I still use my G4 MDD 2X1Ghz Powermac almost daily, I have a SCSI Nikon film scanner that only works in that system. My PM runs great as if it was its first day at job. I have three HD, one of those has OS9 and runs really fast! I love my G4!
First thought before clicking this video: Side panels can be replaced, but how's the power supply? Lmao I'm glad it works. $20 is cheap compared to what folks are asking for on sites like eBay, especially since it functions. Sweet find!
The power supply fans on mine were awfully noisy too, I took a gamble and removed the two 60mm fans inside the PSU, replacing them with a 120mm noctua fan that sits half over the psu and half over the cards. It limits the max lenght of expansion cards but it made my MDD whisper quiet.
to improve the air flow on the CPU heatsink you can add 2 6cm x 1cm fans between the heatsink and the metal of the case and then it can work very well and silently even for hours.
A few years ago, I picked up about 20 of those MDDs from a couple of different sellers. Sadly, about 1/4 of them had bad power supplies and ended up going to recycling. I know that the power supplies can be recapped and brought back to life, but it just wasn't cost effective when I could only get about $125 for them when it cost almost $100 just to fix the power supplies. And yes, most of the people I sold them to were audio geeks who wanted to use older break-out hardware, like the Digidesign Digi 002.
I have a feeling these MDD's might be worth more in the future simply because a lot of them will get thrown away because of dead power supplies. I have two MDD's with Acbel power supplies that I recapped. I also changed the power supply fans which happens to be where most of the noise comes from. I also put fresh thermal on the cpu's and now my systems are super quiet. And by they way, I'm one of those audio geeks that runs Didigesign protools on them. The stereo type fits. 🤣
Very cool! I still have my MDD dual 1.25 but haven't fired it up since around 2010 I think. It's now packed away in the original box in my storage unit. Great machine.
Ha, I spent at least 10 minutes shouting at the screen "IT'S THE PSU THAT IS SO LOUD, NOT THAT FAN!" - currently I'm just scratching my head over my own MDD that sat in the attic for 15 years but I just can't get rid of... considered an ATX/Hackintosh conversion, but apparently that's much more nasty on the MDD to get done than with a Quicksilver. So I guess my only option is a retro gaming system or such. Pity I gave away my other MDD with ATI 9800 Pro, since the 9000 Pro is pretty weak for gaming, and all the resources I had for flashing PC cards back in the day are gone now. SSD (on a simple IDE/SATA Adapter) made the system a lot snappier, definitely a cheap upgrade I don't regret spending $20 on, also an USB 2 card is a must, but from here on I'm unsure. The worst part about the MDD is still the PSU noise, it's unbearable and I'm not sure if I want to mess around with fans inside PSUs.
I still have two G4 MDDs, a graphite one and a G5 power mac all in a lockup. Love those MDDs & looking forward to resurrecting it with the cool modern developments like bluescsi
I have two MDDs and two Quicksilvers (though one of the Quicksilvers is thoroughly borked and I parted it out to upgrade the other). Love the PowerMac G4 in all its iterations. The MDD is the nicest-looking though, imo. Still very fun machines to play around with. A dual core version with a decent GPU can easily run Leopard (or better yet, Sorbet).
@Mac84 Try using a pair of needle-nose pliers to unplug the plastic Molex power connectors from the hard drives. Essentially, open up the pliers, place the connector between the jaws so the sides of the connector are against the jaw's teeth and use the pliers as a prybar to disconnect. I did that a lot and it saves your fingers from getting gouged/hurt when trying to unplug.
I bought one in a Car Boot Sale in the UK, cost me £25, in almost imaculate condition. Maxxed out the ram and applied fresh paste, runs lovely, currently running a PowerPC Linux on it, runs nicely for its age.
I have two of these babies, a 1 gigahertz and a 800 one. The power supply on the 1gig just died just a few weeks ago, when the power lead fell out the back while I was moving it while it was still running. There was a loudish crackle, and it refused to boot after that. That is one thing I've found with a few of these G4 towers, the power connecter lead works itself loose over the years, and starts arcing which eventually kills the PSU. Every so often you have to check that the connector is seated firmly, and I had forgotten to do that for some time. I've had the same issue with a Quick Silver which is also now dead. I love the MDDs, but they are a bit long in the tooth now, and can't really run anything apart from old games. I used mine for scanning images and film negatives.
A PowerMac G4 is *always* worth it. I've been using a Quicksilver G4 (originally 733Mhz, upgraded over the years to dual 867Mhz) regularly since 2005. It's still a fun machine, despite having some hiccups doing things like TH-cam and whatnot.
I worked at a newspaper, the newsroom was all mac based, we had a lot of MDD machines doing things like video editing and design. Reporters had G3 iMacs and later g4 eMacs.
I'll be putting a full set of Avid Media Composer Meridien cards in mine soon. Excellent video! Just located the breakout boxes and audio interfaces as well as the custom cables needed to set it all up again.
Still got two G4's and a G5 one of the G4 has power problems need to sort it as it's the better machine and my G5 has just gone down think it's processor problem just ordered second hand one and power supply for the G4 Thanks for you videos a great help when I have to change things on these old but very useful machines. By the way I'm a technically illustrator and graphic design artist now retired but still using Photoshop to enhance my photos.
