Hey all,

I just picked up an old G4 powermac 350mhz 448mb RAM, for my little brother back home in NSW, cost me $20. It has a pre-release version of Tiger running on it and it actually runs quite well, expose etc is a little clunky, but still useful.

Now, it doesnt have an optical drive in it, but I have an ATA CDRW drive at home from an old PC, can I just stick that in it?

In terms of disk space, it has a 10gig ATA and also a 10gig SCSI drive in it. Whats the maximum capacity drive I can get? Ideally I want to get an 80gig drive (around $40 - $50)

Also can I just stick some generic PC2100 ram in it? Just another 256mb (anyone have any they wanna get rid of?)

He will only be using it to web browse and type up some school asignments, so it should do the trick.

Cheers guys.

Grant

You can chuck the CDRW you have in there. Most generic ones are seen by 10.4.

From memory, 120gig is the largest drive you can pop into the old G4s. Anything higher shows up as 120gig.

They use PC133 ram in those models. Should be plenty of those sticks floating around on ebay (or put a wanted ad here).

Old G4's take PC133/100 not DDR so you're PC2100 will not fit.
The maximum Drive size os 128gb so don't go above that.
And yes any old CD-RW should work, if its not recognised by MacOSX I recommend googling for the software "PatchBurn"

The above 128GiB capacity translates to 137GB (sales capacity). As was debated also recently, while 'Patchburn' adds burning support for unsupported drives it (and no-one has bothered to correct me on this one yet: the drive will work with the jumper(s) set to cable select but wants to be set to master to be bootable from the CD/DVD; must be some firmware thing I guess). That last bit I read recently when investigating something unrelated. Consequently I can't find a link or, at least, have not had the inclination to hunt it down.

By the way these things fit 2 hard drives so you can leave the old one in it.

One thing you might consider is replacing the video card as I think it is this that slows the operation down. The original rage card doesn't work well with iphoto or any other graphic program.

Someone was selling a 512kb PC133 stick on this forum, but it didn't work in his old Mac - make sure you can return it if it doesn't work. I dunno what the difference is between mac and pc ram requirements...

Yeah that was me when I 1st brought my G4 it has to be apple compatable I went to me local apple store and brought it there for $140 not cheap but it's brand new.

For the CD drive I brought a normal DVD drive and put it in and does everything.

I have a 160GB HD installed and reg as a 128GB but hey it was cheap to by new from my local PC shop and I would get rid of the old HD as there loud the new HD are quite running and make less heat.

A video card upgrade is a must and i will be doing this soon.

If possable hunt a CPU upgrade faster then what you have now it's what I am doing it's cheap for me so far i upgraded my G4 Digitial Audio from 466MHz to 733MHz but I am still trying to hunt down a faster CPU for my G4 AGP Graphics machine.

Thanks guys appreciate the help.

I just missed out on 512mb sdram on ebay for $20! bummer. I picked up some more elsewhere though.

So yeah, Ive got the HD and RAM sorted. Now I want to upgrade the CPU and graphics card.

in another thread a bloke has a 733mhz G4 out of a quicksilver, can I stick that in my 350mhz AGP G4? If not, what is the fastest cpu I can dump in it?

Also, whats the best graphics card I can stick in it, and how can I get one?

Sorry about the questions, I really dont know much about these older machines.

I actually ended up getting the machine for free, so I dont mind spending a tiny bit just to make it run a bit smoother for my brother.

Thanks again guys.

You can put a QS CPU in but you really probably don't want to. For the QS CPU daughterboard to fit you would need to hack off the ATAPI bus connector on the side of the logic board (disabling the CD/DVD). It is possible to do a wiring hack and attach the connector to the logic board by directly soldering a length of ribbon cable to the logic board and connector at the other end. I would advise against this. It is just not a good modification. (been discussed a few times, in brief, here but I can't be bothered tracking down the links at the moment)

as kji states, you really don't want to put that cpu into your 'puter. You can however, get cpus up to 733 that will fit, and also duals that will fit straight in (up to 500 I think, someone will correct me if I am wrong). max out the ram (512 should be considered the minimum), almost any pc100/pc133 ram will work. I have a couple of 400s, one as a server and they are nice 'puters.

Nope the QS-733MHz CPU won't work in the AGP Graphics machines I have already checked and doesn't turn on I have both the AGP Graphics & Digitial Audio model G4's I have the QS-733MHz CPU in my Digitial Audio Machine with slit modding.

Here's the link to the modding for the G4 Digitial Audio Model :-
CPU modification

But isn't the 350Mhz PCI ???

You hacked off the ATAPI bus connector to try that QS CPU in a Sawtooth? With that connector in place you cannot seat the CPU daughterboard properly at all (physical interference) and that is just never going to start (sort of plugged in just won't work). Likewise it also needs the 12 volt tap to function after you have butchered your logic board to allow the CPU daughter card to plug in properly. This mod is not rare or unusual just not good. Google 'quicktooth' or search the same in these forums. One member at least had one of these machines at one stage. Basically when the machines had higher value it was worth it; just not now.

There is a 350Mhz PCI (Yikes!) and a 350Mhz AGP (Sawtooth).