Power Macintosh 8500 Project Page

Technical Details and History of my PM 72/8500 G4 800 Thing Called "Bertha"...

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* This page is large so be patient as it loads.  The Navigation Bar is Repeated at Regular Intervals Throughout this Page.

Photographs of Bertha are here and a labeled hardware overview photo is here.

Last Updated 8/19/04,11/29/04, 5/14/05, and 5/20-21/05 including extensive updates to Hardware and Software compatibility pages and the OS X introduction. Minor updates (well something as least) to flashwars and ouch (flashing video cards and USB/FW spankings).

Please note this site is under construction and not all links are active, or may not work unless you are using my exact computer and web browser, from my bathroom.

Also please forgive the many inaccuracies this site certainly has because, basically, I am making this stuff up. 

 

This is the original Sliced Apple site (with some small updates) which was started solely to give details of this project. 

Check Out My Recent Activities Page, Where the Adventure Never Stops

Since this project never seems to stop I decided to avoid introducing confusion … well more confusion … and not further obscure this…perhaps…not quite crystal clear chain of upgrades and random thoughts. Therefore ongoing tuning and upgrades that don’t rate their own separate pages will be detailed on my Recent Activities page. Recent hardware changes and screw-ups can be found here along with whatever other random thoughts, trouble, or misconceptions I have chosen to introduce.

A Little Explanation About How this Started

Much like shit, this just happened.

This project all started with a much smaller project to create a Video On Demand system. This goal was, of course, simply a continuation of my life-long interest in computers, especially Apples. Since my day job had become very stressful, with my life not far behind, I had really increased my emersion in this somewhat tedious and technical hobby where knowledge and attention to detail matter.

This entire site started as just a link off the Video On Demand (*simulated here, the real VOD system is internal and private) and was created as a small sub-page to give some of the details of the PM 8500, and then only for internal visitors. However as I created that first page (an updated version of which is now the home page) I realized how compelling detailing my hobby was. This web page is my sounding board. A place where I can let the stranger aspects of my personality run free, and where I can talk to myself to better define my understanding of those topics that interest me.

In other words, I am shocked as well.

* I have no idea why you would want to see THAT simulated either, just go with it.

First a word

I have loved watching this system grow over time.  I have pushed it, fought with it, played with it, and I have learned a great deal about hardware and software, especially modern operating systems like Unix.  I have little doubt that this intermittent and minimally planned upgrade process was not monetarily cost effective if taken all together, but it was certainly intellectually cost effective.

As a personal note, clearly this is a detailed and personal description of a system not wholly out of the ordinary and with details few are likely to appreciate.  However, I find it intellectually useful to articulate and organize my thoughts this way (probably therapeutic as well) and, who knows, someone who stumbles upon my little personal LAN may find something interesting in this exercise.  Perhaps it is also of note that the author of such a long and detailed document about a computer has a career that has nothing to do with computers at all...*

Now, in order for any of this to make sense, once has to know, at least a little, about Macs.

Although I am familiar with PC’s and have even had jobs programming them I far prefer Macs and have NO interest in PC’s of any kind.

Unix that thinks different  (Some History)

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In a successful effort to transition the Macintosh to a modern robust operating system (OS) with true multi-user capabilities, protected memory, modern I/O, preemptive multitasking, and all the other buzz words ... Apple did the really interesting, and what many thought the impossible (me included).  They took an updated iteration of the most well thought-out computer interface in the world (the Mac OS) and integrated it with the most powerful but hostile server OS in the world (Unix)* and, amazingly, created an OS that’s easier to use and maintain than the prior Mac OS 8/9, just as easy to trouble shoot, but with all the power, scalability and versatility of Unix.

This new OS, which was in line to be Macintosh OS 10.0, was named Macintosh OS X because, as the Reverend Jobs explained, “It sounded cool”.  Similar to the “Classic” Mac OS (the name for the OS 9 System that can run inside of OS X to allow use of OS 9 and older solftware) a knowledgeable user can copy an entire working install of OS X from one drive to another and it will pretty much work on any supported Apple system (unsupported legacy machines require drivers not in a normal install).  
 
Unlike OS 9 this system runs for weeks or even months without needing a reboot, without crashing, and often without requiring any intervention by me to keep it working.   Like other part time computer nerds I tend to be unofficial technical support to my friends and family.  Now that everyone has transitioned to OS X I rarely have to explain how to do something or fix a problem.  This was required on a weekly basis in OS 9 (Note that this sentence implies that OS X is not just more stable and powerful than OS 9, but more intuitive and user friendly as well. Well, it is!).  And in the best spirit possible the Linux/Unix Open Source community has embraced their new brother (yea, I know, sounds communist to me too) and helped OS X users to open our systems to a wealth of capabilities and control simply not possible for the older Mac OS and project to bring most of the core Unix software to OS X have progressed very well.

In one of the most surprising of occurences each of the last four major OS X releases (10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and now 10.4) has been faster on the same hardware than its predecessor, and that includes legacy hardware.  This means older machines, including unsupported legacy machines, or actually getting faster over time!!

It is this new Apple operating system that allows my outdated computer to function so well despite its mix and match (or miss-matched) nature, and it’s the Apple managed open source Darwin OS at the core of this system that allows legacy hardware to function at all since the OS'sopen source foundation allow access to the source code that empowers volunteers and Mac nuts to reconstruct and/or author the motherboard and hardware support that makes legacy hardware support possible.

*  I am aware of the distinction, origin, and history that separates official or “true” Unix’s from nix’s like the BSD’s and Linux/GNU, but I am a Mac nut, not a Unix/Linux nut and so I allow this lack of precision … Ok … shoot me!

UNIX the Apple Way…Who’s Yo Daddy!

Mac OS X 10.x is a combination of a GUI windowing system and a set of interface standards collectivley known as Aqua, an open source BSD based Unix base called Darwin, and a lot of Apple proprietary technology including much of the kernel plus a large number number of API's (frameworks). Aqua is the GUI windowing library (think X11) that operates via the Apple window manger Quartz (think kwin, twm, sawfish, etc...). Quartz is unique (still) in that it composts all the elements of all visible windows and interface objects together to generate a final display very much like a layered Photoshop image (more later).  The current shipping OS X is code- named Tiger (we are out of the music names phase and in the cat names phase) and is at version 10.4.0 as of mid 2005. 

OS X uses free BSD as its Unix reference system, although everything above and below BSD layer is basically unique.**  Its Mach based kernel is derived from the micro kernel school of thought, as opposed to the more monolithic kernel that is Linux and reflects a different technical decision that, much like CISC and RISK with CPU’s, is converging with competing kernel technologies to arrive at similar solutions (Apple’s kernel is different from the Mach kernel in many areas).  As one might predict for an open source leaning only partly based OS, OS X is increasingly adopting Linux tools and features such as changing its default shell from tcsh to bash and using gcc as its reference compiler.

