Welcome!

You have arrived at the Sliced Apple site. 

Sliced Apple is mainly devoted to hardware and software upgrades of legacy Macintoshes including lots of tips and technical discussions but has other Apple (and non-Apple) technical content as well, along with various rants. 

This was a website/blog I originally started in 2003, originally just documenting my adventures creating a Frankenstein out of a PowerMac 8500. It then became a more general site for my various computer projects, thoughts on technology, and a blog.

Sliced Apple then sat dormant from 2008 until late 2025, during which I did some real work and lived my life. Now that I have some time, and with the support of my son, I decided to put the old site from 2008 back up and leave it mostly intact, warts, ravings, and dated content intact. Hopefully all this information on legacy Macs will have some value to the legacy Mac community.

However my son and I are going to keep the blogs updated, add new content, and also document the ongoing adventures of Bertha, and the other various legacy Macs we are trying to get running, which means hopefully new technical content and how-tos.

I has been 18 years. It goes without saying many things have changed.

As I bring this site back up in 2025 I am essentially resurrecting it as it was in the early 2000s. This is a legacy Mac hardware site after all so I am going to be running old hardware running old Mac OSs as my web server. Of course the goal is to get the PM 8500 "Bertha" back up such that this entire site (originally dedicated to her) is accurate again. However, in the interim, the 1999 PowerMac G4, also running Mac OS X 10.4, is going to do the task.

After this continues the original (legacy) Sliced Apple main page from 2007, unchanged for your judgement.

Welcome!

You have arrived at the public portion of my public/private web site and the home page for the Sliced Apple site. Sliced Apple is mainly devoted to hardware and software upgrades of legacy Macintoshes including lots of tips and technical discussions but has other Apple (and non-Apple) technical content as well, along with various rants.  To see something more like a useful home page I would suggest going to the Sliced Apple Site Map.  It would also serve as the best page to bookmark for this site.

This is also serves as the entry web page for the PM 8500 Project, a legacy Power Macintosh that is my pet hobby computer and the originating topic of this web site. We just call her "Bertha".

Bertha serves my personal intra/internet needs at my home in Texas and hosts this web site dedicated to my computer hobby, Apple Macintosh computers, some freeware software I have written, and anything else I care to write about, at least when I don’t have Bertha ripped apart playing with her.

This web page began with just a specifications page link off another small private web page and, in the beginning, this site could have just as well been called the “My 8500 Page”. However as the result of a fun project and the need to keep a diary of sorts it has instead slowly grown to complete excess.  Call it therapy.

PM 8500 G4 X Specifications

Technical Details of this Server

This system is part of an active hobby and therefore its specs and peripherals change regularly.  It is not uncommon for the position and/or model of every hard drive and optical drive to change twice in a week, or all its USB devices to be re-arranged, or for the entire system to be disassembled and reassembled four times in one day.  Even PCI cards cycle with some combination of three out five routine cards trading plus many others that are installed once just to test them. The result is that these specs are approximate, although over the past 9 months or more the system had not been altered as much as in days past.  This stability is a consequence of both its heavy server responsibilities and the fact that I am beginning to worry about wear and tear.

Hardware Platform:

Apple PowerPC PCI (Apple system based on a RISC CPU/PCI bus architecture - 1st generation PCI)

Operating System:

Apple Macintosh OS X 10.4.x Client (freeBSD based "Darwin" Unix compatible system)

System originally shipped with System 7.6.  Supported through OS 9.1.x. (OS 9 continued to 9.2) Originally upgraded to OS X using OS X 10.2.x and then sequential upgraded to 10.3 and now 10.4.

Web Server:

Apache 1.3 (Apache 2.0 installed but not yet in use)

CPU:

Motorola 7457 “G4” 800 MHz

CPU on daughtercard in standard daughtercard slot.  Upgraded from original 120MHz 604 that was "clock chipped" 150 Mhz 604 -> 250 Mhz G3 -> (current) 800 Mhz G4 - Sonnet Crescendo PCI G4 800 card

Motherboard:

Apple 8500 “Nitro”- PCI based Powersurge type mainboard - original bus speed (as shipped) was 40 Mhz - currently running at 50 Mhz for a 16:1 CPU:bus ratio

The motherboard is from a high end professional midsized tower system ~ year 1990 - Full Pro line of that time: 7200 - Entry Professional Desktop, 7500/7600 - Desktop, 8500/8600 - Midsized Tower, 9500/9600 - Full Sized Tower.  The laptop and consumer lines were different.

Slots:

DAV x1 (slot for MPEG2 decoder card)

AV In/Out - Digital to Analog (and reverse) with S-video and composite in out built-in to system.

Not tested by me in OS X - Reports are that the hardware still works.


