The World's FASTEST Power Mac Quicksilver?
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- čas přidán 6. 05. 2022
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Today, we're installing a CUSTOM dual 2GHz G4 processor card into a Power Mac Quicksilver. Then, we'll take a look at the new version of Sorbet Leopard, and see just what kind of crazy performance increase we'll see.
LINKS:
🍎 Sorbet Leopard: macintoshgarden.org/apps/sorb...
🍎 PowerPC Minecraft: macintoshgarden.org/games/min...
(Amazon links are affiliated links)
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#Apple #Macintosh #G4 - Věda a technologie
We require a backup of that drive. For research purposes of course.
Lol
And you applied that thermal compound JUST RIGHT! :)
you must be nobody ;)
I have never seen a more perfect application of thermal paste in my life. Spot on. 👏
I'm sure TronicsFix would say it was almost the perfect amount of thermal paste.
From my point of view: As long as the CPU doesn't get too hot and you didn't use a trowel, it'll be an okay amount of thermal paste.
Love it! It's cool to see new life breathed into old machines, which really, I think is the essence of what we're all trying to do in the retro tech community. And when that 7800GS left the factory, I doubt it could ever imagine what its fate would be 15 years later.
Do I personify inanimate objects? Why yes, sometimes! Doesn't everybody?
It's just like my Quicksilver:
Dual 1.8ghz (GigaDesigns)
1.5GB RAM
ATi 9800Pro
SeriTeK SATA card with SSD
Pioneer DVD burner (SuperDrive compatible)
Replaced every fan with Noctua units
I treat performance per watt like a golf score around here! That is the funniest thing i've heard when describing the PowerMacs :)
That's a pretty impressive gain in performance! It's kind-of shocking to think how much further they could've taken these machines if they were less about trying to make people buy whole new machines, and actually offered upgrades for previous generations.
Like, not everyone's going to spend $3-6k every 2 years for a whole new high-end machine, but they might be willing to pay $1k for a processor upgrade.
The original owner of this Mac must have had a pretty good taste in computers for someone who put adult entertainment on the desktop😅
made me giggle, love this channel man!
They organized it meticulously, though. Sounds like good taste indeed.
Cursed Action Retro: "whoa, get a load of this stuff. We got some legit out of print goodies in here!"
Looking at apple now you wouldn't think that they'd have ANY sort of history of any of their hardware being easy to work on.
Looking at apple o fthe past you would think they'd activly advertise how easy it is for users to open the thing up. no mysteries, no scary bits. Meet your computer. It wants you to look inside.
This build is genuinely astounding and scratches an itch I have but am too broke to indulge in. This, the mystic, and GS builds have been jawdropping.
I think they got locked into a bit of a vicious cycle and culture war problem. When Apple focused on making their systems expandable and user servicable, it was pretty thankless. the tech crowd hated them on principle (after all, artists and other non-techs liked them), and they were not going to ever be able to compete with the flexibility of the IBM clones nor did they have the hard core market of amiga, so eventually they just gave up.
The easy to work on mantra of the past was one of many that died with Steve Jobs. It was one of the many policies Steve had to fight for as it was very costly to Apple’s bottom line. They know they can make much more if users are forced to buy a new product.
it's not the amount that matters, that it's full coverage on a bare die does. Make sure it actually contacts the whole shiny bit there and that's good enough. The pea sized thing is for CPUs with heatspreaders built onto them.
It is also largely a myth. Unless the paste is conducive, and 99% of non-liquid metal ones aren't, you can't put TOO MUCH, as it won't harm anything. You can, however, put too little.
@@acumenium8157yeah, but if you put "too much" and it squeezes out such that it doesn't give full coverage of a bare die, as just sticking a pea-sized blob on it might do, then it's not enough. Those tubes come with spludgers so you can spread it out and prevent that.
Awesome! The Quicksilver has always been my favorite. Mine is running a custom dual 1.4ghz upgrade and a 9600 (i think) from a G5.
So did you take your custom dual 1.4ghz from a mirror door G4?
