PowerPC G4 Upgrades Direct from Motorola? 26
Gizzmonic asks: "I was looking at PowerPC upgrade cards for my Mac G3 Blue-and-White and I couldn't help but notice that the offerings by PowerLogix and Sonnet are quite pricey. So, I started poking around Motorola's site looking for the G4 or my dreams. I could probably pull a few strings at work and get them to order a G4 direct. Is there any reason that a G4 from Motorola wouldn't work with the ZIF socket on my motherboard? (Yes, I know about the G4 enabler software) Ordering from Motorola or one of their suppliers could potentially save me a lot of dough, but I'd hate to plunk down the money for an incompatible CPU. What do you folks think?"
Here you go... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Anonymous Cowards and criticism (Score:1)
Have you noticed that your URL has an embedded space in it? Slashdot does that to posts. Go here [slashcode.com]. You just might learn something.
Motorola Dreams (Score:3, Funny)
I like Motorola's G4 processors, but their dream department leaves something to be desired. I'm glad you went with the former option.
ZIF? I don't think so... (Score:3, Funny)
Having said that, heat dissipation can sometimes be a problem and there have been times when overclocking has been desirable.
Unfortunately, finding a suitable heat sink that doesn't interfere with operations can be problematic, although water cooling/immersion can be a more than pleasant solution - with the right component(s).
Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:1)
Re:Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:1)
For the
You could almost say that Next acquired Apple not the other way around.
Re:Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:2)
Heh, tell me about it. Have a look at Apple's execs- [apple.com] a lot of ex-NeXT people, as CEO, Senior VP Hardware, Senior VP Software, and Senior VP General Counsel.
Re:Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:1, Flamebait)
True about the used systems...
The G4 533 w/512k cache smoked the G4 733 w/256k cache. Basicly, the 533/512 G4 was not surpassed in performance untill the 800 came out so..
Buy used and steal Jaguar. Apple gets no dimes untill they lower their prices on current under powered hardware.
Can you belive they have the gall to migrate to DDR on an asynchronous bus which actually quite a bit slower than SDRAM?
At least Apple's marketing department can use the DDR buzzword now.
Re:Why not just upgradethe whole system? (Score:2)
I could theoretically float a fairly new G4 system on my credit card and swap out all the parts, but switching over hard drives, system software, etc would take a lot more time than just replacing a CPU.
I'm most curious about the G4 slot on Mot's own motherboards. Does anyone happen to work with them on a regular basis? If so, is the board ZIF-compatible with the G3? How much voltage does it draw? (G3 mainboards can spit a variety of voltages, but changing the voltage setting requires a lot of hacking and is probably not worth the effort).
Suppliers? (Score:3, Funny)
Highly unlikely (Score:1)
Re:Highly unlikely (Score:1)
The real cost may have to do with the fact they have to reverse engineer firmware updates put out by apple to block people from updating, like the infamous BW Yosemete G3 - I'm half beig snarky and speculative, but I have a G3 BW REV 1 right here, and I don't use it much, expensive to upgrade, slow, broken CMD 640 that won't take a slave, no AGP, no SCSI. Its sitting next to a PC thats 6 months older with none of the said problems, more memory, onboard 7895 SCSI, dual IDE channels that work, etc.
I was rather disappointed to learn that there is little markup on those, but Sonnett has to charge, I have yet to meet many tech savvy mac users (or Mac users that function technically in any capacity), so I can imagine the tinkerer-upgrader-gamer market for Macs being exceedingly small.
What you are paying for is something that won't sell in incredibly high volume.
And to answer the root of this ridiculous thread, I would have to say, heck no, the Mot CPU won't work. If it does, post a webpage HOWTO. I won't be holding my breath.
Not likely (Score:1)