[G4] Airport Original and upgrades.

[Philip J Robar]

On Nov 22, 2006, at 2:41 PM, Erin Owens wrote:

> I just got my first Mac ever, a PowerMac G4 400mhz with 2 harddrives  
> (one 10gb and one 20gb). ... The processor is a bit slow... (my old  
> computer was a windows 98 home-build that I helped put together  
> myself...)

Does it have a PCI or AGP video card? If it's the former than you have  
what is known as a "Yikes" or "Yosemite" in the vernacular, the latter  
is either a "Sawtooth" or a Gigabit Ethernet. See http://www.lowendmacs.com 
  or get Mactracker (free) for details.

> I have two questions:
>
> One: I'm looking to get an airport original for it from ebay. Does  
> anyone have experience in installing one and what has your  
> experience been? Easy or hard? I've never cracked open the computer  
> case yet, so I dont quite know what I'm gettting myself into. What  
> type of tools should I need other than a screwdriver?

It's easy, no tools are required. It slides into a slot and then you  
plug the antenna into it - that's all there is to it. (Yikes can't use  
Airport cards so hopefully you have a Sawtooth or GE.)

> Is it anything similar to a pc inside?

It's similar, but better organized inside than most PCs.

> Two: I'm also looking to possibly upgrade the processor and hard  
> drive. Where would I go about looking for the correct hardware for  
> this? I know it has to be specifically mac compatible, but does it  
> absolutely have to be manufactured by Apple?

OWC (http://www.macsales.com) is a good place to look for an upgrade  
CPU. Prices there start at $175 for a 1GHz G4. You may be able to do  
better on eBay. http://www.xlr8yourmac.com has a database of user  
reviews of upgrades with feedback and notes from the site editor.

Any parallel HD less than 128GB will work. Larger drives will work,  
but any space over 128 GB will be ignored. (There are software and  
hardware workarounds for this limit.) Be aware that the less expensive  
the drive the more likely it is that the drive is a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th  
tier drive as far as performance is concerned, but any new drive is  
likely to be noticeably faster than the two drives you have now. (A  
friend bought a cheap Dell last year, it came with a pretty fast P4  
and a reasonable amount of memory, but the HD was a Western Digital  
that originally came out 5 years ago. It's painfully slow by today's  
standards.)

> And is this economical at all - or should I just leave it as is? I  
> only paid 100 for the whole computer with 10.3.9 and keyboard/mouse  
> and speakers plus the 60 or so for the airport. Is it worth upgrading?

Especially given the amount of memory you got, $100 is quite  
reasonable. Bear in mind that used/refurb Mac Minis and lamp iMacs  
start at around $400. I'd base my upgrading on that.


Phil
--
"The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and  
fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of  
Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic  
cloak... It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to  
them."
-- Adlai Stevenson