Need a cheap, dual CPU mac, what way to go? upgrades? ebay?

hi guys. im just so fed up right now with PCs in my house...sit back its story time for a second..

im 100% convinced the outlets in my brothers room are shot, but my father refuses to think so

so far, weve gone thru

3x dual CPU motherboards
4x CPUs (2 pairs of athlon MPs)
5 sticks of ram
3 video cards (nvidia, ATI, SiS)
3 QUALITY PSUs (lowest wattage was 480, highest was 650)
5 hard drives
2 cases (maybe it was a short?)
3 mice
2 keyboards
2 network cards
2 sound cards
5x IDE cables
3x cdrom drives
various UPS devices to clean the power with NO LUCK

multimeter shows 119-120V every time on all leads

mind you, all of these were new in box, and weve swapped EVERYTHING, we've tried every **** combination....whatever i put together, within a time, it WILL crash, freeze, BSOD, get a pretty red line at the top of the screen

its like a hardware virus.

so ive given up completely. were just gonna part out what we can on ebay, list it as AS IS...sometimes itll work, sometimes it wont, i dont know anymore..i dont really care..but here i am sitting in the next room on the same breaker line running my G5. not a single problem.

so my brother borrowed my old G3, and really likes it...so hed like to switch to mac if it means STABILITY. but what we do is, Cinema4D, video, internet surfing, photoshop...

now i beat the heck out of my G5..FCP, DVD Studio, C4D, AEFX (i heart community college software libraries ) and i cant complain at all about performance..however our issue is, we know we wont gte eough money for a brand new mac, so wer lookin at maybe dual G4s on ebay...and im wondering, would it be easier to just get like a dual 450mhz, and buy an upgrade CPU or something?

what would you guys do? both of us swear by SMP, we'd never go single CPU again

any ideas? thanks in advance

I think at that Mhz range, you're probably better just buying a dual mac. I think once you add the cost of an upgrade card, it is either going to be the same price or more. And, by buying an actual mac with standard dual processors, you get the advantage that if you ever have a problem with OS X, apple can't just claim it's because you're using an upgrade card.

It's been a while since I've looked at dual processor upgrades, so my advice might be a little out of date. Really, the best thing you can do is research the cards, and compare the price with an actual standard mac. What will give you the best performance for the buck?

I think the refurb dual G5 1.8Ghz for $1500 from Apple is a great deal. If the outlets if you house are messed up, I wouldn't plug an expensive PowerMac into them.

I think you have been running into the omdb clause of windows. The way it works is if you have any windows computer running 2000/XP on the same network as a Mac it will for the next day try to break the other machine. Windows will call it names, tell itself that it doesn't exist, and finally shut itself down to ignore it. When all this fails to get you to remove it and replace it with another windows box it initiates the "over my dead body" protocol. There by systematically destroying itself rather than working with a mac. There is counciling available but its a crap shoot if it works. My friend got a mini and the same day her old XP system refused to boot and killed itself (this really happened) it was sad... Well not that sad.

lol you know alot of that does sound like windows...heres what the source looks like:



hold up now, a refurb for 1500$???? wow i feel like i got ripped lol where do you find the refurbs?

MadSkillzMan said:

lol you know alot of that does sound like windows...heres what the source looks like:

Code:

 /* Source Code to Windows 98 */



#include "win31.h"

#include "win95.h"

#include "evenmore.h"

#include "oldstuff.h"

#include "billrulz.h"

#include "monopoly.h"

#define INSTALL = HARD



char make_prog_look_big[1600000];

void main()

{

while(!CRASHED)

{

display_copyright_message();

display_bill_rules_message();

do_nothing_loop();

if (first_time_installation)

{

make_50_megabyte_swapfile();

do_nothing_loop();

totally_screw_up_HPFS_file_system();

search_and_destroy_the_rest_of_OS/2();

disable_Netscape();

disable_RealPlayer();

disable_Corel_Products();

hang_system();

}



write_something(anything);

display_copyright_message();

do_nothing_loop();

do_some_stuff();



if (still_not_crashed)

{

display_copyright_message();

do_nothing_loop();

basically_run_windows_3.1();

do_nothing_loop();

do_nothing_loop();

}

}



if (detect_cache())

disable_cache();



if (fast_cpu())

{

set_wait_states(lots);

set_mouse(speed, very_slow);

set_mouse(action, jumpy);

set_mouse(reaction, sometimes);

}



/* printf("Welcome to Windows 3.11"); */

/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */

printf("Welcome to Windows 98");

if (system_ok())

crash(to_dos_prompt)

else

system_memory = open("aswp0001.swp", O_CREATE);



while(something)

{

sleep(5);

get_user_input();

sleep(5);

act_on_user_input();

sleep(5);

}

create_general_protection_fault();

}

hold up now, a refurb for 1500$???? wow i feel like i got ripped lol where do you find the refurbs?

Click to expand...

Right on Apple's website.

"Power Mac G5 DUAL 1.8GHz/ 256MB/ 80G/ SuperDrive/ PCI/ GeFr5200/ GigE/ 56K - Apple Certified Refurbished"

i did not find these back when i bought mine 5 months ago