Not surprisingly the OS X lineage also has some real blue blood in it.  It is the evolution of the NeXT Open Step OS (OS X is Open Step) and was largely written by the NeXT software team acquired when Apple purchased NeXT (and got Steve back!!) in collaboration with the existing Apple people who certainly were involved in the interface.  It includes many core NeXT technologies, such as Objective C and the Net Info Database, and many Apple technologies such as Apple Script, QuickTime, and HFS/HFS+, plus a host of all new ones:  QuickTime 7, CoreImage, Quartz Extreme and Quartz Extreme 2D, launchd, and Apple authored technologies shared with all like Zero Conf, a new ACL based file metadata and permission system, and more...  The developer tools, including a very good IDE called X Code and an Objective C enhanced version of Apple Script named Apple Script Studio, is bundled on every new Mac and with every copy of OS X. 

The advantages of Apple’s choice of Unix and Open Step have long becoming evident (unless you are a charter member of Thalo net...I wondered where that guy went).  OS X has made lavish use of Unix technologies in both its GUI and the core functionality it offers to the user such as are zero conf, ssh/telnet, web sharing, print sharing (CUPS), file sharing (AFP/AFS/WebDAV/SMB), firewall services, routing, VPN, etc...  Apple is also working hard to bring AppleTalk’s prior ease of use and plug-and-play natures to OS X’s newer TCP/IP based peer to peer and client/sever networking and are the leading authors of the Zero Conf standard, which Apple has christened Rendezvous.  OS X also improves cross-platform interaction through clever use of file extensions to augment and/or replace file type and creator codes (although Apple has a new new paradigm in the works) and provides GUI level support for two-way MS Windows print and file sharing via a bundled install of Samba, CUPS, Gimp Print, and Ghost Script.

OS X includes a new advanced composted display model, Quartz, based on PDF (similar to display postscript), which allows for very complex window and GUI interactions within and across applications.  This CPU intensive choice is prevented from processor hogging by offloading the entire 2D screen drawing as Open GL commands to the 3D game cards present in all newer Macs using an Apple technology dubbed Quartz Extreme (QE). *  It has recently become even more advance with the addition of Quartz Extreme 2D in Tiger, a change change has as much as a 5x increase in 2D performance.

However Apple is not just mining Unix but is developing its own "killer" technologies. OS X 10.4 Tiger, the newest release, contains and astounding number of new technologies, both improvements to existing OS functions and whole new technologies, where just one are two might be enough for a major upgrade but to have them all at once is stunning...

We must not forget proper “I am not worthy” respect must be paid to another key element of OS X’s on legacy machines, XPostFacto.  OS X runs on this old machine thanks to XPostFacto, an open source utility that consists of a set of about ten kext’s (device drivers called kernel extensions) that allow the legacy chipsets and motherboards to be supported, a custom BootX boot loader, and a clever utility which allows (if your lucky) legacy OS X installs using the official install CD.

Now, on to the details of my current system.

*Windows is scheduled to include both such technologies ~2007.

**The actual composition of OS X at the kernel level is very complicated with Mach only part.

Original Hardware System

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Tech Overview of system as originally purchased in 1995

CPU:                          75 MHz 601

 

Motherboard:            7200 PCI based motherboard with 37.5 MHz bus

64-bit bus to cache and memory

L2 cache slot Ð Not filled

Four 168-pin DIMM slots

Three PCI slots (33 MHz) - Empty

 

Memory:                    8 MB RAM (one 8 MB chip)

 

Drives:                       500 MB SCSI HD, 4x SCSI CD-ROM

 

Floppy:                      HD floppy (1.4 mg)

 

Ports:                          1 SCSI bus with an int 50 pin & ext 25 pin connector

2 Modem/Printer RS232 serial ports - Modem/Printer/PDA/Camera

Sound in/out - 44.1khz, plain talk MIC compatible

Mac Video out

Ethernet (10baseT) RJ45 and Apple AAUI Enet port

 

This computer was first purchased new (clearance) in1995 as a Power Macintosh 7200/75 for $500 and although its not the worst professional computer Apple has every produced it’s limited upgrade potential made it more like a consumer machine than a professional one.  It was a member of the first class of Apple machines to use the new PCI bus instead of the NuBus architecture Apple had used before. From a power standpoint it was the rough equivalent of a Pentium 100 with a 500 MB HD and 8 MB of RAM.  As was standard for a PowerSurge type desktop/tower of the day it sported motherboard level PCI video (very limited 2D acceleration, no 3D) with a Mac video connector (similar to a VGA connector), sound in/out, 10baseT/AAUI Ethernet, int/ext SCSI (shared bus on 7200), RS232 serial x 2 (modem/printer ports), ADB (keyboard, mouse, ect...), and three 33mhz PCI 2.0 slots (which few except those with special needs typically used).

The motherboard physical shape (form factor) was shared by the 7500/7600/8500/8600 series and its case is the same used in the higher end 7500 and 7600 Pro desktops.  These machines generally included a single internal HD, floppy, and a CD-ROM drive with additional space for one extra drive (all internal drives were SCSI except the floppy).  IDE was not a standard or even common finding on Macs of this period. It’s motherboard design could handle bus speeds up to 60 MHz but was clocked at 37.5 to be 1/2 the speed of its 75 MHz processor.  It had four 168-pin DIMM slots with a max theoretical memory of 256 MB using 64 MB chips.  The CPU was soldered to the motherboard and was not upgradeable.

Current Equipment/Capability 4-10-04 (slight update 8/19/04)

(This section is upgraded to be close to current.  Older versions, with ascetic choices intact, are here.)

Tech overview as of 4/10/2004

CPU:                          800mhz G4 256K L2 (1:1), 1M L3 (1:4)

 

Motherboard:            8500 PCI based motherboard with 50 MHz bus

128-bit bus to cache and memory (memory can interleave)

Eight 168-pin DIMM slots

Three PCI slots (33 MHz) - Filled

 

Case:                          Full Size ATX Tower (Comp USA brand)

Memory:                    1024 MB RAM (eight 128 MB FPU DIMMS)

(Recently increased to its maximum from 480 MB.  Matched DIMMS were chosen to allow interleaving the impact of which is still being considered.)

 

PCI Cards:                Radeon 7000 Multi-Display Edition PCI (VGA, DVI, TV)

                                    Sonnet Tempo Treo 133 (2 ATA, 2 FW, 2 USB 2)

Asante 696 10/100 Fast Ethernet Card (RJ-45)

            - The two NIC cards alternate depending on location -

Motorolla 802.11g PCI Wireless card (Broadcom based)

 

Monitor:                    Envision (don’t laugh) 20 inch CRT

 

Audio:                        Harmon Kardon subwoofer system interfaced via USB Audio Adapter (iMic)

 

Input:                         MS Bluetooth Mouse

Apple Bluetooth Keyboard

                                    Macally iCAD drawing pad

                                    Wacom Drawing Tablet

 

Drives (Internal):     200 GB Hitachi ATA 133 HD, 

160 GB Seagate ATA 133 HD

36 GB Maxtor (Quantom) Atlas III 10k Ultra SCSI 160 (on fast SCSI 2 bus)

Iomega (Lite-On) 48x24x48x16 CDRW/DVD Drive

Lacie (Lite-on) 52x26x52 CDRW

TEAK 4x4x4x12 DVDr +/- ATAPI – currently in Beige G3

(old) SCSI CD-ROM – taking a break

 

Drives (External):    ACOR 80 GB FW/USB

                                    Floppy access via USB external Floppy Drive

 

Floppy:                      Present but only functional in OS 9.

