Using the tape to cover the pins is a bit risky, it's less risky than cutting the pins, but the tape may come off, and stay inside the agp slot, or you might accidentally cut something other than the tape at the time of trimming. So I recommend using nail enamel, a simple drop. If something goes wrong, you apply acetone, and try again. If you want to undo the mod, you pass acetone, and rewrite the firmware.
@@pedromascarenas And it never happened to me and I did this for well over eight years. In fact if it ever did fall off what you did in the simple tooth pick would’ve solved your problem
He's surprised at the geekbench score not improving, and then surprised again at the better minecraft performance. Like, dude... it's a graphics card, a way better one at that, of course it will perform better in graphically intensive tasks xD
Can someone please give him an award for "Advanced Hand Gestures" ? 😂😂😂 Next to Adrian, 8Bit-Guy and Retro Recipes he is one of the best retro TH-camrs !!
Oh my god you had obstacles at almost every turn 😆 But yeah that performance improvement is MASSIVE. That's a machine you could legitimately play Minecraft (and probably a bunch of other games like Doom 3) perfectly. Also THANK YOU for not making any permanent changes to that very nice 7800GS haha
I know this is kinda irrelevant to the video but that SGI Indy you have is such a cool system. I’d love to have _anything_ SGI someday for my own collection
Majority of the time I agree, but it's always best to look up the data sheet for the parts in your system to see what their max rated temps are as I've seen lower power laptop CPUs have a max temp of 60c before they start to thermal throttle. But as someone else said he still seems to have a lot to learn about cooling.
@@CommodoreFan64 these are PowerPC chips from Apple. they tend to run much much hotter then other chips. 48c on powerpc is great lol but like I said the question is what temp does it run under load
@@tohur I'm well aware of that, and that was part of my point is to check what's the max temperature of the chip you are working with is both at idle, and under load.
Great video - and what a beast! Would love to see some more games running on this card. Oh, and that ATX adapter cable definitely has an air of "cursed Mac" about it, so I think it's very fitting. Unrelated, but it was fun to spot the little unintended cameo from myself in the bottom left at 10:52 😁
Fascinating! I got a Mirror G4 recently and in that same lot I got a 7800GS AGP so this sure makes me want to try this very process (maybe without all the unplanned detours haha). Great video!
Have to admit, I can absolutely dig this kind of modding, especially to keep such a beast running. Makes me wonder what the fastest possible AGP card that could be modded to work on a Macintosh would be. I'm inclined to say a 7950GT, but those are unicorns on the market as it is. Maybe a Radeon 4670? Hard not to wonder at this point. Videos like this are encouraging and making me want to get on my own projects, too.
From my GPU flashing days, I seem to vaguely remember the 79x0 series did not work, 7800 GTX was the fastest you could get for PPC (and Quadro FX 4500 for Pro OpenGL)... On the Radeon side I think it was an X1900 GT...
It's nice about how the power connecter on the flexATX PSU fit in the Power Mac's case, but it does NOT look stock because the power connector is upside down compared to the original PSU's :)
My dual Pentium3 Tualatin 1.4 workstation from 2001 (for which I paid almost $10,000 in today's money back then) after the upgrades over the years, now plays TH-cam full screen, hahaha. Radeon AGP HDMI, Sata2 PCI SSD, maxed out 4GB of RAM, triple boot XP/7/Lubuntu
H.264 will eat your CPU for lunch even on modern systems. It's only usable due to ASIC acceleration. Phones would have battery lifes measured in minutes and burn your hand if they had to software decode video.
@@gajbooks that's very extreme, i use software decode to watch h.264 hi10p videos (no hwdec exists for those) on my phone (from 2018) and it's completely fine
that dell system you used to flash the nvidia card may have an option in the bios to disable the onboard video when graphics card is detected in the slot.
Amazing. Brings back memories of upgrading my PowerMac G4 tower and Cube ~15+ years ago. Only now much harder! I was temped to do one now, but your video convinced me otherwise. Never the less fun to see, keep it up, will watch for your Cube Dual G4 upgrade!
I have had 2 different 7800 GS cards for my 1.42GHz MDD. Mines got a copper heatsink, as the first version I flashed had aluminum and had heat issues. The copper BFG 7800GS worked great!
Hey, interesting thing in this video at time index around 5:00... you have an SGI Indy in that closet of yours... where are the videos on it? :) Will there be any? They have a special place in my heart, the old SGI machines, and I would love to see you put out some videos with them! ^_^
I had a MDD dual 1.42ghz G4 with a 7800GS, played hours of Homeworld 2 maxed at 1080p on it. It was such a great machine. Amazed you managed to get the cpu cool with the 1.2ghz cooler, I don't know if even the copper tower cooler of the 1.42 could have done it [let alone fit] but heat was a well known issue for any mac running a top end G4 upgrade from Sonnet or Powerlogix. [G3's had it easier; The fastest 1.1ghz 750GX G3 upgrade actually used less power than the stock G3's running half the speed, such was the advancement of IBM process nodes over comparable Motorola/Freescale nodes at the time]
Love this. you've gone from snapping ram clips off an SE/30 and making me cringe to building absolutely immaculate computers and making me mad with envy in a very short time! amazing
Nice! I just emailed the seller on eBay about an ATX adapter for B/W G3s and Quicksilver G4s. G4 power supply is dead and the G3 is starting to smell a bit... odd.
Gotta love working with old tech. "Hmm, this thing doesn't work. (some time later) Ok, fixed! Let's try...oh, something else broke. Let's fix it. (some time later) Ok, so now let's...OH FOR F....!" 🤣
People often don't appreciate how truly Plug&Play everything is today. Except for maybe external WiFi adapters, nothing ever seems to have drivers for those out of the box...
@@GdotWdot I've had more trouble with internal PCI-E/mini PCI-E WiFi adapters than external USB WiFi adapters, as in Linux many USB ones are just plug N' play. But yes WiFi, along with Bluetooth have been my biggest headaches over the years no matter the OS.