I have a few BTX style Dell computers with dead mainboards. Viewing that MDD board from behind the cards was an "AH-HA!" moment as I could get some MDD boards and carve up these Dells to make the MDD boards fit. Upgrade! LOL
I have three G4s... my first Mac, an original model iMac G4 (700MHz), followed by the last model 12" PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz). A few years after that, I was given a Graphite (AGP) PowerMac which had a 1.7GHz Sonnet upgrade card I plan to install MorphOS on the PowerMac, when I get round to it...
I supported a lot of these things back in the day. Part of the fan noise is the fan control Apple used would send the fans into overdrive if it thinks anything is hinky. Running it with the case door open could easily have been the trigger for that, though it could also have been the fall or some bit of gunk on the motherboard. But even then the fans were just not built for noise control but for power. Quiet operation was for Windows machines back then.
We had a Sawtooth and an MDD in prepress back in the day. Solid machines, I believe our MDD was twin 733's. We mostly ran Quark, InDesign, Photoshop & Illustrator on them.
Brings back memories... I still have a couple Quicksilver towers and also a couple cubes in storage. They were all working some years ago - and I might be interested in giving some of them a new good home. (One of my Cubes came with a 17" flat LCD screen and the eyeball speakers)
I just bought a G4 MDD 2003 single 1.25 GHz! Luckily in much better condition than this one, it booted up fine and has been great other than a spare video card that started sending me to Open Firmware until I removed it. Really gonna enjoy Mac OS 9 gaming on it! I really appreciated your video to help me learn more about the machine and servicing it.
The Dual 1.25 FW800 MDD was pretty much my introduction to OS X! I picked up a used one in early 2010, which I used as a daily driver for about eight or nine months before I dropped a Core 2 Duo upgrade into my XP system at the time. Still got some occasional use for a few things over the next couple years, too. A year later I also got a used mid-2005 iBook G4 which I ended up using fairly heavily until about 2015 (even in tandem with my 2011 MBP which got me through until September 2022 or so, when its 6750M unfortunately bit the dust), and even until I got a new scanner a couple months ago I used it to run a scanner/printer that didn't want to play nice with Windows 10! I liked 'em both, but -man- was it a pain to upgrade the iBook's hard drive.
I bought a Mac IIfx and the PSU fan sounded like that. I had to use noise cancelling headphones while the machine was running. I've since replaced it with a Noctua and it's actually usable now without going crazy
I want to get an older iMac to play Diablo 2 and Civilization 3 complete on it. My older Macs all need repair and will get repaired this year but only my 2010 iMac can play those. I can't remember what version of Mac OS you need to play them. Lion I think. I have a 2005 Mac mini but I don't think it will run those. I does work. I use it to play music and hope to put the wifi & bluetooth upgrade in it this year.
Just a tip you might want to try, I had a case broke similar to that once. I bent it back a bit too far (on purpose) and made a wad of ribbon epoxy (it's super strong epoxy clay). I pressed it into the hole broken area from behind, and let it harden. Then I drilled a small hole, and was able to thread the screw into that pretty well. Not the prettiest, but it wasn't visible at all from the outside, it was pretty sturdy and lasted another 4 or 5 years before I had to fix it again. (also my fault. it slipped out of my hands on a staircase and replicated the original damage, basically.)
I had almost every power mac G4 Tower apple made in one configuration or another since I was an IT, the only Apple Repair technician in our Computer repair Shop.
I have a gigabit Ethernet dual 450mhz kitted out with a gig of ram, Zip drive, Sony bootable SuperDrive and dual 400gb drives. I use it as one of my bridge machines even after I’ve had much newer and faster models . It’s fast enough
Had a MDD G4; still have a non-MDD G4, a Gossamer G3, an iMac DV G3, and a 2012 Mac Pro. The non-MDD G4 was the first machine I had OS X on and where I learned Cocoa programming.
Me looking and chuckling: 😆he forgot the fan! A minute later: "ok, everything is back as it should, I think" - except you forgot the optical drive metal shield this time!. 😅 I have one the MDD's too (the dual 1.25GHz fw800-model) and I've taken the fan out and replaced it many times in search of more silent and still effective enough one so plenty of experience of that stuff and forgetting something and then having to do it all again to get everything installed correctly. BTW. the 2 small fans inside the PSU are responsible for most of the noise. And the PSU is rebuldable, no need to wait for it to blow and search a replacement. Replace few capacitors and that is it.
I still have the same maudio card and cables. It was able to output and input hires samples at 96khz; CDAudio is only 44.1. Studio standardized at 48. Nice find.
Well. For the first time I feel I have a version of a computer Mac84 ‘might not have’ depending on the other one you mention. You asked what others had and in no particular order! (It will be in an order, as it must) I have 2x1.2ghz iBook G4 1x1.33ghz iBook G4 1x733mhz G4 QuickSilver 1st Gen. 1x1ghz G4 MDD FW800 and my pride and G4 Glory a Dual 1.42 FW800 G4 MDD. With 4xHDD and two super drives and yes it has a dodgy power supply. I think mainly due to the under wattage of it compared to how much draw there is. I do like though, that it has a proper full copper heat sink and 2GB or Ram. It’s a shame about your new purchase but I’m glad somebody of your Caliber has saved it and it’s got a second wind, so to speak.