 

Ports/Interfaces:        Dual internal 50 pin SCSI buses – SCSI 1 and Fast SCSI 2 - 1 External 25 pin SCSI on slow SCSI 1 bus – supports 14 separate devices

ATA 133 - 2 internal connectors to support 2 drives each – 4 drives total

RS232 geoport serial ports x 2 (2.2 Mbps) –> 2 ext modems

Sound in/out - 44.1khz, plain talk MIC compatible (not functional after change to ATX case)

Sound in/out - 48khz via iMic USB Audio Adapter off int USB 2.0 hub

Macintosh Video Connector

VGA/DVI/AV out via PC 32 M Radeon 7000 PCI - firmware hacked

Ethernet 10baseT/ Apple AUX - RJ45 port damaged but AAUI works

10/100 RJ45 port –or- 802.11g via one of two PCI cards (alternating install)

FireWire 400 x 2 -> bay hub for 2 front (4 & 6 pin) and 1 rear open port

USB 2.0 x 2 -> 2 internal 4-port hubs + 1 bay 4-port hub and 1 bay port

System has two internal USB hubs; a 4-port USB 2 hub connected to 5V power and a bus powered USB 1.1 4-port hub off the USB 2 hub. Hubs are off one PCI USB 2 port and internal Bluetooth off the other. The 4-port front hub is off USB 1.1 to make 4 of 5 front ports USB 1.1. Single front bay port is off USB 2 hub. All 5 front USB ports and all 3 FW ports are powered.

USB 2.0 Seven Function Multi Card Reader – front bay mounted

Bluetooth -Apple OEM internal Bluetooth module & antenna from PowerBook G4 - antenna mounted in front cover

Services:                     Apple File Sharing -AFP, AppleTalk, SMB/CFIS,

Apple/Windows/Other Printer Sharing – AFP, AppleTalk, Postscript, IPP, etc…

Web server - Apache

PPP Server via Bluetooth – replaced with hardware BT AP

                                    VNC Server

X11 Server

                                    Video On Demand via http streaming and VLC

 

This computer has undergone a progression of upgrades and modifications that have resulted in a system that is reasonably fast by current standards and the equal to many systems built after the year 2000.  It is also the most stable system I currently own with month uptimes despite heavy use and my lame attempts at software development.  All this despite running a large amount of unsupported hardware, and an unsupported OS that is so difficult to install on THIS unsupported system that it is often easiest to simply clone the 8500’s drive from a working OS X install from a modern supported Apple desktop or laptop system.

The current a full and mostly unmodified OS X 10.3.6 install cloned (ok, really just copied) from a “Aluminum”-Power book G4 12” laptop when it was 10.2.6 (the new Apple laptops have aluminum cases and have been nicknamed AluBooks by some to help distinguish them from older G4 based PowerBooks).  It has been maintained to be completely current. This install, if copied back, will still boot and run the Power book with full functionality and no evidence of its slight alteration to allow it to boot and operate the old legacy system (how many XP laptops can copy...and I mean straight disk to disk copy, not clone via some utility... their default install OS to a heavily upgraded ten year old desktop and have it actually run, and then be able to copy it back the laptop and have it still run).

Some extra barf-inducing details about the evolution from Road Apple to Bad Apple (Bad here is taken to mean Good)

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The 7200 was originally purchased when the standard Apple had a CD ROM drive and PCI slots and ran a 1^st generation PPC processor (similar to a Pentium “1”) but I was using a computer two generations behind and without either (a Mac Color Classic - like a 386sx).  I had began to fall seriously behind in my computer capabilities and people were asking me Mac questions I could no longer answer.  I hated that. I felt a new system was critical, but since I had little money I went with a cheap solution; a discontinued model on clearance (the 7200 for $500) and a used Apple 15 inch monitor.

The top end Macs of the time had 604 processors which were very good performers and for a time Mac’s even held the MHz crown over the Wintel PCs.  The 7200 had a 601 CPU which was a good processor but not as good as a 604.  The 603e was an intermediate low power/heat CPU for laptop and consumer use and was probably less powerful than the 601.

* The 601 was the original professional level PPC processor created by the AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) Alliance when Apple ditched CISC for RISC.  The 603 and improved 603e were versions which lacked multiprocessing abilities and had a less capable FPU (math coprocessor) but were designed for uses requiring low power consumption, low heat dissipation, or low cost, such as consumer desktops and all laptops.  The 604 (and 604e) was a much improved chip sporting an extra wait state to allow useful multiprocessing and a greatly improved FPU and may be one of the best chips Apple has ever used (the new G5 may beat it out).  The current G3 and G4 chips are evolutions of these designs.  The most radical feature of the new chips is the G4’s 128-bit vector processing unit (called Altivec by Motorola and Velocity Engine by Apple) and demonstrate the advantages RISC would have had over CISC had Motorola provided adequate support and know how.

Upgrades progressed as follows over the next 10 years (as I remember) O.k., this is a lousy heading, but, hey...

This list stops just before the latest major round of upgrades.

Doubled memory to 16 MB

Add 256K L2 cache

Add Quantum 2 GB HD (as second drive to OEM Quantum 500 MB HD)

Upgrade VRAM from 1 to 2 mgs

12 MB Mac 3dFX Voodoo II card (2D pass-through)

Attempt to upgrade 7200 mobo to 7500 but after 4 to 5 attempts I was not convinced the 7500 mobo was stable, eventually the company got tired of the returns and sent me an 8500 mobo for no extra charge (SCORE!!!).

120 MHz 604 daughter card immediately clock chipped to 150 MHz (with appropriate large hole drilled in the heat sink for the replacement clock)

Progressive and random memory upgrades (now easier and more random with an extra four DIMM slots) to achieve a final 112 MB of mix and match memory that held stable from about 1997 until the year 2003.

PowerLogix 250 MHz G3 CPU upgrade tuned for 275/55 MHz (CPU/bus) - bought clearance of course

Phillips 2100 2x2x6 External SCSI CDRW (no problems)

Replaced 500 MB HD with IBM 4 G 68-pin SCSI HD (for two internal drives - 4 GB + 2 GB)

Brand X (Comp USA bargain bin) 4-port USB 1.1 card

MS Optical Mouse, hence the need for the USB card

 

Long pause with stable configuration at a G3 275/55 with 112M ram, a 4/2 GB HD, Voodoo Card + onboard (motherboard) PCI video and USB PCI add-in card.

 

OS X goes from beta to 10.2 over 2 years -PM72/85 gets to OS 9.0 (not so stable since installed OS is a combination OS 8/9 + munged OS X public beta install + Barbie game install) but is otherwise ignored, and by ignored I mean it got a super clearance e-machines 14 in monitor - $50 new!.  My iBook and AGP G4 Sawtooth were getting the love. I never anticipated the 7200/8500 would have much of a role anymore.

Moved and got divorced with some interim time in smaller living space along with a loaded new PowerBook 12 plus my existing iBook such that I placed my desktop at my parents house to replaced their now inadequate older Mac clone. I figured desktops were a thing of the past for me.

