[The Godfather]

http://www.macnn.com/feature.php?id=72

For $600? I will definitely save my $$$ for this one
Good thing I foresaw this coming and waited instead of buying a 500MHz G3.
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Foru...ML/000064.html

What will G3 upgrade resellers think of this? Will they lower the iForce and iMaxPowr prices? Will they overprice the coming G4 upgrades?

Yay for Newer and Powerlogix!
Boo for Apple!


To note also: back in April 2000
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum5/HTML/002180.html




[This message has been edited by The Godfather (edited 07-19-2000).]

[Ca$h68]

Hrm.... I'll wait for the macbench scores first. The power logix has 33 more mhz, and most things arent altivec enhance anyway. Hrmmm....

Looks cool though, but if its just another resoldered chip...

Ca$h

[The Godfather]

Can't be a resoldered chip. If it was, that would mean G4's are pin-compatible with G3's.

Not many programs are Altivec optimized? VirtualPC, VideoScript and MacOSX are enough for me!!!

[This message has been edited by The Godfather (edited 07-15-2000).]

[MacNZ]

This is reall cool. We've now got a bit of choice in the iMac upgrade market. I think I'd rather have the faster G3 upgrade, might by a couple for my systems. The new G4 upgrade will hopefully bring down the price of these upgrades.

[Kozmik]

I'd rather Apple NOT SUCK and have made iMac DVs upgradable.

[Trapper]

What I'd like to know is when we can expect to see upgrades for the 2nd gen. iMacs. They've been out now for nine or ten months. That's, like, years in computer technology time. It's not unreasonable to expect that someone is developing something along those lines, is it?

------------------
Travis Hreno
Department of Philosophy
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
CANADA
threno@julian.uwo.ca

[This message has been edited by Trapper (edited 07-16-2000).]

[Kozmik]

If you would kindly read the post above yours, I sort of put light on the fact that iMac DVs (2nd-gen iMacs) are not upgradable, and that is why Apple sucks. Bah... ignorance.

[Ca$h68]

Don't iMac DVs have daughteercards though? I thought they did, but maybe not. If they do, they are upgradeable.

Ca$h

[Trapper]

What!? Really!!??! They are not upgradable!!!??? Is this true? Are you sure? What the hell is up with that?

------------------
Travis Hreno
Department of Philosophy
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
CANADA
threno@julian.uwo.ca

[Kozmik]

I thought they had daughtercards too, but many people have told me in the iMac forum that the chips are soldered onto the motherboard...

[This message has been edited by Kozmik (edited 07-16-2000).]

[The Godfather]

I wonder if the salvage value of my iMac/A will bump up

[SpeedRacer]

I can tell you from first hand exper that the 2nd gen iMacs definitely have all of their chips (besides the obvious ones - RAM, etc) soldered clean on the mobo. They also seem like MUCH more of a pain in the @$$ to take apart than the 1st gens (though this may just be a difference in comfort level when i'm taking apart my own machine versus a company loaner).

If anybody comes out with an upgrade path for the 2nd gen iMacs i'll be REALLY impressed.

Just goes along with what i've said all along: iMacs have been getting progressively LESS upgradeable ever since they were first intro'd. Sad but true.

Speed

[Kozmik]

Perhaps it will be possible to solder a better G3 onto the motherboard. Not G4s, of course, because they're not pin-compatible. Hmm... well, there's always overclocking...

[Ca$h68]

So the second gen iMacs have teh chip ON the motherboard? Oh man. That sucks. Heheh.

Ca$h

WHAT! A G4 rev.A-D iMac!!

I have got to see that!! I probably won't have the necessary dough, but this is one upgrade that I would LOVE to stick in my rev.A/Voodoo2. It would probably make it OSX COMPATIBLE, right? But, on the other hand, I think that even the 400 MHZ G3 iForce maxes out the fill rate of the Voodoo2 card, and it seems we cannot do anything about the 66 MHZ bus speed, or can we...

Oh well, I'll probably jump on a simple G3 upgrade when the prices go down.

Flipper

[Kozmik]

It sucks, too, because the 2nd-gen iMacs are the ones that would really take advantage of a G4 upgrade. Bad graphics card, yes, but the bus speed is 100MHz, same as G4 machines themselves. Also, if people are using them as video editing machines (like I am), they would want the extremely helpful AltiVec acceleration on applications like Final Cut Pro (like I do). Freaking Apple... when will they ever get it right?

Lets just wait and see how the Rev F looks. Will Apple remove or add stuff?