@@CommodoreFan64 oddly I have the opposite experience. Linux does not natively recognise the USB adapter I have, but recognised my internal motherboard Wi-Fi just fine!
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 Like I said it can be hit, and miss. In my experience it's been mostly 5Ghz WiFi, and newer Bluetooth adapters above ver. 4.1 that I've had trouble with the most, that, and devices that don't use Broadcom chipsets.
The evga 7800gs was the first gpu. That I bought when I built my first gaming PC. I got it open box for $100 off of sticker price. Great card at the time. Everyone was going pcie for gpus.
Oh man I love GPUJune, found new cool underrated TH-camrs also at 7:12 is that capacitor leaning harder than the leaning tower? 8:38 also the smoothest molex plug ever bruh
Whenever i watch these videos its like "ok, we are going to install x component.. What are going to need is a screw driver, a pc with dos installed.. _and a interstellar quantum superposition satellite communication device" Just like IRL things never go to plan lol
@@MrKillswitch88 lol i had one on a crackhead athlon x2 build about 8-9 years ago. didnt know anything about hardware at the time. went to overclock it, ran into thermal issues so i just took a 92mm fan and screwed it into the heatsink. worked like a charm . mostly.
_Very_ cool, man! This is quite similar to my own maxed out MDD! It too sports a 7800GS, but is a little weaker on the CPU side. It's rocking the original dual 1.25GHz 7455 overclocked to 1.5GHz. It's no 7448 with 1MB of super quick on-die cache, but it _does_ have a whopping 4MB (total) of kinda-slow L3. :P
Hey Action Retro, I know this might sound like blasphemy to you, but would you ever consider making a new channel called "Action Modern" for more modern Macs? I'd love to see you upgrade more modern Macs (like a 2009 iMac, 2012 Mac Mini and so on) to the max :)
Still don’t understand why you didn’t use a fire gl x3/ x800xt. So easy to flash (no need for a PC) and just as fast. Also, 48 degrees is really cold for anything under load, wouldn’t worry about it at all
@@ActionRetro honestly, not sure if I’ve seen one with both cards on mac, but I could loan you the flashed fire gl x3 I use in my G5 if you want to compare them for a video. Definitely destroys the 9800pro in my upgraded sawtooth. EDIT: try this one barefeats.com/mutant3a.html Looks like the 7800 is faster in most games. Guess it was worth the trouble to ensure “fastest” instead of merely “ridiculously overpowered”
back in the day, we did a small business in buying cheap bulk PC agp and even some pci cards, and flashing them to work in mac's, a local mac shop sold so many for us, at one point we genuinely couldnt get enough cards....dude was selling them to other shops who then marked them up even more.. at the time, some of the card couldnt actually be bought in the 'mac' version because nobody had stock, so few were made, mostly people wanted radeon cards back then, and, my gods, the number of radeon LE and other similar cards i flashed... i got so i could do the commands without thought, muscle memory... but hey, more the doubling our money, and the shop then marking them up and dealing with support issues, mostly installing them. anyway, it was a fun time, more then a few mac owners who came directly to us, were very greatful, one guy owned a business with 36 macs(regretted going mac mostly due to support issues), and, bought all 48 cards we had ready that day, "if any fail, i can just swap them" talk about a windfall....he paid us what the shop quoted him on price, then realized he knew who had to be doing the work and figured he might be able to get them direct... shop owner was not upset... infact... that shop had gotten alot of business from the fellow due to the macs having commonly known issues, often it would take apple months to provide replacement parts... so bad the dude started getting boards from failed units and having them repaired when possible, so he had a stock of parts to use and cycle in/out as apple decided to provide parts... (they are very inconsistent with that stuff im told, to this day...that same shops still around...the genius bar use to call them and ask questions..LOL...) anyway, this kinda stuff is always fun. i also like unlocking pipes or features, flashing/modding cards into quadro/firegl or the other direction, stuff like that can be alot of fun... if there is a quadro version of the 7800gs with 2x the ram, you may want to try and do a bios mod on it... i mean... its likely to be faster after mod, and the 7800 512mb cards did handle stuff better then the 256mb versions, knew a few people who had them....who regret selling them when they did... those models are worth more now in good shape then what they got for them...LOL...
Really nice video. Welcome to 2009 .. I did this but with the extra fiddling around to get a 7950 working. It comes up as a 7800, but the RAM and GPU clocks are >100mhz faster than a 7800 is. So it's free. Did it with dual 1.8ghz 7888b's running with liquid cooling @2.24ghz. Was my main machine for a few years. Really nice to see another similar system.
Now that's taking it to the limit , I always felt it could be done... read somewhere, I believe on Hrutkay Mods PPC Projects, that if you can find the 7888 chips, they would better respond to overclocking above 2Ghz . But there's only so much that can pass through the original 1.42 Dual motherboard whose speed is 167Mhz.
I'd be very interested in graphics cards for 68k Macs that would give them HDMI out. is that a thing yet, if so where do I find them? cheers :) I have a LC 630 with a PDS slot that would be nice to fire up with a more modern video connection :)
I was struck. You're showing off TH-cam on that computer with all those upgrades and the joy of it being watchable 480p@20ish, while I'm watching it on my power sipping handheld smartphone at 1080p@60. It's really ridiculous how in my lifetime computers have already come so far.
Man! I wish I had someone with your expertise in my area... Trying to make a working PowerMac G4 MDD out of 3 computers. Only one has a working power supply. First thing I'll try is swapping out the ram. (no startup chime but fan powers on). Next I'll try swapping out the graphics cards... does it make a difference if I use the DVI or actual monitor for the G4? Also does it make a difference if I use usb 2.0 windows keyboard and microsoft mouse???
