz, onto a Wallstreet's processor daughtercard. The key takeaway from that sentence should be "I don't know" because I don't, I'm simply speculating. The fastest I was ever aware of for the Wallstreet was a 500 MHz G3.

I'm a bit more sure you won't be able to put a G4/7447 in a Wallstreet, because no processor upgrade manufacturer ever offered such a thing. All that was offered was the 7400 or 7410, maxing out at ~ 500 MHz, because those were pin-compatible with the G3 daughtercards of the Wallstreet/Lombard/Pismo. Here's an example. Here's another one (for the Pismo). And, pin compatibility is not the only problem: there's no firmware update available to allow anything later than the 7410 to work in a Wallstreet, because no manufacturer ever offered one. I'm not saying it's impossible, just AFAIK it's never been done.

If I were you, and had your equipment and what I presume is a matching skillset, I'd grab the fastest G3 I could get and give that a try. Might want to see if you can get hold of a few spare Wallstreets - or at least their processor daughtercards - before you try it though. Would be a shame to trash a running Wallstreet on an experiment!

There was a 500mhz G4 for the Wallstreet. I think Sean (Action Retro) tested one in one of his videos but couldn't get it to run stable at all.

Yep he did. Found the video here.

EDIT- Sean (I forget your user name here), if you're reading this, might I suggest you try the CPU upgrade again, except use a spinner drive. SSDs in a Wallstreet are either incredibly unstable or don't work at all.

 

[Project Alice]

@dosdude1 does stuff like this a lot

 

[mode11]

I've got a 550MHz G4 in a Pismo. Was a fairly common upgrade and works wonderfully. Not sure what the internal differences are with the Wallstreet.

 

[micahgartman]

I have no idea if this is helpful but here are pics of the Sonnet Crescendo G3/500MHz in my Wallstreet:

 

[im_to_hyper]

There’s the guy who reverse engineered the MicroMac 68030 accelerator for the Mac SE , Classic and Mac Plus and open-sourced the design.

Guess now we can hope for Sonnet to open source these old designs…

… or for a clever person to reverse engineer them!

 

[TheShortTimer]

There’s the guy who reverse engineered the MicroMac 68030 accelerator for the Mac SE , Classic and Mac Plus and open-sourced the design.

I've considered building or buying one of these for my SE but beyond the fun aspect, it's difficult to justify because although there will be a performance boost - with caveats - the display will remain monochrome. As much as I love the SE, I'd rather run any 68k stuff that could benefit from a faster Mac on my iMac G3, which has a larger - and colour display.