Should you calibrate your battery?

Should you calibrate your battery?

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Reading Time: 8 minutesBefore we dive in, let’s see Apple’s take on this question. From their website “Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan” (linked to from their page “Apple Lithium-ion Batteries” that holds zero useful information) we get the following advice: Avoid extreme ambient temperatures. Your device is designed to perform well in a wide range of ambient temperatures, with 62° to 72° F (16° to 22° C) as the ideal comfort zone. Remove certain cases during charging. Charging your device when it’s inside certain styles…

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Figuring out the PowerBook G4 hi-res overclock

Figuring out the PowerBook G4 hi-res overclock

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Reading Time: 5 minutesSo, I’m stuck. Well not really stuck but I do not have enough time available to invest into figuring it out. So I figured I’d write this up and maybe the awesome community can help me out 🙂 Once this is figured out I can probably document the process and add it to the PPC Overclocking Station page where everyone will be able to enjoy it. Searching the interwebs you can find plenty of references to this. Sites like Macrumors…

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Further tweaking the cooling – Part 1

Further tweaking the cooling – Part 1

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Reading Time: 6 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. I added fans, took fans out, tested different fans, experimented with different thermal pastes and even thermal pads. The biggest change I wanted to make to the cooling since day one, was the heat sink. The aluminum block got the job done but I wanted better so of course the search began for a copper heat sink. Found a few…

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A little-known fact about the Power Mac G5 and what to do with this information

A little-known fact about the Power Mac G5 and what to do with this information

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Reading Time: 6 minutesHow many fans does a Power Mac G5 have? Depending on the configuration this answer varies but you can be almost sure the answer is always one short. Let’s take a look at the Late 2005 Quad in this example. – 2 intake fans (front inlet fan assembly) – 2 exhaust fans (rear exhaust fan assembly) – 1 fan in the PCI bay (speaker assembly) – 1 fan for the hard drives (media bay fan) 6 fans total, right? Wrong….

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Reviving a fried Power Mac G4 CPU card

Reviving a fried Power Mac G4 CPU card

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Reading Time: 7 minutesOnce in a while I take on a project that involves something I’ve never done before. This time it is the revival and overclocking of a Power Mac G4 (MDD) dual 1.25GHz CPU card. This card was working fine until someone decided to take the world’s biggest soldering iron to it in an attempt to overclock it to 1.5GHz. Just like making a sandwich with an excavator, this was doomed to fail. The card fried, pads and traces burned right…

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The G5 Roller Skate

The G5 Roller Skate

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Reading Time: 2 minutesThe G5 Skate is a product I did not even know existed until a month ago. As soon as I did know of it’s existence, I wanted to have one. A few planets aligned and someone offered one for sale on the Low End Mac Facebook group! Not only that, turns out the guy selling it worked in the office I’d be starting my new job in a few weeks later! I messaged him, he took down the post and…

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Project Maya – Full Body Transplant

Project Maya – Full Body Transplant

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Reading Time: 8 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. You may recall me writing “Project Maya, named so by my son when I asked him what a fun codename would be, is the restoration, rebuilding and upgrading of a 2002 Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Doors. This is the first generation so doesn’t have FireWire 800. I wanted a 2002 model specifically because it is the last model to…

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Project Maya – Upgrading the graphics card again

Project Maya – Upgrading the graphics card again

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Reading Time: 2 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. No, I didn’t mess up and accidentally named this post the same as the previous one. And no, you’re not seeing double. I am upgrading the graphics card yet again. The ATI Radeon 9600 performs really well, handling the games I play without issue but it being a card designed for the G5, it simply doesn’t get enough airflow in…

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Project Maya – Upgrading the graphics card

Project Maya – Upgrading the graphics card

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Reading Time: 2 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. This MDD being a gaming machine, the stock ATI Radeon 9000 with 64MB of VRAM was not cutting it. Sure, games would run fine but with settings way down, and even then I often dipped below 10fps. It’s very hard to shoot people at 10fps or less. I needed something a little better so the search began. A few good…

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Project Maya – Overclocking the Sonnet Duet 1.8

Project Maya – Overclocking the Sonnet Duet 1.8

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Reading Time: 2 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. I was in good shape. Brand new processor board, running the goal temperatures even with the case closed and during an Unreal Tournament server test, no higher than 54C. Time to move on to the next upgrade! Then there was a Greg Hrutkay, a fella notorious for being a bad influence. He suggested the Sonnet could be overclocked to 2.0Ghz…

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