Moved into large house and brought out of storage all existing equipment including older computers. Out of curiosity regarding OS X installs on older harder and the desire to print wirelessly from my laptops without buying a new router or print server I installed Jaguar (10.2) to create a print server for my USB printers (worked). I then hung various sometimes-useful legacy devices from it (such as SCSI Zip drives, scanner, burners, ect…) The 72/8500 worked well enough to prompt the purchase of additional USB devices specifically as accessories.  My trusty PowerBook 3400/200 running OS 9.1 got assigned Web Serving duties in order to use the automatic Web file sharing capabilities of 9 (not present in X).  Acting purely as a server the desktop gets little to hands on use.

Significant other (new girlfriend) breaks iBook and then breaks my PowerBook in compensation leaving me temporarily without fulfiller of computer needs and forcing me onto the desktop where a just a few upgrades became ALL THIS.

 

Upgrades resume, as the current configuration is too light for local/GUI use even with minimal use of multitasking.

 

Do I really need an excuse? The final BIG upgrade frenzy (my God man, it’s never FINAL)

The plan that never was, but still was…the plan.

There were several problems to address.  The first problem was that the base hardware computer architecture was so very outdated but now had an OS, OS X, that made thorough and heavy use of resources (and better use of available resources), especially with OS X’s new graphics needs and capabilities.   This meant that every component needed to be upgraded and the upgrades might cost more than a much newer new/used machine with similar performance but with greater future expansion possibilities.   The cost analysis was further modified given that upgrades of the legacy system could be implemented in a staged fashion decreasing short-term expense and allowing for a smoother upgrade path (its easier to pretend like you are not spending money if you spend it a little at a time). As one might predict, mistakes were made and, since this project evolved from very humble beginnings with little goals and less planning, it was not undertaken for maximum efficiency of cost in the early but more important steps.

A few of the bigger “Now I know” - Mistakes:

1)   Cheap NIC card a BAD idea – OS is a network focused OS and network issues are a big deal.

2)   Should have gone for the ATA card sooner as SCSI really cost a premium, which is lost on my onboard SCSI.  SCSI now is almost completely reserved for the high end. 

#2 Essentially added $150 of unnecessary expenses to the process, although use/performance analysis indicates this may not be true as SCSI provides such dramatic benefits that are amplified even more when computing power is less.

 

Cost/Benefit Analysis

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Overview and Considerations

Accepting the irony of analyzing upgrades for sanity after the fact and when I would almost certainly ignore the results of such analysis anyway, I nevertheless figure its good exercise. Since most users are familiar with PCs a general discussion seems in order. So lets pontificate…

Obviously it is of interest as to whether such an aggressive upgrade strategy is any cheaper or just flat much more expensive than buying a faster new or used machine. The consideration of this is very complex as the variables as to hardware, personal needs, and technical experience are enumerable along with important differences between Macs and PCs. Most important are Macs more limited cost spectrum and very different useful life as compared with PCs. PCs tend to be commodities and have a true base of cheaply constructed discount machines involving slightly aging technologies and diminished specifications that nonetheless represent real upgrades and value over more expensive machines just a few years old. With the leveling of technology across the field, capabilities and components even in the base price machines remain near the average. It is true that one PC is pretty much like any other as the components and designs are based on a few limited base designs and mostly vary as to bundling and aesthetics. Intel reference designs and the MS Window’s OS are the defining factors as both Intel and MS enforce uniformity (I don’t mean this as a negative as I realize it is complex).* This is in contrast to Apple systems which are premier high end machines for a smaller and often for a more specialized or sophisticated market segment. Macs don’t have any place or much desire to be in the super low end market.

This makes the equation harder especially given how strongly used Apple equipment retains its value. I think it is often true that used Macs are so expensive that it almost never makes since to buy them over new machines, but darn well makes since to sell your old one to offset the cost of new ones. With the long and continued useful life made more beneficial with re-tasking this makes decided whether to sell a used Mac, re-task it, or upgrade it even more difficult.

The second factor is almost purely OS based and related largely to Apple’s typically very well thought out OS evolution and the fact that Window’s was an after-addition built on top of DOS that spent many years trying to catch up to the Apple OS’s dramatically better user interface while retaining DOS compatibility. The result was that Macs were able to run the newest Mac OS available (as it was very stable in overall function and implementation) for years after they were purchased along with running current software. This made for long useful lives. If fact most Mac users regularly upgrade the OS to remain current as it is normally such a painless and hassle free process.

This is very different from the PC world. Here the very rapid evolution of Windows to bring the GUI up to speed and the breakneck speed of hardware development from such an energetic and competitive market means that PCs run best on the OS they shipped with and are rapidly incapable of running newer OS versions, new software, or using newer features. This is amplified by frequent huge hassles and hardware problems after an OS upgrade such that most PCs end life with the same OS they started life with. For most users this is the best solution. This very different experience is related to the difficulty in the PC world of matching drivers and OS components when such a huge variation of hardware configurations are possible and the difficulty for Windows in supporting systems when almost nothing can be assumed about the hardware.* PC manufactures carefully test and install Windows and the required drivers that work well for the particular mix of components in their machines which is why it is often easier for end users to leave systems running the matched OS they shipped with.

These considerations along with large differences in cost, variety and availability of upgrade hardware between Macs and PCs make any general comment about whether upgrading one is likely more justified than the other very difficult, at least for me.

In spite of these differences many basic points are valid for both Macs and PCs and in general I think can be summed up this way.

Carefully considered upgrades on appropriately chosen systems can be cost effective and prolong system life, sometimes dramatically. This is much more likely in systems that have a larger investment in legacy or special hardware with a large investment in technology not easily transferable to newer machines. Also users who tend to upgrade incrementally over the life of a system as certain areas become deficient, or good deals arise, get more benefit as they spread the cost over a longer time, get benefit from needed capability earlier, and have systems that are generally functional and easily re-tasked when they are replaced allowing more value to be extracted from fewer machines.** However most of the time anything beyond simple upgrades like hard drives, memory, monitors, and basic PCI cards are not cost effective when compared to a newer system. Even with such simple limited upgrades any more than a couple or less when performed in close sequence likely does not make sense. For example (using a PC since the impact of the discount market is so dramatic):

If one takes a five year old Windows PC and upgrades it with a larger hard drive for $100, triple it’s memory for $100, and a new video card for $50, you would have spent $250 on upgrades. These would be reasonable (not excessive) upgrades that offer real performance changes and are often done. However when compared to a new computer the upgrade probably does not make sense. The new system comes with as large a hard drive, the same amount of memory but with a faster faster bus, processor, and memory, a better optical drive, and much faster video system, newer ports and interface technologies, along with a bundled newer ~$130 version of the Windows OS and other software carefully matched to the system. Such systems can often be found for less than $500, or even as low as $300. The newer system will have newer software or if the older computer is software upgraded the newer system will likely work better. This translates to much better overall performance for the same or less money and likely MUCH less hassle.

Therefore unless limited and likely to benefit a system’s performance without requiring a flood of co-upgrades most PC users should buy new systems when it seems time to upgrade unless the upgrades are very limited, and Mac users should think about it. Upgrades are like Pringles. You can’t have just one. In general Macintosh systems are weighted towards upgrades by their much longer useful life running current software but are limited by the generally higher cost of upgrade components.

*          I realize the uniformity enforced has most to do with better interoperability, compatibility, and interface consistency across systems and reflects complex decisions. As for PC’s see Why Windows sucks, but MS itself likes variety.

