New to Me: Quicksilver G4

[Nycturne]

The Mac that got me through college was a PowerMac 8600, but I did pine for a couple of the late model PowerMacs, with the design of the Quicksilver G4 being my favorite. But I wound up with an iMac G5 and later a Mac Pro. So when I saw a working Quicksilver G4 867Mhz in good shape locally, and it looked to have been upgraded, I couldn't resist.

In the end, when I had a chance to find out what it all had, I found:

• 1.5GB RAM.
• OEM Zip 250 drive (not sure if the drive actually reads disks).
• UltraSCSI card and USB/Firewire card.
• ATI Rage 128 PCI card for an extra display, in addition to the stock GeForce 2MX.
• The OEM speakers, although the wire insulation near the plug is starting to give out.

Someone really kitted this thing out, and kept it intact for a good long time. I wish I knew the story behind it.

So far, the only thing I've done is replace the original 60GB HDD with a 120GB SATA SSD, and get some upscaling profiles tuned in so that I can run this at a few different resolutions on my 4K monitor off the VGA port on the GeForce 2MX.

But what I want to do is replace the fans with Noctuas, and look at getting DVI out of the machine instead of VGA to cut down on signal noise. With the cost of the Belkin adapter these days, it looks like it'd be cheaper to just get something like the Radeon 9000 Pro and use the DVI port on that? Sheesh. Also need to see what's going on with the Zip drive.

I've bundled my RetroTink 4K profiles that I built for this and my Quadra 605 and made them available here in the off chance someone else also uses the 4K: http://retrotink.biticus.net

I think the question is, what all can the UltraSCSI card be used for these days?

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I also have built up a Quicksilver which is one of my fav PPC macs. It started as a single 733mhz education model which I upgraded to a dual 1Ghz. I also upgraded the GPU to the Radeon9000 out of a dead MDD. There are bigger brag-worthy cards out there but the Radeon9000 is affordable and I am very happy with its performance. As far as the SCSI card, I didnt have anything to use so I took mine out in preference for a FW800 card but if I get around to it, I think Id source a high dpi scanner to attach via the scsi card.

The final upgrade Im looking for is what yours started with - a zip drive and bezel

 

[Nycturne]

Since this is primarily going to be an OS 9 machine and will not be running much software which benefits from multi-processors, I’m not really sure there’s much in the way of upgrades that are worth it. So I’m just looking for a Radeon 9000 Pro at the moment as the 4Ti is pretty pricy. A dual CPU card seems overkill for my use case, and getting more than a 933Mhz is getting pricy too. So this might not get a whole lot done to it anytime soon.

I’d consider a SATA card, but Ive been reading that reflashed Sil3112 cards can still be twitchy on Quicksilvers.

And about the only things that need immediate attention are the Zip drive, and the CPU fan that is starting to sound like it is failing. I did clear out a lot of dust clogging the CPU heat sink and the case fan. Woof.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Since this is primarily going to be an OS 9 machine and will not be running much software which benefits from multi-processors, I’m not really sure there’s much in the way of upgrades that are worth it. So I’m just looking for a Radeon 9000 Pro at the moment as the 4Ti is pretty pricy. A dual CPU card seems overkill for my use case, and getting more than a 933Mhz is getting pricy too. So this might not get a whole lot done to it anytime soon.

I’d consider a SATA card, but Ive been reading that reflashed Sil3112 cards can still be twitchy on Quicksilvers.

And about the only things that need immediate attention are the Zip drive, and the CPU fan that is starting to sound like it is failing. I did clear out a lot of dust clogging the CPU heat sink and the case fan. Woof.

I run Leopard on my QS. I dont use os9. I opted for a pata/sata adapter in mine. Performance has been good despite no trim and stable so I have not bothered sourcing or flashing a sil card for it.

That might be a fun upgrade path for my QS this PPC challenge month if I can source one affordably. I could run OSX in raid or run a second drive to dabble with os9 etc. My QS would be a pretty beefy os9 box. I do have an Acard SATA card that has Tiger drivers and should in theory work in my QS but it was not stable last time I tried to use it. Interestingly if I booted off pata, it and the drives attached to it would show up as a SCSI adapter/drives lol.

 

[Nycturne]

I did go with a PATA to SATA adapter because OWC had decent prices on their kits when I ordered that use the StarTech adapter. Performance is good, but copying files from the NAS is bottlenecked by the ATA bus. Not sure if I care enough to get better file copy performance at the prices being asked.

EDIT: BigMessOWires apparently got the Adaptec 1210SA working well with the QS with a little bit of solder work that is in my skill range. And it's cheap enough that it makes more sense than a second PATA adapter for an OS X drive at some point. Okay, adding that to the project list.

So this thing will get a nicer graphics card, modern fans, a SATA card, and maybe a CPU upgrade.

the drives attached to it would show up as a SCSI adapter/drives lol.

Yeah, that's expected. This is pretty common on Windows at around the same time.

 

[Nycturne]

The Radeon 9000 showed up earlier than I expected. Haven't had a chance to push it yet, but I do appreciate getting the cleaner signal. The RetroTink doesn't need a profile to get optimal timings for DVI/HDMI, but SwitchRes is still a life-saver. The 9000 Pro wants to only output 720p when it detects an HDMI device, and a couple resolutions it scales to 720p. With SwitchRes, I can enable the DVI/1080p output modes and get cleaner upscaling with the RetroTink than what the GPU provides.

