Adding Gigabit to G4 Powermac

[Flyinace2000]

I acquired a G4 PowerMac server and it has been happily recording my HDTV via firewire and my cable box. I want to start moving towards gigabit for internal file transfers of these massive HD video streams. What do i have to look for to add a gigabit NIC to my PowerMac G4. Its a 400mhz machine btw.

Thanks

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

Look for a Mac-compatible Gigabit PCI Card. I would start @OWC, Newegg, Macworld, places like that.......

Also check over at xlr8yourmac.com. They have a huge database of reports from 1000's of users.......

 

[Maxwell Smart]

You could also upgrade to a Gigabit G4 Logic board although that might be more trouble than it is worth, it would be nice and might cost close to the same price as the separate NIC.

 

[djdawson]

I put a "Planet" PCI 10/100/1000 NIC card in my old Dual 500 MHz G4 last year and it just worked - no drivers needed. The card cost something like $8, plus shipping. It's modle number "ENW-9605", and here's the vendor's product page:

http://www.planet.com.tw/product/product_dm.php?product_id=186&menu_id=18

The only thing it doesn't do that my built-in 10/100/1000 interface does is offloading of the checksum checksum processing, but that's not a big deal. It was among the best $8 I ever spent. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available anymore, but I would just go to Newegg and read the reviews of the 10/100/1000 NIC cards and pick one that people have used on a Mac successfully. You might look at one of these, though it appears that any card based on the Realtek chipset should work, since they have OS X drivers on their web site:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833122133

In any event, you shouldn't have to pay a premium price for a Mac-compatible NIC card.

HTH - Good luck!

 

[Old Mac Geezer]

You could also upgrade to a Gigabit G4 Logic board although that might be more trouble than it is worth, it would be nice and might cost close to the same price as the separate NIC.

I would sell the 400mhz machine and buy a Digital Audio machine on ebay. You'll get the gigabit ethernet connection on the motherboard so it won't use an expansion slot and you'll also get the 4x AGP port for faster video, which will give you a huge boost if your 400mhz machine is a Yikes! with PCI graphics, and a faster CPU. The 466/533 single processor models can be gotten for around $150 minus what you get for the 400mhz machine, and would give you a lot better value for money. To do a motherboard swap would cost too much and take time rounding up parts. Don't forget that the Gigabit Ethernet/Digital Audio motherboards require a different power supply than the Yikes! and Sawtooth. You can't use a standard ATX power supply so that drives up the cost of a swap. It's a lot simpler and cheaper to just sell what you have and buy a whole Digital Audio machine.

 

[trainguy77]

Also remember the cheap nics offload atlot of processing onto your CPU instead of doing it themselves.