buyers of G5: caveats and helpful tips
 

Thought I would start a catch-all thread for things people should know about purchasing a new G5.

Before buying a G5, you should be aware that poor grad students everywhere want G5s but can't afford them. Also, the G5s might have bugs, which can best be found by sending a brand new, dual 2.0 G5 to a grad student... for testing purposes. :-)

Zach

(and don't forget the 23" display :-) )

I'll start....
 

I've preordered my G5 and am researching what I will have to do to get set up...

one thing that you should know is that you cannot put your present hard drive in the empty slot of a new G5 to transfer data, as I'd first thought. The only type of drives that can be used in the G5 is a serial ATA. Therefore, you will either need to get a firewire enclosure for your old drive to hook it up as an external, transfer present data through backup CDs/DVDs, or an alternative is to make one or the other of your computers a target disk (make it work like a firewire hard drive), networking the two computers with a firewire cable. I've not done this myself, but others have, and here is the links to some apple articles:

Full Apple Docs on the matter below:

How to and
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

trouble Shooting
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75420

and if you follow this thread down a ways, there is some discussion on the procedure.

other things that you should be aware:

1. your present third party speakers will only work if they are analog plug.
2. memory must be installed in pairs....

please, as people run across caveats and tips in the months ahead, post them here. thanks.

Ooop, repeat. Nevermind.

Has anyone heard anything about how long the waiting list is? I plan on getting a G5, but right now I'm still a little short of the money I need to get the model I want. I've been debating whether or not to beg for a loan so I can put in my order now, as I'm afraid that if I wait too long I won't have a chance in hell of seeing one when they first ship.

When I preordered my G5 this week, they suggested a possible late august shipping time frame. That could be just being conservative, but I imagine that'll be close to accurate.

Re: I'll start....
 

I'm curious why you didn't mention what seems to me the simplest - tarnsferring the data over an Ethernet network. How much data do you have that you will want to transfer? Even if you have 100 GB, this will be less than 3 hours over standard 100 Mbs "fast" Ethernet. And if your old machine has 1000 Mbs "gigabit" Ethernet, it should be 10 times faster than that.

adapter
 

I'm pretty sure you can get serial ATA to IDE adapters. I'm sure you can in the PC world anyway..
Dave

If you read this tech note (1.8 meg PDF), there are some useful tidbits, like:

"Note: The AGP bus is 1.5 V only and is not backward compatible. Older AGP cards will not work in the Power Mac G5 computer."

Not that you'd want to.

Re: Re: I'll start....
 

or not transfer it all. merely re-commission your old rig as a backup file server and get what you need (data) when you need it.

refrain from making more work.

also, you are going to be the alpha-tester, the new kid on the block. i hope we hear good reports from you instead of the inverse.

DOOD! That sucks! I spent the $$ for an nVidia G4 Ti and it's not one of the listed 'supported' video cards. *sniffle*

Re: Re: I'll start....
 

because "tarnsferring" people is considered cruel and unusual punishment, besides I don't have time to melt the tar and gather feathers. :)

no, in fact that's another valid option I failed to mention. I just was thinking about the target disk mode personally because I want to make a separate bootable partition on the G5 by cloning the G4's OSX partition....if possible....with all settings and prefs intact for emergencies. Its how I like to upgrade, always a backup and a bootable one if possible, a safety net.

compatibility
 

I doubt that OS 10.2.6 will run on the G5's so I guess you are thinking about first installing a new version of the OS on your G4 and then cloning this partition to the G5. But it is possible that your G5 will arrive before 10.2.7 (or whatever is needed for the G5) is available to you. And I don't see too much benefit in doing it this way as opposed to just installing a second copy of the OS on another partition on the G5.

Re: compatibility
 

well, my planning is still in a state of flux, but my initial thoughts were to clone but not boot to the partition, THEN install in place over that partition to bring it up to date to the proper system version while retaining registration preferences and library items, etc. in place. I will also fresh install software on the proper G5 OSX install partition, but like I've said, I want to be as redundant as possible.
I also intend to sell the old G4 and its drives, so I won't have access to them after the transfer, or at least not the data.

why not use a firewire cable to connect the two and put the "old" machine into target disk mode to transfer files

PCI ATA Cards
 

A suggestion, though compatability cannot be verified yet. What about the option of installing a ATA PCI133 Controler Card. I know ACARD makes MacOS 10.1 & 10.2 compatable cards. I have used one. No drivers needed. Plug it in and it just works.

FYI, the PCI133 ATA cards support the 300GB+ Drives.

Let me know if anyone can't stand having their G5. I think I can find it a new home *wink*

Re: compatibility
 

I can't remember where I read it now, but apparently the G5 will ship with OS X 10.2.7, which is recompiled/optimised for the new processor-as an interim until Panther is released. It has some weird code name (which I also can't currently remember-DOH!) to distinguish it from the 10.2.7 that may become available to the rest of us. If this is true, it means you might encounter difficulties trying to update your G4 before cloning it to the G5. It's also possible that 10.2.7 won't be released to the rest of us, no doubt depending on how far away Panther is.

Rob.

"Smeagol" was one of the names of Tolkien's "Gollum" before he discovered the ring, i think.

Smeagol
 

Yeh that was it! Knew it sounded familiar from somewhere.
Thanks for refreshing my memory.

That wasn't the article I originally read, but I agree with what it says about the possibility of "Smeagol" never seeing the light of day. Its possible it is no more than an insurance, and wouldn't be surprised if reports start coming in during August that the G5s are shipping with Panther. Apple would no doubt get more positive press coverage for releasing Panther apparantly ahead of schedule, (didn't that happen last August with Jaguar?) Meanwhile the "end of year" message just gives them a bit of breathing space (they can always offer Panther rebates if necessary for recently purchased Macs)

I'm not sure if I agree with what the article says about Smeagol not being optimised for the G5, rather just recompiled so it works with it. With Apple claiming backwards compatibility, and such easily optimised code, I can't see why they would need to make major changes just to make Jaguar run, and why they wouldn't bother to optimise the code-its in their interest to have the G5s running as fast as possible straight away. If there really are significant changes required to make OS X run on a G5, are we going to see multiple versions of Panther when it is released?