**        It is ironic that this applies less to individuals than organizations, although it is individuals who are nonetheless for more likely to use such care in computer decisions.

Some Data for Cost Benefit Analysis of My System

Comparison Table 1

Approximate Upgrade Costs

Based Upon A Strange Pre-Cognition Of The Final System

20” Monitor	$120
250 GB ATA100 7200rpm HD	$130
36 GB SCSI 160 10K HD (bought prior to realizing ATA was inevitable)	$150
Sonnet G4 800 CPU upgrade	$350
Sonnet Trio 133 (ATA133/USB2/FW400)	$180
Asante 696 10/100 NIC	$25
Lite-On(“Iomega”) 48x24x48x16 CDRW/DVD (USB2->ATA)	$100
Radeon 7000 32MB PCI graphics Multi-Display Edition	$40
64 MB DIMMS x 6 ($20 each) Now 128 M DIMMS x 8 at $20 each for $160	$120

Upgrade -Total Approximately $1215

 

Comparison Table 2

Approximate Total Cost Other Systems

Total replacement Cost other Selected Systems for Comparison as mid-late 2003

Upgraded PM72/85	~$1200
Desktop G4 1.4 Ghz/256 Ram/60 GB HD/USB/FW/CDRW/DVD Pro Desktop with 64 MB AGP 4x graphics (ATI or nVidia) ~ $1700  (+ $100 for same monitor)	~$1800
Laptop G4 (loaded AluBook G4 12”)  G4 867 MHz/640 MB DDR 266 Ram/60 GB HD/USB/FW/CDRW/DVD-RW/Bluetooth/802.11g/32 M AGP 4x nVidia graphics	~$2200

 

Replace - Total Approximately $1800

In order to compare Apples to…well…Apples, let summarize the differences I would get between a legacy upgrade and a new system replacement.

Comparison Table 3

A Brief Comparison of the Options (lets recap)

CPU	1.4 Ghz or 867 Mhz vs. 800 Mhz
Motherboard	133 vs. 50 MHz
Graphics	AGP 4x (266 MHz) vs. 33 MHz PCI
OS Install	Supported vs. Unsupported
Boot options	Bootable (firmware) USB/FW vs. non-bootable (loaded driver) USB/FW

Replacement is $600 to $1000 more expensive (for the chosen systems) in straight dollars…but what of relative value.

 

 

Impulse Buying with an Edge

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Being pushed onto the desktop by my laptop tragedy I experienced the combination of a slow small HD, too little RAM, and too little CPU and quickly became impatient with a scanned picture taking 10 minutes to load into Graphics Converter (virtual memory is not a good idea on a slow bus, slow HD, etc...)

As I dropped off my beloved “Alu”book 12 inch at the shop I asked about DIMM prices and was surprised to find they were clearing out 64 M DIMMS for $20 each, cheaper than online prices, so I bought six.  Combining that with two 32 M chips already in the machine brought the total to 480 M. I also helped the HD situation by installing an IBM 4 GB HD I had originally used in this same system but had resting in another system I had given to my parents.  The HD did not work well there and they had 50 GB of HD storage anyway so I had re-possessed it some time before.  It was a 68 pin SCSI HD and was significantly faster even on the 50-pin bus.

With the increased memory and larger/faster HD (the 2 G and the 4 G instead of the 2 G and a 1 G) I had some breathing room and the system ran better.  However, the real upgrade frenzy was kicked off by some basic stupidity.

The built-in 10baseT Ethernet port stopped working after I came back from a trip.  Some investigation showed the 4-port Linksys wired/wireless router to which it was connected had blown all 4 LAN ports and probably taken the desktop’s port with it (presumably a power spike).  Seeing no reason to spend a lot on an Ethernet card I went to CompUSA and bought the cheapest NIC available which boasted Mac support (I was not in the mood for a huge driver search if I chose any random card) and chose the D-Link 530tx+ 10/100 card.  I was hopeful the extra network bandwidth would be nice for LAN activities.  I downloaded the latest drivers for 9 and X, installed the card, and rejoiced when X booted, recognized the card, and asked me to configure my new network port.  I did and all was well, or so I thought.

I was playing with the power of Unix as I had been since OS X came out, although that was intermittent since my job is very time consuming (and not computer related).  Since the beta III release of Apple’s X11 my latest challenge was figuring out X Windows.  One of its compelling features was remote sessions and that is where I focused my efforts.  My efforts did not go well as network problems abounded.  My laptop (the PB 12) was back in my possession by that point and I could easily connect to it from the desktop via ssh and start a remote X windows session, but any attempt to connect to the desktop remotely and the session would freeze as the Ethernet port just stopped working (along with all other networking activities on the desktop).  It could be fixed by using the Network control panel to toggle networking off and then on, but it would always return when I tried to connect again (it also occurred in lots of other situations, but mostly for high volume outbound LAN activity and was therefore too infrequent to notice).  Moving cards, changing ports on the router, zapping PRAM, fixing permissions, and on and on made no difference. In frustration I eventually decided to reformat the HD and reinstall X.

When changing to the 4 G HD I had used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the 2 G HD to the 4 G HD and restart, and it had worked perfectly.  I then erased the 2 G and made it a dedicated OS 9 partition that also held some extra OS X apps.  Being falsely reassured by how easy the initial OS X install had been using XPostFacto I backed up my users folder and went about erasing the 4 G HD and reinstalling X 10.2.

Bet you can’t do that again!

OS X installs by booting from the install CD from which an installer script is run. This script uses the Installer, an OS X application, to install various “packages” which Apple at least made some effort at hiding for the casual user.  The trouble is that this install CD certainly has no boot or hardware support for my legacy system and therefore I can’t directly boot from it making installing the OS problematic.  XPostFacto gets around this by setting open firmware (bios for PC’ers) variables to allow the System to boot initially of the internal HD (for bootx, kexts) switching to the install CD one the critical drivers for the base hardware are loaded.  Unfortunately, this is tricky and timing issues cause it to fail often and at random such that I was never able to repeat my first experience.  Changing back to the original 2 GB drive, SCSI manipulations, removing cards, chants, and odd haircuts did not help.  I could not run the installers manually without already having OS X on the system since they required the Installer application.  I could not put the SCSI HD in another Mac with OS X since Apple had long since left SCSI as a standard interface. Copying the CD to a HD and making it bootable was hard (vagaries of X, UNIX, and read only drives), network transfers of the system was almost impossible due to permissions issues, and since my new PB 12 and this old desktop shared almost no ports, especially SCSI or FW, I had no way to even clone a working X install, provided that would even work (I was so young).  I had no terminal since I had no OS X (I could only install OS 9 or earlier).  I needed X to install X. Catch –22.

*It turns out this cross support issue is big.  I had two laptops and two desktops, all modern systems running OS X except for the older desktop.  The new desktop was donated to my parents to bring them up to date leaving my iBook and PB 12 to support each other through my crazed OS experimentation.  This was accomplished via FW target disk mode** allowing for bailouts and repairs.  However my iBook had been, eh, rendered less useful by my new girlfriends love of gravity.  Since my legacy desktop lacked FireWire and my laptop lacked SCSI both my laptop and older desktop were orphaned.  The older desktop was hardware married to my trusty (and still used) legacy PowerBook 3400 via SCSI disk mode, but the older PB was forever trapped in 9 and could be off no help in X.  I really needed a bail out option for the PB 12 and for the old desktop.

