Any Apple/Mac Egg-Spurts Here??

[offamychain]

Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 65
Location: Underground.
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 2:25 am Post subject: Any Apple/Mac Egg-Spurts Here??

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I have received permission from the lady to add a couple more crunchers to my "ranchette". (well, actually, she's still playing soldier somewhere, but "permission" just sounded cool)

I am adding another Pentium--for Ubero & other Pentium-friendly projects. I have the board on the way, but no CPU. Will probaly go with a high-end Celeron or medium-speed P4, depending on how much she lets me spend.

I was gonna get another mid-range AMD, but have a wild craving to try an Apple, something I haven't played with since the Apple II days in high-school.

I need suggestions. I know less about Apples than I do Linux--& that's not much.

A very general idea of what I won't is below. Can someone stir me in the right direction. Keep it simple please, I'm Apple-illiterate.

1. Used pieces off Ebay.

2. Max. of around $150 (hopefully). (MOBO/CPU/Memory) No cutting-edge G5's wanted. Just something that can justify the electricity it uses.

3. Roughly equivilant to a AMD1700, Celeron2000, or P4-1800 with 512Meg DDR266.

4. What about peripherels, Will my IDE-CD work, or do I have to buy that too? What about the HD. Have I got one that works, or do I have to buy that too?

5. OS?? Is there a free one available? Will Windows work on Apple. What about Linux? If I have to go with an Apple OS, I need a "graphical" one, sorta like Win, not a total "command-line" type. I don't know, & don't want to learn, all those long DOS-command things.

Any help is appreciated. Trust me, you know more than I do about Apple.

[Death]

you must check apple.com site at first.

they have MacOS X 10.3.3 with friendly GUI that can f$%k winXP in all holes.

thay have terminal like any linux (actually it is FreeBSD with GUI :) but you may not even notice this.

your IDE devices may work well if they supported by OS. most of all actually does.

you can add any PC100 of PC133 ram as well.

I'm seriously doubt that you can buy some spare parts at ebay....

apple DON'T sell spare parts.

best wey to do this is buy some older G4 with minimum RAM and possiby no hdd or cd to minimize cost and then add it by yourself. they range from ~733MHz to 2x1000MHz.

MacOS X costs ~$100. You may download it from warez sites (don't tell THEM that I told you =). 3 ISO images is not so big download =))))

well if you ask something more i can help you better...

[Death]

Will Windows work on Apple. What about Linux?


:D :D :D :bs: :D :rotfl:

no way :moon: :jester:

[offamychain]

Didn't figure Win/Linux would work, but had to ask. Like I said, I know nothing about them.

Thanks for the help, I know more than I did. The only thing that confused me was the comment about "no parts". As of tonight, there are almost 10,000 parts on Ebay for Macs, from MOBO's & Memory to Cases & Cables.

There are a bunch of complete computers, but also a bunch of pieces. Not many bare CPU's, but alot of CPU/MOBO combos. I don't know which of these parts will fit together yet, but, out of several thousand pieces, some of these are bound to be compatible.:cheers:

[magnav0x]

Yes there are a couple versions of linux you can use on Macs. BTW, how does Mac processing power compare to a PC? What is the PC equivilent of a Mac 1ghz?

[offamychain]

That's what I was asking. I have no idea. That's in line#3--something roughly equivilant to an XP1700. The 1700 runs at 1467MHZ, but will outperform most Intel's running at the same speed. A 2000MHZ P4 will greatly outperform a 2000MHZ Celeron in most applications. That's why I specified "equivilant". I have no idea if a 1Gig Apple performs on the same level as 500Mhz Celeron or a 3000Mhz P4.

[Paratima]

We eagerly await your benchmark report. :D

[Welnic]

Macs are great machines to actually use. They are not the most cost effective crunchers.

How they compare to other processors varies greatly from project to project. It depends both on the type of computation involved and if the client was optimized for the G4. Distributed Folding is mostly just chasing pointers (I don't know what that really means either) and does not involve the FPU much. Howard says because of that it is not worth optimizing the client to take advantage of Altivec, which is the G4s vector calculation engine. So for dF a G4 will match up with an x86 proc about the same as the clock rate, which means it pretty much sucks.

F@H actually uses Altivec in the Gromac cores. On those it an 800MHz G4 would probably be about the same as a 1600XP. That is a pretty crude guess, I might look at my old FAHlogs on my AMDs and get some real numbers.

The pure math projects are where the G4s really shine, but I have never run any of those.

I have been running my 2 GHz G5 on MD5crk where it really shines. This thread doesn't have too many posts on it now as it is new: http://www.free-dc.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6379

If I was going to get something just to fart around with I would not get anything less than a 400MHz G4. I don't really know how much old macs cost, but I wouldn't bother with anything less than that.

[Chinasaur]

offamychain,

My 800Mhz G3 is doing 30-39 a day on D2OL currently. My XP2400 did about 80 a day ...my dual XP1800 did about 60-67 a day... so there's your benchmark.

G4's shine on F@H .. you can check out the MacNN forum @ http://forums.macnn.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=72 to see what the MacNN Team says about performance on various projects.

Current version 10.3.3 is fastest OS X yet. Macintosh now stands with the fastest with it's G5 processor. You will pay as much for a similarly equipped Xeon or Opteron as a G5..Mac's are price competitive in their market.

OS X is like a fine wine. It feels silky smooth to drink (use), is robust and full bodied (BSD), has great legs (stable), is a deep rich color (GUI is drop dead gorgeous), and you'll pay a bit more for the quality. OS X has apt-get and Fink (uses apt-get), X tools, X11, great Apple apps, mucho community provided software (versiontracker.com and macupdate.com). I would recommend www.macofalltrades.com for a used Mac if you decide to take the leap. Their prices are very good. Used prices are higher than you would expect for the Mhz involved, but once you get one, you will be surprised how fast and useable they are...the Mhz myth does not hold for G3's and G4's...they "feel", and are, faster than their numbers imply.

When I had to downsize, I sold my AMD's (Dual 1.53Ghz and 2.0Ghz) running Libranet Debian, and kept my upgraded B&W 800Mhz G3 with 1GB of RAM.

What does that tell you?


:cheers:


Per item on equivalent to XP1700 - http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/72604/wo/uX3b9mSCUV9E3yN2U62nol5X0dd/1.0.7.1.0.5.3 - but it's much more than $150

The eMac is a good way to get your feet wet -

1. http://www.macofalltrades.com/product.asp?dept%5Fid=2&pf%5Fid=G4700EMA1&mscssid=UBH53PATJ35G9G6WFLP4H7E1TK3PBTT9

or

2. http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71508/wo/b13TIanKgMGb3ns7gVM1MUZEBju/0.0.7.1.0.5.21.1.2.1.0.0.0.1.0

[offamychain]

China & Welnic-thanks. That's just what I was hoping for, a very rough idea of where certain Macs compared to certain Intel/AMD's. I'll be building my own from used parts, as I always do. Just a board, CPU, HD, Memory, & a workable OS laying in a basket. And of course whatever cards I have to have to get video & DSL. Nothing new, no case, just a bare cruncher.
I have built around a half-dozen XP1700 systems for around the $150. That's where the price came from. Being as it's only planned as an experiment, but powerful enough to actually be productive, I can't justify a cruncher that will cost twice as much for the same thing though.
I still know more than I did & will keep looking to see if I can find some good deals.