@@danielrhodes7594 no, it is a modified 800mhz dp card, I purchased it that way from eBay. The MDD cards won’t physically fit in quicksilver.
@@ericbauer4559 Oh, ok. I had watched a video where a MDD dual 1.4Ghz was put in a G4 cube with modifications, so I thought the same could have been done in a quicksilver.
@@danielrhodes7594 It could probably work electrically, but with the orientation of the card, it would hang over the ram slots.
You have no idea how much I needed this today.
Favorite case design, ever. For both Macs and PCs. It was just glorious. No sharp metal edges, took 1 second to open and access, such an amazing aesthetic. They've lost their way!!
I installed a 1GHZ processor upgrade card on my old G4. Surprisingly it worked easily and right away lol. I dont think it was hand built though!
I recently discovered your channel and I wanted to thank you for inspiring me to give some attention to my Power Mac G5 Quad. I'm in the process of converting it to air cooling.
As a self-proclaimed computer repair expert, I have to say that was the exact perfect amount of thermal paste.
Action Retro: Come for the Retro Macs, Stay for the X-Files T-Shirts.™
You know you watched some of the hard drive contents 😂
Love the design of this Mac. Easy to open and acces to everything. We had these on our design school and these G4 Macs were absolute beasts at everything we threw at it.
I love the stuff you do with these macs. It makes me feel like playing with my old (non-mac) hardware again. Maybe try to run Minecraft on a P3 or P4.
I've just recently acquired a Quicksilver myself. 933 MHz PPC G4, 1 GB memory, 75 GB hard disk. Managed to put 10.5.8 on it, and a bunch of apps.
I have subscribed purely to make you happy and so I can see more epic retro content.
Keep up the splended work, Sean :D
Great video, sir. I have a dual 1 GHz Quicksilver I still use for Office tasks
Perfect amount of thermal paste.
When a 20+ year old mac has more processing power then your current pc
I love the QuickSilver I still have mine, with the original monitor, keyboard, and mouse all packed away I their original boxes. 😊 This computer was such a great user experience I’ve held on to it for all these years.
Man! just went down a crazy "action retro" rabbit whole and loving it. Keep 'em coming!
herd is the man. i've purchased some of his custom 7448 cards for my various old PPC macs :D
Thermal paste application was unbelievable. For the first time in history it was the exact right amount. Amazing!
That application was graceful and perfect
As usual, Great Video. Wish I could find this type of upgrade for MDD.
I had a 1.25ghz MDD G4, I sold it about 10 years ago. I regret doing that so much, I'd love to still have it in my collection.
That amount of thermal compound, is so good, it looks like Goldilocks applied it. After she broke into your house, ate your food, sat in your chairs, slept in your beds, and played your favorite medium difficulty games after deleting the saves.
Watching your videos finally motivated me to complete the restoration of my dual 1.8GHz G5. It's been a lot of fun just playing around in old OS X, seeing what actually is still possible and what isn't. Really wishing I'd bought a Mac-edition 6800 Ultra when they were still cheap on eBay, the FX5200 has been my main limiting factor I think. WELL SHIT! I HAVE THAT 7800GS! I didn't know I could make it work on a Mac! Looks like I got more work to do! 😁
I used to own one of these and still thinks it looks better than the Mac Studio that is sitting on my desk right now. Not only does it look better but being able to upgrade the internals was great!
As you actually applied thermal paste and not left is bare, you did it right!
I passed up buying one of those cheap years ago from my university's surplus yard. I really wanted it, but I had no idea where to put it! Sadness. How neat that you can upgrade the processor so far with a modern card!
The end of the video is just full *THONKS*
That seems to be performing similarly to my mobile workstation laptop from 2008. Definitely impressive.
I was expecting some censored pixilation on the thermal compound there. Always loved the look of these machines.
I have a suggestion for a video, I'd love for you to try out the apple emac, I don't see a lot of videos about it and you're the perfect Mac guy to do it
I have a Quicksilver in my cellar. My main memory of it is that it has very loud fans.