Anyway, went a bit off topic there, I apologize.

I'm not in the market for a G5, but a word of warning to those who are considering pre-ordering.
I pre-ordered a top spec G4 iMac when they were first announced, and waited over 6 weeks to receive it. Less than 5 months later the 17" wide screen model came out with a GeForce 4 MX. I could have cried! Steve Jobs has already mentioned big things ahead for the G5 in the coming months.
You have been warned.

Rob.

Firewire Target but....
 

Firewire Target easier, but....

The Suppostion that the new Systems do not Ship with regular ATA all seems incorrect to me...

The Super drive in those systems are Standard ATA and thus there has to be at least one ATA connector on the motherboard and you certainly could always slave a second device.... And in fact see below.

*Ultra DMA ATA/100 bus: supports internal optical drive
-------------------------------------------------------
http://developer.apple.com/documenta...PowerMacG5.pdf
(PAGE 23).
------------------------------------------------------------
I was disapointed that there is only room in the case for a total of two 3.5 Drives and one 5.25 inch Drive. I am sure its goof for Air flow..... It means internally you could stripe one pair for speed or reliabilty and thats it.

Most of Apple recent cases had room for 4 to 5 3.5 inch Drives.

I guess people privliged enough to have a G5 will be buying even more firewire enclsures or perhaps multidrive enclusures.

Perhaps Apple will get into the act with a little mini me Xserve raid. I could see a lot of people needing 2 to 5 drives in a single case to raid for speed or reliabilty

Further down in the Dev. Doc a new clearer Description Firewire Target Mode G5 desc
 

Target Disk Mode

The user has the option at boot time to put the computer into a mode of operation
called Target Disk Mode (TDM). When the Power Mac G5 computer is in Target
Disk Mode and connected to another Macintosh computer by a FireWire cable, the
Power Mac G5 computer operates like a FireWire mass storage device with the
SBP-2 (Serial Bus Protocol) standard. Target Disk Mode has two primary uses:

high-speed data transfer between computers
diagnosis and repair of a corrupted internal hard drive

The Power Mac G5 computer can operate in Target Disk Mode as long as the other
computer has a 1394a or 1394b FireWire port and either any version of Mac OS X or
Mac OS 9 with FireWire software version 2.3.3 or later.

*************************************************
To put the Power Mac G5 computer into Target Disk Mode, restart the computer
and hold down the T key until the FireWire icon appears on the display. Then
connect a FireWire cable from the Power Mac G5 to the other computer. When the
other computer completes the FireWire connection, a hard disk icon appears on its
desktop.

If you disconnect the FireWire cable or turn off the Power Mac G5 computer while
in Target Disk Mode, an alert appears on the other computer.

To take the Power Mac G5 out of Target Disk Mode, drag the hard disk icon on the
other computer to the trash, then press the power button on the Power Mac G5
computer.

The optical drive is on a standard ATA/100 connector, but running a cable to connect a hard drive would probably be difficult. This would possibly be the case with using a PCI ATA card, due to the "cooling zones" in the G5. Also, most SATA to ATA drive adapters are fairly large, and I don't think they would fit inside the drive area in the G5.

Actually If I read the Diagram correctly
 

Actually If I read the Diagram correctly (a dubious assumption:)

****And firewire Target mode really is the way to Go***********

The Optical Drive is Close to Top of the case and so are the two 3.5 inch Drive bays almost direcly opposite, so it should not be too hard to borrow the Super Drives Cable or Run a new one brielfy that had two connectors.

Drive space
 

I don't see a problem with the limited space for only two hard drives and one optical. half a terabyte is a lot of space for now and in a couple of years you will probably be able to replace them with larger drives. And with Fire Wire 800 drives, expandability isn't an issue. I already have an external 52x cdr, so that is all I will need along with the (slow) super drive:)

It is a great System...... But.. I am sure it was a design Compromise for Cooling
 

It is a great System...... But.. I am sure it was a design Compromise for Cooling

I just wish the System was a few inches taller to support at least 4 3.5 inch Drives. A drive itself is only 1 Inch Tall, 3 more would easily fit in 2 Inches of Height with an inch of clearence. A tray of Drives in the Bottom or Top.
----------------------------

It is not the 1/2 a Terabyte that is @ issue. Nor is it the fact that you can buy Firewire Cases that Hold Single or Multiple Drives. Even ekk a SCCI/Firewire Raid or Firewire Raid holding 4 to 8 drives and up.

---------------------------
**********In the Older cases you could Raid just the Drives inside the case many people bought inexpensive 2 and 4 channel raid cards. They then raided the drives the way they wanted.

Some People made a raid pair for Redundancy for the OS and for Data, mirroring, while others made the same with a second pair for Data. Others raided for straight speed with 2 to 5 drives [You need to use 4 to 5 for for Video Editing Broadcast Quaility or better].

Others went for for a Sub $100 dollar ata133 controller and used Carbon Copy Cloner with a pair of drives (replcing ata66 and 100 controlers on the MB).

The point here is the Drives cost little and so did the ATA and or Raid Cards. Thus after spending $1500 to $4500 on a desktop they could build in a lot drive speed, capacity, or reduncacy or even a combination of these for as a little as few hunderd dollars and usually much less then $800 dollars.

