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Upgrades Businesses Desktops (Apple) Apple Hardware

Upgrade Your G4 Cube to a Pentium M Processor 214

Posted by timothy from the if-you-so-desire dept.
reklusband writes "This report tells of a company that has released a processor upgrade for G4 cubes; this upgrade is in the form of a Pentium M. The cube becomes Windows + Linux, x86-blah compatible."
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Upgrade Your G4 Cube to a Pentium M Processor More

Upgrade Your G4 Cube to a Pentium M Processor

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  • I don't care. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Ziviyr ( 95582 )
    "and we've put the hard work in to ensure Windows compatibility."

    Faster Linux?

  • Whatever (Score:5, Funny)

    by aendeuryu ( 844048 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:06AM (#12800716)
    I'm holding out for x86-yaddayadda compatibility. You early adopters can go nuts.

    • Re:Whatever (Score:2, Interesting)

      by absinthminded64 ( 883630 )
      Kind of makes you wonder how long Apple has been planning on their x86 compatibility.. I dont think they would already be kicking this stuff out for the G4s without serious hardware modifications or even a total replacement of the mainboard if it hadn't been on the horizon for some time. I've never seen or opened one of these up. Maybe the processor is on it's own daughterboard? I also see the word 'Upgrade' but not sure if they are referring to an upgrade of their own product line or an upgrade for exis
    • "Upgrade" a G4 to a Pentoum M? More like a downgrade to me...
      • Waa, Waa!
        My processor is still better then yours. Get use to it!

        Dude. It is G4 (an early one) vs. a Pentium M. There are many years difference. The Pentium M, will kick the G4s but in all spece.
        • Dude, it still only runs Windows or Linux.

          Any way you look at it it's a step down. Running crap faster does not make crap more useful or palatable

  • why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Loconut1389 ( 455297 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:06AM (#12800723)
    why bother, i mean really.. You're not really upgrading so much as shoving a bunch of pc parts in a g4 box, in the end you've still just got a pc, and ultimately one without openprom so you wont be able to run os x.

  • Stage 5 of the switch? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nigham ( 792777 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:08AM (#12800730) Homepage
    See here [geekculture.com].

    • Re:Stage 5 of the switch? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:16AM (#12801048) Homepage
      Yesterday I got banned from a macintosh channel for defending powerpc against Intel.

      Speechless...
      • Oceania has always been at war with East Asia. Oceania has never been at war with Eurasia. Chocolate rations have gone up 10 grams! Doubleplusgood, eh?

  • What a waste of $$$ (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ankhcraft ( 811009 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:09AM (#12800732) Homepage
    For the bottom-end of the same price ($399), you would have more than enough to buy a similarly equipped PC133 bus computer, used. And since your G4 is probably used as well, why have one machine when you can have two? Honestly, old PC-compatible machines running w/ a 133 Mhz FSB (*no* DDR, etc.) are fairly cheap these days.

  • Upgrade.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:10AM (#12800733) Homepage

    So in other words you take your Mac, that in G4 form probably still works fine with OSX, put in a new motherboard and processor. And now you can use the same BOX as a PC and run Linux.

    Not so much an upgrade as using a G4 case, and in terms of an upgrade... So sort of like taking a PDP-11 box, keeping the disc controller and network controller, putting in a Pentium processor, rolling your own Linux and saying "I've upgraded a PDP-11".

    NO YOU HAVEN'T because it DOESN'T WORK with the old software.

    I would dare try and get my Wife to switch from a Mac onto Linux, that would hugely downgrade my quality of life.
    • haven't been following the news, eh?

      K.
      • haven't been following the news, eh?

        Well this thing doesn't have Apple-signed DRM firmware so it is never going to run Mac OS, Intel processor or no.
    • So sort of like taking a PDP-11 box, keeping the disc controller and network controller, putting in a Pentium processor, rolling your own Linux and saying "I've upgraded a PDP-11".

      If I only I had the space in my house. I can probably get my hands on a few dozen 11/84's

      • Nah, just get an electric furnace, it's more efficient than using 11/84's to heat your place in the winter... :-)

        ttyl
        Farrell

    • Re:Upgrade.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:34AM (#12800800) Homepage
      So basically it's not an upgrade, it's a casemod in reverse.

  • So ****ing what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by onlyjoking ( 536550 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:11AM (#12800735)
    What the **** is all the noise about? So I start with a G4 running the wonderful OS X and I'm given the option of spending money to destroy it and put an Intel chip in the box so that I can ...... run Windoze or Linux? Someone hit me on the head, please, and let me in on this one coz I just don't get it.
    • aims for those PC users who admire the G4 Cube's design but don't want to run PowerPC software such as Mac OS, Mac OS X or Linux.

