Reading Time: 4 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. As the 2023 PPC Challenge is well underway, it was time for Maya to make an appearance again. As we’re used to from these machines (once the power supply has been fixed), it fired right up. This year I want to play with some of the cool projects out there such as Arctic Fox, Message Bridge, Discord Lite, and others….
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…
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…
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…
Reading Time: 4 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. While looking for a new CPU card I did some more testing with the fried 1.25Ghz chips. They ran long enough for me to do some basic testing and I ended up removing the internal speaker. This made a surprisingly big difference in the heat output of the power supply as it was now able to draw some fresh air…
Reading Time: 5 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. With the Mac clean and functional, it was time to install a few upgrades. The reason I wanted a FW400 model was native Mac OS 9 compatibility but I really wanted FW800. So a 64-bit (bootable) card was found and installed. Even though I will probably never need it, I also wanted USB 2.0 available just in case so this…
Reading Time: 3 minutesThis is a post in the Project Maya series. To see all related posts go to the index page here. Finding the MDD I wanted was not hard, they are readily available on sites such as eBay. Finding one where I would not pay more than it’s worth however was extremely difficult. I’d find one for $50 (the most I’d pay for one) but shipping ranged anywhere from $40-$130 which put it way out of my price range. Locally I’ve…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteProject 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 boot Mac OS 9 natively. Sure the FW800 can boot Mac OS 9 by running a modified version and it works well, I wanted the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesI have a G4 Cube, a beautiful, upgraded and fully functional G4 Cube. Unfortunately I had to leave it behind when I moved and thus haven’t seen it in 8 years. I used it sporadically but mostly I had it just to look at it once in a while and think “Damn, that’s a sexy Mac”. Here’s a few photos from 2008. I miss having my sexy Mac to oogle so I’ve been on the lookout for a cheap Cube…
Reading Time: 10 minutesBack in 1999 I just had my Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White) for about a year when the Power Mac G4 was announced and it blew my mind. The specs, the hype, the gorgeous design, the marketing, the performance! I had to have one but being a 16 year old student, $3,500 was not exactly in my budget. I got the chance to play around with the G4 in school when the graphics department upgraded some of their G3’s…