Possible to swap MDD FW400 for FW800 logic board?

Question

Hello all,
I'd thought I would ask this question because I have been thinking about this. Currently, have a dual 1.25 2003 model(not earlier MDD!) MDD G4 with the 2MB L3 per processor.
I just received today my airport extreme USB netgear device and I must say plugged into the USB 2.0 5-port card I have it is even faster than the Belkin PCI F5D7000 card! But, my question is concerning something else.
FW800 logic board - is it really worth it for me to swap current FW400 board with the FW800 board? 2ndly, can I use my existing MDD case or do I have to find another case? My power supply is a 360w power supply. I am not sure if it is a quieter one or not. The date on my power mac G4 2003 says: copyright June 2003(or was it July?) Apple computer. - Does this entail that the FW800 machines came out the same time as mine did? Again, I don't have the original MDD(867,1gh,1.25), I have the last dual bootable OS 9.2.2 MDD machine from 2003.
Also, is the airport extreme card going to produce faster results that the netgear WG111V2.0 USB device I currently have plugged into my USB 2.0 pci card? One thing I did notice is that I can no longer put my computer into hibernation or deep sleep, since I now have the USB 2.0 netgear wireless device attached.
Can anyone confirm if there is a way around for the sleep/hibernate function to work even with the USB 2.0 device plugged in? I also removed the Belkin wireless PCI card(FD57000). Before the USB 2.0 device, my computer would goto sleep and hibernate normally.
Thanks!

Answer 1

*9.x and Internet*: shouldn't be a problem with Ethernet. Forget which control panels you'll need to play with TCP/IP, Network? So if you want faster Internet with the MDD in 9.x, go with Ethernet -- the regular Airport card will work in 9.x by the way. That's the reason why for faster wireless, I'm going to buy the new Airport Express (with wireless -n), and connect via WDS to my Airport Extreme -- the MDD will connect to the Express via Ethernet which should be fine in both 9.x and OS X.
I did this once before my the original Airport Express (wireless -g) and an old Linksys all-in-one that supported WDS. But the Linksys blew its ethernet ports, so I replaced it with a newer model that doesn't support WDS.
*Copper heatsink* should fit any MDD CPU card, I've tried mine on both a Dual 867 and 1.25GHz cards, although I'm using a Verax cooler on the 1.25GHz Dual. The copper contact plate while narrow (about 1.5 cm) is a long piece, so it would contact both single and dual CPUs. As for the 1.25GHz dual in particular, see here.
Just a tip, use some good thermal compound, like Artic Silver. You'll need to clean off the old compound on your CPUs. I used Articlean (also made by Artic silver), works great. They sell a kit with both cleaner and purifier (preparation compound for the thermal compounds).
*Dual 1.25 2003*. I think the best way may be to check the model number. According to everymac.com, it should be M9145LL/A. I'm sure the info's also on Apple's site somewhere. The last 2003 1.25Ghz have 2MB L3 cache, which is easy enough to see in say System Profiler. If you're seeing 2MB L3, then you know you've got the CPU from the last 2003 model. As for the motherboard, you'd probably have to check the assembly number under the modem to insure a 2003 motherboard, but I don't think that matters as much as the CPU.
The CPU cards from MDDs and G4 XServes are pretty much interchangable --setting aside the issue of 133MHz and 167Mhz front side buses, which could overclock or underclock depending on CPU card & motherboard combination. And reading around there's an incompatibility with certain MDD Dual 1.0GHz on certain motherboards.
You could put an early 1.25GHz dual with only 1MB L3 on a 2003 MDD motherboard; for that matter you could stick a 1.42GHz dual from a FW800 MDD on your 2003 MDD motherboard, which some people have done. I guess if you're seeing Dual 1.25GHz w/1MB L3 advertised as the last 2003 MDDs, then people might not know what they're talking about, or may have replaced the CPU. The 1MB L3 versions cost less.
FW800, indeed if you want it, you can always add a card later. Since the MDDs don't have USB2, for that you'll need a card as I think you've already done. But there's always a worry of eating the slots. While rare, there are some combo USB2/FW800 cards. Problem with a combo cards over separate cards is that there's usually a performance hit on the FW side. A friend of mine has one that suffers from this -- like 7-10MB/sec hit. I recently bought a Siig combo FW800/USB2 and there's not nearly the performance hit; FW800 is only a few ticks less in MB/sec compared to my FW800 only card. In my DA, I didn't see any deep sleep issues with the Siig card, but every Mac is different. I've haven't tested it in a MDD, yet.
I'm working on getting two MDDs working (long story), so I have my hands full. Can't say I love the MDDs yet, but I certainly been bit by the tinkering/upgrading bug. So I'm have fun getting my two MDDs together that are both very close to being ready -- I need to stress test them before moving over my HDs/data, cards, etc.