[G4] Upgrade of old G4/400Mhz/OS X-Jaguar?

[Ben Smith]

> Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:12:43 -0400
> From: "Fast Primes" <fast_primes at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [G4] Upgrade of old G4/400Mhz/OS X-Jaguar?

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm a Windows XP user that just got an old Mac with the following specs:
> 
>      -     400Mhz processor
>      -     running OS X 10.2/Jaguar?
>      -     384 meg ram--expandable to 1.5 gig via 4 slots of PC100 SDRAM 
> mem.
>      -     10 gig drive--7 gig free
> 
> The machine seems to work fairly well--however it's frozen up on occasion, 
> sometimes with the revolving "beach ball". Is this because of memory 
> constraints or should I upgrade the OS to 10.3 or 10.4?
> 
> Can the processor be upgraded to a faster one via some third party solution? 
> Are new Intel CPU boards available?
> 
> How do I connect to an Windows NTFS formatted USB external drive and read 
> files off it?
> 
> Thanks!
> 

Some more info on the Mac would help, the back of the case should have a 
plate with the info.
If it is a 400Mhz it could be any of several machines, does it have an 
AGP graphics card, is the ethernet 10/100 or 10/100/1000, as it could be 
a Yikes (G4 PCI Graphics),Sawtooth (G4 AGP Graphics)or Gigabit ethernet.
There are various processor upgrades, but they vary according to the 
motherboard (but NO Intel upgrade, the board architecture is quite 
different).
You can just plug a NTFS drive into the USB port and read the data ok 
under 10.4.x, however you cannot write to it, I don't think 10.2x 
supported NTFS reading, you will probably have to update the OS (I think 
that there were 3rd party NTFS utils for earlier OS's but you will have 
to hunt for them yourself).
You would be best off upping the memory to at least 1GB (it will 
actually  take 2GB under OSx)and upgrading to 10.4.x (currently 10.4.10, 
10.4.11 rumoured to be coming soon), also you can use standard PC 
memory, either PC100 or PC133, (I find that about 8 out of 10 ex-PC 
memory sticks work fine in my Sawtooth)
For cross platform compatibility a FAT32 external drive is the best.
Ben.