Not as loud as the MDD, but loud. I have an 800-DP. I too would like to find one of these dual 2 Ghz cards.
I usually recommend switching the airflow direction of the CPU fan on the back, because normally it blows inward. Since the CPU fan is pulling air from the back of the computer there's a good chance it's taking hot air from the PS and just cycling it back into the case, especially if the tower is in a small enclosure or smushed against a wall. Also the CPU fan in stock orientation blows into the back of the optical drive which often has its own exhaust fan which would be trying to blow out. Kind of makes for bad airflow.
These machines are known for PS faults and unfortunately, because of ADC and its unique 24V line, there are no drop-in replacements available; you either have to mod an ATX one and lose ADC in the process (not a big deal typically) or try to source/repair an original PS.
I used 4 of those dual drive G4 drive caddies in my 1939 Philco radio cabinet PC case, so I can mount up to 8 internal hard drives into it. I made a custom PC case from a 1939 Philco radio. The wood cabinet is very spacious, and I draw air in through 8 intake fans.
Honestly, my love for this machine is second only to my G5 Quad. This machine is just so charming.
Those quad G5s are getting rare to find in working condition. I mean G5s in general are hard to find working but I am seriously jealous wish I still had mine
The PowerMacs are the nicest looking rigs anywhere. Be fun to see Yellow Dog Linux running on it.
Fantastic upgrade Sean And Herd Is Awesome with his magic Upgrade nowhow
Got a dead quicksilver so very interested to see the power supply mod 👍
Awesome video! Until now, I had no idea that Apple once made Macs that you could work on without exotic tools like pentalobe screwdrivers and heat guns, acrobatics to avoid damaging ribbon cables and connectors, unique disassembly guides and custom adhesives for reassembling. I guess it still took some hardware hacking to make off-the-shelf parts work with them, but apart from that, those old PowerMac G3s and G4s look fun to work on.
I totally did the screwdriver, pentalobe and tri-lobe dance today replacing an iPhone battery. Apple has been hit and miss with this type of user customization design.
I remember often on G4’s and G5’s stuff even though it seems easy to ‘upgrade’ or replace, there’s always getting the hardware to jive with everything else. Or the drivers/firmware not existing or being incompatible under the operating system or software.
It’s a trip seeing this upload.
I was lucky enough to get two dual cpu cards from herd - one with a pair of 7457's, one with a pair of 7455's - only 1.2GHz, but may still have some more MHz inside them if i push them. The reason for sticking with the 7457's and 7455's is the L2 cache size and L3 cache support. I have a Digital Audio 733 that i plan on modding with a QS2002 board & PSU.
You should be able to get 1.5 GHz or so out of a 7457 no problem. The issue is the L3 cache is limited in how fast it can run (and it is based on a ratio set in the card's SPD EEPROM of the CPU clock speed). I was able to locate some 333 MHz rated 1MB L3 cache chips, and installing those along with flashing the SPD EEPROM with a dump from a 1.42 GHz MDD CPU card (which has 2x1MB L3 cache chips per CPU, along with the highest ratio) should allow for even faster overclocks, with the added benefit of having 2MB of L3 cache per CPU.
I think about the two quicksilvers I threw out about 4 years ago...before I collected retro tech, kills me to think about all the things I sent to the scrapper...... **Sad mac noises**
I threw out a Powerbook G3 about 8 years ago because the LCD panel was busted. I sure wish I'd known that's probably one of the easier parts to source!
@@MrDeelightful but like I said to Action Retro, more of the older stuff that gets thrown out the more valuable the stuff that is still left around.... I mean I just bought an Osbourne and a Hyperion for more then I paid for my last 2 project cars.....
Hey, if you want a free speedup for your G4 monster, do try to install the Sonnet G4 open firmware patch for their upgrades. It also works on any other upgrades (dunno if 7448/e600 based ones, but it's worth a shot!) and it gave me a MASSIVE boost on anything that was limited by the FSB speed. I dunno what black bus protocol or FSB overclocking magic Sonnet worked into their patch, but it surely does work really well!