      Linux is only for PPC, silly...

    • Re:So ****ing what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Errtu76 ( 776778 )
      Actually, just for Windows since there are PPC flavors of Linux already available. So i'm wondering how many people that specificly buy a Mac would even consider losing this feature to 'gain' windows?
    • We can say "fuck" on /. you know. Self-censoring yourself only makes you look silly.
    • It'll be just about the only computer other than a brand-new Mac that'll be able to run Tiger/x86 legally... ; )

  • But (Score:4, Funny)

    by hobotron ( 891379 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:11AM (#12800740)

    Did they give it a fruit name?
    Guess they dont teach you fancy pants marketing people like they used to.

  • I, for one, call bullshit on that one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fifirebel ( 137361 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:12AM (#12800741)
    An unknown korean company does a board plus an OF to BIOS translation layer for the huuuge untapped market of PC users who admire the G4 Cube's design but don't want to run PowerPC software.

    And that's old news, look at the post date: Monday, February 28 2005 @ 10:27 AM EST.

    Bullshit...

  • Pentium M an excellent choice (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Pentium M processor is an excellent choice for a desktop system, because having been designed for laptop computers, the power consumption is astonishingly low (around 20W), and it performs at low frequences (~2 Ghz) better than a Pentium 4 clocked much higher (I believe at 3.4 Ghz). As a plus, it operates at a low temperature and with the Asus Pentium M motherboard, the heat automatically kicks in at a user-defined threshold so the computer is silent for most of its operation.

    On the downside though, th

  • But does it run OS X? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:19AM (#12800757)
    Just asking.

  • Uhhh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mdxi ( 3387 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:22AM (#12800770) Homepage
    ...the G4 Cube is already capable of running Linux.
    • at a slower speed and with notably fewer compatible apps.
  • Does anybody has a mirror, the site seems dead, and it hasnt pass it 50th comment. Seems they were running their server in a old cube workstation.

  • What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:42AM (#12800815) Journal
    Two words: device drivers.

    We've seen lots in the last few days about Apple and Intel and some blurring of the lines, but in all this I haven't seen much related to drivers. Think about it for a second. Whether you install Windows on a Mac or OS X on an x86 system, is anything (besides the very basics maybe) going to work?

    In order to get OS X as popular on x86 as Windows or Linux it's going to require a LOT of driver writing by both Apple and other vendors. Unless Apple comes up with a way to get Windows-native drivers to work (or Linux I suppose, but Windows has a better full-support native driver base) OS X is going to suffer many of the same problems Linux does with hardware support, specifically products that are not mainstream.

    Or am I wrong and is there a quick and easy way to build a native "plug-'n-pray" driver base such as Windows XP has? Love it or hate it, you have to admit that XP really does have great native support for tons of stuff, a feature which is a huge plus for a lot of people. Usually, it really does Just Work (TM)
    • Keep in mind that Apple probably won't sell MacOS on general pc's -- the sell a package, not just harware or software. That means they only have to support the machines they themselves sell, just like they do now. There won't be much of a change there.

      Jan

    • Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Com2Kid ( 142006 ) <com2kidSPAMLESS@gmail.com> on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:15AM (#12800904) Homepage Journal
      • Or am I wrong and is there a quick and easy way to build a native "plug-'n-pray" driver base such as Windows XP has? Love it or hate it, you have to admit that XP really does have great native support for tons of stuff, a feature which is a huge plus for a lot of people. Usually, it really does Just Work (TM)


      This actually is not TOO huge of a problem.

      Since Apple switched over to PCI and AGP ports quite some time ago, there already exists a large hardware base designed around those two industry standards.

      Next, since the actual OSX kernel compiles against both the PowerPC and x86 platforms, any kernel calls in the drivers will not have to be rewritten.

      Indeed depending on how Apple handles their BIOS calls, very little may need to be rewritten at all. Many hardware devices now days are CPU assisted, (sound cards, network cards, modems, and so on) which may help Apple a great deal as the heart of these types of devices drivers essentially boils down to Kernel calls and a basic software app, both of which should port over easily.

      Basically anything that already has an OSX driver on the PowerPC platform should, with not too much work, and often times maybe with no work at all, have an equivilent driver on an OSX release on x86.