I still have an old 6400GS (or some other 6xxx GS) lying in my drawer. Unfortunately, it had a case of "capacitor-gate." Several caps a long time ago decided to expose their innards on it. I still have an old ES1869 ISA sound card (was in my first Windows 95 beige box), an ISA 56k Fax modem (not any of that winmodem rubbish!), an ATI Radeon 9200 AGP card, a Soundblaster Live 5.1 PCI card, an SB Audigy 2 PCI card. And several TV tuner cards. Both sound cards still work,, and so do the tv tuners.. :)
Three increasingly odd coincidences in this video: 1) similar MDD upgrade project as mine, down to the same PSU choice (though I'm sticking with the geforce 4ti GPU for OS 9 games along with some voodoo 2s) 2) the exact same no-name low profile micro atx case PC that I use for similar projects 3) transit map mousepad for the MDD (though mine is for SEPTA Regional Rail, a public transit system in Philadelphia). Thank you for the uncomfortably familiar content!
BTW, it may be in the plans already, but the ADC Apple Studio CRT is a great match with the MDD. You can use a Gefen DVI to ADC adapter with it, as long as you use a strong enough power supply (and a vga input). Otherwise there's a PCB you can order to build your own adapter. That latter option would be an interesting video on its own.
The fact that that the custom firmware was already made and tested by someone else and all you had to do was a find a compatible card, made the upgrade suspense rather anti-climatic but gaming difference was clearly visible. A worthwhile upgrade.
It would also be great to replace the High Air flow fans in my 933mhz Digital audio, I hear air more than anything, would like to also extend the Digital audio speakers from my iMac G4 to use with it too :)
Although the rage 128 pro was already an awesome Card Back in the day. I have one in my Windows 98 SE Machine and I can Play half Life on that Machine with reasonable performance, although only at 1024*768 on an old LCD panel
I do know, it's some time and this is kinda lika a mummy I'm about to resurrect, but I gotta say: Thanks to your pointers I've managed to do that for my own G4 MDD - got the adapter, got one of my old spare mainboards with XEONs and AGP slot reactivated, tried out a few nvflash versions till I 've found a good one able to flash it and bam, flashed the graphics adapter. Next I've disabled pins 3 and 11 et voila, a mac-suitable nvidia graphics adapter was born. Thanks a lot!
Excellent video, well done. Would it be possible to expand your testing to other games like Doom 3, Quake 4 or Halo Combat Evolved? Especially the first two where released towards the end of the PowerPC area and really struggled even on a G5 Quad with a Quadro 4500 GPU. Would be interesting to see how the 7800 will perform. Thanks for your consideration.
getting around 60 fps in halo on my g5 quad with fx 4500 my ati x1900 gets a bit better . doom 3 gets 60 at high same with quake 4 in most areas havent tried prey yet
@@amdintelxsniperx Hi Chris, many thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I had to sell that G5 a while ago, so I can't test again. From memories, I would be barely above 30 fps in Doom 3 or Quake 4 on 1024x768. Not sure if I had a driver- / software- issue or if there was something wrong with the almost 20 year old hardware. 🤨
Love these videos. Going to have to start a drinking game for every time something goes monumentally wrong. That said, this video might have put me in the hospital.
Next year we need to have an April fools stunt where you change your channel name to Druaga3, and a bunch of other TH-camrs will do the same but with different numbers.
This is relevant to my interests. One day I went to the local computer shop, intending to buy a low-end Mac laptop, something (relatively) cheap. Still not sure what happened, as I walked out with a MDD, the 23" monitor, and the clear bubble speakers. It was right after Apple slashed the price on both as the G5 was about to be released. Even so, it still cost $500 million, lol, and when something is that pricey, Imma need a lot more than twenty years' use from it!
For the youtube benchmarks, does that browser let you right (alternate) click and pick "Stats for nerds"? It gives plenty of good information and tells you when frames are dropped.
OK, not sure if this mod is worth the trade-off with no hardware acceleration in OS9. There are nVidia drivers in the extensions folder but they don't seem to do anything. BTW, successfully flashed the ROM on my 7800gs WITHOUT needing a second graphics card. Also, another trick for disabling pins 3 & 11 on the card is to use nail polish on the unwanted pins. Interested to hear you thoughts on the lack of hardware acceleration in OS9. I'm guessing you have the same issue? Leopard works very well with the fan even spinning down when its not under load!!
awesome that you were able to flash the ROM without needing to use a second Graphics Card. Would appreciate (many others too) if you could share with us using this thread, how you did it... I guess, writing in Terminal.
@@justice4You2 Hey mate, nope, I am rubbish in terminal. I used an old AGP PC board with nvflassh.. I have another 7800gs card that I can have another crack at to refresh my memory. I remember that nvflash is very picky with the cards it works with (need to match the card with the version of nvflash) and there was some trial and error. U need to pick up a 4600ti and flash it if you want the best card that will also work with os9 and accelerated graphics (which is what I use now instead of the 7800gs). Let me know if you would like the version of nvflash and the rom and I will figure out a way to get it to you.
@@MyNameIsPlayer2 I saw on another chat that NV Flash is just as difficult. I do have a tried and tested procedure to flash my RADEON X850 Pro AGP card which is on the shelf waiting for me to execute this project. So I'm just comparing alternatives. My model GPU (native Windows) is HDMI in-out capable and offers the GH Acceleration that should render HD quality TH-cam output over TenFourFox.
I dived into everything Mac in 2004 when I purchased the MDD G4 1.42Ghz Power Mac. I therefore have no interest in OS 9 and its legacy software. So I don't mind that my G4 doesn't natively dual boot.
The made for PC only GPU products of those days were always so much a better offering than anything for the Mac offered even though we were using PCI and AGP as well.
Well is there a Mac BIOS for a Ati HD3850 or HD4670? These should be the fastest AGP cards out there. I looked up some benchmarks and they claim the HD3850 should be 50% faster than the 7900 GS.
Video cards have the ability to hardware accelerate video formats such as VP9, H264, AVC, etc. To unload the processor on the G4 you need to install such video card with hardware video acceleration for watching videos on TH-cam and other sites. To find out whether it supports hardware accelerated video card or not, there is a program DXVA Checker.
