HELP!!! - How do I sabotage/KILL an Old G4?!?!

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
<EDITED>



I work on an old powermac g4 with a single 500 mgz processor. It has a gig of SDRAM and it runs like an old piece of sh*t!



Is there sort of program or process I can make this machine go through to degrade the processor? Some code/process that will reduce the kernel to a choking freezing block of code? Pouring my coffee onto the motherboard will be too obvious.



</EDITED>



(Thank You Wilco for pointing out my high levels of retardation)
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 24
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Well, the first part is trivial - you could install RC5-72 and set it to high priority with the BSD function "renice". That'll freeze just about everything.



    But they could find that rogue process easily with Activity Monitor or BSD commands such as ps or top.



    So you would have to install your own versions of ps and top, or find someone who knows BSD and see if there is a way to omit processes from the top display, or a way to launch processes without them being displayed in the top or ps displays.



    Hell, you could just write an AppleScript that executes a shell command to give itself high priority and then goes into a loop.
  • Reply 2 of 24
    wilcowilco Posts: 985member
    So, you're soliciting assistance in commiting corporate sabotage on a public discussion board using your real name -- with a link to your business?



    Were you one of those people in line for iBooks?



  • Reply 3 of 24
    Yes! Thats exactly what I'm doing!



    About the ibooks, I didnt wait in line, I waited until the last minute then just trampled any baby strollers in my path.
  • Reply 4 of 24
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    How about selling it on eBay?
  • Reply 5 of 24
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    Put an incorrect memory module in or reverse it.

    The motherboard will smell funny.

    Or take the heatsink of the cpu and run like that for a while (need to use CPU so use Safari (ha ha!)).

    Bend a paper clip to an L shape and run it over the legs of some of the components.

    A 20oz magnet can also do wonders.







    None of this makes the machine slower it just kills it!



    Dobby.
  • Reply 6 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wilco

    So, you're soliciting assistance in commiting corporate sabotage on a public discussion board using your real name -- with a link to your business?



    Were you one of those people in line for iBooks?







    Look at his name and then look at the URL of his business. I'm guessing he can get away with it.
  • Reply 7 of 24
    UPDATE:

    Some office-hall reconnaissance and light prodding yielded reliable information. Art dept. will upgrade at the end of the year. Hopefully by that time the Intel Powermacs will be out... Yeah!



    (thank-you to all who responded to me in my moment of frustration )



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Tidelwav

    Look at his name and then look at the URL of his business. I'm guessing he can get away with it.



    What is it with you? What exactly does that mean? \
  • Reply 8 of 24
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mike Moscow







    What is it with you? What exactly does that mean? \




    It means that it looks like you own the business you link to, and that you won't have a problem explaining your little actions today to... yourself.
  • Reply 9 of 24
    Oh, ok I understand now, I think.



    Thanks all, forgive me for being a dumb-ass.
  • Reply 10 of 24
    What OS is on this machine? Is it still OS9? If so that could be a great deal of it's running like shit!



    A format/reinstall could fix your problems. One of your memory modules could be flakey too. I hate to see someone wanting to make a powermac run worse. It can still be usefull as a server of some type...
  • Reply 11 of 24
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    what about installing Developer Tools... isn't there an app that lets you scale the CPU frequency lower (for dev purposes)?



    This is a hilarious thread
  • Reply 12 of 24
    How about throwing it out the f*cking window! I HATE this machine.



    I have been assured that we will be receiving brand new machines in 3 months. I can wait three months, then I'm going to kick this piece of shit down the stairs.



    Its running panther, and it doesnt really crash so much. Its just slow, too slow for the hectic environment we're subjected too. I'm literally spending 30-40% of my day watching the beach ball spin. Days where I'm working on big files, I spend 60-70% watching that ball spin.



    Dudes, thats ridiculous. It might seem trivial at 1st, but it gets old real quick after a few busy weeks.



    I swear, I just want to BREAK this machine.
  • Reply 13 of 24
    rara Posts: 623member
    Hmm... this comes to mind...
    Code:


    while(1)

    {

    fork();

    }



  • Reply 14 of 24
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    anyway, just as one last fyi:



    One of my buddies in college tried to fry a P4 (with an OEM heatsink) by running specific mixes of instructions that yielded high power dissipation. That didn't work, so he tried to run mixes that created high current fluctuations across certain circuit paths of the chip. This didn't work either.



    I don't think it's possible to fry a g4 in software.
  • Reply 15 of 24
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    btw, have you tried going to Energy Settings and ensuring that the processor is set to Maximum Performance?



    I also just saw this on VT



    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27613
  • Reply 16 of 24
    you could send it to me
  • Reply 17 of 24
    How about some short-term, low-cost upgrade options?



    A G4 1 GHz CPU upgrade is available for about $200; G4 1.5 GHz is about $350.



    An ATI 9200 128 MB video card is available for about $125. The newly announced, but not yet shipping, ATI 9600 Pro 256 MB will sell for about $200.



    For more details, see: http://eshop.macsales.com



    Cheers,



    -Nathan
  • Reply 18 of 24
    can't you just type some random, dangerous code into terminal so that the computer won't boot? every article about terminal i've read gives warnings about typing the wrong thing... so it won't technically "break" the system, but to the untrained eye, it may very well appear fried
  • Reply 19 of 24
    cj171cj171 Posts: 144member
    Code:


    rm -rf /



  • Reply 20 of 24
    do you happen to have a cosmic ray generator handy?
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