I was screwing around with a new single quad-core Mac Pro the other day and saw this on the logic board:
and thought “what the fuck is that?” I haven’t seen an easter egg, hardware or software, on an Apple product in a LONG time. I have no idea what the “Big Frank” non-socket or “Little Frank” actual-socket is. My only speculation is that the single quad-core board is the “Little Frank” and that the dual quad-core board is “Big Frank”. I’ll speculate some more and say that maybe the connector is for the equipment testing hardware. Any other guesses? I love mystery ports on Apple’s boards.
This wouldn’t be the first time Apple’s used the same base board design with different connector placement depending on the model. If you have an original or ALS iMac G5 (all-white, no iSight camera) and you look at the logic boards, the 17″ and 20″ models have essentially the same board, but with the LCD inverter plugs in different locations and DIMM sockets facing the other direction. There are a few other minor differences, but one time I got a board almost-seated in the wrong size machine. I only noticed it when some of the plug locations were in the wrong place.
Back to the Core i7 Xeon Mac Pro. I wonder if the huge processor/memory board on the single quad-core machine is replaceable with the board from a dual quad-core machine with full function? I would assume “no” because Apple rolls that way with often-unnecessary firmware limitations on its hardware. Is there someone familiar with Intel boards able to tell me why or why not?