@@AmanOU2be Yes sir. After 2 years I got me a newer mac, and gave the MDD to a colleague, and 5 years later I found the old heatsink in a storage closet !
@ActionRetro, I just performed an ATX swap on my G4 MDD DP1.42 and my Radeon 9000 pro refuses to display anything. What are the odds mine failed just like yours? I've ordered a 7800GS to replace it, but for the moment I am dead in the water. Did you dig into your issue at the time of the swap? I thought maybe 24v related so I added 24v to the white wire in MDD harness and grounded to the system. No change. I made my own harness but verified it three times to the MDD pinout with a multimeter. System spins up, no video.
so, I did some digging, an equivilent system from today would be an amd athlon 3000g, but with 1 of the cpu cores disabled, and 4gb in single channel ram at 1866mhz (you cant go below 4gb on ddr4)
By the way, there are HD video cards from the Radeon series with an AGP interface. Pravda them mostly produced for PC computers But I think you can flash for MAC.
Does the Radeon HD 4670 AGP not work on these? I guess that's not a huge surprise given its release date. I'd also recommend the browser extension h264ify since the 7000 series do support h.264 decoding.
I think that graphics card is the one I was using when I first started playing Minecraft. Sadly I gave it to my (now ex) girlfriend's sibling and recently had to buy another for my Pentium 4 machine. It doesn't work though and I think two of the caps are bad :(
I was going to comment on the flashing bios. But I see you got that. I remember a whole story about that including the mfgs. of the video card locking it out. So when you tried to flash the mac bios onto the card in the pc. It wouldn't let you anymore.
I'm surprised you commented on how quiet the system is. When I had a flashed 7800gs (I think it was BFG brand) in my MDD back in the day, it was absurdly loud. WEEEEEEEE!!!!!
I actually bought one of the 2003 models to try to make the most powerful native Mac OS 9 machine ever but I still can’t source a dual CPU daughterboard. I also wanna try something extreme and make a PCB adapter to be able to solder dual 1.7GHz 7448s which I found can be bought on Aliexpress except they use different pin connections than the original 7455s. I already have a GeForce4 TI 4600 128MB though unfortunately not the Apple one with the ADC connector but it does have dual DVI ports and S video so that’s nice since it’s the best OS 9 supported card that I can tell.
"mutilating PC parts to work in old macs"
You're out of line, but you're right.
Blurring out the thermal paste made me laugh.
😂
Oooo sooo naughty
CPU paste blurred to avoid Pea size/ Cross style controversy. Lol.
@@megan_alnico 😂
@@megan_alnico I think me and him (Action Retro) liked that comment
Using the tape to cover the pins is a bit risky, it's less risky than cutting the pins, but the tape may come off, and stay inside the agp slot, or you might accidentally cut something other than the tape at the time of trimming. So I recommend using nail enamel, a simple drop. If something goes wrong, you apply acetone, and try again. If you want to undo the mod, you pass acetone, and rewrite the firmware.
This has never happened. Use electrical tape. Have been doing this with ati cards since 2006
@@goclunker It happened to me, I needed to buy a dentist tool and a magnifying glass to remove the tape from agp slot.
@@pedromascarenas me too
@@pedromascarenas And it never happened to me and I did this for well over eight years. In fact if it ever did fall off what you did in the simple tooth pick would’ve solved your problem
Geekbench does not test graphics at all. Only CPU and RAM.
He's surprised at the geekbench score not improving, and then surprised again at the better minecraft performance. Like, dude... it's a graphics card, a way better one at that, of course it will perform better in graphically intensive tasks xD
69 likes, Nice.
I think in that comment he meant that the gpu would close the gap between the 2 systems overall, not necessarily on geekbench
Can someone please give him an award for "Advanced Hand Gestures" ? 😂😂😂
Next to Adrian, 8Bit-Guy and Retro Recipes he is one of the best retro TH-camrs !!
Hahaha thanks
Don’t forget LGR! He’s the PC version of Action Retro
@@WalterMan Yup LGR, and Retro Man Cave as well. All these retro tech guys are fave channels on YT.
Xyqx
@@andrer2274 nice, gonna check out
Oh my god you had obstacles at almost every turn 😆
But yeah that performance improvement is MASSIVE. That's a machine you could legitimately play Minecraft (and probably a bunch of other games like Doom 3) perfectly.
Also THANK YOU for not making any permanent changes to that very nice 7800GS haha
Yeah lol MC versions before 1.10 because the card can't handle such rendering and 1.13+ requires OGL 2.0
@@cheedam8738 mine craft 1.8.90 ppc works just fine and actually gives better fps then 1.2.5
@@amdintelxsniperx interesting
It will actually run PREY, a xb360 title amazingly
@@goclunker yep I play prey on my power Mac g5s .
I know this is kinda irrelevant to the video but that SGI Indy you have is such a cool system.
I’d love to have _anything_ SGI someday for my own collection
48 C isn't that hot the real question is how hot does it get under load.
He has so much to learn about airflow and cooling, that i wish i could explain to him.
Majority of the time I agree, but it's always best to look up the data sheet for the parts in your system to see what their max rated temps are as I've seen lower power laptop CPUs have a max temp of 60c before they start to thermal throttle. But as someone else said he still seems to have a lot to learn about cooling.
@@CommodoreFan64 these are PowerPC chips from Apple. they tend to run much much hotter then other chips. 48c on powerpc is great lol but like I said the question is what temp does it run under load
@@tohur I'm well aware of that, and that was part of my point is to check what's the max temperature of the chip you are working with is both at idle, and under load.
Wow, you've got an Indy! That's really cool.
I get as excited for these Saturday vids the way I used to bail out of bed to run watch Mr.Wizard as a kid
This powermac g4 can make some older windows laptops jealous with the fps in minecraft XD
Great video - and what a beast! Would love to see some more games running on this card. Oh, and that ATX adapter cable definitely has an air of "cursed Mac" about it, so I think it's very fitting.
