|
Tuesday, 10 May 2005
1430 - New computer, dammit
My iMac has been throwing system panics at me for a couple of months now. Every resource I've looked at says the panic code:
panic(cpu 0): Apparent UniNorth Hang: AGP STATUS = 0x00000004
is an indication of hardware problems. Bleagh. The machine is 3 years old, too, and out of the AppleCare I bought for it when it was new.
I wasn't really ready just yet, but it's time to buy a new box. I depend on this system far too much to do my daily work. I'm going to the Apple store in the Cities this evening to buy a dual 2 GHz PowerMac G5 with the standard components (the only thing I'd upgrade is the memory, and I can get that a lot cheaper elsewhere; if I could, I'd upgrade the hard disk, but that has to be done at the factory). I'm going to get a 20-inch Cinema Display along with it.
This will cause me a problem with Hercules: it depends on a kernel driver (tunnel.kext, which provides a program access to the low-level guts of the networking software) that hasn't been updated for Tiger yet. Erf. Looks like I get to go on a crash project to do the update; the driver is available in source form, thankfully. Since I'm working on a couple of projects that depend on that functionality, this is a critical update to get done. I also was hoping to be able to build Hercules on Panther (the previous version of OS X) for at least one more release, but that looks like it's not going to happen.
current mood: ![[mood icon]](https://www.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/irritated.gif) irritated
|
Comments:
You can at least add a second SATA drive trivially. Yes, I can, and should I find that 160 GB internal isn't enough, I will. Of course, this is a mere two weeks after buying an external 300 GB Firewire drive... I just got my dual 2GHz G5 in tonight. I took it with the stock amount of RAM and decided to buy a matched pair of 512M PC3200 Corsair DIMMs. Several sources have lead me to believe this is the cream of the crop for RAM, and it still comes in a little less than Apple's RAM for probably about the same high quality. I also added in the Bluetooth, because that doesn't appear to be an installable option later, unlike the Airport Extreme, which is just a plug-in card. (One could argue one could buy a USB-Bluetooth adapter, yeah.) However, I decided to order the Dell 2005FPW 20" wide-screen flat-panel monitor in place of the Apple Cinema display. Both use the same LCD panel, allegedly, though obviously the electronics and construction behind it are a bit different. Here is an article at AnandTech that seeks to compare the two: http://www.anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2400The Dual 2 only has 4 RAM slots, unlike it's faster brethren, which have 8 RAM slots. The maximum density per slot is 1GByte, meaning the 2 GHz system gets 4GB RAM, and the faster brethren get 8GB RAM. The 2.3 and 2.7 GHz systems also have PCI-X. If that's important to you, then you'll want to look a little higher. Had someone been around to sign for the UPS package from Dell today, I would not be getting any sleep tonight as I fiddled around with the box. At best, I have unpacked it, installed the RAM and done most of the physical setup. Tomorrow I disappear from the face of the Earth as I tinker with it. :) I didn't realize we were going to wind up with the same machine...
Even if the Dell is the same display as the Apple, I wouldn't buy it for half the price. Dell sucks as a corporation, and I will not patronize them.
PCI-X doesn't mean much to me, and I'm not pushing 768 MB hard in the iMac, so 2.5 GB in the G5 will be no sweat at all. (I'll probably order 2 1 GB DIMMs tomorrow.)
I'm not going to set it up tonight, though...it's just far too late. First thing in the morning, OTOH... You've got more willpower than I do. If I had all the pieces in place, I would not have gotten any sleep last night. :) No, I don't. I set it up and started transferring all my files with Setup Assistant before finally making it to be about 1:30. |
