[G4] New guy (rilly)

[Daniel Brieck Jr.]

Michael,

Comments are with-in the original message.


On Oct 28, 2005, at 8:19 PM, Slip Kid wrote:
> My only concerns regard adding hardware/software & the current OS.
>
> 1. What do I "need" to know in order to know if an app or drive  
> or...will work.
> (Yeah, the 20gig drive is not enogh - But, I can go "off the shelf"  
> with a Western Digital or any third party HD?)

Yes any ATA hard drive will work, just avoid ones larger than 127- 
Gig, because the internal ATA controller can only see up to 127 GIGs  
of any hard drive . If you want to use drives larger than 127-Gig ,  
you will need a PCI ATA or PCI Serial ATA controller.


> Plus:
> I have a six month old Hitachi CD-RW? [Ht-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8483B]
> I'd like to slde it in? I was told it would be as easy as opening  
> the drawer, removing the faceplate and replacing the CD-ROM/DVD ROM  
> (I'd prefer dumping the Zip?)
>

Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet): Customer-Installable Parts Instructions

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75312

One thing to note is that you will want to have a DVD drive to be  
able to Install Mac os 10.4... It only comes on a DVD disk in the  
box, but you can special order it from apple on CD's

I recommend a Pioneer DVR-109 Superdrive drive, which burns them all  
DVD+/- RW and dual layer DVDs and CD-RW.  Those drives are really  
cheap nowadays about $43.00 and work well with os 10.4.1 or later  
with no driver add ons or tinkering, just connect it up and use it...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827129160R



> 2. I'm glad it has been upgraded to 10.3.9 as I'd prefer using  
> Toast 7.  However? I won't be receiving a disc for the OS.  A PC  
> person never has an OS disc out of reach!  As I am the "owner" is  
> there a way to get a copy of the OS?  It may not matter to an Apple  
> owner - - I'd be more secure with the OS on a disc!

Yeah not having the OS CD is always a bad idea for any platform, but  
especially when running Windows... Bad things can always happen.
>
> 2a.  When I add the larger HD, do you recommend I keep the 20 gig  
> drive?  Is "age" any concern?
> It isn't a lot of "space" I'm keeping!

You could always keep it as a back up, or use your new hard drive as  
a back up. Age is always a concern for hard-drives. "Its not a matter  
of if it will break, but when."

On my G4 I have two 120 Gig drives, so I am to  full capacity in  
terms of what the onboard ATA controller can do, but I still have  
room for two additional drives in the case... If I ever need to add  
more I might opt  for Serial ATA drives, which are getting cheaper.


> As I always i have my OS in a partition of its own, even if the OS  
> "stays" on the original HD I like to give it a 10 gig of space of  
> it;s own?
>

There really is no need to partition the hard drives like that unless  
you are planning to reinstall the OS often because of testing  
purposes, etc. Note that since it is a unix system your files and  
program will be separate from where your os specific files are stored  
automatically. Things will not be scatter around in a hierarchy of  
chaos like it is on MS Windows.

> Thanks
>
> [Oh, I've heard from two crowds:]
> 1. Install Tiger, now!
Yeah, I say go for Tiger. I use to run it on a previous G4 500  
sawtooh system with good performance, but i had a better graphics  
card. Honestly, you don't even have a graphics card  powerful  
powerful enough for  10.3. That card in there does not support Quartz  
Extreme. I would look for better graphics card thats supports at- 
least Quartz Extreme, because if i am not mistaken all graphics  
intensive stuff , scrolling pages, moving windows get mostly off  
loaded to the CPU of the Mac and not the graphics card in the Case of  
the  none Quartz Extreme card...

So when you get the machine  try it out for yourself and see how the  
graphics system performs for what you are doing with it.

I recommend the ATI Radeon 8500 Mac Edition AGP graphics card....
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon8500/radeon8500me/index.html

Hope this helps answer some of your concerns.

>
> Michael


Daniel J. Brieck Jr.