Wow, that definitely seems like it was dropped! Nice video! Out of my collection, the G4’s I gave are a quick silver powermac G4, G4 Cube, 17” 1.25GHz iMac G4 (I use this one the most), and an iBook G4
❤Love MDD but yes, so very loud. And swapping fans for quieter ones can be tricky as you'll likely end up limiting the already comprised airflow this case has. Ideally, swap out parts that consume a lot of power (HDDs, swap PS, cooler CPU) and then swap to lesser fans. I've kept my main MDD pretty much stock, though it came with the later model power supply and main fan that were a bit more quiet. Door looks much better! Gotta break out the bondo to fix that hole now! 😀 Also, it looks like the protective plastic covering is still on the front mirror, time for a short showing the peel!
"You can do a lot". I have one of these with a cinema screen and have been trying to find out 'what I can do with it' besides using it as a DVD player.
Used to have two MDDs! My good one was a dual 1.25/2MB overclocked to 1.5GHz and had a GeForce 7800GS, 2GB of RAM, and 300GB 10K RPM SCSI drive. I actually traded that machine in for a big honkin' 2004 era Dell Dimension XPS, simply because the XPS had a super rare P4 Extreme Edition chip in it - the 3.2GHz with 2MB of L3. The included FX 5950 Ultra video card was also on my "most wanted" list, so it was well worth the trade. So now I'm down to one MDD, but it's nowhere near as nice. Just a dual 1GHz/1MB with a Radeon 9000 Pro and 1GB of RAM (one of the DIMM slots is dead). But hey, it still fires up and is great for OS9 and MorphOS.
Nice machine! Good to see it still works and having all those extras inside is a nice bonus! The G4 systems are awesome, I currently use my PowerBook G4 and have tried out Tiger and Leopard. They run quite well considering they aren’t exactly new machines anymore.
Great video! I’d love to see the SSD upgrade. Could you replace the fan in this Mac with a Noctua fan, or would a Noctua fan not have the right connectors?
The case fan is a higher spec in terms of air flow than the noctuas (it was loud here because the door was open and it was ramping up to try and cool the CPU - which it couldn't). Someone on yt said theirs became unstable when they put in a quieter fan.
I personally prefer the Digital AudIo G4. Mainly because at the time I aquired mine the MDD was made of unatainium and the quicksilver was such a negligible power change over what you could add with third party processor upgrades. The reason why you were having so much trouble is that when it impacted it likely shifted the case out of square making it more of a trapezoid than a rectangle at the impact corner. You may be able to lightly compress the top front and lower lower rear corners and push the impacted Corner out a little.
Fantastic machine, but you were using the VGA output of the ATI 7000 PCI, instead of the much more powerful ATI 9000Pro AGP. Just move the monitor cable. To suppress the noise you need to replace the 3 noisy fans, the large one and the ones in the power supply. You will have to change the thermal paste on the 2 CPUs; to improve the air flow on the CPU heatsink you can add 2 6cm x 1cm fans between the heatsink and the metal of the case and then it can work very well and silently even for hours. The power supply is a very oversized 360watt; the entire Mac rarely exceeds 200W of total absorption. Personally, on my 3 MDDs I installed two Pioneer 110 DVD units for serial duplication of DVDs and with only 2 RAM modules of 1GB each I brought the memory expansion to a maximum of 2GB. The memories required are DDR 333 from 256 up to 1GB but DDR 400 also work excellently (I used the Pentium 4 ones) In a 3D environment with software such as Lightwave3D, Cinema4D, Maya performs very well while it is an excellent companion for long video editing sessions with FinalcutPro 5.1. I highly recommend it. Thanks to OSX and the power of the 2 G4 CPUs equipped with large 3rd level caches, you can perform 3D rendering while proceeding with video editing, without problems. I advise against the use of SSD because the bottleneck will always be the SATA/IDE adapter. I have a video showing the operation of my dual 1250Mhz MDD with Leopard pushed to the extreme with many apps open and running but I noticed that the Mac has better feedback with Tiger even if it lacks some convenient features. th-cam.com/video/hh3Gsx8Urnw/w-d-xo.html
I have an G4 iMac, a 2003 MDD (which I think was the last model that could officially boot Mac OS 9), and a couple of Sawtooths. I prefer to run Mac OS 9 so I’ll have to try MacOS9Lives on the iMac that doesn’t officially support it. Thanks for the tip and for another great video.
Hey what a great opportunity to swap on a set of frosted G3 top/side plastics and handles! They should all swap right over yeah? Folks used to do that in the applefritter/macmods days and i always thought it looked pretty smart.
After you fix the G4 then what do you do with it. Besides what most to with old computers but play games. Is it worth editing videos or making music with it and other Mac software at the time.
I picked up an MDD from an eBay seller, and had the issue with booting Mac OS 9. The issue was that the seller had put in an image that was partitioned without the Mac OS 9 drivers so that System Folder is only usable for Classic. I think in Tiger/Leopard it's an optional thing when you partition the drive. At least you were able to boot back into X with the X key on boot; I needed an optical disk... Reformatting with the original recovery disks fixed that problem, now I can boot 9. Now, I just need to figure out a bent chassis issue of my own...
