Entry level iPhone is free with 24 month contract in Japan (for around $21 a month mind you), yet around 41% of all phones are still feature phones. So their market share comes down to exclusive deals with operators and heavy subsidies, plus the fact that most of electronics is very expensive there. Most people won't go out of their way to buy Android phone when they already got iPhone for free. Nothing to do with quality.
@@xnonsuchx Yeah I still find shitty translation / no translation at all in some parts of Windows 10 to this day. Although I do not use either in my language, instead using English, my experience so far with macOS shows that it has way better translation.
An ssd for 0 seek time would help this quite nicely with performance & general use for sure. Putting in a faster gpu perhaps as well if possible too get.
@Robert F I don't think the ATI Radeon HD 3650 will fit the Cube and the Geforce 6200 needs flashing and has no ADC connector. The best would be the Nvidea Geforce 3 which performs best, is actively cooled and fits without any modification
@@eDoc2020 I used a copy paste text from an excel file, but that did not get into the published message. ATI Rage 128 Pro 16 MB. Stock card Nvidea Geforce 2MX 32 MB. with large Cube heatsink its OK, with smaller heatsink it get very hot Radeon 7500 (RV200) 32 MB. Not compatible with Cube's faceplate. Gets very hot ATI Radeon 32 MB VRAM
Definitely put in an SSD. As far as the space for the optical drive, I think a replacement slot-loading dvd burner would be perfect, if you can find one.
First that Macintosh is locked to a 40 gig hard drive and a 80 gig hard drive depending on the model you can bypass the lockout by formatting the drive in another Mac
Things from Japan always appear to be lost through shipping for a while then it just shows up out of nowhere. I wish postal companies would better track international packages
If ever there were a machine that needed an optical drive, it's the Cube! :) So I'd source a compatible DVD drive if I were you. Also, definitely an SSD would be a good choice to replace the failing (loud, hot, power hungry) HDD. Thanks for the great video!
Fully agree here. Just the necessary future proofing (SSD) and the mandatory DVD replacement if possible. Not sure that sounds great for a vid, though, so maybe a different video card could be an interesting upgrade path, like a GeForce 6200? :)
@@esseferio I wonder if he could adapt an old IDE slot-loader from the late PPC laptops to fit in the cube, I bet they're easier to get a hold of than the original 5.25 drive.
@@shh1234 No way. The old VRM would blow up again, and as happened to me, took the motherboard with it. The Sonnet CPU upgrade takes a lot of additional juice.
AS5 *is* slightly electrically conductive as it heats up. I still recommend to people with exposed-core applications like this, even if they're protected, to either nailpolish the smd components or to use the 25 gram large syringe of Ceramique 2 you can buy off eBay for $7. I've had run-ins with SD5 causing all sorts of weird glitches on exposed-core stuff like that in a couple machines in the past, and as much as some people wish to say it's not conductive, it does indeed become so heated up as the thermals rise and resistance drops. You can get a 240GB SSD for cheap, and a full-size IDE to SATA adapter for not much at all. maxing out the RAM would be ideal, and dropping in an AGP GeForce 6200 with a BIOS flash for Mac use would be a wise decision. a heatsink upgrade to something with a fan for the 6200 would be ideal, and adding in the fan provided with the VRM will only help to keep everything happy. the 6200 upgrade wouldn't have made much more heat than the Radeon or GeForce cards that originally shipped with the machines and didn't use enough power at load to facilitate a VRM swap, so it shouldn't cause any unreasonable power load by adding it in.
The 6200 is a great card, but will likely have wake from sleep issues. The 256MB FX5500 is slightly faster for games (128-bit vs 64-bit memory bus) and wakes fine, though not quite as good for Core Image (not that you'll be using the Cube for productivity really). Neither is supported in OS 9 though. The R7500 is a good all-round compromise - OS9/X support, Quartz Extreme, passively cooled, ADC, looks stock, decent-ish gaming performance. You can 3D-print a faceplate for it (the file's on the MacRumors forum) - fits really well. There's a Titan copper fan that's a good fit for the 6200/5500. And yeah, it was my understanding that AS5 is conductive too. I use MX-2, as it's cheap, non-conductive, and heatsink paste is much of a muchness thermal conductivity wise.
