[geeks] Princeton Univ. Surplus haul today...

[Michael Parson]

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 10:45:38AM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Looking for some Mag G4 pointers - today I picked up what
> I have come to find out is a G4 'Sawtooth' Mac (see:
> http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g4saw.shtml ), with a 20 Gig HD, AGP (ATI
> Rage 128+ graphics) and 768 Meg of RAM, along with an installed OS/X
> 10.3.9 O/S. I have a few questions:
>
> I threw a NOS (New Old Stock) 100 Gig IDE HD drive in as the primary,
> I am really limited to 128 Gig or less with the system as-is, no
> matter what O/S I install, correct?
>
> OS/X 10.4 gives me the option to do a mirror (RAID 1) or striped (RAID
> 0) filesystem, if I put another 100 Meg IDE HD on the same on-board
> controller will I get a performance improvement with RAID 1, or is the
> on-board controller "bad"?

It's still IDE, Definately not any better than ATA/66.

> What is a good *cost effective* graphics card upgrade - this is an AGP
> system (2x!), and I am ignorant about video cards in general, esp. on
> Macs - is there a low-cost card that will have a profound impact on
> the performance od Tiger (OS/X 10.4)?
>
> The machine currently has an IDE DVD-ROM drive, any reason I can't
> just pop in a new DVD-R/W drive and burn DVDs under OS/X 10.4?

I put an Emprex DVD+/-R/RW/DL in my G4, and it works fine.

> The machine currently has 1.25 Gig of RAM in it (I had a spare 512 Meg
> PC133 DIMM to throw in ;^) - 1.5 Gig is the Max RAM, correct?

3 slots, 512M/slot.

> Also, there is a bunch of software on the old 20 Gig HD (MS Office,
> etc.) any ideas on how to transfer it to the new 100 Gig HD? I asume I
> COULD run it off the 20 Gig HD if I made it a spare drive, correct?

For the most part, Mac Software doesn't litter your harddrive with
stuff, you can usually just drag and drop the files over and be set.
Any missing preferences should get re-created the first time the app
runs.  You might need to bring over any fonts that get installed by the
app manually (/Library/Fonts)

> Finally, how do you "properly" close the side - I can't seem to really
> "lock in" the MB tray/side panel - I figure I'm missing something...

For the most part, it should close w/o too much effort, I'd check the
cables and make sure nothing is getting in the way.

> All in all, it is a pretty capable machine - looks to have been
> decomissioned last December (that's when the last update was
> installed), and for $43 for a fairly clean (minor scratches on the
> plastic, but all plastic intact) I'm quite happy.

Very nice.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org