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kevinakerberg

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 25, 2016
38
4
Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA
Hi everyone, I have a dual processor 533Mhz PowerMac G4 DA that I want to max out for a YouTube video. However I am not familiar with any compatible upgrades for the DA systems. Here's the current specs:

CPU: 2x PowerPC G4 7410's @ 533Mhz
GPU: ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16MB of VRAM
RAM: 1.5GB SDRAM
Storage: 2 x 80GB WD Caviar SE's

I already maxed out the ram, but I would like better CPU's as well as a better video card. Preferably at least dual 1.0Ghz G4's and a video card with at least 128MB of VRAM. Thanks!
 

AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Feb 17, 2017
2,283
3,467
Hi everyone, I have a dual processor 533Mhz PowerMac G4 DA that I want to max out for a YouTube video. However I am not familiar with any compatible upgrades for the DA systems. Here's the current specs:

CPU: 2x PowerPC G4 7410's @ 533Mhz
GPU: ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16MB of VRAM
RAM: 1.5GB SDRAM
Storage: 2 x 80GB WD Caviar SE's

I already maxed out the ram, but I would like better CPU's as well as a better video card. Preferably at least dual 1.0Ghz G4's and a video card with at least 128MB of VRAM. Thanks!

I don't know much about the DA's, but I would throw in a 64GB mSATA SSD as a Mac OS X Leopard boot volume with all your apps. If you want to keep costs down and re-use the 80GB HDDs, then software RAID 0 (stripe) the two together for data/document and library storage (e.g. audio sample libraries, Photoshop and/or Final Cut Pro scratch disk, etc). Just be sure to regularly back up the RAID to an external Time Machine volume as the old drives could fail at any time.

Otherwise, a single, modern 7200rpm SATA HDD using a SATA to IDE adapter would outperform the old drives even when RAID striped.

Someone clever could answer this; Would the PCI bus in the DA have enough throughput for a SATA card? Or would the bottleneck defeat the purpose of the faster interface?
 

AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Feb 17, 2017
2,283
3,467
Sounds good for storage, but it can't run leopard without a CPU upgrade. Do you know of any compatible CPU cards for this machine?

There are many; Sonnet, Newertech etc. I haven’t had any personal experience with them but there are other regulars here who are G4 tower experts though.

Check out Leopard Assist at http://leopardassist.sourceforge.net/

This will get Leopard on that tower without having to upgrade the CPU.
 

Anonymous Freak

macrumors 603
Dec 12, 2002
5,604
1,389
Cascadia
Leopard is usable on those CPUs, although you'd need a well over 1 GHz dual to make YouTube usable. Having a dual makes a huge difference in OS X - a lot more usable than even a twice-as-fast single CPU system.
 
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kevinakerberg

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 25, 2016
38
4
Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA
Leopard is usable on those CPUs, although you'd need a well over 1 GHz dual to make YouTube usable. Having a dual makes a huge difference in OS X - a lot more usable than even a twice-as-fast single CPU system.
Oh, sorry. By YouTube video I meant I’ll be filming it and making video series of it. I didn’t mean so it could play YouTube. I’ve tried finding upgrade cards from Sonnet and such, but they’re just not on eBay. Is there an alternative place to buy these cpus or is there one made by apple that’d work in one of these machines?
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,659
28,434
Sounds good for storage, but it can't run leopard without a CPU upgrade. Do you know of any compatible CPU cards for this machine?
LOL!!!!

You just have to know how to get it on there.

I have a Sawtooth at work with a 450CPU running Leopard.
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Oh, sorry. By YouTube video I meant I’ll be filming it and making video series of it. I didn’t mean so it could play YouTube. I’ve tried finding upgrade cards from Sonnet and such, but they’re just not on eBay. Is there an alternative place to buy these cpus or is there one made by apple that’d work in one of these machines?
No one makes them anymore. In fact, some of the companies have died while the rest focus on other stuff.

It's a waiting game when they do come up and you can expect to pay no less than $250, if not $300.

Apple never made these because they are third party overclocked CPUs. As they die off they get rarer and rarer because only so many of them were made during the early 00s.
 
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kevinakerberg

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 25, 2016
38
4
Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA
Apple never made these because they are third party overclocked CPUs. As they die off they get rarer and rarer because only so many of them were made during the early 00s.[/QUOTE said:
I see. However there are CPU's on eBay that would've gone in MDD's or Quicksilver's. Like dual 1.25Ghz G4's out of an MDD. Anyway to get those to work in a Digital Audio?
 

Anonymous Freak

macrumors 603
Dec 12, 2002
5,604
1,389
Cascadia
Oh, sorry. By YouTube video I meant I’ll be filming it and making video series of it. I didn’t mean so it could play YouTube. I’ve tried finding upgrade cards from Sonnet and such, but they’re just not on eBay. Is there an alternative place to buy these cpus or is there one made by apple that’d work in one of these machines?

AH! That makes a lot more sense.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,353
6,497
Kentucky
The "requirements" for Leopard are probably the loosest and most arbitrary in Apple's history of making OSs. I think they were set more with an eye toward performance than the minimum hardware that would actually run it.

A stock Leopard install will work on any system with a G4 processor, AGP graphics, and enough RAM( @LightBulbFun did some torture testing in a VM and if I remember right I think he found the bare minimum of 92mb for the window server to load). How WELL it runs is another story, but you can certainly get it to run.

Things only get complicated when you have a computer with PCI graphics-I have an install lightbulbfun tweaked that will run fine B&Ws, Yikes!, and beige G3s(with G4s upgrades in the beige and B&W) although it runs into issues with some other systems. @Intell has it running on an 8600. I have a 700mhz G4 in my 8600, but I haven't wanted to spend a few hours on Facetime with lightbulbfun(anyone who has done that will understand why :) ) trying to get it to boot. I also have a G4-upgraded Lombard, but I'm not convinced it's actually possible to run Leopard on it.

