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Turbo Glennbo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 2, 2009
3
0
Hello BB'ers - My 13 year old son was just given 2 G4 Powermacs for his personal use. He wants to do nothing but search the internet and create short 1-2 minute videos for YouTube. I want to make 1 decent running G4 out of the 2 he has. Yes these are old, slower, relics and once he gets the hang of using Macs I will either keep adding on to this one or just ge him a Mini. Here what we have and any suggestions on where to go from here would be great appreciated.

#1 (will be the user machine and is currently up and running)
Powermac G4 Sawtooth - currently has the 500MHz processor
OSX 10.2.8
80 Gig HD
382 MB Ram Memory
100 MHz Bus Speed
L2 Cache - 1 MB
AGP Graphics

#2 (parts machine)
Powermac G4 Sawtooth - 1.2 GHz OWC Processor
25 Gig HD
256 MB Ram (will put in user machine)
Everything else is the same as #1

Heres the problem. I did the processor swap yesterday by putting the 1.2 in machine #1 and it booted up and ran for a few minutes then froze up. I emailed back and forth with the OCW tech support and they instructed me to set the 2 jumpers at #1 ON # 2 OFF which I did and it still doesnt want to run this processor. Do I need to configure something in the system before I make this swap? Is this just not possible to do? Any help and or appreciated with this. Would this machine handle a dual processor?

Finally - what would be the next cheap immediate thing I should do or add?

2.0 USB PCI Card?
More Ram of course

Cheers and thanks in advance
 

Turbo Glennbo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 2, 2009
3
0
thanks for the sugeestion - I checked and it does have the 4.28fi

would it be good to add the 2nd hardrive as a slave? The only issue I see with doing this is the Master that is currently running doesnt have any jumper pins - it has the jumpers just not the pins. The slave has pins.
 

Timmahman

macrumors newbie
Jun 19, 2009
16
0
Virginia, USA
Whats the problem with the "parts machine"?
Id add USB 2.0 for sure! Maybe a new graphics card, and just max out the ram :p
A flashed nvidia 6200 is the fastest video card I think that you can get. I see 2 on ebay currently, one for 84$ "buy it now" ;)

About the pins, just search through any computer parts u have laying around, maybe you can find one. Or go to knowledgeable computer store, or call a hard drive manufacturer directly, orrrr you could use a piece of wire to make the connection if you wanna be ghetto.
 

Turbo Glennbo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 2, 2009
3
0
The parts machine has a bad video card and a smaller hardrive - other than that - nothing. also has OSX 9
 

Timmahman

macrumors newbie
Jun 19, 2009
16
0
Virginia, USA
The parts machine has a bad video card and a smaller hardrive - other than that - nothing. also has OSX 9

Should have just left the processor in that machine if it works. Id think swapping hard drives and video cards is easier with less stuff to go wrong then the processor swap :D
Try putting the cpu back in the system it was originally in, and swap the video cards, see if it works then.
 
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