And all this lived happily inside*******

Now the choice is simple, but more expensive an Apple Mini Me Xserve Raid (if they decide to make one) or the many third party SCCI/Firewire Raid or Firewire Raid holding 4 to 8 drives and up.

Most Of these Options start @$600 to 800 for simple two drive affairs and Climb into the thousounds pretty quickly. You have to spend thousounds to reclaim the speed or reliabilty you could have had with internal **Real Hardware Raid**
----------------------------------------

Apple is re-visting the issue already with the Xserve. This is why they have not replaced the Xserve in the same time frame. The Xserve came with 4 drives too before requiring an external Xserve Raid.

Apple is trying or more likely Aready figured out how to Smash all that good sruff into 1U by 19inch by 30 or so inches of a server Rack.
Maybe they will have to make it 1.5, 2 or 3U high.

Re: Firewire Target but....
 

no, actually, I"ve verified that with a call to apple and checking the G5 specs. The hard drive connectors are made for ATA serial drives ONLY.

besides, we're getting a little far afield now from actual useful hints or tips for purchasers into a discussion of the merits of the G5 itself, etc. Consider this a gentle suggestion that we stay on topic in this thread and if need be start a separate thread in the coat room if you want to have just a general discussion about G5s.

I'm hoping for this to be a primer for those who wish to purchase so they can get their ducks in a row and be set to go with a minimum of hassle. If I have to relocate this thread to the coat room at some point, I'll restart another tip thread here with the salient info included.

Sure Color me Confused
 

Sure, Color me confused though:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Ultra DMA ATA/100 bus: supports internal optical drive
-------------------------------------------------------
http://developer.apple.com/document.../PowerMacG5.pdf
(PAGE 23).

The above is Standard ata and in the G5 for the Super, and that in a Pinch if you wanted to you could borrow its ata Cable for a data transfer I realize that the 3.5 inch Drive/s run off Serial ATA the one Apple provides and the second one you can put in.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

On the matter of Topic on and Off.

It is true that pining for extra drives is somewhat irrelvant if you have already ordered... But Some people might take pause and wait. Probably not, but people have a right to know a systems limitations and strengths.

The PCI slots in the G5 do not support older cards which are 5v only; it requires those which are either 3.3v or 3.3/5v universal switching.

This is causing some folks with specialized cards trouble, there is a thread at MacInTouch discussing this issue.

Caveat: verify that your cards are of the universal or 3.3v variety.


Edit: Corrected per anthlover below.

Intereresting no 5V
 

RE: Intereresting no 5V:

I just read the URL/note and think you have it flipped: See Below:

"Current shipping Macs support PCI 2.1. This includes cards that support both 3.3v and 5v switching, and both 32 and 64 bit cards. What isn't always clear in this description is that the current G4s do not support cards that are 3.3v ONLY, only boards that support BOTH 3.3v and 5v OR only 5v. More specifically, there are three types of boards:

5 v only. These boards have a long connector that abuts the rear-end of the computer, followed by a key (a narrow break in the connector to fit over a break in the slot), followed by a shorter connector. These boards won't run in the G5 (but do work fine in current G4s).

3.3v only. These boards are the reverse of the 5v board: they have a short connector at the rear of the computer, a key, and then a longer connector. These boards should run in the G5 (and these boards would not run in a current G4).
So-called universal board that supports both 3.3v and 5v. This board has two key openings, one near the rear of the board for the 3.3v key and another farther away for the 5v key. These boards should run in the G5 (and would run in a current G4). "

A little more detail for those interested..
 

Conventional PCI 2.3
An Evolution of the Conventional PCI Specification

Revision 2.3 is an evolutionary change to the PCI Local Bus Specification. Revision 2.3 makes a significant step in migrating the PCI bus from the original 5.0 volt signaling to a 3.3 volt signaling bus. Revision 2.3 supports the 5V and 3.3V keyed system board connectors (as did revision 2.2) but revision 2.3 supports only the 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards. The 5V keyed add-in card is not supported in revision 2.3. PCI 66, PCI-X, Mini PCI, and Low Profile PCI support only 3.3 volt signaling on 3.3V keyed system board connectors and 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards.

High performance technologies power the logic within the chips with 3.3 or lower voltages. The newer high performance technologies cannot support 5 volt compatible signaling on the off-chip drivers. As a result, the host bridge needs to migrate to 3.3 volt signaling with 3.3V keyed system board connectors. Removing support for 5V keyed add-in cards is the first step in the migration to 3.3 volt signaling systems and ensures revision 2.3 compliant add-in cards will be usable in 3.3V keyed system board connectors.

In addition to the changes described above, revision 2.3 also incorporates other ECNs and approved errata. Compliance to Revision 2.3 will be required no later than January 1st, 2004.

Re: Intereresting no 5V
 

Quite right! I've fixed it now. Thanks!

Must be the prolonged heat wave melting my brain... :D

NP:)
 

NP:)

As a side note to this topic...

Admin should Probably make PCI Voltage and key issue a sticky Top level thread or we might have people trying real hard to jam cards into wonderful new and old machines. Might even save breakage of MBs.

Magic Eight Ball says: "Good idea."

But being lazy I'm just going to make this thread sticky for a while, and maybe we'll get new reports of gotcha's on the G5's as well.

:)
 

:)

A few things to note about the G5
 

Well we got a G5 about a week and a half ago from apple. We are using it now for demoing purposes to presell them on our sales side of the company. So naturally I took it back to the shop and took it apart and put it back together again.

One thing I noticed is the mesh front panel has no filter or screen to catch dirt, dust, hair, bugs, etc. Which would not be a problem if you lived in a sterile enviroment. Which I bet all of us do. Also there is a plastic air shield, which is transparent and right behind the side panel of the case. This helps air flow of the system. We all know its not how many case fans are in your system, its how air flows through it. You don't want any hot air to resignate so constant air flow is good. I have thought about maybe putting a real light filter or screen across the front of the G5 to catch the dust, hair, etc. Now over a period of time dust can build a static electric charge, and thats not good for a system. It can also ruin your fans, build up on your heatsink and for lack of a better term, insulate it, making your processor warmer.

