A 1GHz G4 Macintosh CLONE?

Thanks PCBWay.com - What happens when you upgrade a Mac from 1995 to 1ghz? Today we have one of the rarest SoNNeT Macintosh accelerators ever produced - the SoNNeT Crescendo PCI/G4 1ghz!
I cannot believe I have this absolute grail of a mythical upgrade. But will it work in our Power Computing Macintosh clone?
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#Macintosh #SoNNeT #PowerComputing

[@bramvandenbroeck5060]

Fascinating upgrade card, i am also the lucky owner of a powermac g3 blue and white i found at the local dump, i took it home, and than i noticed something odd, that "Powered By Sonnet" sticker, i made a lil jump in the air! It just has a 400mhz g4 in it, but its a rare sonnet card, so yeah, i am very happy about that! Anyway, nice video! And just 1 thing that made me cringe during this vid, and that is when you touched the golden contacts, avoid doing that, you might kill something on the card, esd is a real thing, i killed ram by doing that . . .

[@krissjacobsen9434]

Facinating that this upgrade was released _after_ Apple had transitioned to Intel.

[@robertaccettura4622]

Some companies like QuarkXPress didn't support OS X for a long time, so there was a market for PPC's that could run it in OS 9.

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

Though I imagine there was still a bunch of people running Mac's with PowerPC as not everyone has the money and/or need to upgrade every time a manufacturer puts out a new computer or phone.

[@AlistairWolfe993]

I recall as late as 2010-2011 we still had a few iBook G3s and G4s floating around in use by staff and students, and I believe our sys admin was still using a dual-core/dual-processor G5 Power Mac at that time as well. (I once lived in Maine and the school I went to exclusively used Macs)

[@BilisNegra]

@@nekomasteryoutube3232 If they had no money for the most basic Intel Mac they probably could not afford this upgrade either, I guess?

[@nickwallette6201]

@@BilisNegra On that line of thought... I'm not so up on the pricing of 90s Mac hardware, but in PC land, those drop-in CPU upgrades that would push Gen X to Gen X+1 were often expensive enough that it was really hard to justify sinking money into an aging platform. And performance wasn't quite on par with just swapping out the motherboard. Granted, there weren't quite as many motherboard swaps in Mac world -- only certain ones would fit. But, if you were savvy enough on when to sell your last-gen system to buy your next-gen system, I think you could still come out ahead of trying to shoe-horn a super fast CPU into a pile of bottlenecks.

[@duncanwilliams2350]

That Power computing would be my favorite. No one would suspect it to ever have that kind of power.

[@CoolerQ]

I have a soft spot for Power Computing because I own one myself, but honestly the UMAX case looks cooler. The Power Computing case is just so utilitarian.

[@ml.2770]

No problem man, pleased to help. Small issue though. I never received your payment.

[@wojiaobill]

oh no! Hopefully he sees your comment

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@musicaldude9429]

I know nothing about macs , ( I’m a windows guy ) but I love just messing with hardware, you have gotten me more in to macs and might be getting one soon

[@alphaLONE]

That trick of bending the card reminds me of the iBook issues where you put a coin under the motherboard to revive your laptop. Funky!

[@destroyer6470]

I've been waiting all week for this, thx for making awsome content!

[@DougCurtis_plus]

I've really enjoyed your videos, it brought memories of a Sonnet Cache card upgrade that I did on an Apple Performa 6400. That purple heat-sink seemed to be all the rage with their upgrades.

[@draggonhedd]

I have a Powercomputing PowerCenter Pro, but the UMAX has always been a lust item on my list.

[@Raptor007]

You should set up a drive with System 7.6.1 on there. It absolutely flies on a G4 CPU with a solid state drive, and it's only possible to do this with an upgraded older machine like yours.

[@timblewee]

I love these videos!!! I haven't seen such an emotive hand since the Addams Family!

[@chadcarter9581]

I used to sell these at compusa… what a fun series…. Thank you for upgrading one of these… thank you for the memories

[@fueledbyregret]

LOL. Wouldn’t be an ActionRetro video if the upgrade card wasn’t borked 😂

[@elgigante2001]

With how nice looking and purple the card is it's a shame that see through side panels weren't a thing yet in that era of computers.

[@AnthonyZenrick]

Huge ribbon cables, and multi-colored power cables were still the necessary evils. It made for a poor viewing experience. lol

[@_PGleo86]

I prefer the Power Computing for sure! The first computer I ever used was the family PowerBase 240, which I still have lying around. I love to see these things!

[@ActionRetro]

Ooo neat machine!