** Apple hardware feature where a computer can reboot into a state of being a pure external FireWire HD.  This is useful in that you can 1) boot another computer from it, 2) install to or repair it, 3) copy to and from it much faster than typical network speeds.

 

During my frequent experiments attempting this impossible install (it took four days) I finally left the 4 G HD balancing on the edge of the open desktop case where it slid off and shorted on the case with smoke, sparks, and general horror from which no amount of tinkering could recover.  So angered was I that the next day I went straight to Fry’s to get another SCSI HD (maybe a 40, or even bigger if they were cheap enough).  I had bought larger (40 GB) ATA HD’s new and they were really cheap, and that was 2 years before.  SCSI HD’s are, of course, not cheap and the cheapest SCSI HD was a Maxtor (Quantum) Atlas III 10K 36 GB HD costing $150.  Looking for another option I wandered the Mac peripheral isle (hell, I would have visited it anyway) and was checking out the ATA cards when I noticed something I had never seen in a retail store. . . Mac accelerator cards (and other really cool stuff).  These were typically mail order items (Like most real Mac people I got MacWorld more for the adds in the back than the articles and almost every computer item I had was mail order.)  My greed and hunger for power took control when I picked up the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G4 800 card.  My computer had a removable daughter card so these upgrade cards replaced my existing card in the processor slot, which should make them more supported and stable.  The $350 price tag of the Sonnet card did not prevent me from getting it, but it did eliminate a combination ATA card + ATA drive such that I got the 36 GB SCSI drive instead.

I pounded home and installed the wonder and was stunned at the speed increase. 800 MHz was a lot since the multipliers available until recently essentially limited G4 speeds on a 50 MHz computer to 400 MHz.

This of course did not alter my OS X install problem one lick and the struggles continued.  Lets just say that the current (then future) me could install OS X on a goats butt using bailing wire, duct tape, and any Phillips optical drive, no matter how faulty.

On THAT instance I made a disk image of the PB 12 OS X install, sans Users folder, and copied it via the LAN to the desktop running OS X. I managed to copy enough of the install CD’s OS to boot from a HD in X, mount the LAN’d disk image, use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy it to another drive, restart from it, and then manually run the installers from the Install CD

The Ethernet problem (Still Coming) was also not fixed by this HUGE PROCESS and took quite a bit longer to figure out and then even longer to (give up and) finally solve the problem permanently. After I discovered that Realtek is the Spawn of Satan the problem was for a time managed by connecting the D-Link card to a 10baseT hub off my router to hold it to 10Mbps speeds.

Now I had an 800 MHz G4 (nice) with a 36 GB HD (nice) and 480 MB of RAM (eh, you always want more).  However, I was using the onboard 2 MB video (no 2D or 3D acceleration) and could not use Quartz Extreme.  Quartz Extreme was a new Apple technology where a modern 3D video card is used to compost and display the 2D Apple Quartz interface.  Its main goal was to take the composting load off the CPU (something it seemed to do well) and speed things up, or at least not slow them down when the graphics got flowing.  With this old machine I really wanted any load balancing (and cool graphics) possible and decided to see if a newer video card and a hacked activation of Quartz Extreme. QE defaults to only working with AGP cards, but can work with PCI although it really does require a Radeon equivalent card or better.

My old computer has only PCI slots, not AGP and therefore only one official graphics card upgrade option, the Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edition - at 3x the cost of the PC version.  Since two of three PCI slots were filled (USB 1.1 and 10/100 Enet) I knew this would be my last card.  Filling this slot would deny me FireWire, USB 2, and ATA.  Unfortunately Fry’s was out of Mac Radeons believing falsely that they were discontinued so I took a chance and got a PC Radeon 7000 PCI for $40 (80$ less than the Mac version) on the hope I could hack the firmware to make it a Mac version.

That was a battle all its own but I did get the thing flashed Mac and it has worked perfectly.

Quartz Extreme made a real difference in perceived speed, and the display was better all the way around, especially when I soon bought a really cheap (should look good for at least on year), but pretty, 20” monitor.

Now I had a pretty cool system with lots of SCSI/USB stuff, stable, shared resources well, felt fast, and was super stable (did I mention stable).  I got into some programming obsessions for awhile writing an auto-updating Start Menu-like tool using Apple Script (went a little nuts here with psychotic self-repair routines, preference bloat, odd backdoors with plug-in type features, and made lavish use of properties), other weird various utilities, and wrote most of a Mac GUI interface for GIMP using a bastard combination of Apple Script Studio, shell scripts, Perl, and Scheme... and, amazingly, the computer would stay up until the next system update forced me to restart.  Multiple apps were started and left running for days, others were summarily executed using kills, killalls, kill -9’s, including the System Events application, but still the system never balked. 

Alas I knew the system had no extra PCI slots, so unless I wanted to spend stupid amounts of effort and money, upgrades were over.

Except there was that nagging CD burner issue...

Time to do it right -or- The time to think about scalability is before

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My 72/8500 from early on had an external SCSI 2x2x6 CDRW, the Phillips 2100 made famous by the class action lawsuit.  However that drive was too unstable for use in X (true for both of the Phillips 2100 drives I owned…ok… I know…I know…) and I certainly wasn’t going to return to OS 9 just to run those old burners.  These drives apparently need a firmware upgrade that requires a PC with SCSI to install.  We know how many of those are just lying about.

Nonetheless I really wanted to be able to offload some burning to the “less used” desktop (it was actually almost certainly used more) so I began to research multifunction cards and, after some FireWire/USB 2 spankings, settled on a Sonnet card since Sonnet seemed to know legacy Macs.  This card had ATA133 with 2 controllers for 4 devices, 2 FireWire ports, and 2 USB 2.0 ports.  I had a plan of using FireWire to allow cross-support for the PB 12, ATA 133 for future HD’s, and USB 2 for the new 48x Iomega CD burner/DVD player that Mac support advertised on the box and was on sale. You know, maybe I would watch some DVD’s while I programmed.

Ok, so, it turns out USB 2 just will not work with this motherboard (timing issues I think) and DVD playback is bad from any device attached to a PCI card (apparently a well known problem dating from time the PowerSurge computers were new and it was noted that sound sources from ATA drives would skip).

Ok, plans change.  USB 2 ports work fine as USB 1.1, which was OK given the Sonnet Trio had replaced my trusty old CompUSA bargain bin USB 1.1 card.  The USB 2.0 CDRW drive works at full speed as an internal ATA drive replacing the OEM internal SCSI drive with that drive going into one of the Phillips 2100’s SCSI external cases and, of course, FireWire communing with the PB 12 as a cross-support solution.  DVD read is very useful since I tend to backup to DVD-r’s now. I can also use the desktop to rip video.

*  USB 2.0 is now working on legacy systems via the use of Apple Developer Logging USB drivers.

The result is both stable and fast.