It does come with 10.2.7, I did not find any major differences in the OS, so its probably just optimized for the newer hardware.

One thing I will note is that its not as heavy as it looks. Its actually a bit lighter than the MDD G4's.

The smart fans were fun to play with. If you remove the air shield in the slightest way you can immediately hear the fans spin faster. The sensor are pretty percise. One thing I will note is make sure that air shield is installed properly and seated along the side of your case properly. If not it will result in your G5 running slower. The processor clocks itself down to prevent overheating.

I did not read that you have to put RAM modules in as pairs, but the low end G5 ( I guess you can call it low end?) does have 2 sticks of RAM in it from the factory. That kind of made me curious if apple was gonna go that way.

You do.:)

Yeah but I think its like do you want
 

Yeah, but I think its like do you want to take Full Advantage of Memory Bandwidth, instead of, you have to or No Boot.

If what I am saying is true their will eventually paired and non-paired bench marks plus lore of greater reliabilty in pairs.

Our G5 has been running for almost 2 weeks straight now and it has had no problems. This is one the first production models as well. Apple sent it to us early to demo it. We are now this week getting them in steadily but unfortunately we are selling them before we can even put any of the big ones on display to demo. Plus I don't work on the sales side, but I know for a fact if there was the slightest problem with our demo G5 the sales reps would come right to me to fix it, so they could sell more.

Additional DIMMs must be installed in pairs of the same size.

—Power Mac G5 Developer Note

'Course, just because that's what they SAY... ;)

swapfiles...
 

as far as to pair or not to pair Dimm sticks--I'm no CS grad, but is that a surprise when you're playing with 32 + 32 bits?
Anyway I looked at a 1.6Ghz in Micro Center this evening.
this had the default 256MB, in two 128's. I checked the swapfiles, since my dual 1Ghz MDD is fond of adding extra ones up to 400MB at most. (I do plan to change that.) This puppy had no internet connection, and no software but the default--and had run up to 256MB of virtual. So this is a 64 bit computer, folks. They probably shoudn't be turned on at less than what, a gig? Another thing, the swapfiles were two 64MB files and one 128MB (!?) I was good. I really don't like MC, but I rebooted it for the benefit of Mac fans. At which time it itwas on song at 64MB of virtual, as opposed to our more prosaic 80MB.:D

No Virtual PC for G5 Macs
 

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07325

Umm...so we're waiting for Microsoft to make VirtualPC work on a G5 Mac? Whoo boy.

We got our first 1.6s and 1.8s at work last Wednesday, and I've been playing around trying to get bochs to run on the 1.8. So far I'm fairly impressed with it considering it's an open source non optimized application. It's definitely not something I'd want a normal consumer trying to use, but it seems at times faster and at times slower than VPC on a dual 1.25 G4.

I love the way the latch for the side door works (including its locking loop). The AirPort antenna scares the hell out of me (I can see people snapping them off inside of the plug now... *shudder*), but at least it is rubber, so it will bend a little.

If anyone is wondering, I contacted Dr. Bott about the PCI TV tuner they sell, and it is 5v only, so currently no 1.8 or Dual 2.0 G5 compatibility, but the manufacturer is working on a new card.

Virtual PC
 

My microsoft rep tells me there will be a version for G5s sometime in 2004. However you can just buy a cheap PC to run office like apps for around $400.00 USD.

Also I think that VPC will be 2000/XP only for the newer macs. The rep mentioned they may not make a 98 version. However, we will not know until it comes out.

If VPC works (i.e., if Microsoft doesn't confuculate it), it will work with any PC operating system, from DOS 3.3 to OS/2 to XP or Slackware.

Meanwhile, I'm on a laptop and I ain't lugging around a damn PC. So this is a deal-breaker. I'll keep my old laptop until a G5 laptop is available and a version of VPC exists to run on it.

Sorry I don't really use VPC. Then why do they sell VPC seperately now in XP/2000/98 versions? I have seen them in seperate boxes. I have seen an XP home edition VPC, and a 2000 Pro VPC. Currently we do not carry the 98 version at my work. Not to mention microsoft has already dropped any support for win 3.11 and win 95. Windows 98 is pretty much completely phased out as well. Microsoft will be dropping all support for 98 as well soon.

So I would not doubt it if VPC only comes out in win2k and XP editions for the next versions. Also, I bet they come seperately.

I did not mean it will only work w/ 2000/xp networks. I meant it only comes in those 2 versions.

Vitual PC Alternative
 

OpenOSX offers G5-accelerated WinTel emulator
By Peter Cohen pcohen@maccentral.com
September 03, 2003 8:55 am ET

Power Mac G5 owners looking for an alternative to Virtual PC may be interested in OpenOSX's announcement release on Wednesday of WinTel v1.0.1. It's a new version of the open source "Bochs" PC emulator. The new version of WinTel is now accelerated for Power Mac G5s, according to the company.

Bochs is an open source IA-32 PC emulator written in C++. The software's main purpose is to act as a PC emulator, like Microsoft's Virtual PC program. It can be used to run operating systems designed for Intel-compatible PCs on non-Intel hardware, and has been used with various flavors of Linux, Unix and Windows. WinTel is OpenOSX's specific implementation of Bochs aimed at Mac OS X users.

OpenOSX offers a number of open source applications for Mac OS X. The company's goal is to provide Mac users with popular Unix software "in a friendly, Mac environment."

