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

Wed Aug 23 11:15:10 CDT 2006

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 10:45:38AM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> 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:

First are you sure it's a sawtooth? There was also the Yikes! that looks
the same. If it has an ADB port it's a Yikes!. It may be ahrd to tell as
some people upgraded their Yikes! with faster processors and a DVD drive.

> 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?

Yes, It's a hardware limitation. You have three choices:

1. Install a new IDE controler in one of the slots. Bootable ones run about $75.

2. Install more hard drives. You can definately go with 2, maybe 4.

3. Use an external SCSI/USB/firewire drive. You have to get a special
   scsi card to boot from it, and while you can boot from the USB ports
   they are USB 1. (12mbits per second). Firewire is faster, but I'm
   not sure you can boot from it. (Yikes! won't boot from a USB port).

3a. You can add a USB 2 card, but it won't boot from it and it cannot have
    a VIA chipset. I have heard NEC ones are ok, but can't get one to try.

> 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"?

No, but it's single threaded. If you want striping you will need a better
controller.

> 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)?

None. Unless you can find a used one, they are AGP 2 and Mac specific. Not an
easy combination to get. Most people who have them won't sell them unless they
are replacing the computer and it no longer functions.

> 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?

No. BUT you may trouble booting a fast drive and you will need software.
Disk Utility will burn DVDs, but only for disk images. If you want to
burn data DVDs you will need toast or freeware cdrecord and mkisofs.

iDVD should burn video DVDs (I don't think it copies them), but it is no 
longer free.

If the DVD drive came with the machine, it will NOT read DVD+R or DVD+RW disks.
Replacing it with a modern one will fix that.

> 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?

That's what the specs say. If it has four slots, it may or may not take four
512Meg DIMMs. or It may take them and still only give you 1.5 gig.

> 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?

Mount the new drive as a second drive, copy it with Carbon Copy Cloner (free
ware) and then upgrade as needed.

> 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...

Hold up the tab or push hard on the side. It takes some force. (I am
not responsible if you push too hard).

> 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.

It sounds like a nice machine, but I would not spend a lot of money
to upgrade it. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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