For AGP-based systems, all that's really required is to bypass the install checks. LeopardAssist is a great program that does just that, although I generally do a TDM install(all AGP-based G4s support TDM) or clone over an existing install. There's also getting hands-on with Open Firmware, which is what Leopard Assist fundamentally does with a nice GUI to make the process easy.

Whatever the case, a SATA card would definitely be a worthwhile upgrade and you will NOT find it bandwidth choked in a Digital Audio. I have one DA that is 100% SATA, and the difference is definitely noticeable. Even if you stick with spinners, you get the advantage of newer drives, which tend to be faster, quieter, and cooler.

Along those same lines, the thought of putting ATA drives in RAID 0 makes me uneasy. I have a Quicksilver that was set up that way from the factory and I've left it(it's a nice high end, BTO computer). The last ATA drives were made in 2012, though, and most of us are using drives of varying ages that are older than that. I WOULD NOT take my chances on mission-critical stuff in ATA RAID 0, and if I had to I'd be sure I backed up constantly(Time Machine is your friend). Aside from the previously mentioned QS, the only ATA drives I run in RAID are in my Xserve RAIDs. Those are 500gb enterprise-class drives that were vetted by Apple for use in that application(although that's not an absolute guarantee). They are in RAID 5 and I have NOS spares(factory sealed and pre-mounted to a sled) ready to go if I need them.

All of that aside, I would be hesitant these days to use a G4 for the sort of content creation being discussed. I do photo work on a dual 2.7 G5, and its showing its age when I process large files(from scans) with it. Handling 36mp RAW files grinds it to a halt. Even a first gen Mac Pro will run circles around a G5 when it comes to video files. It's not really even a matter of raw processing power either-that sort of stuff these days is just optimized for x86-64 and using a different architecture can be a handicap.
 

AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Feb 17, 2017
2,283
3,467
Whatever the case, a SATA card would definitely be a worthwhile upgrade and you will NOT find it bandwidth choked in a Digital Audio. I have one DA that is 100% SATA, and the difference is definitely noticeable. Even if you stick with spinners, you get the advantage of newer drives, which tend to be faster, quieter, and cooler.

Does the DA G4 boot from the SATA PCI card? What brand / model card are you using?
[doublepost=1506061342][/doublepost]
A stock Leopard install will work on any system with a G4 processor, AGP graphics, and enough RAM( @LightBulbFun did some torture testing in a VM and if I remember right I think he found the bare minimum of 92mb for the window server to load). How WELL it runs is another story, but you can certainly get it to run.

Pure dedication to beat the system! Minimum system requirements? I don't think so ... :cool:
 
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bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,353
6,497
Kentucky
Does the DA G4 boot from the SATA PCI card? What brand / model card are you using?

Yes, it boots from the card. It's a Sonnet two port, although I forget the specifics. For a while, many folks were flashing SATA cards to be bootable, although the Sonnets and some Acard ones are bootable OOB.
 
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LightBulbFun

macrumors 68030
Nov 17, 2013
2,900
3,195
London UK
Does the DA G4 boot from the SATA PCI card? What brand / model card are you using?
[doublepost=1506061342][/doublepost]

Pure dedication to beat the system! Minimum system requirements? I don't think so ... :cool:

the 2 port Sonnet SATA cards are rebranded FirmTek 1S2 SATA cards, really good cards those are tho, they work and are bootable in all Macs with PCI slots all the way back to System 7.5

Tiger/Leopard will boot with as little as 91MB of RAM its not fast tho :) (esp when said Leopard is booting from a 6GB Disk image with no space left for Swap, OS X actually popped up complaining about running out of RAM never saw OS X do that before then)

sadly despite looking for a good few years I have not been able to find a 9600 or a suitable 603 PCI Macintosh to buy so i can test my software my self and not have to rely on others. (I actually have a Rare Xlr8 Macintosh slocket that I can fit a G4 ZIF to, and I have 2 3400c PowerBooks but no 128MB RAM cards) there is actually a 9600/200MP for sale in Spain on ebay, I almost bought it but it was just too much in the end (came to £170+ once you factored in shipping and I just could not afford that, 128MB Kanga/3400 RAM cards are not much better either LOL)
 

benwild_33

macrumors regular
Oct 15, 2016
165
108
I've got a Digital Audio build thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/g4-digital-audio-sonnet-upgrade.2037472/

I found CPU upgrade cards were very expensive on their own, both of my ones were found in other systems meaning I got them very cheaply. I'd definitely look in to SATA and an SSD if you want to get the most performance possible, it's the only thing I haven't done (I run RAID IDE HDDs).

I went for a Radeon 9800 which runs great in Leopard but does give off a lot of heat. If you can find the right version of the geforce 6200, they work really well and give off very little heat.
 

ziggy29

macrumors 6502
Oct 29, 2014
495
323
Oregon North Coast
Does the DA G4 boot from the SATA PCI card? What brand / model card are you using?
Yes. And I'll go one better -- even the ancient PCI Power Macs can boot from these. I have a Sonnet Tempo HD card in my 7600 and the Mac sees the card as a second internal SCSI chain and the drives attached to it as SCSI drives on the chain, and easily boots from it.
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,977
3,714
Reviving an old thread here. Sadly, the DA does not boot with flashed Firmtek 1S2 cards, behaving just as infuriatingly as the QSes that followed. I tried a couple of cards I have and know that work.

I would love to know what magic Sonnet pulled in its versions to get them to play nicely with these.
 
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