[@ProjektSUN]

Hey, I noticed you didn't have the latest/last Sonnet driver package, v3.1... let me know if you want it. ALSO... PLEASE use the SCSI2SDv6... v5 is super slow.

[@lnox2449]

AWSOME video nice content for everything and keep those retro Mac alive man.

[@readtedium]

Heartbreak that the chip didn't work 100 percent. It reminds me of an issue I had with an old iBook that stopped working because of a loose connection on the GPU chip.

[@DeusSavage]

15:02 there are so many texas instruments chips on this thing lol

[@NozomuYume]

The CPU speed is limited by how fast it can access the motherboard RAM. Any benchmark that doesn't fit in the CPU and card's L1-L3 cache is going to suffer from the slow memory. This will make it a bit slower than a card on a native memory bus. Short loop benchmarks like Dhrystone won't be affected but ones that test calculations on large data sets will. Furthermore... The 1Ghz Crescendo G4 has a PowerPC 7455, which is a VERY different beast than the 750 in your Crescendo G3. The Crescendo G3 will be substantially slower than half the speed. The 7450 series of CPUs were very different than previous G4s, which is why some call them "G4e"s, and really they could have been marketed as G5 if they'd thought to. It can issue up to 3 integer instructions (plus a branch instruction) per cycle, unlike the G3 and original G4s which could only issue 2 integer instructions (plus branch) per cycle.

[@AmstradExin]

Maybe he SHOULD pull the Cache module??? This would have been the first to try.

[@zehph]

"Be cautious of handling the card" Grabs the thing by the pins to show the camera... 😅

[@squirlmy]

well, technically he wasn't handling the "card"! snicker, snicker

[@Handskemager]

So many fond memories of UT, I was the champion in that game when at LAN parties with my friends, both UT and Quake Arena.

[@drpc97]

god i miss that thing. I had a Power Computing Power Tower Pro 200MHz model. I got it from a company i worked for back in `03. We recycled computers and since it was a mac, it was mine, (they didn't sell macs, but took them anyway). I eventually found a 500Mhz Power Logix Card to put in the Cpu Slot. I ran mac OS X on it(every version possible, Beta - 10.4). The Video card was a 8mb card (forgot the name), but it was a fun time working on this Computer!

[@SPNKRGrenth]

Seeing Unreal Tournament chug along like that, takes me back to when I was a kid, trying to get the demo to work on our old beige G3 powermac with a 233 MHz processor. I had to turn every possible option down to the lowest possible setting to get it playable, but not even having to play at a resolution of 240p was gonna stop me from getting the most out of that demo.

[@AerikForager]

Don't neglect to check that the pins in the socket are all touching the board, I've had thicker boards left in older computers distort the pins and cause intermittent connections in sockets where the newer card is only just slightly thinner.

[@theposguy1435]

I'm not a Mac guy at all... but I really enjoy ur channel (and your apple Shenanigans)so a big thanks from the pos(that's point of sale) guy in maryland!

[@lukeweeks3470]

Been looking forward to this one all week! I'd love to see a video comparing the speed of this original machine versus the machine when it's fully upgraded!

[@EsotericArctos]

Your bracket design looks good and in theory should print without any supports. Might need to play around with bridging settings and cooling. If you use Cura, there are bridge settings in the experimental section of the settings that can be helpful :). The "original" bracket looks like it may have used M2 knurled inserts rather than screwing directly into the plastic? Not sure :). Thanks for another great video

[@DiazFelix]

Use a Toshiba sd-wifi and you will have a complete unit for interchanging files easily.

[@richardwoodurff9186]

I'm drooling, just like everybody else I've been waiting a week for this pron.

[@aaronjamt]

I know this sounds crazy but hear me out: put the card in the oven and bake it. That will allow everything to reflow (fixing any cracked or dry solder joints) and you don't have to fiddle with an iron or hot air gun. Because there's minimal airflow, the parts don't move around.

[@LovelyAlanna]

every time I get the best possible processor for one of my old laptops I get maybe as excited as you are for that gorgeous G4 upgrade

[@markdjdeenix6846]

hi so if it problem is a dry joint the old oven reflow might work! just preheat an oven to the melting point of solder put the card on a tray put it in the oven for 12-15 mins .if you have a digital thermometer for your test meter put that in and monitor the temp in the oven 232 °C is the tempter area but visual inspection might help it depends on the GPU Package type Quad or BGA Im thinking Quad flat Package and the pins can be drag soldered with a chisel tip you might know someone that can sort it out i have brought back GPU's back from not working to working BUT please know this is a new card that might have impact damage a ripped trace it seams strange to be not working the packing looks good

[@jonnycree8880]

I have a presto plus card from sonnet and it came in the same style box, but with a sleeve/jacket that slips over with photos and all the marketing details on it. Just FYI.