As my interest in maintaining my multimedia collection on the server grew and I realized how badly I needed reliable laptop backup I added a Western Digital 250 GB ATA 100 HD, and I was set and finished…

Well…almost…but…now to get that D-Link ENET card to something closer to 100Mbps, or at least not struggle with 5Mbps.  Nope, I could never get any D-Link 530 Tx+ card to function acceptably.  Even with the card held to 10Mbps by being connected to a 10baseT hub it was unreliable and slow.  I came across a ton of research showing this to be a seriously bad chip set. Like most cheap NIC’s the 539 tx+ is based on the Realtek 8139 chip set, and that chip set can cause real performance problems, especially on Unix/Linux systems.  I was now playing with video ripping, encoding, and streaming and poor network transmissions FROM the server were not helpful.

Finally I replaced the Realtek POS with an Asante’ 696 10/100 card, resulting in much greater throughput than 10baseT would permit, although not nearly saturating 100 Mbps, and without any lagging or dropped connections.  All told the improvement in network bandwidth for this computer has been about 5x over stock (and 5x or more over the Realtek chipset).

 

 

The Final Result - Comparisons and Thoughts

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It is my goal to ultimately have four sections here: A consideration of software support and stability, a consideration of hardware support and device drivers, some objective benchmarking, and finally some random partially coherent discussion mixed with some thoughts.  Currently this is still a work-in-progress and is somewhat mixed together. Software and hardware have links to sub-pages.  Benchmarks and ravings to continue on this page.

• Software Compatibility - Every tested piece of software has functioned as expected except for 1) built in faxing, and 2) the hardware profile utility, and these work fine they just fail to list, or recognize, some of the older hardware. No true software incompatibilities have been noted at all.  This is with running a great deal of varied software.  A partial list is here.
• Hardware/Driver Compatibility - Compatibility and driver requirements were not much different that a supported system.
• Benchmarks (next on this page)
• Discussion/Conclusions/Random Thoughts/DSM IV Diagnosable Ravings (follows benchmarks)

Lies, Damn Lies, and Benchmarks

It is now a well-known problem that objective measures of performance for a given process or entity are difficult to design and interpret.  Much like benchmarking a car computer benchmarking tests are artificial and may not reflect performance in real world use.  At best benchmarks are useful objectives checkpoints for comparing systems or assessing upgrades.  At worst they are misleading.

I certainly did some benchmarking as I always do with any upgrade.  There are several different ways to test computer speeds, such as using a benchmarking suite, measuring game frame rates, or measure times to render movie or compile a program.

I tend to look at five basic things the sum of which is likely meaningless: the results from some benchmarking program (currently Xbench), scrolling speed on certain loaded web pages, startup time, time to encode a DVD movie as a DivX AVI, and subjective feel.  Time to crunch SETI blocks is also a very good benchmark but I have not done those recently.  That said I only provide comments and results on a small part of this highly scientific benchmarking system since. I have just been too damned busy to do that much of it;-)

As a basis for direct hands on comparison I really only have my PB 12 laptop.  My Graphite AGP G4 Desktop is on loan to my parents and my use of it is generally confined to SSH sessions.  Even so that system is only 400 MHz with much less memory then the upgraded 8500 and a non-QE compatible ATI 128 GL card so that it feels and slower than the legacy machine.  Other available computers, such as an original Bondi iMac, and a dual USB IceBook 500, are just too slow for a fair comparison not being much above the old desktop in terms of hardware/motherboard/bus anyway.   Regardless they are what I have available.

 

A Smattering Of Random Comparisons And Comments

 

Xbench 1.1.3 Results

Tested Area	PM 8500 480 M RAM ?Partial Interleave	PM 8500 1 G RAM Inter-leaved	PB G4 12 867	iBook 500	Bondi iMac 233 Rev. B	AGP G4 400
Quartz	QE On/Off	QE On	QE On	QE NA	QE NA	Coming
CPU	91.78	93.87	101.48	49.94	12.61
Thread	64.44	65.93	71.97	36.17	20.67
Memory	17.15	22.86	85.18	19.17	17.71
Quartz Graphics	37.02/47.04	38.23	94.66	37.57	26.46
OpenGL Graphics	90.41/86.33	81.32	88.98	49.86	6.79
User Interface	53.81/66.53	53.67	104.09	31.39	38.03
Disk	65.66	64.89	56.00	22.14	46.51
Composite score	44.70	49.2	82.59	31.32	16.79

 

 

Tested Area	PM 8500 480 M RAM ?Partial Interleave	PM 8500 1 G RAM Inter-leaved	PB G4 12 867	iBook 500	Bondi iMac 233 Rev. B	AGP G4 400
Quartz	QE On/Off	QE On	QE On	QE NA	QE NA	Coming
CPU	91.78	93.87	101.48	49.94	12.61
Thread	64.44	65.93	71.97	36.17	20.67
Memory	17.15	22.86	85.18	19.17	17.71
Quartz Graphics	37.02/47.04	38.23	94.66	37.57	26.46
OpenGL Graphics	90.41/86.33	81.32	88.98	49.86	6.79
User Interface	53.81/66.53	53.67	104.09	31.39	38.03
Disk	65.66	64.89	56.00	22.14	46.51
Composite score	44.70	49.2	82.59	31.32	16.79

 

* 8/20/04 Do to my wife’s continued fascination with gravity and a rare total failure on Apple’s part my PowerBook 12 Inch is getting upgraded from Rev A to Rev C Status. This represents a substantial change with a faster CPU, larger faster cache, more and faster memory on a faster main bus, and with a faster graphics processor having twice the RAM, along other significant changes. This will place the new laptop as clearly head and shoulders above the other systems (except for HD speed) especially in graphics performance.

These results have some interesting (and consistent) findings. 

When comparing the upgraded PowerMac with the newer Apple G4 laptop CPU speeds were about the same, not surprising since they are of similar type and speed.  In addition, the disk test is similar suggesting that the slower legacy bus is not too much of a drag for drive access even with a faster drive (these are, of course, not blazing fast drives).*  It was somewhat surprising that the Open GL results were so similar.  This speaks to the power of the Radeon 7000 in that it held its own against the newer nVidia 4MX To Go (really a re-purposed nVidia 2) and suggests the open GL test used was not very bandwidth intensive and is, in fact, almost a pure test of the video card for is a bad test that really rates CPU power.  Quartz and the User Interface tests are probably using QE and are therefore likely to be impacted to a much greater extent by bus speed.  The memory test is clearly a reflection of the faster DDR 266 memory against the older DIMMS.

I also find it interesting that in the Quartz test (with Quartz extreme active) the 8500 is almost identical to the iBook which, lacking a Radeon level card, isn’t using Quartz Extreme.  If I disable QE on the PM 8500 (the default) then we get a significant increase in quartz speed (around 1/3) but no important change in other areas.  I did notice it improved the sound drop out on DVD playback, but did not eliminate it. QE isn’t perfect when rendering on a PCI Video card on this older machine.   It has some stuttering and skipping with big GUI effects.   Still the 8500 feels significantly quicker and more fluid than it feels with Quartz Extreme off.  It is so noticeable that it is annoying to use the system if QE is inadvertently disabled.   My not thoroughly investigated observation is that 1) QE speeds up the user interface with no real performance penalty, and 2) Even where the user interface is not faster, it is more fluid as a result of fewer dropped frames, or more consistent frame rates.  In other words, on older system QE may generally have lower frame rates in situations of light load as compared with non-QE but is able to hold those frame rates and maintain display fluidity under increasing load where without QE it fails.

