Extreme Macintosh Clone Upgrades! Power Computing PowerWave, Part 1

[@DirtyBlueshirtAU]

"Infectious Diarrhea" That sounds... lovely.

[@JakeTheBear1]

That Doug reference tho!

[@brentfuchs5501]

I’m hoping for a Doug score when the build is complete.

[@TristanSpeno]

@@pedrocx486 doug demuro

[@JaredConnell]

HE SAID THE THING!

[@keithedwards3257]

Gotta love the Doug Demuro reference.

[@iwhitespy]

Add a USB Bluetooth dongle to the internal usb port on the sonnet card for built in Bluetooth!

[@CommonSense-hy2sn]

Try Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 or Quake 3, would be cool to see how it performs with period correct games in addition to the Minecraft Powerpoint slide :P

[@WildkatPhoto]

Man I lusted after those Power Computing systems so much back then! I personally think the Clone Wars had a direct impact on the later switch to Intel. The clones taught Jobs and Apple that the majority of Mac users were not as in love with SCSI and non-standard video ports as Apple engineer believed.

[@pedro_8240]

As the Apple engineers believed? I'm pretty sure those where decisions from Mr. Darth Jobs, not the engineers.

[@stuksy4321]

I had a Power Tower back in the mid 90s for work. Really liked it a lot. Hadn't thought about it in ages until I saw this video.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

@@pedro_8240 I am not sure how Jobs will take a decision at Apple when he was running Pixar and NexT not Apple. You claim do be rational, be.

[@dmug]

This really takes me back, first Power Mac my family had was the Power Computing PowerCenter, and my HS had Power Tower Pros with Miro Motion Motion JPEG A capture cards for Premiere 4.0 and Jaz drives. At one point I had the PowerCompiting at a G3 333 MHz daughter card and voodoo iI 12 MB and IX micro graphics card and generic capture card that didn’t do hardware compression, and later an ATI rage 8 MB pci card that had the longest life of any component i had from that era. It was in my first computer of my own, a Bondi blue G3 and later G4. Glad to see some of these clones still survived. Also, man the G4 sonnet card, remember seeing those back when I had a G4 in college thinking “who would buy one of these?” I can’t imagine many were stamped. Will watch the next.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

you had a wonderful setup.

[@dmug]

@@jaimeduncan6167 The PowerCenter was nice but wonderful probably is an oversell. I was always envious of the PowerTower Pros and the PowerMac 9600s, granted I did have more "computer" than most people did at that time. My HS self would have been blown away with my modern setup though.

[@someperson646]

I remember buying a sonnet card back in high school for a G3 I bought on eBay, it gave lot of life to an aging computer, the memories I have making midi music on it brings a tear to my eye.

[@kirishima638]

That bizarre period in time when random PC makers that no one had ever heard of were making MUCH better machines than Apple, and were the envy of every Mac user.

[@donsurlylyte]

they weren't hugely better, some of them were slightly better, but, they were cheaper. people don't realize how expensive computers used to be back in the day

[@leart78]

you are so wrong, back in early 2000s computers were expensive but not even close to the prices we're forced to pay today for the same specs

[@jaimeduncan6167]

@@leart78 no you are wrong and worse confident. Computers were more expensive, and taking into account inflation it's not even comparable. And what are you talking about capabilities? High-end computers had a few GB of ram and most workstations a few hundred megas. Few personal computers use multiple processors, and RAM was slow, (bandwidth was comparable to or slower than our SSDs, although latency was much better). And don't get me started on graphics capabilities or floating point performance. At the winner of 2000 TOP500 benchmark was a. 3.2 Teraflops computer, using multiple racks (it was the size of a small house) that consumed 850KW of power. That machine was less capable than a MacBook Pro 14" max in terms of raw computing performance and cost millions. If we take into account ASCI Red. 1.2TB of RAM the stuff was still less Capable than a fully configurated Mac Pro and the Mac pro is old technology. The Machine learning approach is not that new, but we can put literal supercomputers of the early 2000s in our cars.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

@@leart78 Two examples in terms of personal computers, from MacWorld May, 2000: IBook single core 366mghz G3, 64MB of ram and a. 6GB HDD : $1799 ($3125.48 in today's money) vs MacBook air 8 core 3.65ghz M2, 8GB of RAM. 256GB SSD $1199. High-end Powerbook 500mhz g3, 128MB ram (expandible to 512MB) 18GB HDD. $3997 ($6997 today) vs 12 core. 3.65ghz m2 pro, 16GB of RAM. 1TB ssd (5GB/s) 14" Macbook Pro : $2499 it cost less than the nominal price of the inferior machine in 2000

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

You are fufilling the dreams of 90s gamers everywhere.