WinTel specifically comes with 10 different open source operating systems pre-installed, including various flavors of Linux, FreeBSD and more. OpenOSX noted that it has tested WinTel will Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0 and XP Professional, although the company does not recommend XP or 2000 because of speed issues. OpenOSX's WinTel release comes with a single-click installer.



In late August, Microsoft confirmed with MacCentral that its Virtual PC emulation software, acquired earlier this year from Connectix Corp., will not work on the Power Mac G5. Users who launch the software on their G5s get an error message noting that the software is incompatible with the CPUs in their Macs.

Microsoft attributed this incompatibility to the G5's lack of support for pseudo little-endian mode, and said that the software would be updated to support G5s in the future, though the company stopped short of volunteering a schedule for when this will happen.

WinTel is apparently not restricted by this issue, because OpenOSX noted that the new release "delivers increased performance on the new PowerMac G5," along with newly updated software, added features, and enhanced performance and stability.

A download-only release is available for US$25. OpenOSX also sells WinTel on CD-ROM for $30. Book bundles and 6-month subscriptions are also available. More details can be found on the Web site.

tlarkin:Virtual PC ships with various PC operating systems bundled and preinstalled. That doesn't keep you from buying up a plain old OS install CD and installing one of them instead, though. I purchased Virtual PC version 1.0 waaaay back when with Windows95 preinstalled/bundled. Since then I've generally upgraded only to stripped-down packages that had nothing but the newer VPC application itself and some updater PC-executables that would update drivers and whatnot within the emulated PC environment itself.

I installed Windows NT Server 4.0 over a duplicate of my W95 environment, using a regular Microsoft install CD. (And periodically installed the service packs). Later I duplicated my NT environment and installed Windows 2000 Server on top of it from, again, Microsoft install CD. On a lark, I bought up a set of Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) installation diskettes from eBay along with DOS 6.22 or whatever DOS it was that you needed, and using an expansion bay floppy drive installed DOS and then Windows 3.11 onto a blank disk image. Had to find and download the W-311-compatible drivers for the Trio S3 video card and the ethernet card to get them to work.

When I upgraded to VPC version 3.0, I, on another lark, opted for the version that had Linux Red Hat bundled with it. From that VPC CD I can create a hard disk image that has Linux preinstalled. However, it shipped also with regular Red Hat installation CDs so I could hand them off to another owner of VPC and that person could install Red Hat the same way a PC user would, from scratch. (And I may try that myself one of these days).

All of these drive images work normally under MacOS X although of course they were created before the OS X era. I haven't tried installing a PC OS from native installation media under OS X but as far as I know it works the same way.

VPC ships with 98/2K/XP in order to save you the hassle of doing the install, and for your convenience if you, as a Mac user, do not happen to already have your hands on the PC install media. If you prefer Windows95 or OS/2 or NT 3.5 or something, though, you have to do it yourself. If (as would indeed seem likely) Microsoft stops shipping VPC with 98 bundled, you'd just have to pick up a copy of W98 on eBay or from your brother or whatever and install it yourself.

Unless, as I said, Microsoft changes the way VPC works and prevents you from installing and using any PC operating system that you want to use, which has always been the status quo for VPC under Connectix.

When VPC was still sold by connectix, you could also buy a DOS version, so that you could get it fairly inexpensively, and use your existing Windows install CD.

We were told mid 2004 by our Microsoft rep as well, which is why I started bashing away at bochs. (Evertime I start an install, someone stops it to show off the G5!). ;)

Detailed G5 Photo Gallery
 

Here abides a gorgeous photo gallery of the G5 with explanations, suitable for a museum!

Jacques

Re: Detailed G5 Photo Gallery
 

ha! the A5 rebuttal is not to be missed!

Hmm I just run windows and linux on PCs. Never really bothered with VPC at all. I have worked with it here and there but I prefer to just run it on a PC and not a mac.

Thanks for the total insight of VPC, I am sure one of these days I will have to deal with it, but until then I would rather just not mess with it.

DW 3 Will not boot off CD on a G5!
 

My Diskwarrior CD would not boot off a G5. I had to boot in target mode off a seperate HD the user had. Since all the new HDs are serial ATA only you cannot fit an ATA 133 IDE drive in the system at all. So luckily this time I had their old HD to toss in an enclosure, but next time I won't. So it seems that DW 3 will not boot off the CD on a G5, grrrrr that makes me angry.

Re: DW 3 Will not boot off CD on a G5!
 

Why would you think it would? The OS rev. required for the G5 wasn't around when the DW CD was pressed.

Maybe BootCD can make a 10.2.7/DW utility disc. Worth a try until Alsoft releases an updated CD.

Also, anybody who is successful in getting Bochs running, please tell us if it performs decently. That was always the knock on it, that it's dog slow. Maybe the G5 will help.

Finally, a quarter says VPC 7 will only run XP or later, when it ships. Since they're doing pretty much a complete rewrite to deal with the 'endian' issues of the 970, it's not hard to imagine that some kind of OS activation/locking scheme will be added. That's also why you shouldn't expect it to be finished in a big hurry.

Yeah you are right, I was just hoping they put some kind of legacy thing in the G5 where any OS X 10.2 cd would boot.

I agree that on believing that VPC will probably be only XP home/Pro only and there will be activation with it.

However, we will see.

Though not an Opimal OPtion in any way DW3 Firebooted
 

Though not an Optimal Option in any way, DW3 Firewire booted in Target Disk mode to a Non G5 machine from now is probably the most Safe and Reliable way to repair Dir Damage with DW until there is a DW 10.27 or better Offical Boot CD/DVD.

As many are aware rolling your own boot volume and in particular even booting from Another volume and running DW has been more probelmatic for some

Currently building a G5
 

got one in and am setting it up, will tell you tommorow morning if it could be cloned to an older machine.

