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powermac g4 m8493

JoshJosh
edited November 2014 in Hardware
I just had this lovely piece of Apple history dumped in my lap. I decided to take a look at getting it in operational condition considering the terrible rainy day. Turns out it was running OS X 10.3 which seemed a bit dated. After some research it seems it will easily support 10.5. So fast forward 3 hours and after about 5 dual layer DVD+Rs, I gave up on burning discs and decided to give USB a shot. I had my doubts considering it's a 2001 PC and USB 1.1 (slow) but turns out it works like a champ after writing the DMG to USB using TransMac.

I went through the first 3 hour install only to discover that it has a 20g drive. That's not going to work. So after digging in my closet for a bit I found a golden gem. A Seagate 300g 7200RPM PATA drive. Popped that sucker in and ran the Disc Utility to partition and format the drive and here we are on the second install:

https://jcm.me/owncloud/public.php?serv ... e09d4856c3

I'll keep progress updated as I progress. It has 1.2g RAM which I'm debating to upgrade to 1.5 just so I feel good about maxing it out. Any other thoughts on how to get the max out of this for best bang for $$$?

Most intriguing thing so far out of all of this is that it has a gigabit NIC. Very cool for a computer that's almost 15 years old.

Comments

  • stitchstitch
    I had a Dual G4 1ghz Quicksilver at one point. I ended up just dd'ing the Leopard install image to a hard disk and bootstrapping it that way.
  • DeepFriedCookiesDeepFriedCookies
    I don't like Leopard on G4s. My MDD always seems slow sluggish with it. I have Tiger installed on it for the occasional WoW Private Server party, but other than that, I usually just leave it in OS 9. It's run to be able to run games from 1989 to 2002 without having to reboot. The 300GB drive is a lot nicer than mine though.
  • sj45410sj45410
    I agree with DeepFriedCookies here, I do not reccomend Leopard on a G4 unless you plan on using it as a daily machine rather than a hobby-type or collector-type rig.
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    I mostly played with the Sawtooth and Digital audio models. I heard the QuickSilver came with a 60GB hard drive. Also some of the earlier models only let you use 10.4 unless you swapped out the CPU. Sonnet has some awesome CPU upgrades for the QS and MDD series. Yo can also toss in a better video card but would have to flash it.
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