[cdhostage]

After a bit of a wait and a boneheaded mistake on my part, I have made my Powerbook G3 Pismo into a screamer. Or at least a yeller, which its previous G3 400 was merely a whimperer.

Now, the grayscreen for the memory test, which always takes precisely 61 seconds for no good reason, is followed by the OS X startup which takes only eleven seconds. ELEVEN SECONDS TO START UP OS X.2.6!!! Now that I'm sure that the processor works properly, I'm maxing out the RAM and ordering a new hard disk.

The people from PowerLogix did the upgrade. They had some mixed reviews, but some googling reveeals that they've been better during the last six months. I PayPaled them the $350, and two days later, the padded box with static-free bags arrived. I removed my old CPU and shipped it off. I had to wait about two weeks before it came back, and immediately went on vacation, having done the install. I left everything but the Pismo and powercable at home, so I had no way to fix anything out in the mountains when the thing was reaching towards 100 degrees Celcius and panicking. I didn't play with it much, but when I got home today, I applied more thermal paste (PowerLogix says half-grain of rice at each of four locations, I tripled it and cleaned off the slight excess). It is now working wonderfully.

It holds at about 80 degrees Celcius now, and I haven't tried to run it constantly like with Folding@Home because it the whole computer grows uncomfortably warm. I will have to figure out how to turn the fans on manually rather than automatically, as they don't seem to be turning on. Perhaps I'll figure out another way to cool it - there's some spare room in the body of the 'book...

[Lateralus]

Holy crap! 80c?!

My Pismo 400 maintains about 40c during normal useage. I have never seen it go past 60c, and that was after it had been running SETI for 2 days straight. And I felt that at 60c, it was quite hot.

Did the people at PowerLogix say that 80c is normal?

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Anyways, I am considering the upgrade as well, and I was wondering if you could do something for me as a way of judging the performance increase:

Could you import a CD in iTunes at around 192k and tell me what speed it rips at? I am used to 3.5x-4.0x.

Thanks.

[cdhostage]

Ripping at 7.0 to 8.5x

I got that temperature reading from an old Powerlogix app, Cache Controller, which I shouldn't have opened on my machine anyway. PowerLogix seems to be hardware people only, as the web site is a mess and I couldn't find the proper software, CPU Director, until recently. None of the temperature indicator software seems to work properly, so I think that the new G3 that was put in doesn't actually HAVE a peltier junction to give a reading. Cache Controller must have been putting out whatever numbers it wanted, because the fans aren't turning on (in its unaltered form, I think the fans activated in response to the CPU's temp) and I can put my finger on the heat shield directly above the proc and note it's not terribly uncomfortable. It'd feel like burning at 60 degrees Celcius.