Beating the OS 9.x lock out

[gibsonm]

Hi,

I'm strongly considering buying a 2nd hand G4 desktop to replace an ageing 7100. The official reason for SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) will be to support our home network better.

The real reason is to play CMBB at home (my Ti PB only has 8Mb of VRAM and when its replaced it wont boot into OS 9 anyway).

So I'm looking at G4 boxes. I'm guessing 400Mhz is the baseline for performance (my Ti PB is 500MHz and runs fine) but the video card is the big issue. Is the 32Mb ATI Radeon good enough or should I be looking at better (say NVIDIA GeForce 2 or 3 which came with the Digital Audio)?

I'm also assuming that CMBB doesn't take advantage of Dual Processors.

If you own any of these boxes, can you please reply and hopefully make the decision easier.

[Schrullenhaft]

I don't own any Macs currently, but I'll give you my opinion...

The 32Mb Radeon should be fine for CMBB. The NVidia drivers aren't completely up to par compared to the ATI drivers on the Mac. The background 'sky' bitmap is still fuzzy (I believe that's still a current problem) and the display quality in general isn't so great within CM (from what I hear). I've also heard that the NVidia drivers don't perform well in a number of other applications, performance and quality-wise. I don't know how the two compare in 3D performance in CM though. So it is possible that the GeForce may perform better, but it probably won't look as good as the Radeon, etc.

You're correct in that CM doesn't utilize more than one processor. I assume that you'll actually have to run OS X to get much of a benefit from a dual processor configuration (outside of some PhotoShop filters and some other possible apps). If a solution ever comes up for running CM with OS X, then the second processor could be doing something else while you run CM (assuming OS X threads that well - which it may).

As for a 'baseline' configuration on the G4, your guess would probably be better than mine. 400MHz sounds reasonable to me.

[Wicky]

I can thoroughly recommend the G4 with an aftermarket ATI Radeon 32mb AGP card. I decided to upgrade 3 years ago from a Umax Pulsar (200mhz) to a dual processor 450 G4 as I needed something to able to handle OSX way into the future (Photoshop 7 etc.).

Running Combat Mission (BO and BB demo) is a breeze for this rig and I contemplated getting the new dual 867 but why bother when CMBB will keep me entertained for two to three years but it would be real bargain/pragmatic choice around Xmas when it's discounted to make way for the OSX boot only macs in the new year.

Another good choice would be the e-mac

[CombinedArms]

How does the new G4 17 inch iMac stack up in terms of running CMBB? I'm thinking of getting that as my next computer (My good old beige G3 could probably be upgraded, but by the time I do that I'm halfway to a new computer....)

I've thought about the eMac, but my wife, a Mac fanatic, is pushing me to get the latest and greatest and is actually all for the 17" iMac, while dissing the eMac as yesterday's news. Anyway, the iMac's got 32 MB of video RAM, which sounds good. It also has the nVidia GeForce4 MX . Is that likely to cause any actual problems, as has been suggested above? The G4 iMac screen is wonderfully clear, so it would be great if I could really SEE CMBB well on it--and frustrating if it were actually blurry. (Not that I'm that into skies, anyway.)

Also, am I going to be able to get over the OS X issues?

Anyway, your thoughts would be welcome.

{Ed. note:Just checked and it looks like all the current eMacs have nVidia cards anyway.}

[ September 16, 2002, 09:27 PM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[gibsonm]

Originally posted by Wicky:

I can thoroughly recommend the G4 with an aftermarket ATI Radeon 32mb AGP card.

Another good choice would be the e-mac

I already own a good Apple ColourSync 21" screen so I'd prefer a desktop to an "all in one" like the eMac or iMac.

That way I can eventually trade up to a Cinema display when the 21" dies (don't tell me wife though).

[Wicky]

The i-mac and e-mac are limited for upgrading as it's a dealer job just to poke around it's internals. And you are fixed with the monitor but I think they do have monitor mirroring so you can plug in a larger monitor.

The advantage of a tower unit is the ease of access, via a hinged side, to upgrading memory modules, graphics AGP slot and PCI slots for SCSI cards for running older scanners zip drives etc. which will help in getting the most out of the Mac for as many years as possible. CM2 (the next generation in 2-3 years!)

If you get an education discount from Apple, go for the DP867 for just over a £1000 UK (check on the apple store if they do a build to order with the Nvidia to ATI graphics card) which would keep you going into the 21st century.