Hey Action Retro! I just wanna know what adapter do you use for your Apple Studio Display to connect it to your PC video card. Thanks!
Do you have any plans to make a video of upgrading the video card on the Power Mac G5 quad
You did just right on the thermal compound.
I had to return the MDD G4 towers I had back their original owner... I wasn't really motivated to work on them since I wasn't able to buy them from him. Even though they don't work now they're his link to his glory days. I did manage to go through a bag of hard drives from the era and found some old recordings from 20 years ago. Not the recordings I was hoping to find though unfortunately.
Man I had a cube I upgraded with a G4 dual 500mhz card and a flashed PC GeForce MX4. I loved that thing.. I still kick myself for getting rid of it. I also had a blue G4 upgraded to a 1.4ghz G4 card I got on ebay. Researching that card it seems it was some high temp G4 that was overclocked from 1.0 to 1.4.. or maybe it was 1.2.. I forget. Wish I had that too. The speed between the dual 500 and the single 1.2 was interesting. You could feel the dual 500 was "smoother" in the GUI and some apps, but the 1.2 over powered it in some apps.
Regarding thermal compound: you did it just right! 😉
cool, but since you installed that 7800 would have been nice to see some more games tho, maybe Halo, UT2004, AoE etc.
also a compare vs a Dual G5 1.8 or 2.0 would also have been very interesting
anyways that Quicksilver PM looks awesome, can't wait to find one for my collection too
I know that a 2.1 single core imac g5 gets around 1250 in geekbench 2 if that helps you
Mine is the QS2002 2x1Ghz which I upgraded to 2x1.8Ghz 1.5GB RAM, and added a SATA card to run the boot SSD and HDD with the Documents folder symlinked from the SSD.
I will take that original hard drive off your hands. For science.
FYI: a HighPoint RocketRaid 1740 maxes out the PCI 32 bit/66hz bus and provides a bootable (if I remember from the olden days) SATA II connection if you want the SSD to really scoot.
Buddy of mine snagged one of these from near a dumpster by him and gave it to me. Can’t remember the specs off hand but at some point it would be cool to upgrade it. Also nice to see someone give the Quicksilver some love, as I tend to see more MDD G4’s get modded. It’s justified as it’s a beautiful machine, but the Quicksilver is pretty slick too imo.
Be aware twenty year old machines may have been worked to desth, they can be fragile.
Don't be too tempted to spend too much on specialized upgrades if the machine is going to be short lived or barely used.
@@joefish6091 Computer speed increased a lot faster in those days - the difference between a 2000 and a 2010 machine is enormous. So it may have had a shorter working life than many machines would these days.
CPU upgrades are pretty rare and expensive these days. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on one either, as even upgraded, it would likely still be outgunned by a Raspberry Pi. You're better off just buying one that had high-end specs from the factory, as they're not much more expensive than the lesser models. And at the end of the day, once the nostalgia hit has passed, it's unlikely to be used much anyway.
It's better to have too much thermal paste than not enough, especially for bare die chips. You don't want leave any part of the die dry. The excess will get squeezed out by the heatsink. As long as the thermal paste is not electrically conductive, it'll be fine no matter now much you put in.
You have my dream g4s right there x you lucky man 🤩😍
I was able to get with herd. Its going to take a little while to make the modification. of the IDE port on the main board. Since I have a second mainboard I have a plan.
I have one of these, an I can get the thing to spin up but can never get an output for the drive. Is there a way to re use the screen without that super rare adc adapter?
I've got a QS for this same end goal, though my specs will be somewhat different by the end if I get around to it -- dual 1.67GHz 7457s, a 7800 GS, a SeriTek 2SE4, and I'd love to find a way to get 1GB PC133 sticks made for keyboards working in the QS. Maybe a Radeon HD 3850 for Linux.
I have a Quicksilver G4 867 like that, pretty much like new. I´d love that upgrade for my puppy. :D
i *love* meticulous organization! :D
What version of geekbench is that?