I was always envious of the g4 cube upgrades if I would have had the money back in the day I would have got the dual CPU option. Maybe upgrade the graphics card to a G-Force 6200 AGP card and upgrade the hard drive to a SSD.
Always loved the Cube. Maybe one day I'll be able to get one for my collection! I would Install an SSD, Replace the fan with Noctua, and find a slot loading DVD drive
I have the same 1.2GHz machine! I was lucky in the fact that I found it at a GoodWill for only $50. So far it's worked great but I'll have to check if I have the stock VRM in there as I doubt the person who upgraded the processor did anything with that. Great video btw!
I definitely think this deserves to have a SSD, and I think the SD card reader is a great idea. I do have a question. The 4 metal coulums that you had to remove during disassembly. Did they have to go back in to the same spot, or are they interchangeable?
I feel like getting an optical drive in there would be good if there's room. There's just something about the way the discs feed in and out of the top that's cool and pretty unique to the Cube. Alternatively you could put a tissue dispenser in there :)
Definitely put a SSD in there, a GPU upgrade, and then do a video about trying to run this Cube as your main computer for a week. It will be interesting to see the level of usability this beautiful machine has to offer after all those years.
If the HDD is 5400rpm then DEFINITELY replace it! It will increase the speed of the machine by a huge amount. I have 3 of these and just love looking at them! Timeless design!
Excellent video. Wish, I had a G4 Cube in my collection even if, it only had a small stock Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with a 450Mz processor. Would love to see you do a few of the upgrades, I would like to have done to several of my vintage G4 Power PC apple computers which are as follows: 1) Add an SSD drive (want to make sure that, I get all the right parts and connectors to go from having a HDD for either a laptop or desktop model to a working SSD; 2) Make three partitions on a single HDD or SSD and load different operating systems perhaps OS X 10.3, OS X 10.4, and OS 10.5; and lastly 3) Load a version of Linux for Power PC computers on your Cube with a good step by step guide.
100% put an SSD in it. For noise, performance, and power consumption. You can get IDE->Sata bridges so you aren't limited to just IDE drives. As for the optical.. i'd just try finding a slot-loader DVD-RW drive. And maybe see if you can get a dust filter on the other side of the fan, or even replace the fan with a noctua fan to make it as quiet as possible. New video card! Googling shows that people have been able to get an ATI 9800SE/Pro inside their g4 cubes. I love weird computers like this, and i love upgrading them to their max. So i'm curious to see how it turns out.
A nice video and a sort of memory lane for me. I bought a Cube some time ago and decided to upgrade it with a 1GHz Sonnet CPU board. That worked for about an hour, when the VRM blew up taking with it the motherboard. I managed to get another MB and indeed bought the same VRM from ARTMIX for $150. That worked great, but also my Sonnet CPU blew up after some time. I suspected my Apple LCD monitor to cause problems, so I now use a 19 inch VGA LCD monitor. I managed to find the exact same Sonnet CPU board that you have, so it now runs at 1.2 Ghz. The harddrive was replaced by a SSD. You need to get a SATA to IDE adapter which are for sale on Amazon or Aliexpress for under $10. The SSD works very silent and starts up a little faster. My next upgrade was to replace my optical drive that no longer worked. I found a IDE slimdrive on ebay for $15, took the old one apart and mounted it inside the case of the old drive, so it could be nicely fitted. In your case, you could use an IDE slimdrive as well, but need to create some brackets to properly fit it in. I certainly would not put in anything else than an optical drive, as the CD loader is the charm of the Cube. You will soon find out that the Airport card is pretty useless. Apart from being extremely slow it does not connect to modern wifi networks. So I took it out and bought a TP-Link WLAN nano router at Amazon and plugged it into the network port of the Cube. Setting it up is easy and it works very fast. Based on a video from a Cube user at Mac Forums, I decided to build the nano router inside the Cube, behind the optical drive. The 5v power comes from the MOLEX cable, and I routed a small RJ 45 cable from the external network connector through the whole that was left after taking out the no longer used modem card, to the nano-router. As the nano-router has no external antenna I had to fit an antenna cable from inside the nano-router to the antenna connectors (the 2 gray ovals on the side of the Cube) so the signal can reach outside the metal casing of the Cube. I also upgraded the stock ATI graphics card, but most run very hot and don't make much difference if you are running normal apps. Only if you are gaming, an upgrade to a Gefore3 will make a big difference, but these are almost impossible to find. If you want more info on how to do all this have a look on Mac Forums under PowerPC or you can contact me. I wish you lots of fun with the Cube. It is good to keep them alive.