Unrelated, but it was fun to spot the little unintended cameo from myself in the bottom left at 10:52 😁
Fascinating! I got a Mirror G4 recently and in that same lot I got a 7800GS AGP so this sure makes me want to try this very process (maybe without all the unplanned detours haha). Great video!
Have to admit, I can absolutely dig this kind of modding, especially to keep such a beast running. Makes me wonder what the fastest possible AGP card that could be modded to work on a Macintosh would be. I'm inclined to say a 7950GT, but those are unicorns on the market as it is. Maybe a Radeon 4670? Hard not to wonder at this point.
Videos like this are encouraging and making me want to get on my own projects, too.
Rtx 3090
NoCrea AGP, not PCIe
From my GPU flashing days, I seem to vaguely remember the 79x0 series did not work, 7800 GTX was the fastest you could get for PPC (and Quadro FX 4500 for Pro OpenGL)... On the Radeon side I think it was an X1900 GT...
It's nice about how the power connecter on the flexATX PSU fit in the Power Mac's case, but it does NOT look stock because the power connector is upside down compared to the original PSU's :)
That rom flashing took him under a minute in the video but we all all know how frustrating the actual process was.... respect!
Ehm. That was an SGI Indy. I need to search the channel for videos after this video, or we need an SGI video in the future :)
Yes, wuz telling my cat the same thing. Vid pleez!!!
It was funny how we was ignoring it to look for his DOS machine.. just get outta my way Indy!
My dual Pentium3 Tualatin 1.4 workstation from 2001 (for which I paid almost $10,000 in today's money back then)
after the upgrades over the years, now plays TH-cam full screen, hahaha.
Radeon AGP HDMI, Sata2 PCI SSD, maxed out 4GB of RAM, triple boot XP/7/Lubuntu
For something that could edit 1080p video back in the day with relative ease, it's ironic marveling at them playing TH-cam at low resolutions today.
H.264 will eat your CPU for lunch even on modern systems. It's only usable due to ASIC acceleration. Phones would have battery lifes measured in minutes and burn your hand if they had to software decode video.
@@gajbooks that's very extreme, i use software decode to watch h.264 hi10p videos (no hwdec exists for those) on my phone (from 2018) and it's completely fine
@@zavier6362 it might be fine, but your battery is probably depressed from the current draw.
I don't remember video editing being easy on these machines, certainly not 1080p, but I didn't optimize my G4s at the time.
I had the exact same case on my Windows XP hand-me-down! Love seeing it here
that dell system you used to flash the nvidia card may have an option in the bios to disable the onboard video when graphics card is detected in the slot.
Amazing. Brings back memories of upgrading my PowerMac G4 tower and Cube ~15+ years ago. Only now much harder!
I was temped to do one now, but your video convinced me otherwise.
Never the less fun to see, keep it up, will watch for your Cube Dual G4 upgrade!
I have had 2 different 7800 GS cards for my 1.42GHz MDD. Mines got a copper heatsink, as the first version I flashed had aluminum and had heat issues. The copper BFG 7800GS worked great!
Hey, interesting thing in this video at time index around 5:00... you have an SGI Indy in that closet of yours... where are the videos on it? :) Will there be any? They have a special place in my heart, the old SGI machines, and I would love to see you put out some videos with them! ^_^
This hand is so expressive, he could be an actor.
I had a MDD dual 1.42ghz G4 with a 7800GS, played hours of Homeworld 2 maxed at 1080p on it. It was such a great machine. Amazed you managed to get the cpu cool with the 1.2ghz cooler, I don't know if even the copper tower cooler of the 1.42 could have done it [let alone fit] but heat was a well known issue for any mac running a top end G4 upgrade from Sonnet or Powerlogix. [G3's had it easier; The fastest 1.1ghz 750GX G3 upgrade actually used less power than the stock G3's running half the speed, such was the advancement of IBM process nodes over comparable Motorola/Freescale nodes at the time]
Love this. you've gone from snapping ram clips off an SE/30 and making me cringe to building absolutely immaculate computers and making me mad with envy in a very short time! amazing
Amazing video, I´ll try to get my hands on one vintage mac one of these days due to your hacking enthusiasm. Good job!
Great videos! It’s good these machines are still in use.
5:07 A SGI Indy! I am hunting for one for years, but if I find one for sale it is very expensive or if it is cheap, it is already sold to someone.
Nice! I just emailed the seller on eBay about an ATX adapter for B/W G3s and Quicksilver G4s. G4 power supply is dead and the G3 is starting to smell a bit... odd.
Gotta love working with old tech. "Hmm, this thing doesn't work. (some time later) Ok, fixed! Let's try...oh, something else broke. Let's fix it. (some time later) Ok, so now let's...OH FOR F....!" 🤣
So true lol 😂
People often don't appreciate how truly Plug&Play everything is today. Except for maybe external WiFi adapters, nothing ever seems to have drivers for those out of the box...
@@GdotWdot I've had more trouble with internal PCI-E/mini PCI-E WiFi adapters than external USB WiFi adapters, as in Linux many USB ones are just plug N' play. But yes WiFi, along with Bluetooth have been my biggest headaches over the years no matter the OS.
@@CommodoreFan64 oddly I have the opposite experience. Linux does not natively recognise the USB adapter I have, but recognised my internal motherboard Wi-Fi just fine!
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 Like I said it can be hit, and miss. In my experience it's been mostly 5Ghz WiFi, and newer Bluetooth adapters above ver. 4.1 that I've had trouble with the most, that, and devices that don't use Broadcom chipsets.
The evga 7800gs was the first gpu. That I bought when I built my first gaming PC. I got it open box for $100 off of sticker price. Great card at the time. Everyone was going pcie for gpus.
Oh man I love GPUJune, found new cool underrated TH-camrs
also at 7:12 is that capacitor leaning harder than the leaning tower? 8:38 also the smoothest molex plug ever bruh
The relief and joy in your voice when it works! Can totally relate 😅
Very good GPU! Mac and Windows 98 compatible! How can you go wrong?