Thanks for the video! You seem like a man in the know, so ill ask you. I picked up a G4 Digital Audio, and want to add additional HD's and need to find a PCI IDE card that will boot to both OS 9 as well as X. Any suggestions as to what PCI cards would work?
Your best bet is to look at OWC or Sonnet cards, those are officially supported (at least their legacy products), but other modern cards may share chipsets and may work. I'm sure there's a Reddit or MacRumors thread about it... also, some SATA PCI cards can be modified to work. Check out TinkerDifferent.com for more info.
I had a dual 1.0 GHz 2002 MDD, and a 1.5 GHz 2005 PowerBook G4 15 inch. I'd install an SSD and run 10.5.8 Leopard, I wanted to on my MDD, I did on my PB.
My father had a G4 AGP (the Silver/Dark Greenish) that works pretty fine, I need to replace the PRAM battery at some point but I rarely power this thing on. I did format one of the drives to get 9.0 on there with the Original install discs that came with it and it worked fine. Currently trying to get Data of his 8100/100 over the network but no luck connecting it to anything :
I do know about the power supply issues. :-( Fortunately, my dual 1.25 GHz is doing just fine, but my dual 807 MHz is dead. I checked out replacements, but the ony two I found were more expensive than the machine itself is worth. :-( It's funny, Quicksilver power supplys are plentiful and very reasonably priced.
I'm going to try fixing a rev a iMac G3 that won't boot, no screen and orange power led. I recently purchased another Bondi Blue iMac G3 that has no power. Perhaps I can restore it with parts from the no power machine
I have a 1.25 GHz eMac! Right now, it's sadly sitting unused next to my dresser; I want to put Mac OS 9 Lives on it, but the install image is terribly unstable running off of USB, and I'm not set up to burn CDs right now.
I don't care if you call me crazy, but I'd either be recapping the PSU, or finding a new one, then putting this system into a shiny silver PC case with really nice vinyl Apple stickers.
i swear every single time i see one of these units at my local thrift store, i always have to ask myself if i really want it or not because of the possibility of the battery corroding the internals
Still have a sawtooth 500mhz Powermac G4 a G5 iMac a G4 Powerbook Little Al a G3 Powerbook Pismo All of them still work and are fully functional. sadly my G4 titanium powerbook died......
I don't have any offhand, maybe check out some period appropriate Macintosh magazines on Archive.org and see what were advertised. Keep in mind, unlike PCs Macs didn't really need basic audio cards for the same reasons PCs did. As Macs had stereo in / out built in throughout the 90's and beyond. However, there were USB sound devices (by Griffin, etc) and I/O cards (like this M-Audio one) for more professional use cases beyond standard sound. Some generic USB ones may work fine, but your mileage may vary greatly. Remember most Macs didn't have USB 2.0 ports until after 2004-ish.
If you are looking to do some old-school music production; I’d suggest seeing if you can find a FireWire audio interface; no card required. Otherwise, for just ordinary games and playing back pre-recording music, the built-in audio is quite competent.
I still use my G4 MDD 2X1Ghz Powermac almost daily, I have a SCSI Nikon film scanner that only works in that system. My PM runs great as if it was its first day at job. I have three HD, one of those has OS9 and runs really fast! I love my G4!
Awesome. Any chance for a vlog on using the machine? I don't think anyone has seen that sort of setup.
First thought before clicking this video: Side panels can be replaced, but how's the power supply? Lmao I'm glad it works. $20 is cheap compared to what folks are asking for on sites like eBay, especially since it functions. Sweet find!
The power supply fans on mine were awfully noisy too, I took a gamble and removed the two 60mm fans inside the PSU, replacing them with a 120mm noctua fan that sits half over the psu and half over the cards. It limits the max lenght of expansion cards but it made my MDD whisper quiet.
to improve the air flow on the CPU heatsink you can add 2 6cm x 1cm fans between the heatsink and the metal of the case and then it can work very well and silently even for hours.
A few years ago, I picked up about 20 of those MDDs from a couple of different sellers. Sadly, about 1/4 of them had bad power supplies and ended up going to recycling. I know that the power supplies can be recapped and brought back to life, but it just wasn't cost effective when I could only get about $125 for them when it cost almost $100 just to fix the power supplies. And yes, most of the people I sold them to were audio geeks who wanted to use older break-out hardware, like the Digidesign Digi 002.
I have a feeling these MDD's might be worth more in the future simply because a lot of them will get thrown away because of dead power supplies. I have two MDD's with Acbel power supplies that I recapped. I also changed the power supply fans which happens to be where most of the noise comes from. I also put fresh thermal on the cpu's and now my systems are super quiet. And by they way, I'm one of those audio geeks that runs Didigesign protools on them. The stereo type fits. 🤣
@@RoyMaya L'alimentatore può essere tranquillamente sostituito con un ATX e un pò di mano esperta.
Very cool! I still have my MDD dual 1.25 but haven't fired it up since around 2010 I think. It's now packed away in the original box in my storage unit. Great machine.