[@jorgemtds]

Gamers on Mac's?

[@thedungeondelver]

@@jorgemtds Yeah I'm still trying to puzzle that one out. Shogo MAD, Myst, ... Marathon? Wolf 3d and at some point DOOM, I think? Otherwise...Oh! There was an A10 flight sim, A10 Attack! I think it was called.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

@@thedungeondelver Diablo/Diablo 2 Warcraft 1/2/3 Starcraft Unreal Tournament Quake 1/2/3 Myth _Numerous_ flight sims Age of Empires 1/2 Command & Conquer Etc, etc... ...Believe it or not, most big name computer games got a classic Mac OS release in the 90s and very early 2000s.

[@thehomienicked8208]

@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines Many great PC games got Mac ports, but they were usually a long time after release. There were also some big titles that the platform missed out on too and certain genres just had terrible representation. The platform's market share back then was just so low.

[@bltvd]

My first “mac” was a Power Computing Power Center 132 I ordered direct in 1996. I had to wait about three weeks for it. It ruled!

[@a4e69636b]

What programs did you use on it?

[@bltvd]

@@a4e69636bI was in school for graphic design so i would run all the desktop publishing programs as well as Deck 2 for audio stuff. I had a 4mb video capture card that would allow me to use it as a tv as well and could capture 12 fps of 160 x 120 video. I had a huge collection of pirated software i acquired from Hotline Servers.

[@Vintechfinder]

How funny! Aside from a few minor differences, this clone uses the same case as a Dell Dimension XPS P90c. In fact, this video just helped me locate rails for a Dimension XPS P90c that I'm currently working on. Thanks!

[@ducksonplays4190]

I have a Dell Dimension 4100. I'm not familiar with the Dell Dimension XPS P90C. What are it's specifications?

[@Vintechfinder]

@@ducksonplays4190 it is a socket 5 90MHz Pentium on an AT style motherboard

[@ducksonplays4190]

@@Vintechfinder Cool machine!

[@Stryder_The_Nite_Owl]

Great video. I cannot understand why people prefer to format their drives using the patched Apple HD SC Setup, rather than use a professional tool such as FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit. HDT was the definitive tool for formatting and partitioning disks and drives back in the day. It's one of the pieces of software I purchased (even though I couldn't afford most software at the time) and kept updated for years.

[@HeavyD6600]

Great video! Thanks! I'm not a Mac guy, but I'm really digging your upgrade videos!

[@dan0n3]

" Who until then had furiously guarded macOS from running on anything but a real mac. " Hackintosh intel community hold my clover. x

[@oofingberg]

Intel MacOS wasn't a thing back then

[@phantom2488]

So happy I found this channel do more of this I enjoy watching it because I never have the time to experiment

[@CircuitBored]

Clones are so cool! Nice to see that you've added another to the fleet. Good luck getting Leopard running - that's going to be a challenge!

[@dcfuksurmom]

nice name lmao

[@samuelcolvin4994]

That's the beige zip insider drive! Those things are crazy rare!

[@JoeSteele]

It was so funny to run across this video today. I was just talking with a friend from Vallejo who said he and all his friends had these Mac clones because of a shop in Vallejo that another of his friends ran that sold them. He is looking to see if that guy still has any new/old stock stashed away. 🤞🏼

[@DavideNastri]

Do you think it is possible to find a g4 accelerator for iMac bondi (the 1st one)? Where do you search for this kind of stuff? Thanks!

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Good question, I don't remember that we ever had one. I know that we had for the G3s and G4 towers. I have a bunch of old PC magazines, Bytes, and Macworlds of the early and mid 2000s I will check. If I don't reply is that I did not find one. Best regards.

[@noahisamathnerd]

Doug’s catchphrase is everywhere now. It’s kind of impressive.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Now you're making me wanna build one.

[@seshpenguin]

It's crazy that you can put such a huge CPU upgrade in that machine... x86 computers could only dream of such a generational leap!

[@RacerX-]

Way Cool! I remember those computers well as I had to support them in some of the offices I worked. I haven't watched the series yet so looking forward to the other episodes. I think for Hard Drives I would be tempted to use a seagate server U320 drive with an adapter. It would eat the SCSI2SD for breakfast. You probably already know this too but in the SCSI2SD utility you can change the drive identifier from code2src to one of the ones Drive Setup expects, like SEAGATE and then you wouldn't need the modified drive setup. Just a thought... Keep up the good work.

