mac vs pc questions

[rmcelroy]

i have a pc and i dont know much of anything anout macs.

i am trying to get a job somewhere else, but the catch is, they are going to be primarily workin with macs...

i was wondering, what are the primary differences between a mac and a pc.

i know the OS is different, Macs use a Unix based OS, but i am primarily concerned about the hardware aspects.

how is the hardware of a mac different from a PC? are there some good places to find pics of the inside of a mac?

 

[mrdinkel]

The new G5 Powermacs run off of the IBM something or other chip. I believe the older macs run off of a motorolla processor.

IBM-compatible computers use a completely different architecture designed by AMD and Intel.

This is a good demonstration.. and I'm an IBM Fan

http://www.apple.com/g5processor/architecture.html

There are essentially two common threads between mac and IBM : they both CAN run programs written in Unix, (a little bit of recompliling) and they can interchange Microsoft Office Suite Files.

 

[rmcelroy]

thanks. i think what i really need to do if find a mac and open it up to see what i really wanna know.

so im assuming that you cant buy pc parts and build a mac then, huh? the hardware is completely different...

is there anywhere you can go to online to buy individual mac parts if you wanted to build your own?

 

[g5orbust]

Mac hardware and PC hardware are very similar, and in most cases exactly the same. Macs use industry standard RAM, hard drives, optical drives and video cards (some of which are just firmware flashed versions of their PC counterparts and some of which are modified versions that have ADC (Apple Display connector) soldered onto the PCB).

PC parts cannot be used to build a Mac machine and spare Mac parts to build your own are very hard to come by within a reasonable price margin (sometimes so expensive that buying a new mac is cheaper).

 

[rmcelroy]

so if i had one that used standard ram, hard drive, optical drives, and video card... then the only difference in hardware between the mac and a pc would be the motherboard/processor?

is that correct? so technically, i could just take the motherboard/cpu out of my pc and replace it with a mac mobo, and i would have a mac then? or am i way off?

also, is there any OS X emulators or other mac OS emulators i can run on my PC to get a feel of what a mac would be like?

 

[g5orbust]

so if i had one that used standard ram, hard drive, optical drives, and video card... then the only difference in hardware between the mac and a pc would be the motherboard/processor?

You could do that, but Mac mobos dont use standard motherboard mounting points, so unless you have enough skill to drill new ones on your case, I think you should stay away from that. Also, I dont think they sell many working mobo/proc combos from recent macs. Most people just sell the whole package. If you found a bare mobo with at least a 1GHz G4 in it, then youd be in business.


is that correct? so technically, i could just take the motherboard/cpu out of my pc and replace it with a mac mobo, and i would have a mac then? or am i way off?

You could, but see my above comment. Also, mac internal optical drives are the same as PC ones, but dont have the same firmware as required by the OS. The only ones that do are the Pioneer DVD burners (A03 onward), though I have heard of people putting other optical drives in the second bay of their G4 towers and having them work without a problem. What you would most want is something that works in iTunes (if it works there, it works throughout the system).


also, is there any OS X emulators or other mac OS emulators i can run on my PC to get a feel of what a mac would be like?

No mac emulators, but there are many windows XP skins available that mimick the MacOSX environment (including Dock and most recently Exposé). While they add no mac compatability what so ever, they do add the look of the OS to your windows system.

 

[rmcelroy]

thanks, you've been very helpful

 

[g5orbust]

thanks, you've been very helpful

Anytime.

If you have any more questions, I must ask you to post them in this thread. No use in cluttering the subforum with new question threads when you have a broad topic question thread right here.

 

[rmcelroy]

por supuesto, señor!

 

[rmcelroy]

ok...

i think i have one more really stupid question concerning this topic...

if you had a machine that had a Mac mobo and processor, but all the other parts were PC like the hard drive and ROMs ect... like we were tlaking about there... could you install windows and run windows on it?

or

could you install OSX on a PC?

if not... then why?