Ha, I spent at least 10 minutes shouting at the screen "IT'S THE PSU THAT IS SO LOUD, NOT THAT FAN!" - currently I'm just scratching my head over my own MDD that sat in the attic for 15 years but I just can't get rid of... considered an ATX/Hackintosh conversion, but apparently that's much more nasty on the MDD to get done than with a Quicksilver. So I guess my only option is a retro gaming system or such. Pity I gave away my other MDD with ATI 9800 Pro, since the 9000 Pro is pretty weak for gaming, and all the resources I had for flashing PC cards back in the day are gone now. SSD (on a simple IDE/SATA Adapter) made the system a lot snappier, definitely a cheap upgrade I don't regret spending $20 on, also an USB 2 card is a must, but from here on I'm unsure. The worst part about the MDD is still the PSU noise, it's unbearable and I'm not sure if I want to mess around with fans inside PSUs.
I still have two G4 MDDs, a graphite one and a G5 power mac all in a lockup. Love those MDDs & looking forward to resurrecting it with the cool modern developments like bluescsi
I have two MDDs and two Quicksilvers (though one of the Quicksilvers is thoroughly borked and I parted it out to upgrade the other). Love the PowerMac G4 in all its iterations. The MDD is the nicest-looking though, imo.
Still very fun machines to play around with. A dual core version with a decent GPU can easily run Leopard (or better yet, Sorbet).
@Mac84 Try using a pair of needle-nose pliers to unplug the plastic Molex power connectors from the hard drives. Essentially, open up the pliers, place the connector between the jaws so the sides of the connector are against the jaw's teeth and use the pliers as a prybar to disconnect. I did that a lot and it saves your fingers from getting gouged/hurt when trying to unplug.
Whenever I do this I need up ripping off chunks from the connector 🫣
I bought one in a Car Boot Sale in the UK, cost me £25, in almost imaculate condition. Maxxed out the ram and applied fresh paste, runs lovely, currently running a PowerPC Linux on it, runs nicely for its age.
What Linux flavor are you running?
@@jemf Lubuntu for Power PC
I installed Lubuntu for PowerPC version 14 from memory
I have two of these babies, a 1 gigahertz and a 800 one. The power supply on the 1gig just died just a few weeks ago, when the power lead fell out the back while I was moving it while it was still running. There was a loudish crackle, and it refused to boot after that. That is one thing I've found with a few of these G4 towers, the power connecter lead works itself loose over the years, and starts arcing which eventually kills the PSU. Every so often you have to check that the connector is seated firmly, and I had forgotten to do that for some time. I've had the same issue with a Quick Silver which is also now dead. I love the MDDs, but they are a bit long in the tooth now, and can't really run anything apart from old games. I used mine for scanning images and film negatives.
A PowerMac G4 is *always* worth it. I've been using a Quicksilver G4 (originally 733Mhz, upgraded over the years to dual 867Mhz) regularly since 2005. It's still a fun machine, despite having some hiccups doing things like TH-cam and whatnot.
I worked at a newspaper, the newsroom was all mac based, we had a lot of MDD machines doing things like video editing and design. Reporters had G3 iMacs and later g4 eMacs.
These computer were famous the the loudly fans. I had one in the basement and it could be heard clearly from the first floor of my house.
I'll be putting a full set of Avid Media Composer Meridien cards in mine soon. Excellent video! Just located the breakout boxes and audio interfaces as well as the custom cables needed to set it all up again.
Damn, it had quite the hit. Mine is luckily fresh as a daisy and upgraded up the yin yang
put a novelty icepack on the busted portion
Still got two G4's and a G5 one of the G4 has power problems need to sort it as it's the better machine and my G5 has just gone down think it's processor problem just ordered second hand one and power supply for the G4
Thanks for you videos a great help when I have to change things on these old but very useful machines.
By the way I'm a technically illustrator and graphic design artist now retired but still using Photoshop to enhance my photos.
I have a few BTX style Dell computers with dead mainboards. Viewing that MDD board from behind the cards was an "AH-HA!" moment as I could get some MDD boards and carve up these Dells to make the MDD boards fit. Upgrade! LOL
I looked into the history of molex and apparently it was designed for cars originally which explains why it’s so stubborn.
I have three G4s... my first Mac, an original model iMac G4 (700MHz), followed by the last model 12" PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz). A few years after that, I was given a Graphite (AGP) PowerMac which had a 1.7GHz Sonnet upgrade card
I plan to install MorphOS on the PowerMac, when I get round to it...
I supported a lot of these things back in the day. Part of the fan noise is the fan control Apple used would send the fans into overdrive if it thinks anything is hinky. Running it with the case door open could easily have been the trigger for that, though it could also have been the fall or some bit of gunk on the motherboard. But even then the fans were just not built for noise control but for power. Quiet operation was for Windows machines back then.
Funny with the stickers covering it up it looks fine
We had a Sawtooth and an MDD in prepress back in the day. Solid machines, I believe our MDD was twin 733's. We mostly ran Quark, InDesign, Photoshop & Illustrator on them.
Brings back memories... I still have a couple Quicksilver towers and also a couple cubes in storage. They were all working some years ago - and I might be interested in giving some of them a new good home. (One of my Cubes came with a 17" flat LCD screen and the eyeball speakers)
Obvious solution: stick it into an old PC case so that in 30 years some aspiring TH-camr will have a mystery to solve.