Basically my first step is to set it up just the way I/the client wants it. Then clone (CarbonCopyCloner, if you don't use it, start now) the machine to an older mac and see if it works.

as it happens my first targte for that clone is none other than my handy dandy trusty little G3 imac with 80gig hard drive and 1gig of ram.

Yes I said G3. I am testing the burn on the OLDEST machine first, then younger machines to be certain.

Will report tommorow.
knowmad

I don't know if this will affect CD/DVD booting, but there is an Apple technote saying that 10.2.7 (G5) will not work in any machine other than a G5.

IT WORKED!
 

Ok, just to remind you all what i have done (look up two posts):

Got a single processor 1.6GHz G5 with 256ram (too little) and an 80GB HD(too much?).

Set it up, basically just by adding what I thought the user would need. I did not rebuild the machine from scratch, I used the install that the factory sent it with. Added Developer tools, Fink, eject menulet, classic menulet, shadowkiller, set the dock, set the system prefs. Then I logged in as root and moved the current user setup to the default user template (English.lproj) and logged out.
(as a side note, I tried to use perl to install CPAN, but it quit out halfway through, I was intedning to install psync but never got that far, need to look into that).

Then I used carbon copy cloner to create an ASR compressed disk image of the G5. I let that run overnight as I needed to get the hell away from my office. This morning I came in and restored the new G5 image to the second drive (partition) on my G3 IMac (DV Graphite edition, 80GB HD, 1GB ram.... sad that it has more ram than the G5, but the IMac is mine and the G5 belongs to a slightly penny pinching client).

Restore was done booted from partition on the IMac with the restore image sitting on my server, so it was technically done over the network. Image size was 3.2Gb and whole thing took less than 15 minutes (did not actually time it).

Booted just fine.
only problem is that for some reason the system settings, such as energy saver and dock, reverted to default.... and not event he default i built but the factory default. The dock repopulated itself with default icons (imovie, idvd, itunes, etc..) and this is in the admin account which was already created. I need to look more closely at this aspect and figure it out.

otherwise, worked perfectly.

Knowmad

almost forgot.... FOR THE RECORD
 

i now have 10.2.7 running on a G3, so no matter what apple says, it will work on things other than a G5!

What benefits are there for running OS X.2.7 on your G3?

Jacques

the benefit is in the clone
 

The benefit, besides making apples statement that it won't work into a falsehood, is that i do not need to keep two disk images around. Let me explain: When you are building many machines for clients and the like you need to clone them, much like using ghost on WinTel or RevRDist on OS9. It makes it easier if you can set up an entire room of machiens with a just a few minutes of typing commands. So, the benefit is not in the fact that it is 10.2.7 but rather in that it does not die. So I can set up one G5, just right, with everything I think a user should have, make a cloned disk image, put it on my server, and build as many machines as I want, regardless of what level G-chip they have. If it did not work on older machiens I would need an image from a G4 and an image from a G5, not a big deal, but annoying.

I hope that explains it.

ps
I fixed the default setup issue, i had accidentatly reset it before i made the clone, found the proof when I went back to original G5 machien and looked. oops.

Remade clone, works fine now.

Knowmad
(edited for BAD spelling)

Nice. Now I know that I can tackle a similar project without worrying about it flat-out never working.

If you wnat i will make my ASR usable, read only, compressed disk image of my G5 setup available for download. I have a T1, as long as you promise to download between 5pm and 9am New York Time. (unless soemone tells me there is a problem with this legally speaking)

Speaking of setup for a new machine..... I think I will start a thread asking what everyone thnks should be basic setup for all machines.
knwomad

Houston, we have no problem at all !
 

Hi there,

I just wanted to mention that I received my tiny 1.6MHz G5 yesterday. The whole staff in my office got new machines: mine is the only Apple, the others are kindof 1.8 GHz PCs with pretty much the same peripherals like my G5.

First of all, you can be certain that everybody stared at the box and the way I celebrated the unpacking... Every little thing I found was treated like an easter egg and carefully put on my desk. How nice is it to get a DVD-R and a CD-R enclosed to test the optical drive right away? People stared at me, opening the case with one latch, looking at the nice internals, installing extra RAM and closing it again. My G5 resides on top of my desk, the others hide their Boxes beneath the desk.

I did the standard installation of the G5 that came with it while my collegues unpacked hundreds of brown papers and loveless plugged their things together. Then I mounted my old Powerbook G4 via Firewire and copied the public directories, /Library and /Applications in no time and merged it with the new system. Then I created the 5 users that I have manually and copied their home diretories over.
By that time my collegues had BIOS settings open and the smartest figured out that they needed to install a special driver for the onboard RAID-controller before manually partitioning and formatting the drive...

OK, I spent 2 hours or so to install current versions of mysql and PHP and copy several Websites over, but that was mostly because I changed the directory-structure and set it up from scratch. It took not more than yesterday afternoon and in the evening I had some time to enjoy the speed (compared to the 400MHz TiBook). Oh - they didn't give me a second IP adress so the TiBook couldn't get one. The Download and installation of IP_over_Firewire from Apple took 5 minutes and works perfect. The G5 is the Gateway to the internet and the TiBook has Firewire-networking to it. Now they share Files with 400Mbit which is even more than the 100Mbit Network of the office...

I'm the first in the office today, because I can't wait to work with the new machine. I have had no problems at all and really love the new setup. Everythings up and running and I even fixed some problems because of installing a new machine from the scratch. I got rid of some evolutionary grown glitches and set them up correctly now.

OK - there is one problem about the new machine: The others are coming now and trying to install WinXP on their machines. Since I have no more work with my own machine and do know XP very well, they want me to help them getting around all the hundreds of problems they have with their machines...

OS 10.2
 

is now like windows

full of bugs

How fast is the dual G5? - Fast!
 