      A dream goal for Apple of course would be drivers needing no porting at all, since it is very unlikely that venders will put even the slightest effort in porting over drivers for older hardware. Heck even in the world of Windows, hardware support often times falls to the wayside after only 3 or 4 years! (In other words a lot of hardware that was released for 98, ME, and Windows 2000 ended up without Windows XP support! Ouch!)

      • Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:12AM (#12801041)
        I would doubt if most drivers take anything more than an Endian switch and a few tweaks here and there to deal with the register differences, most of which can be done by a good compiler.

        Most companies who haven't released their specs to Apple, on the other hand, will be out in the dark when it comes to writing new device drivers. Apple's gone out of their way to make it easy two switch between the platforms, device drivers are not going to be something to slow them down.

        That's one of the advantages of running a microkernel like Mach; *everything* plugs in to it, so making a driver work shouldn't take much mucking around inside of the kernel wondering why something completely doesn't work.
      • the fact that many devices offload work to drivers and the CPU makes it ***HARDER*** to port drivers, compare modem v. winmodem for which is easier to get working under linux assuming the vendor hasn't released info and both need to be figured out. when the hardware does most of the work the driver is small and could be decompiled into at least a semi-readable blob of c, OTOH if the drivewr is large and complex it can take *years* to reverse engineer and by then the hardware is obsolete and the software is

    • Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:02AM (#12801007)
      As I'm sure 8 million people will tell you, Apple's not in the market for OS dominance. They're in it for an awesome platform. This means both hardware AND software superiority.

      In other words, device drivers for your generic Intel hardware --WONT BE MADE-- *shock and amazement*.

      But, that probably won't stop the hackers from trying their best to boot it on Whiteboxen. And I'm sure they'll succeed, but the lengths they go at to succeed won't be worth it to the average user.
    • As it stands Mac OS X runs on Apple Production hardware because its just that, production, produced by apple, so they know that users won't be using anything but a small hardware set. Even internally within Apple you can get some interesting prototypes lying around with interesting issues associated with them.

      In short part of the strength of the Mac is that developers, including Apple, can assume that it will only be run on a very small set of hardware, and thus anything that is not within that set will no
    • Apple only cares about device drivers for the specific hardware it will be using in Macintosh branded computers because that's all Mac OS X is goign to run on. They are not releasing their software for white box PCs.
    • Yes, there is...

      Apple probably will support a thin subset of the avaliable Intel ChipSets. They'll not going to support every chipset, and commodity hardware out there.

      Actually I think this is how they'll prevent MacOSX from running on other hardware, by not providing ChipsetDrivers. Of course there is OpenDarwin, and there will be lots of hackers out there providing drivers to support their favorite Mother Board and processor... And Apple will gladly use all those contribuitions in the future if they sw
      • other hardware but what they produce.

        That it will get there is a given. Hackers are inventive and resourceful.

        But Apple is once bitten and twice shy about the entire cloning thing. Been there, done the slow bleed, thank you.

        With weekly software updates, your box 'phones home' to the mothership and can download stuff that can 'investigate' the downlolader's geshtalt and report any non-standard chipset usage.

        Apple has realized what Microsoft never knew because of how Microsoft acquired their market, and w
        • I don't think that Apple is worried about geeks that will hack OSX into some off-the-shelf hardware. These would never buy Apple hardware in the first place.

          And as I said, Apple has a lot to gain from these hackers... if they figure out how to put OSX working on AMD boxes it means free research made for Apple.

          Building MacOSX atop of a OpenSource kernel was a incredible smart move... now every driver created, every bug squached, every software ported will mean less research costs. In a matter of months App
          • I would stake money that Apple will shut down (via C&D, legal threats, software update, whatever) any attempt at making OS X86 run on generic hardware easy or out of the box. I doubt they'll sweat it as long as it's hard and hackerish - Jobs is aware of the limitations of DRM and I'm sure they know it'll happen. It's not worth the money and effort to try to prevent it. What they will try to prevent is any attempt to sell or otherwise provide an off the shelf solution. And I suspect they won't have too m
  • Why can't you just keep using Os X and a PPC version of Linux on the G4? I see no added benefit in running Windows on my mac...

  • I can see applications for this (Score:3, Funny)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:21AM (#12801060) Homepage Journal
    For example, this would be handy if you want to export that warehouse full of G4 cubes nobody wants to take off of your hands to a country that's on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

  • Mirror... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Currawong ( 563634 ) <sd&accounts,amos,io> on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:36AM (#12801097) Homepage Journal
    ...here [macdash.com]

  • I see the steps! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aldric ( 642394 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:38AM (#12801099)
    1. Post an article about turning a Mac into a PC.
    2. Watch the Mac zealots go apeshit.
    3. Profit from ad revenue!
  • I had two G4 cubes at one time (one for home, one for work). If somebody can make one of these near-obsolete machines be useful for them, who am I to complain? Better that than the landfill or sitting on a shelf.

