[phuture]

So the other week, the apartment across mine had a massive garage sale, desks and chairs for $5, old toys for a quarter... so I found a G4 tower sitting all by itself. I asked, "what's that?" meaning, like what is it's speed, configuration... ... dude said, I dunno, it's a G4, fast computer! My son pulled out the hard drive, though, so it won't start. So I pulled the lever to open it up and have a look, and the dude panicked and said, "Don't! That's the speaker!" Not wanting to correct him, I let go of the lever and asked how much he was asking for it. Twenty-five bucks! I was like, ok! here!

I took it home, opened it up and it's a dual-carbureted G4 running at 450mhz on each side, GGB Ethernet, loaded with 768mb RAM!!! It's also got two SCSI cards attached to it, I'm guessing it was used as a server of some sort in its previous life? The DVD-ROM drive was fried so I bought a cheap $50 16X DVD burner at best buy, patched it with patch burn, and dumped in a 120GB drive.

OK, so get this, and this is what I don't understand... but it makes me love my garage-sale find even more! I ripped a CD in iTunes and I saw speeds of 12X continuous, 14X periodically. Now my Pismo (400 G3) rips it 2.9-3.2X usually. BUT!!! The 15"alBook, the one I bought last year then sold it 2 weeks later... that one did mid-7X speeds with bursts up to 10.4X regularly. Now that machine ran 1.67ghz if I remember correctly, it had 512mb ram and Tiger with iTunes 4.9 on there. My tower runs Jaguar with iTunes 4.0 (haven't had a chance to update software yet)

Why is this that a 6-year old machine will rip a cd so much faster than a new machine running at triple the clock speed? I mean, they are both G4-family processors but with 5 years between them. Are dual-processors really that effecient? Or, could it be the software itself? This is definitely a paradox I can't figure out! BTW, does anyone know if iDVD will run on my new machine? I mean, to the iDVD software, does it see my machine running at 450mhz or at 900mhz? It needs a minimum of 733mhz to run. Thanks!

[Cadaver]

The speed difference here between iTunes rip speeds is that desktop optical drives are usually much faster than slimline notebook drives. Copy the raw AIFF file to the hard drive and re-rip, and you'll see the difference in processor speeds.

[chris v]

Still -- a dual 450 for 25 clams is a serious deal.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

The speed difference here between iTunes rip speeds is that desktop optical drives are usually much faster than slimline notebook drives. Copy the raw AIFF file to the hard drive and re-rip, and you'll see the difference in processor speeds.

I thought of that too, but he should be doing a lot better than 12-14x in his desktop (and 7-10x in his laptop) if it was limited by the speed of the drive.

[Big Mac]

Terrific find for the price! I'd love to find a G4 tower at the right price.

iTunes has its own encoding overhead and limitations. IIRC, people have said there's a cap on AAC encoding, for example.

[iREZ]

congrats on a lucky find ; )

[PB2K]

i found a garbage g4 that was a 533 mhz. nothing inside except the motherboard and broken powersupply. i need to get it to work. congratulations with your bargain

[Todd Madson]

"That's the speaker!" Hilarious.

That's a great deal - especially for a dual. Duals can do amazing things.
Enjoy your new addition. Very good score!

[G5power]

Awesome deal - that makes it worth looking through the junk that you normally see at garage sales. What sweetens the deal is that they hadn't stripped the RAM out and forced you to search for reasonably priced PC100 memory. The way my luck works when I've looked at computers at sales, it's always the old Packard Bell 486 that they want $500 for since they had paid $1000 back in the day when originally purchased.

FWIW, my dual 867 really flies on ripping audio CD's. I attributed that to the dual processors and the DVR-109 16x drive.

[turbopants]

That's a great pickup and bargain. Score! You should be able to run most apps with that.

[ericssonboi]

Nice... more reason to head out to garage sales once the weather gets better..

[phuture]

Originally Posted by G5power

The way my luck works when I've looked at computers at sales, it's always the old Packard Bell 486 that they want $500 for since they had paid $1000 back in the day when originally purchased.

FWIW, my dual 867 really flies on ripping audio CD's. I attributed that to the dual processors and the DVR-109 16x drive.

Haha, yeah, I've run into lots of those myself too!

[PB2K]

finding my 533 wreck brought me back into the Powermac forums the only "real" mac forum

[phuture]

Hey PB2K, was the processor still there in your garbage-find G4, at least?

