Given to me by a reddit user. Don't know anything yet other than the label below and that it has two video cards. More to come after lunch.
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500mhz AGP PowerMac G4
- Thread starter eyoungren
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Very nice! The 500mhz Sawtooth isn't super common.
I have the exact same model, except I'm pretty sure mine was the Server model, so essentially the same. Very neat! What video cards are in it?
OK. A bit more…
PCI-SATA card, 250GB SATA boot drive (that laptop drive there) and the 2x 3TB WD Greens. I decided not to RAID them.
Been a struggle, especially trying to get Screen Sharing working but I'm not going to be using that much. Just need it to complete updates.
700+ ram for it. All the sticks I could find. That said, it's sharing two large drives and that's all I intend it to do.
Oh yeah. Added a NetGear Gigabit NIC I had laying around. It works, but I'm on a Fast Ethernet box for this Mac so I'm using the native port right now.
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PCI-SATA card, 250GB SATA boot drive (that laptop drive there) and the 2x 3TB WD Greens. I decided not to RAID them.
Been a struggle, especially trying to get Screen Sharing working but I'm not going to be using that much. Just need it to complete updates.
700+ ram for it. All the sticks I could find. That said, it's sharing two large drives and that's all I intend it to do.
Oh yeah. Added a NetGear Gigabit NIC I had laying around. It works, but I'm on a Fast Ethernet box for this Mac so I'm using the native port right now.
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I removed one card, I will get a picture tomorrow. Currently there is a Rage 128 Pro in there.
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Nice score @eyoungren. I have three of these beasts now. The Sawtooth really can't be faulted. It's a solid G4 with decent expansion. It could take 2GB of RAM whereas the DA and Quicksilver were capped at 1.5GB.
I dropped in a flashed Radeon 9700 into one of mine along with a 700MHz CPU (which is from a DA 733Mhz and has a 1MB L3 cache) and it handles Leopard fluidly. It's a nice old Mac.
I intend to drop in a SATA card at some stage and maybe even a small SSD to give it a real boost.
I dropped in a flashed Radeon 9700 into one of mine along with a 700MHz CPU (which is from a DA 733Mhz and has a 1MB L3 cache) and it handles Leopard fluidly. It's a nice old Mac.
I intend to drop in a SATA card at some stage and maybe even a small SSD to give it a real boost.
ohh if yours is a server model, im very curious either what its model identifier is? is it the Mythical PowerMac3,2? and or what PSU it has (does it have a redundant PSU?)
I have the 400Mhz version with a 1.2GHz G4 upgrade and 768MB of ram. Three drives installed and two of them RAIDed (on separate IDE busses) and I use it to rip the occasional DVD. I think I have a GeForce video card in it that is used by the G4 Cube (probably worth more than the whole setup).
None of my PPCs see much use today.
They are neat to look at.
None of my PPCs see much use today.
They are neat to look at.
Mine is this one: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_server_g4/specs/macserver_g4_500.html
PowerMac3,1. Same as the regular AGP 500 MHz models, according to EveryMac.
How do I know what PSU it has?
Mine is this one: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_server_g4/specs/macserver_g4_500.html
PowerMac3,1. Same as the regular AGP 500 MHz models, according to EveryMac.
View attachment 895843
interesting
post a picture of the label on the PSU or see if you can look in through the fan vents and see if you can spot 2 circuit boards rather then 1? the PowerMac G4 server (at least one model/config of it) shipped with a redundant PSU which was basically 2 PSUs in 1 box (and because of this the wattage of the PSU is lower then normal)
IIRC @bunnspecial has one of these PSUs (and maybe some pics of it somewhere) but sadly not a complete machine (I Think, im still not sure if the PowerMac3,2 came to market or not, you can find mention of it in OS X System files and some apple dev notes, but I have never seen a physical PM3,2 sadly)
(as a side note your BootROM could do with updating, the latest is 4.2.8
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1126 )
(as a side note your BootROM could do with updating, the latest is 4.2.8
Is there a resource somewhere for all the latest machine Boot ROMs released?
