[G4] Upgrading a Sawtooth

[Mel]

>
> 1.  Does the Sawtooth accept a 2nd video card and its drivers without 
> problem
> or driver conflicts?
Should be no problem on the second video card. The Radeon Mac Edition 
is a better card, but you have to get lucky to find one. If you can't 
find one at retail, you could maybe try eBay.

> 2.  What are the requirements for replacing the internal CD-ROM? Can 
> it be any
> old ATA drive, or does it have to have certain specs?
There are many drives that are compatible, but not all are. Some of the 
cheapest drives sometimes work great. The best place to confirm that 
the drive you have chosen is compatible with your Mac is:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.comdrivedb/search.drivedb.lasso
which has many reports from users. You can search for your machine and 
drive. They also have modified files to enable Disk Burner and iTunes 
for drive support. An excellent resource.

> 3.  Is the mobo upgradable to a more current board?
It is the rare Macintosh that you are able to upgrade the motherboard. 
The Sawtooth is not one. It is a very upgradeable machine, however, 
that should be very serviceable. The processor card is upgradeable; you 
can replace it with a faster one. You can also add an ATA-133 card with 
a faster drive to give better performance from you disk subsystem as 
well.

Like everything else, you have to make the choice of when it is worth 
upgrading and when it's better to move to a new machine.

Mel
G4 Quicksilver 933MHz, Superdrive,
48x24x48 Firewire CD-RW,
768MB RAM, 60GB, 20GB