[@ww21943]

I bought that same Tango card on eBay for my recently acquired StarMax. I plan on starting a channel and making a video soon. Btw- you channel is a big reason why I started getting into vintage Apple computers. I plan on going to VCF East so I’m sure I’ll see you there!

[@wdd6864]

This looks great. Since 8.0 did not do Extended Format until 8.1 are you going to reformat since Standard will not boot OSX? Also helps with the block size

[@pentiummmx2294]

it's too bad that umax decided to die on you but at least you got a powercomputing clone as the replacement.

[@sixteenbitify]

It’s most likely not dead. These “G2” Macs are extremely picky when it comes to the RAM configuration, PCI card setup, and SCSI voodoo.

[@andrethib]

I had a 15" Sony triniton monitor back in the mid-90s, it was beautiful. does your have that hair-thin vertical wire down the middle of the screen?

[@sewanlel8322]

I love these series

[@bearthechair2789]

Powercomputing is pretty awesome. My dad and I are working on fixing the one we have. Main thing is new scsi CD drive and SD and new ram and it should boot. Btw I love your videos and take inspiration for the videos I'm currently working on

[@pedrofelck]

Tbh, I love the Dell Dimension 4100 case (I have one here in need of retrobright, btw)

[@retropuffer2986]

Stunning machine. What a great bridge computer this could be!

[@BigGroupHug]

Im happy for you. What can you do with it now? Photo editing?

[@Nickword1]

This is so awesome. I am so glad i found this channel!!

[@Kspcs909]

I hated old Macs until I found this channel... recently I got A power machintosh 9600 for free, i managed to start it up but keyboard is missing and i have no idea how to get one working.. anyway, awesome video!

[@jaimeduncan6167]

English is not my first language, so I am not here to criticize you, but I believe you mean: "I hated old Macs *until* I found this channel". What you wrote means that you started hating old Macs *due* to this channel 😃

[@Kspcs909]

@@jaimeduncan6167 you're right!

[@sadmac356]

"Crazy" seems to be what you do here, Sean

[@Mac84]

UNLIMITED (CLONE) POWER!!!!1

[@leedogg90002]

4:34 Nice Doug Demuro reference 👍

[@paulmuaddib451]

As usual, most excellent.

[@ps3customgamer]

Well the hackintosh community is prospering on x86

[@sixteenbitify]

I am so jelly of that 1GHz Sonnet G4 card. I only have the 800MHz variant for my 9600/200, but would love to get an extra 200MHz. I’m sure that will make loads of difference, especially with the 2MB backside cache vs 1MB on the 800MHz.

[@kirishima638]

Bet you could overclock it. These cards were mostly identical.

[@osgeld]

I had one back in the early 2000's that looked nearly identical but it was a 120Mhz, great machine cleaned it all up, got everything running like clockwork and ended up selling it to a local collector for a fair price at the time, cause I also got a 8500/180 in the original deal so I pimped that out and with its AV ran my PS2 and VCR though it and piped it to my flat CRT TV over VGA (later I sold it and with extra money got a deal on a 350Mhz 9600 in which I used as a cad / electronics workbench computer with OS9. whatever and debian linux for the real work ... also slapped a modded Radieon 7000 PCI in there for quake 3)

[@ceruleanserpent387]

Love the flatscreen crt!

[@anidiotontheinternet3514]

This is more powerful then my PowerMac G4

[@jaimeduncan6167]

which one do you have? the original, the Silver, or the dual mirror?

[@anidiotontheinternet3514]

@@jaimeduncan6167 og with a sonnet cpu

[@socamx]

You're making want to dig out my 9600/300 with its 700 mhz Sonnet G4 upgrade, Mac Voodoo 5 5500 PCI, and Sonnet Tempo Trio. I think I got it up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 768mb of ram. I upgraded that thing so much back in the very early 2000s and getting that 700mhz G4 felt like I got the holy grail back then. Would be interesting to see you do a video on old Mac Voodoo cards like the 5500.

[@zerocks88]

the CRT being behind your hand for that short time looked like it was green screened in, I assume because of the light bouncing off the back of your hand from it and the refresh rate being different to the video or something ?

[@steaker-gi9uw]

It's probably too late now, but you should make a disk image of that hard drive so you can go back and look for cool software/extensions whenever you want. But you can wipe the drive and use it as you'd like normally.

[@matthewday7565]

I nearly had the Powermac experience, but the G4 I got as part of a bundle was DOA

[@aswxwing]

You're insane. I love it. Play some Escape Velocity on stream!

