Comments on: Mac OS X Leopard on a Power Mac G4 Cube

By: Richard Mondello

Richard Mondello — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 02:38:54 +0000

Max - I recommend signing up for the G4 Cube mailing list at http://themacintoshguy.com/lists/MacCube.html to pose your question. I don’t have any real experience modding cubes, but these guys do.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:02:37 +0000

Can anyone here tell me how the upgraded there processor and graphics for the G4 cube as im trying to find a different graphics card that will fit to run leopard.

Thanks

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:29:52 +0000

I’m running 10.5.2 on a Cube with a stock 450MHz processor, a 160GB 7200RPM HDD, 1GB RAM and a GeForce 6200. All the applications that I use frequently - Safari, Mail, Office v.X, iTunes 7.6, iPhoto 5, Preview, Quick Look, Time Machine, and Front Row - work fine. The old G4 with the 1MB cache runs daily apps better than my old 800MHz G3 iBook running Panther (and which can’t run Leopard).

The cost for my Cube hardware upgrades for Leopard? $50-HDD, $35-RAM, $75-Flashed GeForce 6200… for a grand total of $160.

And while I’m sure that a new Mac Pro really has ~24x the processing power, how much does one need for email, browsing, word processing and multimedia playback?

By: Richard Mondello : Living on a Slow Mac

Richard Mondello : Living on a Slow Mac — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:13:39 +0000

[...] its extended hiatus today, Monday. Over the last twelve days, I’ve been living on a 450mhz PowerMac G4 Cube with 640 MB of RAM. It’s eye-opening not only how difficult the transition has been for me, [...]

By: sstrungis

sstrungis — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:27:55 +0000

Thanks for the report. I did an installation as well. I placed the HD from the Cube into an enclosure. Then I used my wife’s G5 to do the install to the HD. Once the OS was on the drive I placed it back into the Cube. Everything booted fine. The OS is slow without an unsupported videocard. My card is Quartz Extreme compatible, but not Core Image compatible. I suspect that a lot of Finder stuff is CI needy.

It is possible that an Nvidia 6200 card would fix these issues, but such cards are costly at about $100 via eBay.

By: Daz

Daz — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 09:04:16 +0000

Yeah, the Rage 128 will hold you back. But my cube has a Radeon 7500 and a 1.2Ghz CPU upgrade and Leopard installs & runs just fine on it. So you could always look at doing those upgrades.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:33:28 +0000

Putting Leppy on an old comp would be like puttin me in a XL Leppy T-Shirt: doesn’t quite fit, looks ugly, and nothing works the way it’s supposed to.