Last weekend when we went to the other house I got the 466MHz G4 on the internet! I connected an iPhone to my MBP through Wi-Fi and the MBP to the G4 through Ethernet! (the Internet sharing didnt work with the iPhone USB for some reason and bluetooth didn't want to work) And for the first time in years this G4 has connected to the internet! 
So I tested TenFourFox7400 and Safari 4 and Camino and OmniWeb... The machine choked on TenFourFox! I could barely get anywhere at all. Safari and Camino ran better but they all still lagged, especially on the Javascript. Javascript choked the poor G4 . And if you turn it off then the websites b**ch about it and want you to turn it on . So browsing was very difficult and slow on this machine, nearly unusable. That's no problem though as this machine is only really used for file storage and organizing and scanning, and (almost) never connected to the internet.
I got some new games working on it: Amadaeus's Minecraft, Bitfighter 019d. Previously I got Mars Explorer 2.22, Deimons Rising and Otto Matic, but didnt have internet access that time. Mars Explorer 2.22 ran quite well... butter than 1.98, but it requires an internet connection to download the maps to play whereas 1.98 has the maps built in. When I got 2.22 working I downloaded some maps (I downloaded all this stuff for the machine at the library) and loaded them locally. This time I had internet connection and could join games and play it!
Deimons Rising and Otto Matic work well of course.
Bitfighter 019d ran surprisingly well, although had many lag spikes and switching menus took a while.
Minecraft... well... worked.... but of course... LAA-AAA-A-A-AG! (lag sheep). yeah I got about 0-1 fps or 5-10 fps. I connected to keaton's server and that worked! Server ran better than singleplayer as in singleplayer the server is hosted locally and chokes the system. Amadaeus's AppleScript sets Minecraft to use a maximum of 1GB (default) so it would choke the system as it used more; I couldn't find how to edit it and set the maximum to 384mb. When I didnt have Java updated and the script crashed there was an "edit" button that opened the script in the editor, but after I updated it the script app always worked and I couldn't edit it. Now about the graphics of Minecraft... it rendered kind-of... weird... kind of bleachy and liney and... I don't know how to describe it... it's not very bad but it is just some artifacts. Probably the Rage128Pro doesn't render it well (in Mars Explorer 2.22 it also didnt render the green laser aim thing right, it shot through the vehical when it was supposed to only be in front). As for Bitfighter, it rendered that... more pixelly, like the older versions of Bitfighter and the original ZAP. when it's supposed to be smooth lines. No problem though.
I used this connection to update all the software on the machine. (I had recently installed a fresh installation and was cleaning up everything on it and dumping the old OS).
The machine has 3 hard drives: 30GB Maxtor drive (7200rpm), 160GB Maxtor drive (5400rpm) (limited to 128gb ), and 40GB Western Digital drive (5400rpm). I don't remember the exact model numbers of these. The 40GB drive I put in recently in the zippy bay. The two Maxtors were always there as far as I can remember, and they are in two bays on the bottom connected to the ATA bus controller there.
I tested each drive with SMARTutility. The 30GB was found with a massive amount of errors and SMARTutility said it was failing. Also, when I first launched SMARTUtility, a very weird thing happened. When I first launched it it lagged a bit and i heard 3 loud clicks or so (like a clicking of a bad hard drive) and then SMARTutility said there was no drives. On second launch everything went correct.
I installed a new installation of Tiger on the WD 40GB after I put it in (this was a while ago); just last weekend I transferred everything in place and bla bla... The 30GB drive had the original OS installation, and the 160GB had some crap stored in it that I transferred to my 2TB through ethernet to my MBP to the drive (more about this later). After I transferred all the crap I erased it.
Later I used Xbench and tested each drive. The fastest was the 160GB Maxtor, about 50Mbyte/s or something like that. The other two were much slower, about 16 or 20 Mbite/s. The 30GB was a little faster than the 40GB because it was a 7200rpm high-performace drive.
Because of this I transferred the OS to the 160GB Maxtor from the 40GB WD with CCC and erased the old.
Then I transferred all stuff from the 30GB Maxtor to the new install and erased the old.
I installed Leopard on the 30GB Maxtor from my MBP. And for the first time, it ran Leopard!
Leopard was very very sluggish, graphics were glitchy, animations were snails, and the CPU was constantly %100 when not doing anything. I didnt play much with this as I didnt have time.
One time the Dock glitched when I was trying to move something somewhere on it. Trashcan moved itself to the other side of a folder, finder was behind another icon, and some translucent item was floating above it. It was all frozen and I had to restart.
I couldn't connect to the MacBook Pro from the G4 (for file sharing) but I could connect to the G4 from the MBP, so this is how I did all the transfers. This was probably an incompatibility of Tiger and Yosemite; in Leopard I could connect to the MBP but it was unstable and kept breaking when I tried the Internet.
So to transfer files from the G4 to the external HD I mounted the G4 volume on the MBP through file sharing, and then dragged the files from the mounted server to the external drive. The data went through the ethernet, through the MBP, out the USB to the drive. The mounted "servers" (volumes) do not appear in disk utility so I had to manually copy files with cursor. I wanted to make a disk image of the volume but I couldn't.
Well that's about it I think, if i'm not forgetting anything.
I need an IDE PCI card to access the full 160GB of that drive, so I'd probably get a card with both IDE and SATA to fit new hard drives. Can someone recommend me a cheap PCI card and tell me what will and won't work?
The machine is quite noisy; replacing the fans should help. Are the stock fans in the G4 sleeve bearing or ball bearing? Would oiling them be plenty or should I replace them anyway?
What is the best graphics card for this Mac?