  • FAKE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hector_uk ( 882132 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:43AM (#12801107)
    this is a fake, other than the fact that the pentium M is COMPLETElY incompatible with the cubes motherboard, i know someone who knows the person that runs this site and it's fake u-power probably dose not even exist (impossible to find on google) i'll probably hack a P-M motherboard with a yonah in my cube when the x86 version of OS X comes out and hack that into running on it.
    • Well, remember, anything's possible.

      One COULD make a custom chipset to connect to the G4 Cube's chipset (I've heard that Acorn did something just like that for their 486 card), but I HIGHLY doubt that someone would do that nowadays...
      • Apple sold compatibility cards for the early PPCs up to early PCI machines. Most were 486sx-ish contraptions, and literally gave you a second machine running in parallel with the Mac. This was to shore up the "not pc compatible" sentiment during the PPC rollout.

        Applied Engineering even sold a 8086 compatibility card for the //e and GS, and IIRC there was a //e compatibility card for some of the NuBus Macs.

        OTOH, this is just dumb, especially in light of the recently posted article on sub-$300 PCs.
        • Yes, but last I checked, those boards used their own RAM - they used the host system only for I/O (keyboard, mouse, display, and for the Mac PC cards, disk). This, AFAICT, is using the G4's RAM.
          • True, which makes this an even wonkier solution. Sharing the memory bandwidth (through whatever means) can't be healthy for the performance for either the host or the PC.

            IIRC the Mac->PC cards didn't even use the onboard video. They had a loopback cable between the system video and the PC card, and a built-in analog MUX would switch the video out lines between the Mac and the PC's raster.
    • i know someone who knows the person that runs this site

      Oh right, like we should believe these "friend of a friend" anecdotes?
  • "....in the form of a Pentium M......." Ok off topic, but when I read that I had a 70s flash back of a cartoon of the "Wonder twins". I would run around ad a kid yelling their signature "Super Wonder Twins....in the form of a (insert counter threat)!"........These days I mostly run around mumbling "....Super Wonder Twins.....in the form of a ...... Budwiser!"
  • Yeh, I know, DEC put an x86 emulator on the BIOS of the Alpha so it could run intel card firmware during boot, so it's almost beleivable...

    But it would be a lot easier to replace the whole cube motherboard, not just the ZIF.
  • if you need raw speed, I have a mini and a centrino notebook, and both being almost equally clocked the centrino P-M runs circles around the g4.

  • Hoax (Score:5, Informative)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @11:28AM (#12802942)
    This is a hoax.. and not even a very good one. They didn't even include photoshopped pictures of the CPU board with the Pentium-M.

    Basically, they are claiming to make a CPU board that plugs into the Cube's main board. With a few BIOS tweaks they can run x86 software.

    This is, of course, bullshit. It will take much more than plugging a board in, and some BIOS mods, to get a Mac/PowerPC system to be able to use an x86 processor.
  • I don't really understand why there is such adamant opposition to this idea. Jesus. Like a 450 mhz G4 is really THAT useful anymore? 10.4 runs great on my g4 ibook, and sort of well on my eMac 700mhz... but on my 600 mhz G3 iMac it runs like crap. I don't have a g4 cube, but the specs on them aren't the greatest anymore -- my iMac is roughly equivalent to the G4 cube (sans altivec). Personally, I would love to have a G4 cube with this upgrade because the G4 cubes look cool. I would rather have a functional
    • A fair number of people are posting to say "Whah? That's not an upgrade, they're just using the case" or to point out that the thing's a hoax -- but adamant opposition? You want adamance? Stridency incoming:
      This strangely violent opposition is why most people are turned off by mac users. "PENTIUM IN MAC IS EVIL!!!11" Get over yourselves.

      I didn't see a single post about the evils of Pentiums. Violent?

      Huh?

  • danamania.com has a lot of fake photoshopped mac pictures and tongue-in-cheek articles like this one (is that a picture of Dana on the front page of the site? Sexy!)

    If it was real (or even possible), it would't be marketed as a Cube upgrade, it'd be marketed as an upgrade for G4's, not just the Cube. That's because the Cube uses the same CPU module as the first few Powermac G4's, and there are a lot more of those than there are Cubes.

    It's interesting to speculate whether such a thing could be done;

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