32 Bit 33 MHz PCI x 3 (2.0 Compliant)

Video:

32MB ATI based Radeon 7000 multi-display (dual head) capable PCI video card


2M PCI Video (on motherboard) - separate from Radeon 7000 PCI card


Support for three logical monitors - one from built-in video, two from Radeon PCI card

Caches:

L1 32K Data, 32K Instruction


 L2 256K at 800 MHz (1:1)


L3 1M at 200 MHz (4:1)

RAM:

1 GB of  FPM or EDO 168 pin DIMMS (8 slots, 8x128) - Matched and interleaved

Hard Drives:

200 G ATA 133 HD - Hitachi


160 G ATA 133 HD - Seagate


36 G SCSI 160 QUANTUM ATLAS 10K 10K3_36_WLS Hard Drive on internal SCSI 2 bus

Optical Drives:

Internal ATAPI LITE-ON  LTR-52327S 52x26x52 CDRW (Iomega Branded)


Internal SCSD Toshia CD Drive XM-5401B Currently Removed


Internal ATAPI Teak (Que) DV-W50D 4xDVDr/16xCDRW Currently Removed

Other Drives:

Internal 7 device Multi-card reader (via USB 2)


External SCSI Epson Iomega Zip 100


External ATAPI Lite-On 52x26x52 CDRW via Firewire (Lacie Branded) Currently Used Elsewhere

Ports:

Apple motherboard 10Mbps Ethernet -RJ-45 or AAUI (RJ45 connector not working but AAUI works)


PCI 802.11g Wireless NIC (Broadcom based, Motorola branded) - or - Asante 696 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI NIC


Macintosh Video Connector (motherboard), VGA, DVI, TV via RCA composite video (PCI card)

All video works as expected with normal multi-display support.  Quartz Extreme works well well enabled on the PCI video card.


Geoport Serial Ports x 2 (RS432 based with bandwidth up to 2 Mbps) - function as standard serial ports or as faster Geoports

As originally used these ports supported modems, printing, and AppleTalk peer to peer networking via a direct serial/serial connection or via local talk connections. Modems work in OS X but printing has not been tested.  OS X has no support for Local Talk or old AppleTalk (AS) and only supports newer AppleTalk over TCP (AFP).  Geoport modems have also not been tested but function is unlikely since they were a modem simulated by system software and OS X is unlikely to have such code.


Internal Fast SCSI 2 as bus 0 and SCSI I as bus 1  (50 pin connectors) - allows 14 total devices internal  plus external

SCSI devices appear to work as expected with more exotic devices (SCSI scanners) requiring 3rd party drivers per the norm


External SCSI 1 on bus 1 (25 pin connectors)


Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) - standard Apple connector for input devices (now replaced by USB) - required for "at startup" keyboard commands to open firmware


FireWire 400 x 2 (3 externally assessable) - via Sonnet Trio PCI card interfaced to USB/FireWire bay mounted powered hub

2 ports on card one splitting to 2 ports on the hub

FireWire works very well and seems generally immune to USB's bandwidth problems from its PCI 2.0 slot limited PCI card.  Has good transfer rates and burns reliable when used with optical drives.


USB 2.0 x 2  (2 USB 1.1 and 5 USB 2.0 externally assessable) - via Sonnet Trio PCI card interfaced to  2 internal hubs, and the bay hub  -  internal connections are made to BlueTooth, the USB card reader, and the iMic

USB 1.1 works as expected. USB 2.0 (Hi Speed) works as expected with low bandwidth devices but fails with high bandwidth devices like USB 2.0 external drives.  It appears the older PCI 2.0 slots gets overwhelmed USB 2.0 data flow with a system freeze resulting until the USB 2.0 device is disconnected.  Most devices are pretty slow (Palm syncing, Printers, Bluetooth, Keyboards, Mice, Scanning, etc ) and work well.  All devices work well (if slow) if buffered through a USB 1.1 hub. Systems just a couple of years newer with PCI 2.1 slots do not have this problem. FireWire 400 on the same card does not have these problems.*


Bluetooth via USB 2.0  (directly off the PCI card) via OEM Apple internal Bluetooth module - antenna mounted in front case cover


Audio In/Out via USB Adapter - iMic (on board audio not working after I screwed it up)

PCI Cards

Motorola 802.11g Wireless PCI card (Broadcom based)


Sonnet Trio 133 - ATA 133 controller (supports 4 devices), USB 2.0 x 2, FW 400 x2


Power Color Radeon 7000 PCI 32 M Multi-Display Edition - (firmware flashed to Mac Edition)

Peripherals/Other

Printing/Faxing/Scanning - networked HP AIO PSC 2510


Cyber Power USB UPS (auto-save software blows so it is not in use)


