Why the Sawtooth is the greatest Mac ever made
by
zen
Many people have their favorite Mac and for several different reasons. A lot of people in the Mac world tend to put aesthetics before function and expandability, by choosing impractical but pretty computers. The Cube, and any iMac from the G4 model on are perfect examples of this. To be fair, I do have a natural bias against any all in one computers, but at least the iMac G3's didn't sacrifice hardware health for the sake of design. The form before function thing is a big part of the Mac culture; one I have never been able to relate to and never will.
When I look at what makes a perfect computer, I look at reliability and expandability before anything else. Expandability means tower and the Power Macs Apple made in the 1997 - 2002 (8600 - Quicksilver) era are the most reliable computers Apple ever made. Within this elite group of hardware the Sawtooth has the greatest track record of them all in both personal experience and Apple service records. The first revision of the Sawtooth only had a 1.6 % failure rate and the Uni-N 7 revision of the tower was under 1 %. These numbers are very impressive on their own, but they seem even better when you look at MDD's or G5's. MDD's had a 6-11 % failure rate depending on model, and the first dual 2 GHz G5 has a shockingly high failure rate of around 30 %. The liquid cooled models are just as bad if not worse. People can chase after higher specs all they want, but what good is it when it stops running?
I actually switched from computing with 2x MDD (dual 867 and 1.42) to 2x Sawtooth in 2009. The dual 867 was decently reliable, but the dual 1.42 had some real issues with stability on every OS I ever ran on it. Then there is the G5 systems, which I feel are about the worst thing that ever happened to the PowerPC architecture, but I will get into that more in the future.
When most hear about my switching from the MDD to the Sawtooth they ask things like "why would you do that?". The answer is reliability combined with the G4 7448 CPU. I need reliability first and foremost, and I also had a strong desire to acquire a 7448 chip. The MDD's fail me on both these needs, because they are not nearly as reliable as other G4's, and they cannot take any of the 7448 upgrades since they are all only compatible from the Sawtooth through to the Quicksilver.
The Sawtooth are not only the most reliable Power Mac, but also one of the cheapest to buy of all the AGP equipped models. I see them these days for 40-80. Cheap enough that I have 5 total and plan to buy another few for a cluster I plan on building. 8+ systems is the sweet spot for G4 clusters, and I still want a few spares if the day comes that I need parts. I have built clusters for other people for years now, but this will be the first one I have ever built for myself. I am even at the point now of writing some of my own cluster software.
Breaking down the other G4 towers
MDD's are by far the most unreliable of all the G4 towers. Many people are understandably enticed by the stock specs since they are the highest of all the towers. If someone needs to get the best bang for their buck, and good performance without CPU upgrades, a dual 1.0 GHz Quicksilver might be the best choice for the long run.
The Gigabit Ethernet model has the same 2 GB RAM capacity as the Sawtooth vs the 1.5 GB limit in the Digital Audio and Quicksilver. Over the years though I have noticed the Gigagbit PSU's are not quite as reliable as the Sawtooth are. I would prefer the onboard gigabit vs the gigabit PCI card I have to use but the PSU tradeoff made the choice for me.
The Digital Audio and Quicksilver are both very reliable towers, but in my experiences the extra 512 MB RAM the Sawtooth allows is more of an overall system benefit than the 33MHz faster bus and AGP 4x vs 2x. OS X loves RAM as we all know, so the 33 % extra memory capacity and better PSU is why I chose the Sawtooth to base all, or at least most, of the computing I do. I have one Gigabit Ethernet system.
The Yikes (PCI Graphics) is one to avoid unless you get it for a steal. There is nothing unreliable about it, but it shares the same logic board with the rev. 2 B&W G3, and has a very slow memory controller compared to the AGP models with the same 100 MHz bus speed. Sawtooth's can be found for the same price or just a few bucks more and will perform noticeably better with the same CPU speed. The memory performs up to 3x faster, with a Yikes clocking in at only 180-250 MB/sec vs 500-800 MB/sec in a Sawtooth. Very impressive for the same bus speed which points to how important a good memory controller is.
The final word
Everyone has their own prerequisites for what makes a perfect computer but longevity, reliability and expandability are qualities that virtually anyone can get on board with. The Sawtooth meets all these needs and then some. They may be 12 years old now but when used by the right people they can still be extremely capable in the modern world.
Video on PowerPC: Part 2 - Playback on G3
by
zen
The recent news of the new Mars rover being powered by a 200 MHz G3 is making some reevaluate their perception of the G3's ability. The early G4 chips are fundamentally just a G3 with an added Altivec unit. The final Power Mac G3 and the first G4 tower even share the same logic board and CPU socket. In terms of video playback though, the lack of Altivec is a big hit on performance, but there is still lots you can do with the right codecs and software.