Dude you have a SGI Indy on your shelf! When are you gonna do something with that?
Whenever i watch these videos its like "ok, we are going to install x component.. What are going to need is a screw driver, a pc with dos installed.. _and a interstellar quantum superposition satellite communication device"
Just like IRL things never go to plan lol
Actually, the best GPU for that Mac is the 7800 GS 512MB from Gainward, which also had a better chip with more pipes unlocked.
Yea a card for which only 2000 were made and generally sought after by collectors.
@@MrKillswitch88 Found one here for $25 lol.
@@MrKillswitch88 lol i had one on a crackhead athlon x2 build about 8-9 years ago. didnt know anything about hardware at the time. went to overclock it, ran into thermal issues so i just took a 92mm fan and screwed it into the heatsink. worked like a charm . mostly.
Is it fairly close to a PS3 GPU?
@@leighbyford635 Id say its sorta comparable.. but also not.. why do you ask?
_Very_ cool, man! This is quite similar to my own maxed out MDD! It too sports a 7800GS, but is a little weaker on the CPU side. It's rocking the original dual 1.25GHz 7455 overclocked to 1.5GHz. It's no 7448 with 1MB of super quick on-die cache, but it _does_ have a whopping 4MB (total) of kinda-slow L3. :P
Hey Action Retro, I know this might sound like blasphemy to you, but would you ever consider making a new channel called "Action Modern" for more modern Macs? I'd love to see you upgrade more modern Macs (like a 2009 iMac, 2012 Mac Mini and so on) to the max :)
Love this idea!
@@ActionRetro Now would be the time to get the parts and then bank them for 5 years from now when it is retro!
@@BurleyBoar Apple officially calls anything that’s been superseded by a newer model 3+ years ago as being “vintage” :)
Can you boot into Mac OS 9 with the new card?
Love the channel.. because of your channel I now own a MDD! oh the nostalgia 🤣
The video showed him booting into OS 9.2 with the new video card at one point. I don't think you get 3D acceleration in 9.2 though. No driver support.
Still don’t understand why you didn’t use a fire gl x3/ x800xt. So easy to flash (no need for a PC) and just as fast.
Also, 48 degrees is really cold for anything under load, wouldn’t worry about it at all
Did anyone ever do a comparison that you know of?
@@ActionRetro honestly, not sure if I’ve seen one with both cards on mac, but I could loan you the flashed fire gl x3 I use in my G5 if you want to compare them for a video. Definitely destroys the 9800pro in my upgraded sawtooth.
EDIT: try this one barefeats.com/mutant3a.html Looks like the 7800 is faster in most games. Guess it was worth the trouble to ensure “fastest” instead of merely “ridiculously overpowered”
back in the day, we did a small business in buying cheap bulk PC agp and even some pci cards, and flashing them to work in mac's, a local mac shop sold so many for us, at one point we genuinely couldnt get enough cards....dude was selling them to other shops who then marked them up even more..
at the time, some of the card couldnt actually be bought in the 'mac' version because nobody had stock, so few were made, mostly people wanted radeon cards back then, and, my gods, the number of radeon LE and other similar cards i flashed... i got so i could do the commands without thought, muscle memory... but hey, more the doubling our money, and the shop then marking them up and dealing with support issues, mostly installing them.
anyway, it was a fun time, more then a few mac owners who came directly to us, were very greatful, one guy owned a business with 36 macs(regretted going mac mostly due to support issues), and, bought all 48 cards we had ready that day, "if any fail, i can just swap them" talk about a windfall....he paid us what the shop quoted him on price, then realized he knew who had to be doing the work and figured he might be able to get them direct... shop owner was not upset... infact... that shop had gotten alot of business from the fellow due to the macs having commonly known issues, often it would take apple months to provide replacement parts... so bad the dude started getting boards from failed units and having them repaired when possible, so he had a stock of parts to use and cycle in/out as apple decided to provide parts... (they are very inconsistent with that stuff im told, to this day...that same shops still around...the genius bar use to call them and ask questions..LOL...)
anyway, this kinda stuff is always fun.
i also like unlocking pipes or features, flashing/modding cards into quadro/firegl or the other direction, stuff like that can be alot of fun...
if there is a quadro version of the 7800gs with 2x the ram, you may want to try and do a bios mod on it... i mean... its likely to be faster after mod, and the 7800 512mb cards did handle stuff better then the 256mb versions, knew a few people who had them....who regret selling them when they did... those models are worth more now in good shape then what they got for them...LOL...
Wow that's such a cool story, thanks for sharing that!
48C doesn't seem very hot compared to any of the Intel machines I've used.
Do 3D graphics still work in OS 9 with this card?
Hi! . I don't own any Apple equipment, but I really enjoy your efforts to revitalize these nice retro machines.
Really nice video. Welcome to 2009 .. I did this but with the extra fiddling around to get a 7950 working. It comes up as a 7800, but the RAM and GPU clocks are >100mhz faster than a 7800 is. So it's free. Did it with dual 1.8ghz 7888b's running with liquid cooling @2.24ghz. Was my main machine for a few years. Really nice to see another similar system.
Now that's taking it to the limit , I always felt it could be done... read somewhere, I believe on Hrutkay Mods PPC Projects, that if you can find the 7888 chips, they would better respond to overclocking above 2Ghz . But there's only so much that can pass through the original 1.42 Dual motherboard whose speed is 167Mhz.
The limiting factor on the pci bus is going to be what makes or breaks that controller card. It depends... Exited to see your results
I'd be very interested in graphics cards for 68k Macs that would give them HDMI out. is that a thing yet, if so where do I find them? cheers :)
I have a LC 630 with a PDS slot that would be nice to fire up with a more modern video connection :)
I was struck. You're showing off TH-cam on that computer with all those upgrades and the joy of it being watchable 480p@20ish, while I'm watching it on my power sipping handheld smartphone at 1080p@60. It's really ridiculous how in my lifetime computers have already come so far.