[@h8pewou]

I love the UMAX machine

[@magesnz]

i'm a big fan of the umax, that would be one of mine if i could get one into canada

[@donatj]

I’d maybe start with the connector on the main board as the culprit as I have had similar happen to me in the Pentium 3 issue with a broken solder joint

[@emmabentley7945]

Awesome! been waiting for this video all week ! :-D

[@paulstubbs7678]

Observe anti-static precautions, then promptly makes the edge connector first point of contact!

[@dmug]

I suppose if it can't be fixed you could always try for the PowerLogix G4 upgrades for the 604 macs, granted those only made it to about 500 MHz, never had the G4 version just an non-production version G3 but had the jumpers for overclocking / bus over clocking that I bought since some employee took pity on a kid with limited funds in my PowerCenter. Might be able to squeeze a few more MHz out of one of those cards if they're still out there.

[@FOBob-sr1fd]

Can't wait for a follow up on the G4 upgrade.

Fun fact about this Power Computing case: I had a deja vu seeing it. I have Umax Apus 3000 (I believe sold as C600 outside Europe) which uses the same case with just different front panel. It has also different riser card, with 4 slots - 3 PCI + one on top (brown, named COMM, looks like PCI rotated 180 degrees and pushed a bit towards front of a case). Of course motherboard is Umax specific (Umax Typhoon, used also on other models - it uses Socket 5 for CPU card which is hilarious). I have "one and a half" of them, as first had board eaten by corrosion (pins were literally falling out riser card slot), other had top case missing. But this way I got both original 603e CPU and I think G3 upgrade. I thought of trying OSX on those too. So, to answer which one I like better - Apus case also doesn't spoil what's inside (there's only a small sticker with CPU model) ;)

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

I Like Both of The Clones For Different Reasons Sean You Might Be able To Reflow Some Of The Solder Joints I'm Sure There Is A Loose Component Causing You The Grief But Wow That Is A Super CPU Upgrade Great Find

[@kuillus]

Another explanation for the plain white box would be an OEM part for system builders (clone manufactures pre-install) or stores to offer include pre-installed upgrades? What makes me think this is sticker and manual included which seems a little weird for a hardware replacement swap. I could be totally wrong here. I don’t know for sure, just guessing by OEM PC hardware packaging.

[@kuillus]

Also another great video! Great job! :)

[@smeqwack7337]

i love that purple color, i wonnder if there is modern parts that are in that color.

[@xaviafh7269]

I would probably use a heat gun trick on the sonnet card, the trick always gave me good results, just have the gun on low or medium heat and move it around the pcb for around for a while, I usually do it for 5 minutes for smd parts

[@kubosh3]

I saw DosDude solder G4 2.0GHz on the iMac G4 which looks great. I bought the G4 BGA chips and will try to solder them on the daughter board for my MDD (dual 1GHz) right now. Regarding your case looks like you have to put the CPU card on the Heating Table and re-heat using hot air station - Simple action :)

[@Call_Me_David]

If you open the flaps on all four sides of the piece holding the card, the plastic wrap opens up and card can drop right out.

[@bobdobalina3971]

OMG, the UMAX is a Dell Dimension XPS case also!

[@Zizzily]

I think my preference would actually be the UMAX. Trying to find dual 604e processors seems very much in spirit of the channel, and it would be an awesome payoff if we managed to find someone who has one, much like finding this SoNNeT card eventually. The additional expandability also lends itself to making the ultimate monster sort of Mac. I also really dig the aesthetic. If it was way back when, the sleeper aesthetic would certainly be fun to surprise my friends with, but the UMAX definitely goes toward the "ultimate Mac" vibe of the channel. It also feels more unique than the Power Computing, and I love showcasing that sort of oddity. While the Power Computing is notable for being beige and "boring," it's hard for me to get excited about it. Harder to find now, but back when it would've been used, it seems like it would've been more common. Obviously, I will enjoy the content either way, and you should definitely take your own opinion on preferring the Power Computing into account.

[@johnmerryman1825]

I remember buying those power computing machines new for the office back in the day!

[@crestdazoltral7705]

Sonnet (or at least one of their German distributors) used to offer a less obnoxious fan for their upgrades for installations into large enough cases.

