Thread
G4 MDD 1.25Ghz
Hi,
With the advent of Snow Leopard, G4 towers sure are getting cheap these days ... picked up this beauty for AUD $99! It came in pristine condition (bar many stickers on the sides) and is the last MDD made (the one with FW400 ports, OS 9 compatible, 2003 model).
Specs:
- G4 1.25 single, 167Mhz bus
- 1.25GB RAM
- 80GB HD
- Combo drive
- Radeon 9000 Pro
What I'm going to do:
- Overclock to ~ 1.5Ghz, seek out cheap dualie 1.25
- Up to full 2Gb RAM
- Have a spare 250GB IDE HD
- Superdrive
- Video card upgrade: I believe MDDs have issues with some PC flashed cards due to a differing ADC implementation, but I'll look into it. Have two potential upgrades: Radeon 9800XT or Geforce 6800GT (probably an overkill, better off in my PC!).
- PCI USB 2.0 card, PCI wireless card
Sweet!
JB
With the advent of Snow Leopard, G4 towers sure are getting cheap these days ... picked up this beauty for AUD $99! It came in pristine condition (bar many stickers on the sides) and is the last MDD made (the one with FW400 ports, OS 9 compatible, 2003 model).
Specs:
- G4 1.25 single, 167Mhz bus
- 1.25GB RAM
- 80GB HD
- Combo drive
- Radeon 9000 Pro
What I'm going to do:
- Overclock to ~ 1.5Ghz, seek out cheap dualie 1.25
- Up to full 2Gb RAM
- Have a spare 250GB IDE HD
- Superdrive
- Video card upgrade: I believe MDDs have issues with some PC flashed cards due to a differing ADC implementation, but I'll look into it. Have two potential upgrades: Radeon 9800XT or Geforce 6800GT (probably an overkill, better off in my PC!).
- PCI USB 2.0 card, PCI wireless card
Sweet!
JB
Very nice haul, I remember back at my old job (cicra 2005) I was in charge of maintaining 5 dual 1.25 Ghz MDDs (as well as about 20 eMacs and one G5)...running Panther and pre-CS Adobe apps with a full gig of RAM I remember them being faster than greased lightning!
:-/ 
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Hey,
I've spent a little time tinkering with the MDD some more. By all accounts it's the fastest Mac I've owned - much faster in general use compared to my G4 Cube (with a Gigadesign 1.5Ghz 2MB L3 cache CPU).
- Overclock to 1.58Ghz - seems any higher requires a voltage increase, which I'm not a fan of doing
- Dual Superdrives - well, the slots are there
- Video card: the Radeon 9000 seems pretty good and I've a Geforce 6800GT AGP in my PC which would flash over, but I'm confused about running flashed cards in MDD machines (seems it doesn't like most of them)
JB
I've spent a little time tinkering with the MDD some more. By all accounts it's the fastest Mac I've owned - much faster in general use compared to my G4 Cube (with a Gigadesign 1.5Ghz 2MB L3 cache CPU).
- Overclock to 1.58Ghz - seems any higher requires a voltage increase, which I'm not a fan of doing
- Dual Superdrives - well, the slots are there
- Video card: the Radeon 9000 seems pretty good and I've a Geforce 6800GT AGP in my PC which would flash over, but I'm confused about running flashed cards in MDD machines (seems it doesn't like most of them)
JB
I had a chance to grab a FW800 single 1ghz machine for $119 not long ago. That's less than I paid for my 533mhz DA a few years ago. I let it go because the shipping would have been too much and I didn't feel like driving over to Brooklyn to pick it up although he did also have the seldom seen 667mhz DA and a couple of other things that might have made an in person pickup worth it.
2 weeks ago i got a 1.25 DP FW800 for $75 b/c the person who sold it to me didn't seat the ram correctly and it prevented it from starting up. Last weekend I got a 1.25 UNI (the fastest stock OS9 machine) for $15 that the person said had a dead CD drive. Well, i got that one home, and it does not power up (the light on the power button comes on for a second, but it won't do anything else), so i think it has a dead PSU, but i got 2gb of ram for the one that does work, so that made me very happy!
I think my oldest half brother has a 667mhz DA, I never new they existed until i saw his
but yeah, the prices on G4 towers are plummeting, I no longer feel bad about passing up a QS for $90 about a year ago