I also took a look at the Zip drive to see what might be wrong with it. It came to me with a 250MB disk stuck in the drive. I had already freed the disk and cleaned out some dust bunnies a while back, but wanted to get a couple more disks before I went further. Picked up a couple 100MB disks and a 250MB from a local recycler. Started by checking to see if it still reads 100MB disks. Worked. Tried the new 250MB disk for grins. Also worked. Huh. Was it the dust causing problems? Not sure. But I have a 250MB Zip drive that seems to still work. Should probably give it one more clean just to make sure I got all the dust out.

While I'm not sure what I'll use a Zip drive for anytime soon, it's good to know that this machine pretty much just needs a cleaning to be in full working order.

Still waiting on the CPU fan replacement, and the SATA card, as that will be the next step.

 

[Nycturne]

Next round of changes, the CPU fan arrived along with an Adaptec SATA card.

The fan isn’t quite as strong as the original, but as the original was spec’d to cool dual CPUs, it should be adequate unless I do eventually splurge on a dual CPU card. At least the whine from the old fan is gone and the machine sounds closer to what it would have been new. Not silent, but more "whoosh", less "eeeeeeee".

Adaptec card is going to be more interesting. Removing the EEPROM and flashing it went perfectly. Booting fine and getting a peak of 95MB/sec read, 85MB/s write. It can almost keep up with the home LAN now, and moving DVD images around is much easier. However, I am not sure the voltage regulator that I picked up was the right one. It was recommended because it was the right package and had a low enough dropout voltage to allow sleep to work on the QS. However, when I installed it, it burned itself out. Double checking the specs, it’s only rated for 6V max input, and it looks like the SATA card is designed to use the 12V power input.

in hindsight, I should have checked the voltage being presented to the original regulator before switching. Luckily the mistake only cost me a 90 cent regulator. Card still works after putting the original regulator back, but now I need to do some analysis and searching to see if there is a suitable replacement in the same package, or if I need to adapt a regulator in a different package.

 

[Trash80toG4]

Adaptec card is going to be more interesting. Removing the EEPROM and flashing it went perfectly. Booting fine and getting a peak of 95MB/sec read, 85MB/s write.

I wish someone would sell some flashed ROM replacements? I've got the hot air rework side of things but not the EEPROM reflashing setup.

Very interested in your project, especially so since it's targeted for OS9. Ran my QS for many years to run my considerable Graphics/CAD/CAM suite. Had it on hand for a replacement for the Digital Audio for if/when it flaked out. I'm stalled on setting up my backup for the QS. It's the OS9 version MDD. It's so nice when your held in reserve backup machines are upgrades.

Everything you're doing is directly applicable to setting up the MDD, so following your progress closely.

 

[Nycturne]

I wish someone would sell some flashed ROM replacements? I've got the hot air rework side of things but not the EEPROM reflashing setup.

Very interested in your project, especially so since it's targeted for OS9. Ran my QS for many years to run my considerable Graphics/CAD/CAM suite. Had it on hand for a replacement for the Digital Audio for if/when it flaked out. I'm stalled on setting up my backup for the QS. It's the OS9 version MDD. It's so nice when your held in reserve backup machines are upgrades.

Everything you're doing is directly applicable to setting up the MDD, so following your progress closely.

The Adaptec card uses reprogrammable flash for the firmware, but it has a small 2Kbit EEPROM that is used to customize the vendor info given to the host machine. Remove or disable the EEPROM and the card acts like a standard SilTech card and can then be reflashed in OS9 with the 128KB ROM. No external programmer needed, I don’t have anything like that myself.

Don’t even need hot air if you just want to lift the Vcc pin, but it will make removing the EEPROM easy.

I’ve been booting off the card for a couple days now, but I haven’t dared let the system sleep. I am also thinking of installing 10.4/10.5 on a second SSD I have floating around just to see how well it handles it.

For Quicksilver G4s, the 3.3V regulator apparently interferes with sleep due to the high dropout voltage. So I intend to replace it once I have something that is properly spec’d in hand, but for the MDD I don’t think you need to.

 

[Nycturne]

I recently came across a cheap 933Mhz Quicksilver processor card harvested from a machine. It was cheap enough that I figured ”why not”? So today I put it into the system which gave me a chance to finish cleaning out the dust bunnies in harder to reach spots in/under the heat sink and the original processor card. Bagged the original up to keep for parts down the road. The original thermal pad was okay, but removed the remnants from the heat sink and applied some newer thermal paste. Looking pretty good so far.

I’ve been meaning to put Sorbet Leopard on a second SSD I put in here, still haven’t done it. But I can share the SCSI Director results of the two drives on the modded/flashed Adaptec SATA card. Very nice for the era.

Related to the SATA card, it looks like I have a second card that’s also preventing sleep (huh), but the diagnostics from OS 9 are pretty useless at identifying the actual cards, meaning I’ll have to do it all manually. Thanks Apple.

Machine ID: 406
Model name: Power Mac G4
Keyboard type: Apple Extended Keyboard
Attributes: Low power mode disabled because of PCI cards in slots: 1x8,1x8
Processor info: PowerPC G4
Machine speed: 933 MHz

Still no