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HELP ME ISH, YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE (MAC LOL)

Eggs Mayonnaise

Eggs Mayonnaise

All In With The Nuts
I'm upgrading my Mac G4 733 rather than buying a new Mac because new Macs are stupid expensive and I have to get a new Dell laptop in order to be able to do my job.

So I've been running around the Net looking for info and bargains for the whole shebang: processor, HD, CD/DVD drive, video card.

I have a factory G4, the specs in the link below pretty much echo my unit:
This is a link, see?

I went to mac-forums.com and got some recommendations:

Giga Systems single 1.53GHz processor (I'm on a budget, it doesn't have to be crazy fast):
http://www.gigadesigns.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=32

ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (Mac Edition) video card (currently I have the GeForce 2, and my old CRT is dying. I want to buy a widescreen LCD but the card won't support it) -- they are readily available on eBay.

I want a bigger HD too, but the specs say:
Can officially support two Ultra ATA/66 hard drives -- drives larger than 128 GB are not supported. It could be configured with up to three 10,000 RPM Ultra160 SCSI drives at the time of purchase, or one Ultra ATA/66 and two Ultra160 SCSI drives, as build-to-order options.
Click to expand...
I'm not seeing a lot of options at places like MacZone, any suggestions? I'd like one big drive.

Also I want to stick an internal combo drive in there, are there options out there? Preferably one that can write to dual-layer DVDs...

Also, what hell am I getting myself into doing this? What other components will either explode or need upgrading as a result?

WHEEEEEEEE!!!
 
The place you should go for your processor et al. is:

http://www.otherworldcomputing.com/

The have a pretty decent system - you punch in your model of powermac, and they show you the upgrades cool for your system. The DL DVD-RW drives are around $50: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Pioneer/DVR112D/

So for processor upgrades, here's the list OWC has for your model:
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upg...ype=Processor&TI=0647&shoupgrds=Show+Upgrades

Now it looks like yo can spend up to $700 (for a dual 1.8GHz) but by that price point you could get a new Mini and whoop your Quicksilver's ass. Stick to the low end of the spectrum, like this guy: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEG42M1200/


For the vid card, you'll want something AGP 2x-4x, somethin' like this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI Technologies/100435066/

Although eBay would prolly have that guy cheaper.

As for the hard drive, yes, the onboard controller will only support up to 128GB drives. So we've gotta go off the mobo for HD control, picking up something like this:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ACARD/AEC6280M/

Attaching IDE drives to this card will circumvent the 128GB limit, but will slow the drive down just a little, because instead of attaching to the 133MHz mobo controller, you're attaching to a card in the 66MHz PCI bus. What I would do is put a nice fast 7200RPM 80GB drive as your boot volume on the mobo controller, then attach some gawdawful huge drive to your IDE PCI card. System will be fast, and you'll have huge storage. Woot.

That's something you may want to consider, a new Mini will be around $800 or so, configured out to be whoopass, so don't spend anything over $600 total for upgrades... it starts to become a little counter productive to spend money on an old machine in any situation. I feel the upgrade need, tho, a reliable machine is a reliable machine.

Questions?
 
WOO HOO! I think I just had an accident...

Well, the Mini that I would want, with a huge HD and max RAM, runs $1249. And that's without keyboard or monitor. So my cost ceiling for upgrading is a little higher than yours. I already have a PCI card installed with USB 2 ports.

(Plus, I really don't want a Mini: we bought one for the office and it died twice in 6 months. And any other comparable Mac is just more expensive.)

You were right, I saw the 9800 vid card at eBay for about $150. The 1.6MHz processor is $239 (less than the Giga 1.53 I had found, thanks), the IDE/PCI adapter is $70, a 7200/80GB drive is about $55 (in fact OWC has a 7200/120GB drive for $75 -- would that be pushing too close to the machine's limit and risking failure?). I'll pick up the second drive later on.

It's funny, I found some bookmarks of equipment I researched about a month ago, and we both came up with the same DVD-RW drive! That's only $45...so the grand total so far is about $635, less the huge PCI card drive.

I'm budgeting the new monitor in a separate category as my current 8-yo CRT is flickering and dying anyway, so it doesn't count as an "upgrade" cost.

I'm quite encouraged! Of course once I attempt to to install all this and the Hellmouth swallows me up, God will have the last laugh, but for now I'm excited!

You RAWK, sir. So what do you think about the 120GB IDE?
 
So, I take it you got a job again?

I'm finding that an external drive is great for swapping between machines, even PC-to-mac.
That way, necessary programs remain on the big one, and back-ups and docs go where you want.
 
Eggs Mayonnaise said:
You RAWK, sir. So what do you think about the 120GB IDE?
Click to expand...

;)

The 120GB IDE 7200RPM is what I'm running in my older 533MHz PowerMac G4, and it loves it. I put a great deal of strain on that guy as well, so don't worry about it bein', "too much".

speck brings up a good point - you could just as easily forgo the $70 on the PCI IDE card and spend $30 on an external firewire enclosure. Slap a nice 300GB in there and you've got your storage, and firewire isn't too terribly slow compared to internal drives.

As far as swapping between PCs and Macs, the only consideration you have to make is formatting - for both OSs to see the drive it has to be formatted FAT32, if it's NTFS the Mac will read but not write, if it's HFS the PC won't see it at all. FYI.
 
Jack: Yes, I started the new job 2 weeks ago, but finding and liquidating a 20-year old mutual fund I forgot about is the reason for the current spending spree. ;)

I have horror stories from attempting to format externals for both OS's. I stopped trying after a while. I wiped out an Acom Data 160GB drive by hooking it up to the Mac after formatting it according to thier directions. Tech support basically told me to talk to the hand.

At some point it will make sense to get a LAN setup going...but that's a headache of a different flavor.

120GB it is!
 
BTW, while I've been hemming and hawing over Mac parts, I also ordered this laptop from Dell last night:

Inspiron 9400, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7400 (4MB/2.16GHz/667MHz)
17 inch WXGA+ Display
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X 1400 HyperMemory
250GB 5400RPM SATA HARD DRIVE
8X DVD+/-RW Drive (incl DL)
Windows XP Professional SP2 (no rush for Vista)

Thank God Monday is payday, I'm tapped.
 
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