[Kozmik]

This time it will be a 4 meg graphics card! "That's all the consumer market needs."

[Ca$h68]

Actually, my 333 maxes out my voodoo2 card in my franken iMac. So, ...hehe... its not too good.

Ca$h

I hope and pray there will be an iCube with a 4x AGP slot and ZIF slot + 100 MHz system bus.

There is what I would do:

1. Get an iCube with MotherBoard + CPU only
2. Install the old stuff from my DV (HD,DVD,192MB RAM)
3. Get a real grafix card.....

well, one can only hope...

[Kozmik]

Well, hope further.

[joe]

My DV had a recent trip to the shop (under warranty). Unlike earlier iMacs, the slot load is all one board - including the monitor analog driver board (which was the cause of my shakey display)!!! According to the techs, the only solution is a board swap.

I'm really sold on the iMac concept. But Apple dropped the ball when they removed the expansion capabilities of the original iMac - a slow but deliberate process. First, the rev C/D lost the Mezz slot. Then the slot loaders lost the processor and video ram slot. Can anyone just imagine how nice the DV would be if it had an extra slot for more video ram? Voodoo2 card? SCSI? Processor swap? This is not to say upgardes can't be done of course. No reason you can't swap the motherboard of a DV for another with a 500MHz G3 and 1MB of backside cache. Ditto 16MB of video ram. But it's not as convenient as with the rev A/B models. And it would likely be more difficult for manufacturers to handle as the cost of a DV motherboard is more expensive than just the processor daughter board alone.

As for the iCube? It looses the advantages of the stylish, colorful, and simplistic all-in-one design of the iMac. You end up with a rats nest of video, speaker, mic, and multiple power cables - like a tower but without any of the benefits. Nothing stylish about a cube no matter what the color. The G4 tower with it's unique drawbridge design and stylish curves and color is a much better choice - ditto G3 tower for that matter. The iCube smacks of a non-upgradeable tower. Hmmm. That kind of says something about where Apple seems to be headed: non-upgradeable iMac, non-upgradeable cube bummer.......joe

[seanyepez]

I'm going to see what I can do to an iMac DV. I'm going to try to solder one of those new IBM G3's onto the board.

Does anyone have any cooling suggestions?

[Steph]

I have noticed that the DV motherboard also has a place for the Mezz, all the solder pads are there (I think it was even identified as Mezzanine, but can't remember for sure now). It looks like there may be the supporting circuitry for it too, only the connector missing. Perhaps there is a little bit of hope for the DV's.

A modifiable iCube would definately be nice though.

--Steph

[seanyepez]

That is very interesting, Steph, very interesting.

Is that really a mezzanine? wow!

What if they include a AGPx4 port on the next revision...........rumor...

[Steph]

I've just double-checked. Ok it does not actually say Mezz... that must have been some wishful thinking in my memory. However, what is there are the solder-patches for a 140 pin connector, which to me looks like the size and shape of a mezz connector. If anyone wants a look it, I've taken a trio of digital pics and put them on the web.

The url is: http://www.maksystems.com/dvmobo-1.jpg
You can replace 1 with 2 or 3. 1 and 2 show the connector area in 'wide' and 'close up'. 3 is a pic of the rage chip, just for the heck of it. The white connector is usualy filled by a small card, which I removed for the pictures. Not sure what it does.

--Steph


[This message has been edited by Steph (edited 07-18-2000).]

[Ca$h68]

Take pictures of the card if you can. From the pictures you've posted, it looks way to tiny to be called a mezzanine.

Ca$h

[Steph]

The bit that I believe may be for a mezzanine has no connector in that spot, just the 140 solder-points, 70 per side. The connector would be about 3 inches long. For those of who who have the mezz connector, can you confirm the rough size, or number of pins? The spot in question you can see in imgs 1 and 2, but not in the 3rd pic.

--Steph

the early imacs' daughtercards can be
upgraded to new ones, go to
newer technologies' website.

the early imacs' daughtercards can be
upgraded to new ones, go to
newer technologies' website.

[Ca$h68]

Duhhhhhhhh........

>SLAP<

[TimmyDee51]

What's that about upgrading the daughtercards? Does that include a new graphics chipset too or are you just talking about the upgrade cards? The upgrade cards have been out for a while but I have not heard a thing about a daughtercard upgrade.

[Ca$h68]

CPU upgrades= daughtercard upgrade

The CPU is mounted on a daughtercard, so is the RAM. You will never see a video upgrade really, since it is on the motherboard...(excluding gamewizard of course)

Ca$h