[@itmkoeln]

My guess regarding the speaker having a foam arround it, is for isolation of Speaker from the Case so that the case isn't humming back and forth from speaker to case and vice versa...

[@destroyer6470]

Can you through a vampire accelerator in a 68k mac and see it absolutely fly?

[@orcatype225]

Oooh you have one of those older Zip drives that took a 5.25 inch drive bay instead of the smaller 3.5 inch ones!

[@Otakunopodcast]

Forget not wanting to show other peoples' files. I'd say "infectious diarrhea" is reason enough for not wanting to explore that drive! Thank you for sparing us from that evil. :)

[@Tonyisgaming]

What is Ironic is that in the 90s, people cloned Macintosh's to make them usable. in the 2000's people started cloning them to make their computers better, hahaha! Steve Jobs really flipped Apple upside down in the best way.

[@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7]

And nowadays a lot of people Hackintosh because of real Macs often being underpowered compared to PC hardware, especially in the GPU department. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I personally much prefer the Wozniak days to Jobs or Cook.

[@FlyingDutchman19801]

13:33 'Infectious Diarrhea' nice

[@ThaManWithTheHat]

Got that link for mac HD setup?

[@RuffianSoldier]

love the doug demuro reference lmao

[@sonofgod798]

Subscribed just now! This channel has potential but why not many likes?

[@OptimusMonk01]

My Amiga Sam460ex is 1.1GHz with native SATA. Pisses all over this in terms of performance.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Are you comparing a. 2010 machine to one released in 1995?

[@yaperbox]

Don't quite know why but these videos are fascinating to me looking forward to the next one 🍺

[@НиколайМаринков-я6л]

Yooooo never even dreamed of such a thing

[@memsom]

You should install BeOS on it as this was one of the first macs BeOS booted on.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Sean Leopard Yes Sir Hope You Can Install It on That System I Cannot Believe The Expand ability Built In to That Clone

[@cernorama]

Id like to see one of those quad 604e clones

[@Zerrudo_]

with all those hand gestures, you should really consider getting a hand puppet xD

[@fsfs555]

So you're normally supposed to lay these machines on their side and remove the bottom panel to access PCI cards, just FYI. Those Micropolis drives were loud and hot but they were generally pretty quick relative to their contemporaries, especially the AV variants. If it still works I'd keep it around.

[@ActionRetro]

Oh thanks for this! I was actually considering sticking it back in in the machine instead of putting a fan there

[@fsfs555]

@@gmeeer9165 It's amusing that you had to go back and edit a single-word reply. Maybe you should put more than 5 seconds' worth of effort into a post if you're going to call someone out. So what exactly is "falae" about what I wrote? Yes, the bottom panel comes off of these. I'm looking directly at the same model right now: main cover off, then two more screws and the lower panel slides up and off for access to PCI cards. It's even in the service manual (PDFs available online). Do you have an opinion on the Micropolis hard drive? Try expressing it, then.

[@zero38operator]

Wow. I didn't know the mac had clones!

[@piecaruso97]

You should try leopard on this thing then, also for leopard I am working on drivers for some pci sound cards if you are into that sort of upgrades

[@skunch]

have you ever considered a PCI usb 3.0 card? you can find them online and they clearly state they are limited by the PCI bus, but it should be faster than usb 1.1/2.0 via PCI. *edit* PLEASE PRESERVE THE DATA ON THE ORIGINAL HARD DRIVE!!!

[@seymoronion8371]

@@gmeeer9165 StarTech makes several variants, such as the PCIUSB3S22 card. As for Mac OS Drivers, well... I'm not so sure about that.

[@billermanthegreat]

I had some baller 21in trinitrons back in the day. I got them suckers for free, they were pretty cool to mess around with

[@Aapj3h]

That case, totally looks like a ATX case i own. Sidepanels same, metal on the front same, inside/rear different tho.

[@zenmaster24]

is that a normal atx psu? if its ~25 years old, might be time for a change to a modern one if possible

[@TalleyLewis]

Yeah, those PCI SATA cards are not of the best quality. I use them in my retro windows pcs and the plastic always breaks off around the ports.

[@cjhawk67]

The OEM for those cases is Palo Alto the model is the ATCX.

[@jeffwalther2023]

The Palo Alto Products ATX Convertible was the case for the Umax S900 and J700 (tower and desktop configuration, respectively). Did they also make a very similar named case which was used by Power Computing? Power Computing used the case shown here on the PowerWave also on their Power 80/100/120 line of NuBus PowerMac clones and it (the PowerWave case) was also used in the Umax C600.