[@greypatch8855]

Keep the videos coming

[@waltberger7885]

Anyone ever find out what the click of death on Zip Drives was caused by ? I remember mine would work fine and then itd start clicking when say backing up something. Every Zip drive i ever encountered and im talking 1,000s when I was repairing computers back in the late 90s and early 2000s had this issue after 6-18months. The Super Disk drives I liekd a lot more, but they never really caught on and then all of a sudden 8x, 12x, 16x CD burners came on the scene and it was all over for Disk drives overall.

[@kargaroc386]

I don't like how the scsi2sd mounting bracket flexes when inserting cards. It will fatigue and break off with a bunch of use. If it could be secured on the other side of the mounting bracket somehow, that would fix it.

[@crestdazoltral7705]

A PPC604ev (over)clocked @ 400MHz (in a PowerMac 9600) with a Radeon PCI 32MB runs UT99 just fine if you have about 128MB RAM installed. A bit more (an other 32-64MB?) is better because it allows you to raise the detail level to medium without running out of memory in some levels. A better GPU which takes more load of the CPU helps get the most out of those old CPUs. I would like the opportunity to spend a few hours on such a system to revisit my purple tinted childhood memories (and the purple cooler fins that featured in them). How much tearing and stuttering did it really involve?

[@Azaxs-Amiga]

The capacitors on the back will defiantly need replacing asap =)

[@SamwiseOutdoors]

Bear in mind that I had to get up to 1Ghz in 2003 by using a Tyan dual-AMD processor server board. This is pretty astounding.

[@upload15613]

Send it over to Louis Rossman, he'll fix it right up lol

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

I do hope you can get that 1GHz module fully working on the PowerComputing system. And since I have a feeling it'll nag on you otherwise... if you get the opportunity, I too would love to see that UMAX get the dual-CPU module. I presume it would mean getting a whole mess of RAM to fill the other system though, at least.

[@DerekWitt]

It's purple! Stand by while I get a towel to wipe up the drool off the floor. LOL

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Sean! Check the PCB thickness on the original CPU vs the G4 Sonnet, might be too thin to touch the slot contacts.

[@ActionRetro]

Hah, I tried the card in another machine to test exactly that. Same symptoms!

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

@@ActionRetro Oh no! I think it's time for Mac84 Steve to un-curse another CPU card!

[@paulwilliams4274]

@Action Retro I am super interested to see how well the Power Computing + 1Gh G4 card + ATI 9200 video card can play Minecraft!! Woooooooot!!

[@wojiaobill]

oh man I love these videos

[@DanaDoesStuff]

Wait, the MLA suffered massive data loss?? Inconceivable! Surely this hasn’t happened multiple times in the past! 😛

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@fmlazar]

I've always liked the UMAX cases even the low profile models.

[@floydiandroid]

Sonnet made amazing hardware….I miss the age of truly upgradable macs.

[@Oyashirochama13]

They still make amazing hardware, they are my primary source for anything thunderbolt if I don't have an alternative (due to price) and have some interesting multi pci-e thunderbolt racks too.

[@floydiandroid]

@@Oyashirochama13 definitely true! I really just miss my upgradable processors 😂

[@Natures_Intentions]

Been waiting all week for this video. If you can't figure out the g4 1GHZ I bet @mac84 could give you a hand with it. Those clone mac computers are really awesome I hope to get my hands on one someday and feature it on my KZbin channel.

[@orestes1984]

I upgraded a 7600 to a 500mhz G4. It's still interesting that these things have a daughter card like a Pentium II. This also reminded me that you have to pull out the cache card like the 7600 board to get to the CPU card. Heh... Imagine your cache coming on a card and being upgradable also like Apple intended in the 90s.

[@Rabbit_AF]

I upgraded a B&W to a 1 GHz G3 and the PCI Radeon 9200 128mb. It flew in 0S9, but was so slow under OSX, that I had to sell it. I miss that old Powermac, but it was the right thing to do. Edit: This was in 2008.

[@goclunker]

I did the same, with 1gb of ram, and a 6200fx 256mb. It was not slow at all in osx. Did you even install the drivers to enable L3 cache?

[@Rabbit_AF]

@@goclunker I had everything installed correctly and even was able to overclock it to 1.1 GHz. I installed a fan onto the G3s heatsink so that it would stay cool too. It was definitely useable, but I think my expectations were a little too high.

[@goclunker]

@@Rabbit_AF that’s funny because the g3 1ghz zif upgrade card has 3 fans on in from the factory…

[@Rabbit_AF]

@@goclunker The PowerLogix PowerForce G3 ZIF 1.1 features a 1.1 GHz PowerPC 750gx (G3) processor with 1 MB of backside cache on a 1.1 GHz backside bus.