Also check your peripherals as you might need to upgrade printers etc. due to different connections and factor these costs in as well.

Enjoy

[Wicky]

whoops - double post

[ September 17, 2002, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[Michael Emrys]

Haven't there been problems withthe Radeons displaying fog? ISTR several people complaining about that.

In any event, my GF2MX with 32MB does just fine with CMBO, though I am definitely thinking of going to the 4Ti with 128 for CMBB. Not that it doesn't look alright now, but I am thinking ahead to mods.

Michael

[Schrullenhaft]

The lack of fog-table support is a PC only issue under DirectX. Under RAVE on the Mac the ATI cards have better drivers right now. I'm not sure if this holds true under OpenGL.

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Haven't there been problems withthe Radeons displaying fog? ISTR several people complaining about that.

For the Mac, ATI cards don't have a problem with fog. My ATI Radeon 32mb shows a fine battlefield pea-souper

The only time I had a problem with CM was trying to run it on a Umax Pulsar 200mhz Mac clone with a Radius 8mb graphics card. It was fine with 2D on a 19" monitor but was poo with 3D graphics, therefore a whole new Mac was purchased to fit onto the CM:BO disk !

The fog problem is confined to ATI PC cards/drivers

[ September 18, 2002, 05:06 PM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[Jarmo]

Second hand G4's.

A bunch of the 400Mhz models (450 too?) were with a hybrid motherboard with no AGP slots. These would give less 3D performance, but more importantly the card upgrades would be hard to find. I don't quite remember if the first G4's actually shipped with Rage128 instead of radeon, this would be a BAD THING for a gamer.

All-in-ones.

eMacs and all non-17" iMacs ship with GF2MX, which is acceptable now, but as it's non-upgradeable it'll limit you in the long run.

GF4MX in the 17" iMac is good, but even that ships with "only" 32MB's. That's good for now and ok in the near future, but will limit gaming after a while.

Graphics card upgrades.

For mac gamer, ATI 9000 and 9700 are the best options (once they actually ship). 8500 is good and 7500 okay.

Nvidia's cards are great for OpenGL games, but their RAVE support sucks. This is starting to be a non-issue outside CM. GF2MX is slower than any Radeon out there, but GF3 and GF4 are great cards.

On the mac side, the limitations of GF4MX are not as important as on the PC-land, DirectX compatibility doesn't matter at all.

[demoss]

For what it's worth, on my Ti PB G4 with the 8 MB video, the demo was just fine. Sure, you might miss a little detail, but it worked great.

[gibsonm]

Originally posted by demoss:

For what it's worth, on my Ti PB G4 with the 8 MB video, the demo was just fine. Sure, you might miss a little detail, but it worked great.

Yes I know I have one (refer my original post). However I use this for work (at least that's what I tell the tax man) and when the least runs out next year and I replace it with a 2.5GHz G5 PowerBook (or whatever), the new machine wont start in OS 9.

Rather than put up with the Classic graphics I want to buy a G4 desktop to replace an ageing 7100/80 which does some infrastructure tasks on the home network (Now Up to Date / Contact diary server, Retrospect server, connection for legacy SCSI hardware, etc). The theory is that if I buy a G4 now (or before MacWorld San Francisco) I can:

- Upgrade the performance of the infrastructure (100T ethernet, stop running AppleTalk, provide a storage area for digital photo's / movies)

- Have a desktop (with a 21" screen) that will always be running OS 9.2.x and CMBB is only a click away.

I need expansion options and I want to use some existing hardware (SCSI, 21" screen, etc) so forget iMac and eMac for me at least.

The last hurdle is what graphics card works best out there in the installed base, hence my initial post.

[ September 19, 2002, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: gibsonm ]

[Buckeye]

I just got one of the new 17" iMacs, and am very pleased with its performance with the CMBB demo.

I have the standard 32 meg nVidia card and 512 megs RAM. The graphics are outstanding, with no obvious dithering at all. The skies are blurrier than in CMBO, but I suspect the sky graphics were downsampled a bit for the demo (as were the sounds), because of their large size (the skies in CMBO are not nearly as blurry on the same machine).

So, although the 32 megs may not be enough in several years, by then I'll need a new machine anyway for CM2!