[@knghtbrd]

Not 100% sure if that case was used by Dell, but … it's the same brand as the ones that were. 😃 Sleds should be finable if you don't just print some. That Zip drive … there's enough zip drive mechanisms out there, I'd totally swap it to get that up and running. I wonder if someone fed it a click of death disk… Check any disk you've put into that drive to see if the surface has been damaged. If so, do be sure to physically destroy them to protect any other zip drives from click of death.

[@eDoc2020]

The drive rails for that case look awfully similar to what my "new" PC case from 2001 needs. I designed a 3D model that should work for mine (but haven't tested it) and I'd be happy to send it to you. Not having _any_ rails for reference I designed it to use the screw holes in the front instead of spring-loaded tabs. The PowerWave has these screw holes in a different position but maybe you could find a way to make it work.

[@adamlips1711]

that case looks a lot like the Power computing towers they made for the A1200 and A4000 Amigas!

[@ActionRetro]

Interesting!

[@blooder81]

i need dual 800mhz/1ghz quicksilver. my dual 800mhz has bad l3.

[@BilisNegra]

2:10 If there were mac clones today, they would also be giving us more power for cheaper, no doubt! Apple has always been too pricey, and still is... Although looks like that might be changing a bit at long last with the Silicon platform. Now is the first time I'm slightly tempted to get a Mac. If I haven't quite made my mind still is because, in typical Apple fashion, every upgrade from the basic specs costs a fortune, and with everything soldered to the mainboard you cannot even upgrade your machine later if you change your mind about just getting the base configuration.

[@ryanzmuda3167]

Will you add Max ram.

[@TheNovum]

That machine looks alot similar to a RS6000 clone i picked up last year. Bull Estrella 350 (unsure of the model number though). If you want i can do a YT or something.

[@thepupthatwinks]

It had to be 2 hours ago i can't wait ANOTHER WEEK

[@NGNetwork1]

You tossed up that pic of infectious diahhrea and now i'm curious to see what it is.

[@BobJones-bi8ip]

Put a voodoo2 in it to run virtual pc 2 to play win95 3dfx games

[@crestofhonor2349]

Makes me wish the apple monitors I have had vga out but instead I had to buy a db-15 to vga converter to use it with a modern PC

[@Livingstonshoedios]

did you chroma key on a screen capture? i thought it looked a bit too crisp, then you put your hand in front of it. not a issue, if anything id say thats a creative solution.

[@draggonhedd]

Hey I've got a PowerComputing PowerCenter Pro with a g3 card and an ATI Radeon from an Xserve G5. I think its an 9200 like yours. Also, the SCSI chipsets on these powercomputing clones are really really slow. You'd be good to install a faster scsi card if you want to use scsi. But, I have issues with my g3 card, the cache doesn't seem to work right. Its slower than it ought to be in os9 with a g3. From what I am aware, the G4 cards aren't supposed to work in these... hmm Also don't forget to install cdrom toolkit or os9 wont be able to see the pCC cdrom drive correctly. You'll be able to boot/install from it but it wont read CDs well otherwise.

[@ActionRetro]

Is the cache working on your card?

[@draggonhedd]

@@ActionRetro I dont know. I don't think it is. The card doesn't report cache or processor speed to the OS. Every option in the XLR8 tuning software just says .0mhz. I might try re-flowing the solder on the card. Might recap it too...

[@Unirule]

I am interested to see it run xpostfacto

[@kona0197]

You talk about upgrading this computer to the extreme yet you don't talk about upgrading the RAM. I'm sure it could handle more.

[@_chipchip]

Love that Sony!

[@paulmuaddib451]

Whoa, the zip drive doesn't work?! What a surprise. 😂

[@ActionRetro]

😅

[@MainAvel]

>airflow >mid-90s case yeah those two don't coexist in the best of days

[@RisingRevengeance]

Honestly I dont care much for any apple products other than OG ipods but it's still very interesting to watch you mess with old hardware

[@marco3392]

Doug reference 😂

[@JohnDoe-ml8ru]

If you have a SATA port, why use a slow SD card?

[@jaimeduncan6167]

It's not slow, for that machine 😀

[@ClusterShart]

RIP Infectious Diarrhea, you will be missed.

[@ActionRetro]

🤣

[@andrive]

Nice

[@robsquared2]

I always wonder if you gesticulate this much in real life.

[@Angelgreat]

REVIVE THE S900! EEP!

[@TrashfordKent]

Can't wait:)