[@goclunker]

@@Rabbit_AF different card. Mine was a sonnet

[@Toby_Q]

When I watched you put the card in first, you didn't push it down all the way. I think that's your problem. It really looks like you didn't get both rows of pins all the way into the socket. That's why pressure worked, a little pressure let those top pins barely touch the row in the slot.

[@luked3172]

Oh man, I can't wait until this thing is fully pimped out!

[@knightsun2920]

I have a used power mac g4 dual 1.6 GHz Sonnets upgrade module. Sadly my quick silver or something failed and got rid of it, i think it still works. interested?

[@Nickword1]

Freaking awesome man!! You should try out some retro music recording and beat making programs from the 90s on it. lol

[@paincreatesfame]

“I used the tried and true Bend-It-Just-A-Bit Method” lmao I love how janky it can be to fix older systems 😂😂

[@DerekWitt]

Adrian Black had to do that to a Mac logicboard once or twice when reinstalling it after recapping. I think it was a Color Classic or an SE/30.

[@CommonSense-hy2sn]

Seeing UT99 made me be like \o/ Hope the G4 card gets fixed and you get OSX working with UT2003/04! I noticed the textures weren't filtered, was it running in software rendering? Some early 3D cards don't have texture filtering though, like the ATI Rage 1&2, forget which card it came with or if you've already put the Radeon in. Don't think a Radeon would save the 604 with UT99, according to mobygames the minimum required CPU is a 603e which is a bit too generous, Windows version requires a Pentium 1 but it's barely playable on a Pentium 2 233mhz + Radeon.

[@richardestes6499]

Weird follow-up question: can you use these Sonnet chips in an IBM RS/6000 or as an upgrade for a PowerPC 601 ThinkPad?

[@goclunker]

No

[@dreamvisionary]

Reads 'observe precautions for handling' then continues to handle edge connector without an ESD wriststrap 😂

[@tayloralmond]

Hey man, do you have any interest in a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh? I’m looking to clear out some space and I know you’d take good care of it. It’s got a G3 upgrade card, the Apple ethernet card, and I also bought a USB card for it (that works in MacOS 9). I also have both back panels, the instruction manual, the keyboard and trackpad, and the install disks. The only issue with it is the sound doesn’t work out of the speakers (the headphone jack still works and it’s what I use). The power supply/amplifier is messed up (the previous owner tried to fix it with poor results).

[@aaroncook7709]

I'm still looking for the Powerlogix Powerforce 1.1ghz G3 upgrade for my Blue and White. If anyone has seen 1...

[@aa-au]

1:25 Nice switcheroo... As for the beige zip drive not working, I may have a spare zip drive that I could possibly send you. I am assuming it's a zip 100 and SCSI? Or maybe IDE? Let me know and I'll send you an email.

[@kratafila]

Sonnet Crescendo's best use is in a towerized Amiga.

[@bastiencantet3851]

Maybe you shouldn’t let the card on the anti static bag because of static, you can broke the card

[@Da40kOrks]

I like how the power computing looks like a Dell from the era..

[@DanielRodriguez-ff5cs]

I really like this video saga

[@iank3973]

Between the upgradability and the aesthetics I favor the Umax Supermac, but they both are cool machines from a bygone era (but one I remember very well! LOL)

[@Scott__C]

The Power is cooler as a unit, but the UMAX I like better because I had one, and the design is cooler. ;) Very cool though.

[@gozi9423]

Love Ur video's :)

[@DerekWitt]

Sure puts Power into PowerPC!

[@sugargliderdude]

oh it's the hand-wavey man again!

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Thy name is SPEED!

[@ghostblackout1]

SPEED

[@ActionRetro]

SPEEEEEEED

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@ActionRetro ACTION SPEEED!

[@JohnDoe-ml8ru]

I owned one of these, it was very buggy and without speculative addressing turned off, it would cause a lot of corruption.

[@Zodqueen]

I think that card should be in history book

[@nonetrix3066]

I wish CPUs still came like this it's much cleaner

[@ceruleanserpent387]

You done good

[@lemagreengreen]

Just reflow the whole card first instead of trying to find the broken joint, it's quite possibly a CPU pad and will be a pain to track down any other way.

[@froggybrolly]

new action retro video? :O

[@richardestes6499]

Check the Wayback Machine to see if they saved a snapshot of that forum thread.

[@mcj1m_noonewillfindthis]

So I'm not the only one that uses the phone as microscope?!

[@RiggityWRECKED]

7:54 Noctua fan upgrade? 😈