Dream computer. I heard that the AGP Radeon HD 4000 series cards might work in the MDD in Linux :).
If I had the MDD I'd try it, i think I have the GPU somewhere.
Man! I wish I had someone with your expertise in my area... Trying to make a working PowerMac G4 MDD out of 3 computers. Only one has a working power supply. First thing I'll try is swapping out the ram. (no startup chime but fan powers on). Next I'll try swapping out the graphics cards... does it make a difference if I use the DVI or actual monitor for the G4? Also does it make a difference if I use usb 2.0 windows keyboard and microsoft mouse???
What's the result?
I still have an old 6400GS (or some other 6xxx GS) lying in my drawer. Unfortunately, it had a case of "capacitor-gate." Several caps a long time ago decided to expose their innards on it.
I still have an old ES1869 ISA sound card (was in my first Windows 95 beige box), an ISA 56k Fax modem (not any of that winmodem rubbish!), an ATI Radeon 9200 AGP card, a Soundblaster Live 5.1 PCI card, an SB Audigy 2 PCI card. And several TV tuner cards. Both sound cards still work,, and so do the tv tuners.. :)
Three increasingly odd coincidences in this video: 1) similar MDD upgrade project as mine, down to the same PSU choice (though I'm sticking with the geforce 4ti GPU for OS 9 games along with some voodoo 2s) 2) the exact same no-name low profile micro atx case PC that I use for similar projects 3) transit map mousepad for the MDD (though mine is for SEPTA Regional Rail, a public transit system in Philadelphia).
Thank you for the uncomfortably familiar content!
BTW, it may be in the plans already, but the ADC Apple Studio CRT is a great match with the MDD. You can use a Gefen DVI to ADC adapter with it, as long as you use a strong enough power supply (and a vga input). Otherwise there's a PCB you can order to build your own adapter. That latter option would be an interesting video on its own.
The fact that that the custom firmware was already made and tested by someone else and all you had to do was a find a compatible card, made the upgrade suspense rather anti-climatic but gaming difference was clearly visible. A worthwhile upgrade.
have a look at the bios settings, it'll probably just automatically change it to use the discreet graphics.
It would also be great to replace the High Air flow fans in my 933mhz Digital audio, I hear air more than anything, would like to also extend the Digital audio speakers from my iMac G4 to use with it too :)
I flashed a ATI Radeon 7500 64mb for my Sawtooth back in the day. It was a nice upgrade from the Rage 128 Pro.
Although the rage 128 pro was already an awesome Card Back in the day. I have one in my Windows 98 SE Machine and I can Play half Life on that Machine with reasonable performance, although only at 1024*768 on an old LCD panel
I do know, it's some time and this is kinda lika a mummy I'm about to resurrect, but I gotta say: Thanks to your pointers I've managed to do that for my own G4 MDD - got the adapter, got one of my old spare mainboards with XEONs and AGP slot reactivated, tried out a few nvflash versions till I 've found a good one able to flash it and bam, flashed the graphics adapter. Next I've disabled pins 3 and 11 et voila, a mac-suitable nvidia graphics adapter was born. Thanks a lot!
Would love to see the gainward bliss 512mb AGP card given a go, there were some documentation on trying to get it working a few years back
Excellent video, well done. Would it be possible to expand your testing to other games like Doom 3, Quake 4 or Halo Combat Evolved? Especially the first two where released towards the end of the PowerPC area and really struggled even on a G5 Quad with a Quadro 4500 GPU. Would be interesting to see how the 7800 will perform. Thanks for your consideration.
getting around 60 fps in halo on my g5 quad with fx 4500 my ati x1900 gets a bit better . doom 3 gets 60 at high same with quake 4 in most areas havent tried prey yet
@@amdintelxsniperx Hi Chris, many thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I had to sell that G5 a while ago, so I can't test again. From memories, I would be barely above 30 fps in Doom 3 or Quake 4 on 1024x768. Not sure if I had a driver- / software- issue or if there was something wrong with the almost 20 year old hardware. 🤨
I might blur out future thermal compound applications in my future videos.
GPU at 17:36 is a variant of a ATI rage 128 pro i got mine out of a G4 sawtooth
also how tf is a g4 more powerful then my i5 2400 on mc ?????
I have the same Mac except it is a G4 and has a red gpu and a duel core on a literal circuit board. Do you know anything abt that
Love these videos. Going to have to start a drinking game for every time something goes monumentally wrong. That said, this video might have put me in the hospital.
With all these computer months, I wonder what will be next? Amiga August?
That would be awesome
Next year we need to have an April fools stunt where you change your channel name to Druaga3, and a bunch of other TH-camrs will do the same but with different numbers.
Hey smokers!
This is relevant to my interests.
One day I went to the local computer shop, intending to buy a low-end Mac laptop, something (relatively) cheap. Still not sure what happened, as I walked out with a MDD, the 23" monitor, and the clear bubble speakers. It was right after Apple slashed the price on both as the G5 was about to be released.
Even so, it still cost $500 million, lol, and when something is that pricey, Imma need a lot more than twenty years' use from it!
Awesome video as always! :D How well does the graphics card work with OS 9?
Seems perfect so far! I haven't tested different resolutions yet though.
@@ActionRetro Wow! That is so cool! Really must be the most powerful OS 9 machine out there! :D
For the youtube benchmarks, does that browser let you right (alternate) click and pick "Stats for nerds"? It gives plenty of good information and tells you when frames are dropped.
OK, not sure if this mod is worth the trade-off with no hardware acceleration in OS9.
There are nVidia drivers in the extensions folder but they don't seem to do anything.
BTW, successfully flashed the ROM on my 7800gs WITHOUT needing a second graphics card. Also, another trick for disabling pins 3 & 11 on the card is to use nail polish on the unwanted pins.
Interested to hear you thoughts on the lack of hardware acceleration in OS9. I'm guessing you have the same issue? Leopard works very well with the fan even spinning down when its not under load!!
awesome that you were able to flash the ROM without needing to use a second Graphics Card. Would appreciate (many others too) if you could share with us using this thread, how you did it... I guess, writing in Terminal.