* This is wrong. In fact the older and slower bus is a HUGE bottleneck. A similar ATA 133 card placed in a slightly newer Mac with a 2.1 compliant PCI slot and a 66 MHz bus was able to achieve throughputs of 60MB/sec (3x better) using the exact same drive. What we are seeing here instead is how MUCH slower laptop drives are as compared with desktop drives where a new laptop is getting similar driver performance to what can be reached on a decade old desktop system.

As for other less objective or less documented indices of performance:

·      Stability is equal to or better than newer, supported systems (and much better than my new PB 12)

·      MPEG 4 encoding is nearly equal to the PB 12 and is probably mostly a reflection of similar CPU power plus Altivec.

·      Virtual PC 6.1 clearly performs better on the laptop, despite the laptops lack of a L3 cache and a slower L2 cache and suggests that memory and motherboard speed are very important for VPC performance.

·      Subjectively the upgraded PM72/8500 feels equal to the PB in most uses.

·      Serving performance seems to work well for my limited uses.  It does VNC well and serves movies as VOD without problems (using VLC to stream http DivX files).  Print serving (sharing) is also problem-free, including faxing via printer sharing.       

*The desktop has an old “stored in closet boxes” serial modem hooked up to each of the two serial ports, a 33.6 that is used for sending and receiving faxes, and a 56k it uses for dialing into private networks (don’t ask, it is too painful).

 

Finally, and Can I PLEASE LEAVE! (I hope there is no QUIZ)

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The Bottom-Line.  This server is a legacy PowerMac that consists of a high end motherboard from the medium sized professional tower of its day combined with low to medium level modern PC components.  It is upgraded with the fastest available CPU upgrade at the time (that has only become available the later part of 2003 since it depends on a new G4 that supports higher multipliers).  This computer is maxed on PCI cards (with the equivalent of 5 cards) and memory upgrades.  As a result, it supports essentially all of the old Mac interface and peripheral standards, and pretty much all the new port standards as well.  The exceptions are FW 800 and USB 2.0 with USB 2.0 waiting for driver upgrades for the PCI cards when used in legacy systems (USB 2.0 is now fixed and fully functional).  It also has very good peripheral support essentially equaling that of a comparably equipped newer system with the iSight the only notable exception so far.

For most uses it feels as fast as my $2200 G4 PowerBook, and is more stable.  It does a good job of print and file serving, and acting as a peripheral master station, but is fast enough to get real work done.  It has in fact become the preferred computer for most programming, writing, and graphics work (along with real work) relegating my laptop to lounging and traveling status.

 

For me this journey has been worth it.

 

Future Upgrade Plans

Replace all eight memory chips with 128 MB DIMMS for a total of 1 GB RAM.  I should get additional benefit from matched chips in that they can be interleaved for a performance increase of around 15%.  (This was recently done)   Replace 2 GB SCSI HD with a 250 to 500 MB ATA HD as an expansion of its back-up/archiving role.  Eventually as it becomes too slow for real work I may just match the drives as a mirrored software raid for some backup redundancy and make it a true server (in closet, no monitor, ect...) since even with a slow bus it should easily handle private household-level serving duties.  (Recently replaced and added drives to now have a total of 4.  200 G ATA 133, 160 G ATA 133, 36 G SCSI 160, and 2 G SCSI.)   Clock chip the PCI bus from 33 to 40 MHz by changing the appropriate 2-pronged oscillator. (Not done)   Modify wiring to allow a standard ATX PS to be connected without needing modification. (Done)

 

 

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Hows Bertha (the PM8500 thing) Doing Lately?    Upated May 2005  

She is doing great! 

The Sliced Apple site has expanded dramatically and serves MUCH higher volumes than it did, all still served by Bertha (with .mac mirroring when needed).  It's easy, if your are at slicedapple.ath.cx you are on Bertha, if you have been redirected to homepage.mac.com/rwikoff/sliceapple/ then  you are on the mirror.  Bertha is up 95% of the time and only goes down for a rare freeze (she doesn't have a watchdog UPS) or an external networkd access problem not related to her.  Most problems she recovers from automatically.  She is currently networked wirelessly via a 802.11G PCI card.

Because of some lifestyle changes and other...er...shit...I am rarely actually physically near Bertha.  I manage her remotely via the Terminal and VNC and she has been doing fine.  She continues to serves as my main backup for any important files and is active as as webserver, AFP file server, VNC server, and wedDAV server.  She also archives my mail. 

Except for an early problem with a loose power connector (hard to solve remotely but taking only minutes once I got back in town and looked at it) she has not had a hitch.  She is currently running 10.3.8.  I don't balk at installing updates remotely (10.3.9 is out) but soon I will install Tiger 10.4 so I have been waiting.

Bertha is so stable right now that I am in no rush.

What! I forgot the obvious?

Where are the benchmark comparisons to the original PM7200/75?

1^st, this is a work in progress (I am lazy) and I have to pull the files off archived disks (really lazy), and 2^nd the benchmarking utilities used 10 years ago would be very hard to compare to current values (ok, got to give me that one).

(I have located the my old benchmark files.  They start with a Mac Plus that eventually got the Brainstorm upgrade (still works!) and progresses through the Color Classic with and without AE 40 MHz 030 CPU upgrade, and the PM 7200 through a variety of upgrades.  I am working on some way to compare those results to ones obtainable or meaningful now.)

However using guesses (hey, I do have a life) we can make some, eh, guesses.

I guarantee the following results to be very precise...now accurate...well...lets go with precise.

Here goes!!

_________________________

When matched for clock speed I generally consider the 604 to be 50% faster than the 601, the G3 to be 50% faster then the 604, and the G4 to be equivalent to the G3.  The G3/G4 difference seems to be changing as OS X and all its software becomes Altivec aware and optimized.  Therefore I, as God of this website, will arbitrarily give the G4 a 25% advantage.  The other BIG advantage of the G4 is the ability to work on multiprocessor configurations but that is unfortunately only a dream for me.

800/75 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.25 = 30

So, the current computer is about 30X faster in CPU power. (It could happen)

Hard drive speeds seem to double with each upgrade therefore...

500M->2G->4G->36G->250G lets us calculate

2 ⁴ = 16 for the change in speed and

250G/0.5G  = 500 for the change in capacity such that

The current computer is about 16X faster in hard drive speed and has 500x the hard drive capacity.

Video Cards are more difficult.  This computer originally had (and still has since it is motherboard based) a PCI based video chipset (brand unknown) with some minimal 2D acceleration and 1 MB of VRAM (doubled to 2 MB in my system, but expandable to 4 MB).  Video cards have exploded in power since then now rivaling the CPU in complexity.  The ATI cards took real leaps in power from the Rage II->Rage Pro->Rage 128 GL.  They took a huge leap in power with the transition to the Radeon design of which the current card is a descendent.   Given all this, it’s possible the current video hardware is 1000x more powerful but it would take real research on my part to figure it out.

Finally, to compare the RAM we take

1024 M RAM/8 M RAM which gets us...

 

Memory (RAM) is 128X greater in capacity.

 

Ok, happy, now git, I got to rip!!!

 

 

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Created ~ 12/15/03

Modified many times

Modified 5/14/05 - small formatting changes in results section

Modified 5/20/05 - added photos link, revised, OS X text, other small changes