[Tuoder]

Originally Posted by phuture

Why is this that a 6-year old machine will rip a cd so much faster than a new machine running at triple the clock speed? I mean, they are both G4-family processors but with 5 years between them. Are dual-processors really that effecient? Or, could it be the software itself? This is definitely a paradox I can't figure out! BTW, does anyone know if iDVD will run on my new machine? I mean, to the iDVD software, does it see my machine running at 450mhz or at 900mhz? It needs a minimum of 733mhz to run. Thanks!

Dual 450s have more processing power than a single 733. I am guessing iDVD is multithreaded, like eveything else that Apple does, so you shouldn't have much of a problem running it, provided that you meet all of the other requirements as well.

[24klogos]

I had the same machine for quite a bit, it's a work horse.
what a deal.

[PB2K]

yes, the processor was inside, but i replaced it with a 1,33ghz dual

[olePigeon]

Dual 533 Gigabit G4 is one of my alltime favorite Macs. It's up there with the LCIII, ColorClassic, 8600/9600, and G4 Cube.

[mountainash]

i am, like, sooo jelous.

[Wiskedjak]

A coworker found a working 21" StudioDisplay in the throw-away pile at his apartment building the other day

[Timetheus]

My MacBook Pro goes from 12x to about 20x when ripping CDs in iTunes (latest version), and isn't the optical drive in it the same speed as the ones in the pre-October Al books? I'd be inclined to think, then, the limitation is more in the processor than in the drive.

[discotronic]

Sorry, wrong thread.

[PB2K]

my powermac 533 with the dual g4 1.33ghz (2mb cache per processor) upgrade converts cd's to mp3 at 18x speeds

not bad eh, and it boots from os9 too

[all2ofme]

Mmmm, Cubes. Speaking of which...got a perfectly working 450MHz Cube, keyboard etc. for £20 a month ago. Was very happy with myself

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Dual 533 Gigabit G4 is one of my alltime favorite Macs. It's up there with the LCIII, ColorClassic, 8600/9600, and G4 Cube.

[mrplow]

where did you find the cube so cheap?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Pardon my ignorance, but how is 25$ for a Cube an excellent deal?

I have a 5 year old 2x800MHz QuickSilver G4 here that I thought about selling...but I'd be surprised if I got anything above 100 dollars for it...even with the upgraded video card (Radeon 8500) and a one year old Super Drive and 6 month old 180GB HD.

Can someone tell me how much my Quicksilver is worth? If I can't get more than 200 or 300 for it, it's no use selling it.

As of right now I see some dude selling a Quicksilver G4 that pales in comparison to my machine and is trying to rip someone off for $899...I don't know who's stupid enough to fall for such a prank but if that guy manages to sell it...I suppose I can too.

[mrplow]

i'll give you 100 for it... it would be nice to replace my grandma's XP box.

[ReggieX]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

Pardon my ignorance, but how is 25$ for a Cube an excellent deal?

You're kidding, right? They fetch a pretty penny because they're rare, plain and simple. And 20 pounds is at least US$34, so you fail on 2 counts.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

Can someone tell me how much my Quicksilver is worth? If I can't get more than 200 or 300 for it, it's no use selling it.

As of right now I see some dude selling a Quicksilver G4 that pales in comparison to my machine and is trying to rip someone off for $899...I don't know who's stupid enough to fall for such a prank but if that guy manages to sell it...I suppose I can too.

A quick search on eBay shows 2x800Mhz processor cards going for $230 (14 bids), complete towers for $500-700, and systems with cheap LCDs going for $700-900.
Macofalltrades sells dual 1Ghz towers for $1000, but that includes a token warranty.

That "rip off dude" sounds like he's in the right price ballpark.

[all2ofme]

The place I'm working at the moment had a few that they didn't want. I tried to get all of them, but they wanted a few to put on shelves for show...

Pity - they make nice wee servers. My fan's a bit noisy, but apart from that it's perfect.

Originally Posted by mrplow

where did you find the cube so cheap?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by ReggieX

You're kidding, right? They fetch a pretty penny because they're rare, plain and simple. And 20 pounds is at least US$34, so you fail on 2 counts.

Yeah but, in general, rarity in the computer world does *not* fetch a pretty penny...unless you happen to be in possession of prototype hardware. I have a Mac 128K upgraded to a Fat Mac but I wouldn't be able to fetch more than a 30 bucks for it.

[chris v]

G3 350s still fetch at least $50.00 in the retail used market. A G4 450 is still a perfectly good CPU, and I have yet to see anything in that range, Cube or Sawtooth, selling for less that $129.00. So even if you don't think a Cube is worth $20.00, why not buy one if you see it & turn it on eBay for a 1000% profit?

[Tuoder]

Cubes are unique in the computer market. They maintained alot more of their value than others. I think they are awesome little macs, personally. Macs in general maintain their value better and have a longer service life than PCs.