We've been working on an After Effects project that is 43 seconds in length. Rendering time, as you may, know is the big question when it comes to After Effects. We began rendering our composition on both a 1 Ghz Xserve and a dual G4 864 with 768MB RAM.

The Xserver worked for 22 hours to render 9 seconds of the clip and estimated another 65 hours to complete the entire clip! The dual G4 was a bit better but not by much, so we headed down to the Apple Store (Burlingame, CA) and picked up a dual G5.

The results? Rendering the same clip the dual G5 pounded out the same 9 seconds in 5 hours and needed only a total of 11 hours and 43 seconds to render the entire 43 second clip. Awesome!

The bottom line is if you want one, go get it. You won't be sorry. Its one fast machine!:)

got my G5 dual Monday. I'm recuperating from surgery so haven't done everything with it I'd like. One caveat is that the PCI USB card I'd purchased ahead of time will not fit inthe newer style PCI slots. When I called apple for recommendations, got put on hold and finally gave up. I managed with the available USB slots by using the one on the keyboard for the printer.
-- speed: yeah howdy. although my previous reference was a G4 400mhz at home and a G4 Mirror at work, this is a noticeable speed jump. I can especially tell in render-intensive games. Freehand MX now performs at acceptable speeds and photoshop is almost thoughtspeed for operations that used to be clunky.
This is all subjective, of course.
VPC won't work on the G5, which I knew from other posts here at the forum, though that is a little frustrating, I can get around it.
-- Storage and transfer: I wisely purchased an extra SATA drive so that I could boot back and forth. I immediately partitioned that drive and transferred over my previous OSX partition from the G4. This was a breeze since I'd purchased a firewire enclosure. I simply popped out the old HD and inserted into the enclosure, plugged enclosure into front firewire port and used carbon copy cloner to transfer, repaired permissions, worked like a charm.
I then used the restore disc to archive install over that transferred partition (since it wouldn't boot the dual), then deleted the previous system folder. Once I'd done that, I repartitioned the factory SATA drive into three partitions and carbon copy cloned the now properly bootable OSX from the old G4 onto a a partition on the factory HD.
Now I had two bootable partitions internal in the G5. From there I continued to transfer other odds and ends, like library and music, that sort of thing.
In all, it took about 6 hours from setup, transfer to raring to go. Considering I had about 100 gigs of stuff to transfer, no small feat.

I'm recuperating from neck surgery, and can't lift over a pound, so a kind neighbor volunteered to do the actual heavy lifting under my vocal direction.
looking at the G5 insides is a tech wet-dream. Installing extra ram a cinch, and the new connectors for the second SATA drive are slick and easy.
Except for the incompatible PCI card, there were no hitches.

And Diablo runs in real time...woohoo! No one lives forever wouldn't even run on my G4 400 but lives comfortably on the G5 with 3d acceleration.

It took forever to get here, but man is it worth it.

My 2 G5's worth..
 

Hiya, well i've just received 2 G5 dual 2 gigs and i must say they're the best macs i have ever seen, used or caressed ( ;o) ). They're almost silent and look like the dogs bolox on the desk. They weigh a tonne and the handles are far from easy to use but hey, who's going to carry these behemoths very far?
Can't wait until apple bring out a fully 64 bit os to make full use of the chips, but for now i'm happy with 10.2.7..
Conclusion, the dual G5 rocks!
Dave

I can say I only have had to service 1 G5 since they have been out. It was for a defective super drive (the drive door would not open, probably damaged in shipping). So, I can say these machines are built pretty good. Usually when any new system (PC or Mac) comes out I will always have to fix a few of them right off the bat. The G5, however, has been pretty solid and I have only had to repair one.

We've only had to work on one G5 so far. One of the Dual 2s that we got, ironically, the drive door wouldn't open. The tray would try to open, and hit the door. Found that the drive and metal shield weren't aligned properly, adjusted it, and now it works fine.

Dulie G5 Sweet wish it could stay on my Desk
 

Well we got a Dulie in the Shop today.... Paired with a Cinema 23.

For those people Cloning around I tried the reversi trick Starting the G5 in FW target mode.

Instead of Pushing a G5 10.28 image down to a new system..

I tried Pushing a Quick Silver 867 (10.28) image with Tons of Apps and Data onto onto the G5 Dulie.

Would not boot, though Cloned Sucessfully with CCC.

**Did a little Trick that still makes it worth while. I then Ran G5 included DVD OSX Installer with Archive and Install Option (with user prefs).

The end result of both procedures was as if the straight clone had been sucessful.

Well worth the time savings.

I had a dual G5 come in a week or so ago to my shop. It was having intermittent usb problems. Randomly the keyboard/mouse would not work if plugged into the cinema display. I quickly duplicated the problem with 3 more G5s. So, I then next contacted apple and they said that updating from 10.2.7 to 10.2.8 (G5) would fix this problem. I loaded 10.2.8 on the users machine and have not received anymore complaints about it.

Does Cloning kill application authorizations?
 

Hi,
My audio setup takes up to a week or so to get running perfectly. Four major applications but 30 or more plugin authorizations, some challenge and response that take days to get sorted. Is there a way to clone a working backup system for me that does not break all the authorizations. Some challenge and response authorizations use the ethernet address as well, if the drive is going in the same machine is it ok?
If one is upgrading to a new machine, is this possible?
studiogeek

CCC Carbon Copy Cloner
 

CCC Carbon Copy Cloner

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I'm contemplating retiring my old beige G3 and jumping right to G5 after seeing the dramatic drop in price on the 1.8GHz G5 1GB RAM 160GBhd with the Superdrive. Its the single processor.
Is this a good machine and should I grab it while they are left or should I find a top G4 dual? Or any suggestions? thanks :)

yes
 

hiya Dawn, yeah the single G5 1.8 is a nice machine. A friends mother uses her's all day for her own business and after having worked on it a few times, i can say it is indeed a nice machine, very snappy and quick. Obviously not as quick as a dual g5 in hardcore photoshop operaions but in general osx work there's very little difference..
Hope that helps some, Dave

Yeh, it helps, thanks! :) ...now if I can just find a store open on a sunday so I can put my order in! :D :)

Apple On Line Store is Open 24/7 and Apple Stores and Tek Serve is open Sunday
 

Tek Serve is a Local NYC institution.

