340 Mhz G4 PowerMac - What to do?

[Flickta]

Hi everyone!

I have that old G4 PowerMac (350Mhz BUT AGP slot for graphics).

I wonder, whether I can install, say, OS X server or some flavour of Linux on it and turn it into the file-server... What do you think? I just like the design so much, I do not want to throw the machine away.
Also, how will OS X work on such machine? I do not mean actual work, only some support tasks. It has appr. 1 Gb of RAM.

 

[sjpetry]

OS X will be slow, you should maybe consider OS 9.

Sorry I couldn't help more.

 

[brap]

People are running Panther on Lombards and Pismos, clamshell iBooks and the such. If you put in a quartz-compatible video card - nothing fancy, maybe a Geforce MX - it'll be just fine for pottering around. I ran Jaguar nicely on a G3/466 iBook SE, and the Altivec unit on that G4 will add a lot. Give it a go, it's not like the parts needed would cost much.

 

[mattraehl]

If you are familiar/comfortable with the command line, I would skip OSX and just download the lastest Darwin build from apple (for free- developer.apple.com/darwin ), and install that sucker. Or, the latest versions of Fedora Core or Debian would probably run just fine on that machine, if it really has a GB of RAM.

 

[Mord]

os x will run fine on it, i ran 10.3 on a 300MHz B&W, put a 512MB stick in and install tiger.

 

[Flickta]

If you are familiar/comfortable with the command line, I would skip OSX and just download the lastest Darwin build from apple (for free- developer.apple.com/darwin ), and install that sucker. Or, the latest versions of Fedora Core or Debian would probably run just fine on that machine, if it really has a GB of RAM.

Darwin? I'd rather not. After all, I am using Macs because of the GUI.

People are running Panther on Lombards and Pismos, clamshell iBooks and the such. If you put in a quartz-compatible video card - nothing fancy, maybe a Geforce MX - it'll be just fine for pottering around. I ran Jaguar nicely on a G3/466 iBook SE, and the Altivec unit on that G4 will add a lot. Give it a go, it's not like the parts needed would cost much.

How much will GeForce MX cost? Also, is there a way to flash one of the PC vidcards? (AGP GeForce MX I mean)

OS X will be slow, you should maybe consider OS 9.

Sorry I couldn't help more.

I can leave OS 9, yes. But I wanted some easier Mac2Mac cooperaion possible with OS X (Or OS 9) on both machines.

Well, thanks for advice.