I started out watching and collecting compressed digital video on a regular basis in 2002. This was in the late OS X 10.1 days. Then in August that year when 10.2 was released a big swarm of BSD and Linux software started getting ported over, thanks to the BSD based kernel. As I mention in my previous video article for G4/G5, it was this mid-late 2002 era when digital video playback really took off on the Mac. The classic and early OS X days were limited to half a handful of very sloppy, didn't work more than they did, DivX based QT codecs.
The hardware I had in 2002 when I really got into DivX was a B&W G3 350 MHz with 256MB memory, and running 10.2 with an early Mplayer OSX build. It wasn't really till around 2004 that h.264 became more common, but DivX based codec are still common today even though h.264 has slightly surpassed it in terms of user numbers. A G3 cannot really cope with h.264 until you get to at least 700 MHz, but even then it drops frames. DivX, XviD and DVD are your best options for successful playback on more modest G3 chips.
Your best friend with DivX/XviD and the like will be Mplayer (1.1 from 2002), because newer versions of it don’t like G3 CPU’s. This is because they rely heavily on Altivec. The same goes with versions of VLC past 0.5.3. To be fair, the versions that don’t run well (if at all) on G3 are from 2004 on, which is 5+ years after the G4 was introduced. The lack of Altivec is a hindrance on video playback, but I will now move on to the tools that will help you get all the video goodness you can out of your G3.
The Software (OS X 10.2 – 10.4)
Mplayer OSX 1.1 – Download
For best results open preferences and check the drop frames option, and also turn on cache. The drop frames option sounds bad, but it will make choppy video look quite smooth by dropping 2-5 frames a second in an orderly fashion so the end result is smooth. This exact version may be the second most efficient playback app ever made on Mac OS after CorePlayer.
VLC 0.5.3 – Download
As I noted already, the newer versions don’t work so well on G3 in my experiences, but your mileage may vary. You may also want to try some of the 0.6.x and 0.7.x builds, but don’t expect much better than 0.5.3. The archive of old versions is found here.
Apple DVD Player
Mplayer and VLC can play DVD also, but not as well (or with as little CPU) as Apple DVD Player can. DVD playback is something G3’s have done well for a long time, and will keep doing as long as they are still around to use.
It needs to be noted that early G3's like the beige desktop and tray load iMacs do not have DVD playback capability because they lack DVD decoding. On a beige tower/desktop you can upgrade the video to a late model Rage 128, or any compatible GPU with DVD decoding. The rev.1 B&W G3 had a special piggybacked decoder on the graphics card, but only on the DVD model of the tower. Later revisions of the Rage 128 had DVD decoding built in.
Any slot load iMac or white iBook with a DVD drive can play DVD. Any G3 tower with a DVD drive and a 100 MHz Rage 128 (vs the 75 MHz orig.) or better GPU can also play them.
Closing Comments
When it really comes down to it, any computer is only as capable as the ability and imagination of the user. A G3 still has many capabilities if you use it with the right software and computing habits. I encourage everyone who owns a G3 still, and loves video to try my methods and the tools mentioned here. Let your G3 show you what it can really do. It may surprise you.
'Quick' efficiency
by
zen
In 2004 I discovered what could easily be considered the greatest app launcher ever created on the Mac, but it's much more than just an app launcher. I am of course referring to Quicksilver. This has been the very first thing I put in the apps folder after a fresh OS X install ever since. I love how it allows me to all but ignore my dock and not only live without spotlight, but evolve past it.
Quicksilver can and will completely revolutionize the way you think of your apps, files and bookmarks and really all the contents of your drive. Rather than wasting time looking for what I want in the dock or anywhere else, I just tap F6 (you can set it to almost any key) which brings up the bezel and I then type the first 1-2 letters of whatever I'm after. That may sound odd to some, but once you get used to it, and learn how unlimited and customizable it is, your computer use and data access will be on a much more cerebral level.
The shocking thing is that after all these years of Quicksilver being around, there are still many people that have never used it, or even heard of it. I think this is at least partly to blame on the bloated dock syndrome so many suffer from on Mac OS X. This is part of that dock aesthetic Apple started in OS X. I personally think the dock is next to useless. It's kept hidden, and only contains apps that are running, and a rare minimized window, but I normally prefer just hiding whole apps to get them out of my way visually.
So for those of you willing to relearn how you get at your stuff within the OS, I encourage you to give it a try. I can't tell you exactly what it will do for you, because thats actually up to you. It learns from your personal use of it, and what things with similar names you open up more, so that after just 2 -3 uses it has already leaned many things from you.
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Leopard/Tiger - Panther
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