Rebuilding a Power Mac G4

I recently bought a power mac g4 and am looking to rebuild it. It needs a hard drive, ram, and a video card. I am just wondering what would be the best thing to get for each of those for my new mac. Also any other instructions about how to go about doing this, as I am new to building and modifying computers, especially macs, would be greatly appreciated.

I'm looking for hardware that is not too expensive but that still delivers high performance.
So you want a Ferrari but only want to pay for a Yugo?
It is a Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics), model M7825 PowerMac G4 450MHz Drive=DVD-RAM. It also has 100MHz bus speed.
Okay, so how much are you willing to spend on this? How much did you pay in the first place? At some point you will (quickly) reach a zero sum gain where you will be paying more for individual parts than for buying a better machine outright. Upgrading maybe a piece here and maybe a piece there is understandable, but once one starts talking major rebuilds you're talking serious money. The only real financial justification for doing a major rebuild is if there is some aspect you need in an old computer (early OS boot compatibility, special ports) but really want to maximize its performance for modern compatibility. Or maybe you just already have the parts lying around at home and can do it at no cost. Oh, don't get me wrong - I dote on my 28 year old car and have invested more money in it than I could get if I were to sell it (and about once a month somebody walks up to me off the street asking if they can buy it), but you have to walk into this aware of it.
I don't know too much about video cards and RAM. Maybe $100+ depending upon what you get.
Hard drive. This computer won't recognize more than 128GB of any drive without a high capacity PCI card or a software utility (Speed Tools by Intech). Software solution costs maybe $25, but has drawbacks which you should read on their web site. PCI card is maybe $60+. You can put in a larger drive but it will only use the first 128GB, so no harm there. It will use PATA/IDE drives unless you want to buy a SATA card. Bear this in mind if you think you might want to use the drive in another computer at a later date. IMHO forget about buying a used hard drive unless you know it is only a month old and has had zero problems. I'd say if you had an old 80GB HD lying around the house this would be an ideal candidate.
Message was edited by: Limnos

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  • Power Mac 10.5.8 Cannot Eject Drives or Send Files to Trash

    Hello,
    I'm posting to the forum for a friend. He is using a Power Mac OSX 10.5.8 with Dual 2 GHz Power PC G5 processor. The past two months he has been having issues deleting files and ejecting drives (flash drives and external hard drives). He will move files to the trash and the animation (poof of dust) and sound will occur but the actual file is not deleted. Also, when he tries to eject any drives, an error message appears stating the drive is in use by other applications. However, no other applications besides finder are open, and when I check the task manager, none are running in the background. This error has caused one of his external hard drives to become corrupted. We recently updated the computer and after the update the permissions were messed up and we couldn't even create a new folder due to insufficient permisions. We're currently running all available first-aid commands from disk utility. If anyone knows what the issue might be, please respond.
    Much appreciated, blessings.
    Isabel

    Hello,
    Could be many things, we should start with this...
    "Try Disk Utility
    1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
    2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
    *Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
    3. Click the First Aid tab.
    4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
    5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
    Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
    (Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
    If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.

  • Power Mac G5: A common dilemma: to upgrade or buy new

    I know there are a lot of discussions on this topic going around, but everyone's needs and uses are different, so I'd appreciate any input on my situation.
    I own a Dual 1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 with only 1GB RAM and a failing 160GB hard drive.
    At this point, I basically only use this machine for web browsing, iTunes, and Garageband, and am running Tiger.
    I had been having some major hard drive problems so I wiped my system and re-installed Tiger , importing everything from my iBookG4 (which, I recently dropped and the screen connection has failed and is unusable except for as an external hard drive in target disk mode. it is probably too expensive to fix for what its worth so I will probably try to sell it for scrap).
    Anyway, everything was ok for about a week until I opened firefox and noticed all my settings and bookmarks were gone. When I restarted my computer, my music, pictures, documents, and movies folders were all unable to be located (although my applications were fine and my hard drive still showed that the space was the same). I'm not sure if I imported some problem from my iBook or if my hard drive was just messing up again, but I've decided that I either need to upgrade or get a new computer.
    Basically, I am thinking about upgrading my memory, getting a new hard drive, and upgrading to leopard (mostly for time machine). Or, possibly getting a new iMac or waiting a bit and then getting a new iMac or even (gasp) a PC (highly unlikely).
    I was going to get the memory from ramjet and I was thinking of only adding 1GB to make 2GB but could be persuaded of getting more but 400Mhz DDR memory is a bit more expensive than other types. As for the hard drive, I was thinking about getting a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 320-GB Hard Drive with a 16 MB cache. I could pay $15 more for a 500GB with 32 MB cache but i really don't need the space and am unsure whether the cache will really help much. Seagates used to have a pretty good rep I thought, but now they seem to be getting mixed reviews, so I don't know.
    Obviously, I am no computer expert, so any help would be great. Would it be worth it to spend between $250 and $325 to get the memory, drive, and leapord when I could maybe sell my G5 and my 23" apple cinema display (the old clear kind) and get an iMac? I could maybe get about $700 - $800 for the G5 and around $300 - $350 for the display. Will an iMac be faster than my G5 with the upgrades? I don't think I need a mac pro for my current uses.
    Thanks for your help. Feel free to offer advice on what to do with my iBook too.
    -rhineth

    Memory: $60 for 2 x 1GB, I'd call that very affordable.
    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/3200DDR2GBP/
    Disk drives: 2 x $69 for pair of WD Caviar 640GB
    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD6400AAKS/
    It is not about capacity as much as speed and quiet, cool, and how well it handles OS X. I use half the drive, other half is unformatted free space. I'd skip the Seagates. 7200.11 is current.
    I expect new iMacs in '09 as they are overdue.
    Hard drives you keep or put in FW case.
    Current Leopard is 10.5.4 DVD but would be nice to see another DVD now with 10.5.6, $109 (Amazon, maybe less Newegg?).
    iMac vs others:
    http://www.macworld.com/article/133467/2008/05/imaccomparison.html
    http://www.barefeats.com/harper7.html
    http://www.barefeats.com/imp02.html
    Sounds like three things you may not be doing or have:
    SuperDuper for backups. You don't need Leopard.
    Disk Warrior. Everyone, or I should say "HFS+" needs #1 disk repair utility.
    Backup drives. Two backup sets you switch between, and a small "emergency" partition on one for running Disk Warrior and such.
    I replace or move older drives to backup use and put new boot drive in on a yearly basis. Some new drives and memory should be all you need. A couple people even stress their system with graphics and video, and upgrading to 3 or 4 new drives revived their system so that they could hold on and wait another year.

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