A maxed out gaming rig for sure, might be worth it to clean the heat sink out and new thermal paste
Maybe you could swap in a nice subtle RGB fan
It’ll need to be bright enough to shine through the cracks in the metal 😂
This makes me want to dig my G4 systems out and play around a bit. Have two Graphites, an MDD, an iMac G4 15", and a PowerBook G4 15".
I just bought a G4 MDD 2003 single 1.25 GHz! Luckily in much better condition than this one, it booted up fine and has been great other than a spare video card that started sending me to Open Firmware until I removed it. Really gonna enjoy Mac OS 9 gaming on it! I really appreciated your video to help me learn more about the machine and servicing it.
The Dual 1.25 FW800 MDD was pretty much my introduction to OS X! I picked up a used one in early 2010, which I used as a daily driver for about eight or nine months before I dropped a Core 2 Duo upgrade into my XP system at the time. Still got some occasional use for a few things over the next couple years, too.
A year later I also got a used mid-2005 iBook G4 which I ended up using fairly heavily until about 2015 (even in tandem with my 2011 MBP which got me through until September 2022 or so, when its 6750M unfortunately bit the dust), and even until I got a new scanner a couple months ago I used it to run a scanner/printer that didn't want to play nice with Windows 10!
I liked 'em both, but -man- was it a pain to upgrade the iBook's hard drive.
I bought a Mac IIfx and the PSU fan sounded like that. I had to use noise cancelling headphones while the machine was running. I've since replaced it with a Noctua and it's actually usable now without going crazy
You've triggered some PTSD from cleaning my own MDD.
I want to get an older iMac to play Diablo 2 and Civilization 3 complete on it. My older Macs all need repair and will get repaired this year but only my 2010 iMac can play those. I can't remember what version of Mac OS you need to play them. Lion I think. I have a 2005 Mac mini but I don't think it will run those. I does work. I use it to play music and hope to put the wifi & bluetooth upgrade in it this year.
Just a tip you might want to try, I had a case broke similar to that once. I bent it back a bit too far (on purpose) and made a wad of ribbon epoxy (it's super strong epoxy clay). I pressed it into the hole broken area from behind, and let it harden. Then I drilled a small hole, and was able to thread the screw into that pretty well. Not the prettiest, but it wasn't visible at all from the outside, it was pretty sturdy and lasted another 4 or 5 years before I had to fix it again. (also my fault. it slipped out of my hands on a staircase and replicated the original damage, basically.)
I had almost every power mac G4 Tower apple made in one configuration or another since I was an IT, the only Apple Repair technician in our Computer repair Shop.
I have a gigabit Ethernet dual 450mhz kitted out with a gig of ram, Zip drive, Sony bootable SuperDrive and dual 400gb drives. I use it as one of my bridge machines even after I’ve had much newer and faster models . It’s fast enough
Had a MDD G4; still have a non-MDD G4, a Gossamer G3, an iMac DV G3, and a 2012 Mac Pro. The non-MDD G4 was the first machine I had OS X on and where I learned Cocoa programming.
Me looking and chuckling: 😆he forgot the fan! A minute later: "ok, everything is back as it should, I think" - except you forgot the optical drive metal shield this time!. 😅 I have one the MDD's too (the dual 1.25GHz fw800-model) and I've taken the fan out and replaced it many times in search of more silent and still effective enough one so plenty of experience of that stuff and forgetting something and then having to do it all again to get everything installed correctly.
BTW. the 2 small fans inside the PSU are responsible for most of the noise. And the PSU is rebuldable, no need to wait for it to blow and search a replacement. Replace few capacitors and that is it.
I still have the same maudio card and cables. It was able to output and input hires samples at 96khz; CDAudio is only 44.1. Studio standardized at 48. Nice find.
Fans can always* be reoiled with zoomspout, blue 3in1, or nondetergent air compressor oil.
I say always* as some are ball bearings
I owned the dual 1.25 version of this machine. I loved it (Gary from MacRumors)!
Nice!! Awesome to see you here!! Hope you are doing well ❤️
The MDD-G4 is a great machine!
Mine was super loud and I just put new thermal paste on and it helped a lot.
Well.
For the first time I feel I have a version of a computer Mac84 ‘might not have’ depending on the other one you mention. You asked what others had and in no particular order! (It will be in an order, as it must) I have 2x1.2ghz iBook G4 1x1.33ghz iBook G4 1x733mhz G4 QuickSilver 1st Gen. 1x1ghz G4 MDD FW800 and my pride and G4 Glory a Dual 1.42 FW800 G4 MDD. With 4xHDD and two super drives and yes it has a dodgy power supply. I think mainly due to the under wattage of it compared to how much draw there is. I do like though, that it has a proper full copper heat sink and 2GB or Ram. It’s a shame about your new purchase but I’m glad somebody of your Caliber has saved it and it’s got a second wind, so to speak.
Wow, that definitely seems like it was dropped! Nice video!
Out of my collection, the G4’s I gave are a quick silver powermac G4, G4 Cube, 17” 1.25GHz iMac G4 (I use this one the most), and an iBook G4
❤Love MDD but yes, so very loud. And swapping fans for quieter ones can be tricky as you'll likely end up limiting the already comprised airflow this case has. Ideally, swap out parts that consume a lot of power (HDDs, swap PS, cooler CPU) and then swap to lesser fans. I've kept my main MDD pretty much stock, though it came with the later model power supply and main fan that were a bit more quiet.