Canon Lide’ 30 Scanner (USB) -relocated


Griffin iMic USB Audio In/Out


Harmon Kardon Speaker/Sub-woofer -or- Creative Speaker/Sub-woofer system (varies with mood)


Griffin PowerMate (USB Volume/Multimedia control knob)


Epson C62ux Inkjet Printer (shared for Mac/PC) -relocated


HP Deskjet 648c (shared for Mac/PC, + shared as Postscript IP printer via GimpPrint for Mac/PC/OS 9/Palm, ect…) -relocated

Input Devices

Apple ADB keyboard and mouse (for Open Firmware or emergency uses)


Apple USB keyboard (bad/evil skeleton one) and MS Intellimouse Optical (occasional use)


MS Bluetooth Mouse + (MS Bluetooth USB Adapter - not used after adding internal BT) (routine use)


Apple Bluetooth keyboard (routine use)

Modem

Global Village (old) V.90 serial modem (via RS432 port) - standard serial modem (Mad/PC) with Mac style DIN 9 serial connector - does not power from Geoport but uses external PS

Allows Fax send/receive, dial up networking/connections - serial ports and modems seen by Virtual PC for use of PC only clients for special uses.

(Occasional use of a 33.6 Global Village modem  powered off Geoport.  Have/will use a Zoom v92 Bluetooth modem for all the above - also seen easily by VirtualPC)

Monitor/Display

20 inch Envision CRT via VGA connector

(Occasional single or dual display use of Compaq Presario 15in LCD Display via DVI connector)

Case

Full Sized ATX Tower (CompUSA branded Antec case) with separate Antec 500W dual fan Power Supply interfaced to motherboard via a hand-made wiring harness and a hand-built signal inverter to allow soft-power on/off with a  legacy Apple motherboard and a modern ATX PS. Case modified for non-standard motherboard mounting and motherboard connectors.


**Most Printers relocated to office after replacement with HP AOI PSC 2510 for home use.






 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some More Information for the Interested

This web server is running on the workhorse desktop computer at my house, the one described above.  This server performs a lot of duties including: web serving and webDAV, FTP, SSH, hosting the internal Video On Demand system, print serving, and file serving (AFP always and SMB/CFIS when needed), landing point for encrypted tunnels for outside access, digital/device hub with two printers, two scanners, two modems (one for fax, one for dialing into secure systems trapped in the 80’s), Bluetooth (including Bluetooth Access Point for Palm/other internet access, and sync/install Palm Pilot…so named because Clie lacks a certain...), plus a Sony Ericsson T637 GPRS/GSM Bluetooth cell phone.  It also handles backup/trouble shooting/dumb move recovery duties for the other computers in the household (at time of writing: Powerbook G4 12, Beige G3 (G4 400), Generic PC, and iBook plus sometimes an iMac or Mac Plus,) along with computers on loan to others (Sawtooth AGP G4 400, clamshell iBook 300).   This computer, bastardized as it is, is the most reliable and stable system I have ever owned often running for months unattended, and for months getting heavy daily use without requiring a restart. In fact, despite a hard life of constant hardware changes and experimentation, odd drivers and home grown software, and a constant barrage of beta software Bertha last had a fresh system install 11/29/03. It's current system is the result of continuous updates and upgrades of that original install.

In other words a totally unsupported legacy system has been running OS X for around 2 1/2 years without ever needing to be reinstalled. It started as Panther 10.3.0 and has slowly been updated/upgraded to 10.4.5. Now THAT is impressive.

I am an Apple Macintosh fan and, for me, this is a special computer.  Although not rare or unique, one upgraded such as this is a least very uncommon and demonstrates well the differences in Macs and PC’s, especially in what they mean to their owners.

Therefore if you are interested in more information about this computer, or my general semi-accurate ravings, it is available in Nauseating detail that few would appreciate (or want to) but they can load up the full PM 8500 Project Page if they really want more. 

(I promise…nauseating…who would make that up!)

-R (Resident House Computer Nerd)

 

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Various descriptions, links and technical articles about how to perform these types of upgrades are contained on this site.  See the Site Map for links.

If you find any links or content that you feel violates your intellectual property or inappropriately accesses your site please let me know.  If you have an interesting (even if only you think it is interesting) hobby site please email me the link. THE SLICED APPLE SITE HAS NO ADVERTISING.  If you are seeing adds they are not coming from here.  Furthermore I am a private individual and I DO NOT harvest email addresses and spam people,  sell the email addresses, or anything of the kind.  If you send me an email and I don't respond then certainly I could not pick it out of my clutter of spam.  Just put PM8500 or Sliced Apple in the subject and I will catch it.