Good Hunting.

Apple software striped RAID against extern single HD
 

I can't find the article I read in MacAddict not long ago, but it was about an external firewire HD that was faster than a striped RAID.

I first was planning on buying the striped raid option with my G5, but this sounds even better..

Anybody have more info about this?


Leon Buijs,
Rotterdam

You really should post your question in regular hardware forum
 

Anyway Software Raid is slower and not OS independent and limits you to the type of Raid you can do usually 0 or 1 to be effective. Speed or Mirroring respectively.

The G5 for now as it exists now as a single major design flaw room inside for only two drives.

The best Deal on the market for an elegant solution comes from wiebetech that sells a replacemnt door air bafle that allow you mount two more drives there. It is sold with and with out drives and raid card:

http://wiebetech.com/products/G5Jam.html

There is a lot of good info on raid options and testing available on barefeats.com.

There are many other options of external raid, SCCI, Firewire, SATA Eternal Cabling which is sort of a trick too. Barefeats and others have found some performance issues with Firewire raid on G5s. External Raid enclsures that are Capable of meeting a 4 drive Internal raid tend to be signifinicantly more expensive.

As far as drive that equals a raid thats just not reality. That said Drives have gotten markedly faster over the years. You would have to evaluate what you need to do that requires speed or redundancy of raid.

New new G5
 

Well, last thursday I ordered a Dual 1.8GHz 90nm G5 through the apple education store. I added the option of the ATI 9600XT card, which because it is now build-to-order, delayed it from same-day shipping to 5-7 day wait.
I know it's nothing compared to the original G5 shipping dates though.

I also ordered RAM for it, but I didn't notice until a few days later reading some technical documentation (as it's not obvious at all) that it requires pairs of identical chips. Oops. Dealram.com got me two 512MB chips for 79 each (I ordered the second one a few days later after realizing that only one would do me no good).

The moral of this story: if you need your G5 now, don't BTO it. If you buy memory, as the first post here indicates, buy it in identical pairs.

Hmmm...

I thought all G5's ran dual channel memory, which made you put it in pairs.

Is that not correct?

No, that's correct. All G5s currently out must have memory added in pairs.

Trevor

Installing 10.2.8 on new 2x 1.8 G5
 

This is kind of a new thread--sorry but i need help.

I just got a dual 1.8 G5 at work. It came with 10.3.4 but I want to be able to boot 10.2.8 on another partition for testing purposes. I do not have an installer later than 10.2 (G5 won't boot from this CD) or earlier than 10.3.

I have tried cloning my old G4 10.2.8 partion, but I can't boot from it. I tried running the 10.2.8 G5 updater on this partition and it won't let me do it.

Does anyone know how to get 10.2.8 to work on a new G5 that did not come with 10.2.7 or 10.2.8?

Myself and 2 others I kow would gratly appreciate any help.

You should really start a new thread with this problem.

(The quick answer is, original G5s came with a special version of 10.2.7, you will have to purchase a legal copy of it from someplace like eBay. Maybe others in the new thread can point you in the right direction.)

you're right. I posted a new one. thanks.

Final Tip
 

Get one while stocks last :D

G5
 

Just bought a new 17" G5 iMac. When you set up, the computer prompts if you want to transfer files from another computer via Firewire. Worked like a charm! All files from my G4 PowerBook were transferred clean (Safari settings, addresses, websites, software, fonts, etc.).
Mine had Microsoft Office software tryout installed. If yours does too, DON'T OPEN THE TRIAL VERSION! if you have Office installed on your old computer.
Once you have successfully transferred your software, and have Office OSX or Office 2004, trash the trial version before opening yours. Otherwise, you will have to reinstall your own software if you opened the trial version, even if you trashed it after opening it.

From a G3 to a G5
 

Will Target Disk Mode work for us folks who are switching from a G3 running OS X.2.8 to a new G5. I gather that it's the G5 that has to be run in Target Disk Mode while the G3 is booted as usual. My G3 has OS X.2.8.

Also, how would I go about transfering my Safari 1.0.3 Bookmarks, Keychain passwords, Entourage e-mails, Netscape e-mails, etc. to the new G5. In other words, where are these files located on the old G3 and can they simply be coppied into a corresponding location on the new G5?

supported' video cards
 

Ok the Apple PowerMac G5 PCI/PCI -X with AGP 8X (aka pro) Will work with nVidia G4 Ti even thought it is AGP 4X. In-fact the AGP G5's will work with any Apple supported Video card that is AGP 8X or X4. The only loss is Quartz Extreme (in some case's) I am running a Apple nVidia GeForce 6800 GT DDL.
in My 2.5 G5 that card is AGP 8X I also have a G4 1.42GHz PowerMac Mirror Door
With AGP 4X running the same nVidia G4 Ti 128MB I upgraded it to from the ATI 9000 Pro. Well when I read this I know I have used the nVidia G4 Ti 128MB in the G5 so I tried again & I can even type on a G5 advice sight with the nVidia G4 Ti 128MB in the AGP 8X G5 PowerMac! I will now switch back to the GeForce 6800 GT DDL.
Thanks,
Tom

I'm thinking the time has come to unsticky this thread. It will obviously still be searchable.

Let me know if there are any objections.