I recently revived my G4 Cube that I had purchased new in 2000. I replaced the HDD because it was really whining, but it works like new. I actually put OS9 back on it, which is what it originally shipped with. I would like to replace the HDD with an SSD, but can you get IDE-based SSDs? One thing: the "button" on the handle to open the Cube is not a button. It is a fixed latch; to open the handle you push down on the handle part, then it pops up. So I think your handle might not be broken? Cheers!
SSD for sure. I got a hold of a used one back in 2006. I ended upgrading the HD and video card (with some grinding needed to fit lol) and it gets hot. I ended leaving a fan (with 90s blue led lol [I want to replace it lol) to cool it down since not fan was originally there, some type of passive cooling. So yes SSD so I can pull out my Cube and go along. LoL Good Luck 🤙🏼
Provided you can make it fit, maybe a as an ambitious replacement for the optical disk, a 5.25" bay adapter for two optical disks but only one of them populated with a slim optical device while the other is used for extra storage from an optical bay tray adapter for SATA disks? Bit of a stretch but depending on slot positioning (if it isn't centrally-located) it might be possible.
Most definitely put an SSD in there! Is it going to require a SATA-to-IDE adapter? Would be interesting to find out! Also, I think you should source a stock optical drive to also put it in there, or anything close to it if you can. Please do it if you're able to!
On that VRM, it looked like there was an additional fan header for the supplied fan, looked low profile too, maybe having the bottom fan and then the other on the top of the heatsink would improve thermals even further, in a kinda push pull setup. It was awesome to see a cube in bits, not many people do that anymore and it really goes to show how much R&D goes into building them.
I have a 1.42GHz G4 Mac mini and you definitely wanna stick with Tiger on G4s. Leopard is a bit too sluggish, so better suited to G5s (which is why Leopard won't even normally install on slower G4s (
Definitely stick an SSD in it and see if you can find a replacement optical drive too! It would be awesome to see it fully working and fully maxed out. As for the hard drive inside, it may well be bigger than 128GB but that's the maximum these old Macs can address. I have a 160GB drive in my 400MHz Mystic G4 and it only sees it as 128GB.
I have a Cube that I upgraded to OS X Leopard 11 years ago, but haven’t really used it since. Any suggestions? The hardware is pretty much stock, maybe I should keep it that way. I guess I should see if it still even boots.
Since it's nowhere near stock at this point, I'd say make it more better. Definitely add the SSD for a start. Maybe you can find a replacement DVD drive to slot in there. Hey, I like spinning media, so sue me. XD
You should install an Nvidia 6200 graphics card to support full core image. It greatly speeds the machine up. There are even pre-flashed cards available on ebay.
I’m curious how loud the fan was and if it seemed to be doing a good job at keeping the temperature under control. It will be even easier to cool without the old hard drive. My vote is for a new SSD, like everyone else. You could bling it up with an unexpected Jazz drive, but doubt you want to chop the case like the Cursed Mac. Thank you for another fun video!
Please SSD it. SSD all the things, I dunno why you keep sticking with ancient hard drives. Also please put in the stock optical drive if you can find one. Slot loaders are cool
Action Retro I agree the aesthetic is very nice but at least to me the speed is nicer. I’ll keep an old hard drive on like a DOS machine but Macs should be snappy.
@@ActionRetro I certainly like the hard drive noises in some of my systems but this is Jobs' G4 Cube. He famously wanted a silent computer (hence the factory omission of a fan) so I would go SSD to stay as close to this vision as possible. Plus, speed.