Door looks much better! Gotta break out the bondo to fix that hole now! 😀
Also, it looks like the protective plastic covering is still on the front mirror, time for a short showing the peel!
"You can do a lot".
I have one of these with a cinema screen and have been trying to find out 'what I can do with it' besides using it as a DVD player.
Lucky you, Steve ... searching for the Dual 1.25GHz processor module since ages ...
We used to use an MDD as a teleprompter. Its fans were picked up by the host's lav mics which wasn't great!
What model monitor are you using in this video ?
I remember someone calling the MMD PM "the railroad Mac", because of the loud fans. Bloody noisy. I have a Quick Silver & it still works beautifully.
Used to have two MDDs! My good one was a dual 1.25/2MB overclocked to 1.5GHz and had a GeForce 7800GS, 2GB of RAM, and 300GB 10K RPM SCSI drive. I actually traded that machine in for a big honkin' 2004 era Dell Dimension XPS, simply because the XPS had a super rare P4 Extreme Edition chip in it - the 3.2GHz with 2MB of L3. The included FX 5950 Ultra video card was also on my "most wanted" list, so it was well worth the trade.
So now I'm down to one MDD, but it's nowhere near as nice. Just a dual 1GHz/1MB with a Radeon 9000 Pro and 1GB of RAM (one of the DIMM slots is dead). But hey, it still fires up and is great for OS9 and MorphOS.
Steve nice price for that Mac. Yes I approve of the sticker repair
Nice machine! Good to see it still works and having all those extras inside is a nice bonus! The G4 systems are awesome, I currently use my PowerBook G4 and have tried out Tiger and Leopard. They run quite well considering they aren’t exactly new machines anymore.
Great video! I’d love to see the SSD upgrade. Could you replace the fan in this Mac with a Noctua fan, or would a Noctua fan not have the right connectors?
The case fan is a higher spec in terms of air flow than the noctuas (it was loud here because the door was open and it was ramping up to try and cool the CPU - which it couldn't).
Someone on yt said theirs became unstable when they put in a quieter fan.
I personally prefer the Digital AudIo G4. Mainly because at the time I aquired mine the MDD was made of unatainium and the quicksilver was such a negligible power change over what you could add with third party processor upgrades.
The reason why you were having so much trouble is that when it impacted it likely shifted the case out of square making it more of a trapezoid than a rectangle at the impact corner. You may be able to lightly compress the top front and lower lower rear corners and push the impacted Corner out a little.
Fantastic machine, but you were using the VGA output of the ATI 7000 PCI, instead of the much more powerful ATI 9000Pro AGP. Just move the monitor cable.
To suppress the noise you need to replace the 3 noisy fans, the large one and the ones in the power supply.
You will have to change the thermal paste on the 2 CPUs; to improve the air flow on the CPU heatsink you can add 2 6cm x 1cm fans between the heatsink and the metal of the case and then it can work very well and silently even for hours. The power supply is a very oversized 360watt; the entire Mac rarely exceeds 200W of total absorption.
Personally, on my 3 MDDs I installed two Pioneer 110 DVD units for serial duplication of DVDs and with only 2 RAM modules of 1GB each I brought the memory expansion to a maximum of 2GB. The memories required are DDR 333 from 256 up to 1GB but DDR 400 also work excellently (I used the Pentium 4 ones)
In a 3D environment with software such as Lightwave3D, Cinema4D, Maya performs very well while it is an excellent companion for long video editing sessions with FinalcutPro 5.1. I highly recommend it.
Thanks to OSX and the power of the 2 G4 CPUs equipped with large 3rd level caches, you can perform 3D rendering while proceeding with video editing, without problems.
I advise against the use of SSD because the bottleneck will always be the SATA/IDE adapter.
I have a video showing the operation of my dual 1250Mhz MDD with Leopard pushed to the extreme with many apps open and running but I noticed that the Mac has better feedback with Tiger even if it lacks some convenient features.
th-cam.com/video/hh3Gsx8Urnw/w-d-xo.html
That's a good pickup for the price. I have an open side door panel for a MDD, but I think postage to the US may be a little expensive.
I have an G4 iMac, a 2003 MDD (which I think was the last model that could officially boot Mac OS 9), and a couple of Sawtooths. I prefer to run Mac OS 9 so I’ll have to try MacOS9Lives on the iMac that doesn’t officially support it. Thanks for the tip and for another great video.
Hey what a great opportunity to swap on a set of frosted G3 top/side plastics and handles! They should all swap right over yeah? Folks used to do that in the applefritter/macmods days and i always thought it looked pretty smart.
After you fix the G4 then what do you do with it. Besides what most to with old computers but play games. Is it worth editing videos or making music with it and other Mac software at the time.
Wow, yeah. That's one of the fastest 32-bit PPC Macs ever made.
I picked up an MDD from an eBay seller, and had the issue with booting Mac OS 9. The issue was that the seller had put in an image that was partitioned without the Mac OS 9 drivers so that System Folder is only usable for Classic. I think in Tiger/Leopard it's an optional thing when you partition the drive. At least you were able to boot back into X with the X key on boot; I needed an optical disk...