Here's the specs of the machine:
Power Macintosh G4
466MHz PowerPC G4 CPU
ATI Rage128Pro GPU
512MB PC133-333 RAM (2x128mb & 1x256mb)
3 hard drives
Pioneer DVD drive
So I tested TenFourFox7400 and Safari 4 and Camino and OmniWeb... The machine choked on TenFourFox! I could barely get anywhere at all. Safari and Camino ran better but they all still lagged, especially on the Javascript. Javascript choked the poor G4 . And if you turn it off then the websites b**ch about it and want you to turn it on . So browsing was very difficult and slow on this machine, nearly unusable. That's no problem though as this machine is only really used for file storage and organizing and scanning, and (almost) never connected to the internet.I got some new games working on it: Amadaeus's Minecraft, Bitfighter 019d. Previously I got Mars Explorer 2.22, Deimons Rising and Otto Matic, but didnt have internet access that time. Mars Explorer 2.22 ran quite well... butter than 1.98, but it requires an internet connection to download the maps to play whereas 1.98 has the maps built in. When I got 2.22 working I downloaded some maps (I downloaded all this stuff for the machine at the library) and loaded them locally. This time I had internet connection and could join games and play it!
Deimons Rising and Otto Matic work well of course.
Bitfighter 019d ran surprisingly well, although had many lag spikes and switching menus took a while.
Minecraft... well... worked.... but of course... LAA-AAA-A-A-AG! (lag sheep). yeah I got about 0-1 fps or 5-10 fps. I connected to keaton's server and that worked! Server ran better than singleplayer as in singleplayer the server is hosted locally and chokes the system. Amadaeus's AppleScript sets Minecraft to use a maximum of 1GB (default) so it would choke the system as it used more; I couldn't find how to edit it and set the maximum to 384mb. When I didnt have Java updated and the script crashed there was an "edit" button that opened the script in the editor, but after I updated it the script app always worked and I couldn't edit it. Now about the graphics of Minecraft... it rendered kind-of... weird... kind of bleachy and liney and... I don't know how to describe it... it's not very bad but it is just some artifacts. Probably the Rage128Pro doesn't render it well (in Mars Explorer 2.22 it also didnt render the green laser aim thing right, it shot through the vehical when it was supposed to only be in front). As for Bitfighter, it rendered that... more pixelly, like the older versions of Bitfighter and the original ZAP. when it's supposed to be smooth lines. No problem though.
I used this connection to update all the software on the machine. (I had recently installed a fresh installation and was cleaning up everything on it and dumping the old OS).
The machine has 3 hard drives: 30GB Maxtor drive (7200rpm), 160GB Maxtor drive (5400rpm) (limited to 128gb
), and 40GB Western Digital drive (5400rpm). I don't remember the exact model numbers of these. The 40GB drive I put in recently in the zippy bay. The two Maxtors were always there as far as I can remember, and they are in two bays on the bottom connected to the ATA bus controller there.I tested each drive with SMARTutility. The 30GB was found with a massive amount of errors and SMARTutility said it was failing. Also, when I first launched SMARTUtility, a very weird thing happened. When I first launched it it lagged a bit and i heard 3 loud clicks or so (like a clicking of a bad hard drive) and then SMARTutility said there was no drives. On second launch everything went correct.
I installed a new installation of Tiger on the WD 40GB after I put it in (this was a while ago); just last weekend I transferred everything in place and bla bla... The 30GB drive had the original OS installation, and the 160GB had some crap stored in it that I transferred to my 2TB through ethernet to my MBP to the drive (more about this later). After I transferred all the crap I erased it.
Later I used Xbench and tested each drive. The fastest was the 160GB Maxtor, about 50Mbyte/s or something like that. The other two were much slower, about 16 or 20 Mbite/s. The 30GB was a little faster than the 40GB because it was a 7200rpm high-performace drive.
Because of this I transferred the OS to the 160GB Maxtor from the 40GB WD with CCC and erased the old.
Then I transferred all stuff from the 30GB Maxtor to the new install and erased the old.
I installed Leopard on the 30GB Maxtor from my MBP. And for the first time, it ran Leopard!
Leopard was very very sluggish, graphics were glitchy, animations were snails, and the CPU was constantly %100 when not doing anything. I didnt play much with this as I didnt have time.
One time the Dock glitched when I was trying to move something somewhere on it. Trashcan moved itself to the other side of a folder, finder was behind another icon, and some translucent item was floating above it. It was all frozen and I had to restart.
I couldn't connect to the MacBook Pro from the G4 (for file sharing) but I could connect to the G4 from the MBP, so this is how I did all the transfers. This was probably an incompatibility of Tiger and Yosemite; in Leopard I could connect to the MBP but it was unstable and kept breaking when I tried the Internet.
So to transfer files from the G4 to the external HD I mounted the G4 volume on the MBP through file sharing, and then dragged the files from the mounted server to the external drive. The data went through the ethernet, through the MBP, out the USB to the drive. The mounted "servers" (volumes) do not appear in disk utility so I had to manually copy files with cursor. I wanted to make a disk image of the volume but I couldn't.
Well that's about it I think, if i'm not forgetting anything.
I need an IDE PCI card to access the full 160GB of that drive, so I'd probably get a card with both IDE and SATA to fit new hard drives. Can someone recommend me a cheap PCI card and tell me what will and won't work?
The machine is quite noisy; replacing the fans should help. Are the stock fans in the G4 sleeve bearing or ball bearing? Would oiling them be plenty or should I replace them anyway?
What is the best graphics card for this Mac?
Here's the specs of the machine:
Power Macintosh G4
466MHz PowerPC G4 CPU
ATI Rage128Pro GPU
512MB PC133-333 RAM (2x128mb & 1x256mb)
3 hard drives
Pioneer DVD drive
Last edited:
