Since the Radeon 9800 Pro in the Power Mac G4 died, my only functional backup with hardware acceleration in Leopard was a PCIe GeForce 6600 LE. Works with this PCI to PCIe adapter. Maybe it’s finally time to look into some more interesting options, for fun? Since I’ve hung onto this Power Mac […]
Category Archives: Low End Mac Tech Journal
When using an original Nvidia GeForce 7300GT 256 MB out of the original Mac Pro: only the dark themes work in Windows 11, Windows 10 seems to work fine. There’s a lot of acceleration glitches with Windows 11 but it’s totally usable as long as all the text shows up in the explorer window. Otherwise, […]
Recently posted in our community, someone installed Adélie Linux on their Quad G5 – now to be featured as a part of the “Low End Mac Mailbag“. As a part of the Low End Mac mailbag, we aim to: Greatly increase daily article output Save the knowledge shared by others Have our community be more […]
So yeah, cross flashing your 2008 Xserve to a 2008 Mac Pro with the proper ROM with the proper serial number apparently doesn’t work . Now I have a 31 pound aluminum paperweight I don’t understand why the blank ROM worked fine but the one with my serial number and stuff on it […]
There’s not much to say about this, other than it looked interesting for the moment it presented itself on the screen. For the last 2 developer beta updates installed, whenever I login for the first time, all system windows stay dark purple for a brief moment. .. Above: Screenshot taken in macOS 26.2 Beta 2, […]
I don’t know why. For some reason on my M4 Mac mini in Tahoe 26.2 Beta (25C5048a), the default system icon for .bundle files is a Microsoft Word 2004 icon. I do have Microsoft Office installed, but surely it’s not that old! As it turns out, there’s an explanation for this. . . In my […]
In order for computers and devices alike to be able to communicate wirelessly, a set of technical standards were drafted known as IEEE 802.11. Using radio waves, our devices talk back and forth to Wi-Fi routers, repeaters, extenders, etc; . . IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) is the group responsible for the IEEE […]
In a previous article “M1 vs M2 vs M3 vs M4 vs M5“; I compared the tech specs of entry level Apple Silicon chips from each generation, sprinkling in some basic benchmarks while also sharing some details learned from other sources. . . There may not be an M5 MacBook Pro in front of me, […]
My journey with Apple Silicon for the Mac is perhaps atypical, but I was always open to the possibility that in the future my daily driver wouldn’t be a Mac Pro. The classic Xeon cheese graters are still useful to this day, however – I still have my 2008 3,1 now for old drives and […]
When we type on our iDevices, we expect every keystroke to be as accurate as possible, or at least as close to our perceived rate of success as can be, and for typing to be at least reasonably comfortable. When the on-screen keyboards don’t type the way we expect, instances happening on and off, it […]
Recently a website called BeeBom posted some benchmarks which reflect what appears to be the new Late 2025 14-Inch M5 MacBook Pro. If there is any indication from this artificial “water pressure test”, the M5 surely has cutting-edge single core performance. See: Mac17,2 – Geekbench 6.5.0 Pro for macOS AArch64 – Results Browser . . […]
Since Mid-2002, Apple computers started using DDR SDRAM (Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory), the first model being an Xserve G4 1.0, shipping with 266 MHz PC-2100 DDR. . . As of September 2025 the latest iteration is DDR5, with DDR6 planned for 2027, and current Apple silicon devices are using LPDDR5X, a low-power […]
A new industry report shows Apple is to saturate just under half of all 2 nanometer production capacity at TSMC. The report also has some notable insights on the industry now, and for the immediate future. The 2nm process at TSMC went into production as planned. . . When can we expect M5 chips? We […]
Metal is the current generation of low-level graphical API that Apple uses, which powers the hardware accelerated graphics on their OSes, namely macOS. Metal 1.0 was introduced on September 30th, 2015, alongside Mac OS X El Capitan and iOS 8. Before the Apple Silicon transition, the Metal API received regular major updates every 2 years. […]
Precisely as the headline sounds, the Apple Silicon iMac almost ended up having this same design cue as the intel iMacs. First shared by Kosutami on X and first reported by 9to5Mac (as well as MacWorld), are some pictures from before the EVT stage of the M1 iMac. “Fun fact: before the EVT Stage development […]
It’s important to have a backup plan and stick to it. Ideally you will have at least two backup systems in use, so if your backup drive dies, you have a second backup. My preferred backup system is to use SuperDuper to make bootable clones of my hard drive partitions and Time Machine to do […]
A lot has changed since the first Macintosh. Apple no longer uses a phone connector for its keyboard or DE-9 serial ports for its mouse, printer, and modem. As others have recently pointed out, the only connector still in use from 1984 through today is the analog headphone jack. Macs have always had some form […]
Last an article was posted sharing the M3 Ultra benchmarks for the new Early 2025 Mac Studio, showing just how powerful Apple’s new flagship chip really is. Below are benchmarks for the $1999 M4 Max Mac Studio with 14-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, and 36 GB of RAM, Comparisons are also made against the M3 Ultra […]
With the release of the new M3 Ultra Apple Silicon chip there is a new proverbial “king” of Mac performance/specs, as this chip is aimed at the professional market and features the highest specs in the Mac lineup in Early 2025. While new product performance is often touted and contrasted against old products during launch […]
Fresh to the Low End Mac mailbag from FaceBook User Michael Vega: “Possibly known knowledge, but I wanted to show a proof of concept and I’m glad it works. I have a thunderbolt 3 dock, but it works with Thunderbolt 2/1 Macs. My work laptops are a current generation of Lenovo PCs with Thunderbolt 4, […]
Processors keep getting faster and faster. Hard drives and SSDs are getting faster and faster. System memory gets faster and faster. Graphics processors get faster and faster. Network speeds get faster too. So why does so much feel slow?
SATA standards are all backwards compatible, right? Well, not necessarily. Researching upgrade options for the 2010 iMac on my desk has been a real learning experience. Some SATA III hard drives are auto-sensing and thus compatible with SATA II and SATA I ports, but some SATA III hard drives are fixed speed only and thus […]
Mac sales have been growing ever since Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel processors, in no small part because that made it possible to run Windows on Macs at full speed. No more Intel emulation. No more DOS cards. Boot Camp and then virtualization apps made it easy to run other operating systems on Intel-based […]
The PC Card was originally called the PCMCIA card when it was launched in November 1990. It is compatible with the Japanese JEIDA memory card 4.0 standard and supports a 16-bit ISA-compatible data bus. PC Cards may be 5V, 3.3V, or both, and 3.3V cards have a key that prevents them from being plugged into […]
Macs have had networking since the “Fat Mac” shipped in late 1984, but over the years Apple has changed the file sharing system, so not all Macs can share files with each other. This article provides a brief overview of which Macs can share files based on the system software they are running.
Apple made an unusual decision when it designed the original iBook, the one with the handle. Unlike most Macs before and since, iBooks do not have a PRAM battery. Neither does the 12″ PowerBook G4, which is based on the iBook G4. Instead, the parameter RAM (PRAM for short) is maintained by using the charge […]
Back in 2015, a proof-of-concept piece of Mac malware arrived under the name Thunderstrike. The name was chosen because the software specifically used the Thunderbolt port in newer Macs as its infection vector, and it was designed to use an ethernet adapter as its carrier. Apple addressed the issue with the Mac OS X 10.10.2 […]
October 21, 2016 will go down as one of the biggest cyber-attacks in the history of the Internet – perhaps the biggest ever. We’re going to learn a lot from this one, and we need to be sure to take steps to avoid it happening again.
Mac users have had networking since 1984 using Apple’s 230.4 Kbps LocalTalk hardware and AppleTalk protocol. However, there was an older networking standard with roots at Xerox PARC (which also inspired the Mac’s look and feel) known as ethernet that was destined to become the networking standard.
The following collection of articles is adapted from postings by Scott L. Barber, an all around Mac geek, on our Quadlist email list circa 1998. Although a few of these are specific to 68040-based Macs, most have much wider application (or, at times, much narrower), and in some cases these look at technologies long since […]
With the October 2005 introduction of the 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 Quad, Apple had introduced the most powerful PowerPC Mac ever. Whatever was to replace it had to be a real powerhouse – and the first Mac Pro certainly was.
With macOS Sierra, Apple has once again raised the bar on which Macs can install and run the newest version of the Mac OS. But as sometimes has happened in the past, there are workarounds that make it possible to install Sierra on some unsupported Macs.
There are several kinds of Duo Docks of two main types: The full docks, such as the Apple Duo Dock, take the Duo inside much like a tape into a VCR; full docks provide ADB for keyboard and mouse, video, floppy, SCSI chain, two NuBus card slots, and two serial ports.
Earlier today in the Apple Macintosh Enthusiasts Facebook group, Charles Lott asked if an OS X Mac with a USB floppy drive could write disks that a Mac running System 7 could use. The short answer is, it depends.
Apple took a nice step forward when it introduced the first Aluminum iMacs (iMac7,1) in August 1997. The logic board uses the Santa Rosa chipset, and it has an 800 MHz data bus, up from 667 MHz on earlier Intel-based iMacs. The CPU sits in a socket (Socket P), so you can upgrade it!