I'll take a look when I have a chance and room to pull it out of the area it's in!interesting
post a picture of the label on the PSU or see if you can look in through the fan vents and see if you can spot 2 circuit boards rather then 1? the PowerMac G4 server (at least one model/config of it) shipped with a redundant PSU which was basically 2 PSUs in 1 box (and because of this the wattage of the PSU is lower then normal)
IIRC @bunnspecial has one of these PSUs (and maybe some pics of it somewhere) but sadly not a complete machine (I Think, im still not sure if the PowerMac3,2 came to market or not, you can find mention of it in OS X System files and some apple dev notes, but I have never seen a physical PM3,2 sadly)
(as a side note your BootROM could do with updating, the latest is 4.2.8
I'll update the ROM too, haha, I tend to not do those types of things unless I run into problems on the PowerPCs I have, but thanks for the heads up.
Out of interest - are they recognised at their full capacity? How do you have them partitioned (IIRC APM is limited to about 2.2TB per partition).
APM is only needed on PPC macs to boot from them. If you want to stick an 8TB drive in a PowerMac G5 for example you can. Partition it as GPT\GUID. Have another drive in there for booting partitioned as APM.
Also, late 2005 macs such as the later PCIe G5s, late 2005 PowerBooks, ect will actually boot from GPT and don't actually need APM at all. Though the OS X installer will complain; you'd just have to clone an existing installation or install from an Intel Mac using TDM.
Obviously this post isn't about Late 2005 macs. For a 500Mhz Sawtooth using a PCI Sata card, it only needs to be APM if you're booting from it.
I had so many issues that day, I was not paying attention to partitioning. It was necessary at multiple points to place them in the external drive dock I had attached to my Quad and use Leopard's Disk Utility to partition/format them. Apparently the last partition/format took.
Both drives were recognized by Leopard DU as 2.7TB (these are 3TB drives, so this is within spec) and got partitioned as APM. Both drives are being recognized as their full capacity under Tiger (in the G4) with that partitioning.
I will mention that previously, while attempting to format two 1TB drives in my ICY DOCK I had the RAID partitioned as GUID and could not copy anything to that RAID. Repartitioning that RAID to APM made it usable.
No idea what's going on here, but APM is working. It's 180º from how the 4TB drive in my Quad is partitioned (GUID).
Not in a spot to check the partitioning of my RAID attached to my server at the moment, but I suspect that's also APM.
while you can format a drive above 2.2TB as APM I think any data above that 2.2TB point can start to get corrupted (or will get corrupted i cant quite remember which)
so id recommend formatting the drives as GUID, especially if your not booting from them
so id recommend formatting the drives as GUID, especially if your not booting from them
Well…I was going to upgrade to Leopard this weekend so now I have an additional reason.
DU on Tiger just does not seem to like partitioning/formatting these drives.
Alright. So now we have Leopard and drives partitioned GUID. Leopard formatted the drives with no issues.
Currently the Mac is not hooked up to a monitor. Essentially I'm using it as a NAS. Two large 3TB drives shared on my network.
I have a few cards that support Quartz Extreme though so if I ever decide to put the Mac to a different use that needs that I will install one.
I generally use Leopard to partition all my PPC drives, even if it's for a G3. That way if for whatever reason I want to resize it later, I can without much hassle. I think Leopard's version of DU is the best one.
I even use it to format drives for "modern computers" as long as I don't need APFS or exFAT; as those of you who use Intel Macs probably know that DU started sucking big time after 10.10. Hell I find myself using DISKPART on Windows more than Apple's "new and improved" Disk Utility.
Based off, I schitt you not, nearly every time I've needed 10.11+ Disk Utility to complete a task or fix an issue, I'd say it's borderline useless.
The ability to individually repair file permissions and a partition's FS structure have been removed in place of a single "First Aid" button that is never able to successfully fix anything in need of repair. The vertical box visual partitioning model has been replaced with a pie chart (for the sake of aEsThEtIcZ), which is very difficult to understand and operate, especially when it consistently fails to do the exact same tasks that earlier versions breezed through. - Although whether that's a fault of the application through inferior change, or a fault of the user due to awful design is up for debate.
Of course, if you try to go into the OS internals to change some things back to your liking, like, oh I don't know, putting telnet and ftp back into 10.13+'s /bin, where they belong, you are immediately halted by the annoying burden that is System Integrity Protection, user freedom and responsibility be damned.
As many of you remember, I really could do this all night.
Cut a long tirade short, El Crapitan and up is increasingly the proficient UNIX user's worst nightmare and then some. For me, effectively making Linux not a computing choice, but a health requirement.
I may or may not speak for other people, but I hold the opinion that Yosemite was horrible on the eyes, and Mavericks slow as hell. Leaving Mountain Lion as the last personally tolerable, and even enjoyable, version of Mac OS X ever released.
Rant over. Carry on...