[geeks] Apple G4 upgrades

[John Francini]

At 17:30 -0500 11/19/06, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>Can an Apple G4/800, or any single-CPU system really, be upgraded to
>dual CPUs?
>
>Are both sockets present?


The motherboards, if I recall correctly, are identical.  The CPU(s) 
is/are mounted on a daughtercard.

You can upgrade a single CPU system to a dual CPU by getting a 
dual-CPU daughtercard.

Check out Low End Mac's web page on G4 upgrades: 
<http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/g4upgrades.html>

>Related, what's a good source of information on Apple motherboards?

There's some good info on that site.  However, it's not 
super-technically-detailed.

>
>For example, I'd like to know which G4 motherboards are just like the
>1GHz dual models, but have slower CPUs.

You have to deal with the systems bases on the model. For example, 
the 800 MHz CPUs and 1GHz models were called QuickSilver.  The 
motherboards were, iirc, the same; just the CPU/cache daughtercards 
were different.


>The reason is that the slower models are so cheap, you can upgrade them
>to 2GHz operation cheaper than bying a 1-1.4GHz model.
>
>However, I can't seem to find out if the units with the slower CPUs have
>motherboards that are otherwise just as good as the ones with faster
>CPUs.

Systems within a given model family have similar motherboard specs, 
typically in terms of memory speeds.

john
-- 
John Francini, francini at mac.com

"The journey is more important than the destination-that's part of 
life. If you only live for getting to the end, you're almost always 
disappointed."     -Donald Knuth