Reformatting with the original recovery disks fixed that problem, now I can boot 9.
Now, I just need to figure out a bent chassis issue of my own...
Thanks for the video! You seem like a man in the know, so ill ask you. I picked up a G4 Digital Audio, and want to add additional HD's and need to find a PCI IDE card that will boot to both OS 9 as well as X. Any suggestions as to what PCI cards would work?
Your best bet is to look at OWC or Sonnet cards, those are officially supported (at least their legacy products), but other modern cards may share chipsets and may work. I'm sure there's a Reddit or MacRumors thread about it... also, some SATA PCI cards can be modified to work. Check out TinkerDifferent.com for more info.
Steve when are you going to have the second video for the clone amacs
Great video! Thanks!
I had a dual 1.0 GHz 2002 MDD, and a 1.5 GHz 2005 PowerBook G4 15 inch.
I'd install an SSD and run 10.5.8 Leopard, I wanted to on my MDD, I did on my PB.
For dusting an old computer, I take it outside and use a leaf blower. Gets all the dust out!
It's easy to bend metal back into shape. Just try to avoid stretching it (denting it), as then you'll need to shrink it back.
My father had a G4 AGP (the Silver/Dark Greenish) that works pretty fine, I need to replace the PRAM battery at some point but I rarely power this thing on. I did format one of the drives to get 9.0 on there with the Original install discs that came with it and it worked fine. Currently trying to get Data of his 8100/100 over the network but no luck connecting it to anything :
i have a 380 w coolermaster psu that was in a pc and god damn it was loud. louder than your mdd
Wish I waited a bit longer and got one of these instead of the Quicksilver G4
I do know about the power supply issues. :-( Fortunately, my dual 1.25 GHz is doing just fine, but my dual 807 MHz is dead. I checked out replacements, but the ony two I found were more expensive than the machine itself is worth. :-( It's funny, Quicksilver power supplys are plentiful and very reasonably priced.
I have a 733MHz Apple Macintosh G4 (Digital Audio). Perfect condition.
I love os9.
Every retro computer enthusiast should own a ball-peen hammer.
I have a dual 1ghz mdd that I'm planning onmaking some upgrades on. I could use some advice if you'd be willing to help.
What an absolutely beautiful computer. Apple sure knows aesthetics.
I'm going to try fixing a rev a iMac G3 that won't boot, no screen and orange power led. I recently purchased another Bondi Blue iMac G3 that has no power. Perhaps I can restore it with parts from the no power machine
Do an atx power supply mod!! I just did that on mine and it’s VERY quiet now!
I have a 1.25 GHz eMac! Right now, it's sadly sitting unused next to my dresser; I want to put Mac OS 9 Lives on it, but the install image is terribly unstable running off of USB, and I'm not set up to burn CDs right now.
I don't care if you call me crazy, but I'd either be recapping the PSU, or finding a new one, then putting this system into a shiny silver PC case with really nice vinyl Apple stickers.
i swear every single time i see one of these units at my local thrift store, i always have to ask myself if i really want it or not because of the possibility of the battery corroding the internals
I've seen plenty of the MDD's and so far battery corrosion is not their problem. It's the power supplies that need servicing.
What, no TIG welder for the busted handle mount?
Does your game run in 'Classic Environment', in MacOSX?
Still have a sawtooth 500mhz Powermac G4
a G5 iMac
a G4 Powerbook Little Al
a G3 Powerbook Pismo
All of them still work and are fully functional. sadly my G4 titanium powerbook died......
i got one of those its 867 mhz it was given to me in the box as it would have been thrown out
make an aluminum case for it
Hello im thinking of buying a mdd and i want a dual processor one? ❤
Technicaly the last powerbook was a cut down g5 cpu. LOL
Absolutely it was worth it :)
Battle-scarred Galactic, Eh?!
Hello Steve do you know what audio card will work with the mdd I would like to put an audio card in my mdd
I don't have any offhand, maybe check out some period appropriate Macintosh magazines on Archive.org and see what were advertised. Keep in mind, unlike PCs Macs didn't really need basic audio cards for the same reasons PCs did. As Macs had stereo in / out built in throughout the 90's and beyond. However, there were USB sound devices (by Griffin, etc) and I/O cards (like this M-Audio one) for more professional use cases beyond standard sound. Some generic USB ones may work fine, but your mileage may vary greatly. Remember most Macs didn't have USB 2.0 ports until after 2004-ish.
If you are looking to do some old-school music production; I’d suggest seeing if you can find a FireWire audio interface; no card required. Otherwise, for just ordinary games and playing back pre-recording music, the built-in audio is quite competent.
Even with the case being broken you got a great deal for $20.00 bucks! Of all the broken parts can it be fixed or SD printed to fix it?
Artic silver grease the CPU’s…also you can Ed 40 to the fan to the center and not a lot it should quiet it down.
i never in my life owned a mac. the only apple product i ever bought was an ipod with the click wheel
A mac scsi card would be useful.
Hi
Did you know you can buy an empty g4 case on ebay?
Positively more expensive than the whole machine cost him tho'!
@@BilisNegra
Yes
@@BilisNegra
The value of the machine would go up
As I said in the video I have one in mint shape, so I’m not too fussed about the value of this system.
Steve I have 5 MDD’s