[Hoopenfaust2]

Originally posted by Buckeye:

[

I have the standard 32 meg nVidia card and 512 megs RAM. The graphics are outstanding, with no obvious dithering at all. The skies are blurrier than in CMBO, but I suspect the sky graphics were downsampled a bit for the demo (as were the sounds), because of their large size (the skies in CMBO are not nearly as blurry on the same machine).

So, although the 32 megs may not be enough in several years, by then I'll need a new machine anyway for CM2! [/QB]

I've got a 15" iMac and was just wondering what is the highest resolution the 17" can go?

My 32MB nvidia still dithers some of the graphics but I'm just thinking its the resolution of 1024x768 that keeps it from being "sharp".

There is a huge difference between the iMac and my iBook.

[Buckeye]

The standard resolution on the 17 incher is 1440 x 900. I've been playing with terrrain features at full and trees at extreme, and don't notice any dithering (unless it's perhaps the roadwheels, but I suspect not). Even when I go to extreme terrain, I get a nice clear picture, although panning over terrain at level 1 is a little slower.

Is the iMac better than the iBook, or vice versa? I assume the iMac would be better because of the stronger graphics card.

[CombinedArms]

This is very encouraging. I have a 17" iMac en route to me right now--shipping all the way from Tawain and currently in Indiana on the way to NY.

I might be back with questions if I have any problems. The system 9 vs. X issues sound a bit complicated, for example.....

[Buckeye]

Well, I definitely like my new iMac, but the skies on CMBB remain blurry, even when I reduce them to the stock CMBO size. Other than the skies, though, everything else looks very nice. Probably would be better with a Radeon, but that wasn't an option.

[Wicky]

macfixit.com

Using Mac OS 9 on Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Door systems

While Apple may not disallow Mac OS 9 booting on new systems until 2003, the company is already limiting support for the older operating system on the newly shipping Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Door systems. Peter Stern details his experience with the situation:

"After confirming the system booted normally and Jaguar worked, I set about repartitioning the drive into 2 33gig partitions and an 8 gig partition which was to become a stand alone bootable OS9. A day and a half later, after myriad attempts to install OS9 from a number of different sources, searching the Apple knowledgebase, and 3 calls to Apple's tech support, I finally found a senior tech who confirmed what I was already suspecting. The only version of OS9 that can successfully boot one of these new G4s is a special release of 9.22 that is used for Classic.

"The new IDE bus cannot be found by "older" releases of OS9. Symptom, no hard drive found by install disk. The installers will also refuse to run on this computer when you boot from the CD.

"The solution offered by the Apple tech was to create the partitions then drag the OS9 system folder onto the 8 gig partition. That worked sort of. When I booted to that partition, I got a desktop and icons but no finder menus visible. I removed the 3 Classic entries in the system folder and rebooted to a normal OS9 desktop which is selectable as a boot drive now.

"My next attempt was to try to install OS9 on a firewire drive and boot from that. The only way to get a retail 9.2.1 installer to run, was inside Classic and it placed a system on the firewire drive. The system did not end up being bootable. Next step was dragging the system folder containing 9.2.2 from the OSX drive onto the firewire drive. This caused startupdisk to see the firewire drive as a 9.2.2 drive and I could select it for restart but the system would not boot from it.

"These limitations don't apply to eMacs or current iMacs because they use the older IDE bus technology. So if you are buying a new G4 desktop be aware your ability to use pure OS9 is going to be tricky to set up and limited in scope."

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Wicky:

The i-mac and e-mac are limited for upgrading as it's a dealer job just to poke around it's internals. And you are fixed with the monitor but I think they do have monitor mirroring so you can plug in a larger monitor.

The advantage of a tower unit is the ease of access, via a hinged side, to upgrading memory modules, graphics AGP slot and PCI slots for SCSI cards for running older scanners zip drives etc. which will help in getting the most out of the Mac for as many years as possible. CM2 (the next generation in 2-3 years!)

If you get an education discount from Apple, go for the DP867 for just over a £1000 UK (check on the apple store if they do a build to order with the Nvidia to ATI graphics card) which would keep you going into the 21st century.

Also check your peripherals as you might need to upgrade printers etc. due to different connections and factor these costs in as well.

Enjoy

that is a GOOD economical system:

" go for the DP867 for just over a £1000 UK (check on the apple store if they do a build to order with the Nvidia to ATI graphics card) "

BUT is that DP 867

one of those: Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Door systems???

"Using Mac OS 9 on Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Door systems"

If so I would be concerned

:confused:

-tom w