Hi Sean!, it would be great if you could share how did you create your external ssd drive with all those partitions and OSs. I created mine but I’m having some hard time with Tiger Live, and MacOS 9.2 Live. Any tip or guide I can follow? Thanks!
have you ever overclocked the front side bus? or thought of doing a period correct OC?
That was the perfect amount of thermal paste! Just right!
It was one of the most beautiful cases of all time. I still have one, albeit empty!
Need to reflow or replace my dual cpu 800mhz Quiksilver. The l3 cache as some problem. Always on power up need to reset the Mac to ignore l3 cache.
What was the seed for that island world? That looks like a fun place to start ...
Very nice! Close but still you need more practise. Dual MaxPower 1.8ghz G4 7448b's running at 2.251ghz and stable for north of 6 years. SATA PCI, GF7950 512mb flashed to nv7800 with clocks running at 7950 speeds. 1.5ghz ram. Stable for 8+ years.
Would that card work on my digital audio running 733mhz?
How to get that custom board G4?
Hey Sean, I'm trying to do this same mod on my QS, but when trying to boot into OS 9.2.2 it freezes. Can you try booting to 9.2.2 to see if it freezes for you as well? I'm trying to determine whether I have a software or a hardware problem.
Also I used the Apple hw diagnostics CD and it said there was a problem with my logic board when I had this CPU installed. Any chance you can test that as well?
Keep up the awesome vids!!!
I have the box for this and the in store demo cd to the demo is weird it runs under 9.2 but it came out in 2003. I also have the imac g4 instore demo cd to.
I also have a rare g4 server thats in a consumer case and its not the xserve.
You really need to make a backup of the exclusive adult content!
Is Mac OS lives 9.2.2 installable on the G4 mdd?
Anyone able to download the Sorbet Leopard image? When I try bringing up Macintosh Garden I get an HTTPS error...I think Mac Garden had something happen that has kept it offline awhile...?
I'm really amazed by herd's upgrase huge increase of performance !
Do you know how much does this daughter board cost? Just curious to know if i Can revive my powermac 😮
Where do regular people buy those upgrades...?
Hi hello im in the philippines and i have powermac g4 quick silver but i dont have any isea how and where i can get the material to upgrade i sont want to put on junk thank you if you will reply god bless
I'd like to see you load modern Linux on that machine just to see what it could handle. The cool thing for me is seeing older hardware get a few upgrades and then hold its own with much newer stuff.
my quicksilver died on me a few years ago, i’m not 100% sure what happened but i feel like i have an idea. it didn’t occur to me to replace the motherboard at any stage so i just dismantled it and recycled the parts and gave the boards to my oldest boy to use in one of his projects.
the case is gone so it’s too late to do anything now. i had some cooling issues with it and tried a few things to make that better. i feel like perhaps when it was taken into the repair shop that they didn’t reapply any thermal paste, not sure though. i managed a few decent upgrades such as the Ati Raedeon 9000 and Giga Designs dual processor upgrade, up from the original 933Mhz.
would be nice if apple offered this case again for their new hardware
Dumb question: does the dual 2.0 setup allow this Mac to run OS 9? Part of the draw of the powermac G4 line for me is that they are the fastest classic mac os-compatible machines, not sure if this modification ruins that utility.
Any way to upgradey g3 beige tower with one of those CPU’s
Let's get a 20" iMac G4 mod!
You have really built your “brand”. Your distinctive gestures, voice, and very interesting upgrades make for great learning oops.
Man, I should make some modes to mine !
And where can we get that terrific dual G4 processor card? herd unfortunately doesn‘t ship to Europe… 😖
Just saying the CPU Compound, Pefect application ;)
The system bus speed of 133mhz is what really cripples this system, even with a CPU upgrade. That along with the AGP graphics card. It works better with a CPU upgrade but still that bus speed :/ I had one running Debian for a long time. Too bad all these tech companies are making machines that are all soldered down and have no upgrades. I think you might want to try MorphOS or AROS ha.
Does the guy who made the custom G4 card sell them? I'd be very interested