I don't think an SSD makes sense in an old computer like this, since the OS doesn't specifically support TRIM. I personally would put a 7200rpm drive in it, it's plenty fast and hearing it work makes the experience whole for me. But if not an HDD, I'd rather use a CF card. And yes, put an optical drive in the poor thing.
Part of me would avoid putting a spinning hard drive in something like this because it spoils its fanless nature (although it did come spoiled like this from the factory and the added fan also spoils the fanless nature). For somebody with a few dollars like our host (sorry, I keep forgetting your name) I'd suggest getting a fresh 240 gig SSD (either factory cleared or secure erased) but only partitioning 128 GiB of it. By only having part of the drive partitioned the wear leveling can work better and overcome the lack of TRIM. For me regular memory cards end up being super slow as OS drives because they don't handle random writes well.
would love to see if you could actually use this machine with the web, using something like tenfourfox and leopard webkit. Maybe some youtube playback tests and photoshop would be cool too. you could also upgrade the video card with something like a 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX officially or unofficially you could put in a 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6200 but you have to re-flash it
Can you get IDE SSDs? Or was the G4 Cube SATA? I'd use the optical bay for a CF card, rather than an optical drive. Apple's optical drives were never very good, the one in my Mac Mini died about a year after buying it so I swapped it out for a second HDD. Then try to use it for software that would have been out during that time period - try to make a video using it or something :)
It's IDE. There is one company I know of that makes a IDE SSD, KingSpec. No idea how good they are though. They also make sata to IDE adapters now though so probably easier to go that route.
You should make this the ultimate g4 cube. You should find every single possible upgrade for it and make this machine the most balls to the wall variant 😂
1700$ And it was a Flop!!!!! Nowadays, Mac's cost 10 TIMES AS MUCH, with NONE, absolutely NO upgradability AT ALL. The Cube had CPU Upgrades, Memory, Storage and even a freaking GRAPHICS CARD!!! Is there ANY Mac with a standard Graphics Card at all? :O
2 things spring to mind immediately: 1) You are not installing a VRM module, you are installing a VRM (Voltage Regulator Module). & 2). The extra cost is due to the size of the Cube case. The smaller you try to make something, the more expensive it becomes. Not everyone has space for a Power Mac G4. The Cube occupies only 16.5% of the volume of a PowerMac G4.
I suggest getting a normal iMac G3 dvd rom drive, if it needs the eject repair do it and install it in the cube, the cube has a finicky dvd drive and they are hard to find. I also suggest getting an IDE to SATA adapter and put in a 128gb sad to keep it a bit modded, the ssd won’t make it too faster but it will be more reliable. I also recommend installing Mac OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.4.11
Very happy to see that VRM is not actually scorched. And it also looks ok. Someone definitely yanked it out sometime in the past and had to resolder it. I really think you could've managed without changing the VRM at all.
That doesn't look like a typical blown VRM - the VRM transistors are the two groups of 3 tiny packages on the front side of the board. I believe it's usually the 5V ones that go. If the VRM blows, it typically takes the mobo / CPU with it - it's unlikely the Cube would still be booting. Those scorch marks just look like there may have been a short in that area at some point (e.g. if it touched metal, or was badly inserted) - get some IPA on it and investigate. Copper heatsinks on the little VRMs are a good insurance if reusing it. e.g. in another Cube.
suprised there weren't more burn marks, I've seen those get hot enough to literally desolder its own chips clean off the boards. Because you know crApple design... They wouldn't know proper cooling if it stripped naked, painted itself Noctua tan, and said "oh look at what a big cooling fan I am!" Also a bir surprised you got a normal optical drive to work. Did you have to short master and slave together like on most of the powerbooks and toilet seats, given how they reverse master and slave? Or do they not pull that jackass stunt on the desktops? Also cute switch to the apple display from the Dell. Fess up, it couldn't drive a standard VGA display, could it?
Cool little Apple.. SSD upgrade is a must. Does it have AGP? I think I have an Nvidia geforce 3 ti something. Love to see any performance and usability upgrades to this setup. Thanks for the interesting video.