@@justice4You2 Hey mate, nope, I am rubbish in terminal. I used an old AGP PC board with nvflassh..
I have another 7800gs card that I can have another crack at to refresh my memory. I remember that nvflash is very picky with the cards it works with (need to match the card with the version of nvflash) and there was some trial and error.
U need to pick up a 4600ti and flash it if you want the best card that will also work with os9 and accelerated graphics (which is what I use now instead of the 7800gs).
Let me know if you would like the version of nvflash and the rom and I will figure out a way to get it to you.
@@MyNameIsPlayer2 I saw on another chat that NV Flash is just as difficult. I do have a tried and tested procedure to flash my RADEON X850 Pro AGP card which is on the shelf waiting for me to execute this project. So I'm just comparing alternatives. My model GPU (native Windows) is HDMI in-out capable and offers the GH Acceleration that should render HD quality TH-cam output over TenFourFox.
@@justice4You2 How does that go with hardware acceleration in os9?
I haven't had much experience with Radeon cards.
I dived into everything Mac in 2004 when I purchased the MDD G4 1.42Ghz Power Mac. I therefore have no interest in OS 9 and its legacy software. So I don't mind that my G4 doesn't natively dual boot.
The made for PC only GPU products of those days were always so much a better offering than anything for the Mac offered even though we were using PCI and AGP as well.
Love the Jackass reference. Keep up with all the great content.
So I spent 300 dollars upgrading my graphics card so I could watch TH-cam in 360p, totally worth it!
It would be awesome if you can get the power Mac G5 With the best graphics card available for it even doing some hacks to make it more powerful
Well is there a Mac BIOS for a Ati HD3850 or HD4670? These should be the fastest AGP cards out there. I looked up some benchmarks and they claim the HD3850 should be 50% faster than the 7900 GS.
As a member of London Underground staff I approve of the mouse mat sir!
Video cards have the ability to hardware accelerate video formats such as VP9, H264, AVC, etc. To unload the processor on the G4 you need to install such video card with hardware video acceleration for watching videos on TH-cam and other sites. To find out whether it supports hardware accelerated video card or not, there is a program DXVA Checker.
Those machines use PowerPC processors with miniature Phase Change Cooling units that help the processors run cool.
I had a Sonnetech upgrade G4 dual that came with a fan, which meant the ridiculously large heatsink could be left out. A bit more room !
For a MDD?
@@AmanOU2be Yes sir. After 2 years I got me a newer mac, and gave the MDD to a colleague, and 5 years later I found the old heatsink in a storage closet !
You might want to look into sugru moldable glue to fix some of the cracking plastic molding around your connectors instead of tape
oh thanks!!
@ActionRetro, I just performed an ATX swap on my G4 MDD DP1.42 and my Radeon 9000 pro refuses to display anything. What are the odds mine failed just like yours? I've ordered a 7800GS to replace it, but for the moment I am dead in the water. Did you dig into your issue at the time of the swap? I thought maybe 24v related so I added 24v to the white wire in MDD harness and grounded to the system. No change. I made my own harness but verified it three times to the MDD pinout with a multimeter. System spins up, no video.
so, I did some digging, an equivilent system from today would be an amd athlon 3000g, but with 1 of the cpu cores disabled, and 4gb in single channel ram at 1866mhz (you cant go below 4gb on ddr4)
By the way, there are HD video cards from the Radeon series with an AGP interface. Pravda them mostly produced for PC computers But I think you can flash for MAC.
Check/Replace the 390uF Cap in that Samsung PSU! I’ve had 2 fail in this way, ideally they should be completely recapped but start there.
Does the Radeon HD 4670 AGP not work on these? I guess that's not a huge surprise given its release date.
I'd also recommend the browser extension h264ify since the 7000 series do support h.264 decoding.
I think that graphics card is the one I was using when I first started playing Minecraft. Sadly I gave it to my (now ex) girlfriend's sibling and recently had to buy another for my Pentium 4 machine. It doesn't work though and I think two of the caps are bad :(
This is so cool. Great upgrade!
Did anyone else notice the "upgraded" CPU heatsink from the MDD 1ghz edition? That wasn't there last time......
Oh yeah lol, I swapped in the better heatsink.
I was going to comment on the flashing bios. But I see you got that. I remember a whole story about that including the mfgs. of the video card locking it out. So when you tried to flash the mac bios onto the card in the pc. It wouldn't let you anymore.
what a real test for a Mac? try running X-plane 8 or 9 on the G4 and 10 and 11 on Intel macs
I'm surprised you commented on how quiet the system is. When I had a flashed 7800gs (I think it was BFG brand) in my MDD back in the day, it was absurdly loud. WEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Sounds like you had the wrong rom on it. There was a rom specifically to tackle the fan running full blast
Hi, does the graphics card works at 100% on OS9, thx.
I seen at the end the Power Light was blinking at the end. Due to power supply mod or Heat?
I actually bought one of the 2003 models to try to make the most powerful native Mac OS 9 machine ever but I still can’t source a dual CPU daughterboard. I also wanna try something extreme and make a PCB adapter to be able to solder dual 1.7GHz 7448s which I found can be bought on Aliexpress except they use different pin connections than the original 7455s. I already have a GeForce4 TI 4600 128MB though unfortunately not the Apple one with the ADC connector but it does have dual DVI ports and S video so that’s nice since it’s the best OS 9 supported card that I can tell.
They sell adapter boards.
It is pretty easy to pop the pins out of power connectors and put them in another spot. That is how I did it. No need for more wiring clutter.
17:48 thats almost my exact monitor! (except mine has a bit of silver on the stand)
I don't know about you, but i welcome our English gesturing hand overlords..
I wonder when Linus Tech tips' hand is going to make its debut
What are all the months of computer terms? Like GPU June or Marchintosh etc.
Looking forward to that Sil3112 hacked into classic!