Adding OS X to a G4

I assume you are running OS 8 or 9 right now. Anyways if you want classic support in OS X you will also need to run OS 9.2.1 I believe. As for day to day OS 9 or 8 operation you will not notice any real difference except that you will use the Startup disk control panel occasionally to change your default boot disk.

All of your files will be available in OS X. If this will be your first OS X Mac then it will seem quite a bit different than OS 9, especially if you jump strait to 10.5. For basic use internet browsing (with a flash blocker), e-mail and typing you should have 768MB RAM minimum for 10.5 and 512MB for 10.4 preferably the RAM would be maxed to 1.5GB or 2GB depending on G4 model.

Some keyboard shortcuts were changed by engineers whom were looking to tick off long time Mac users for some unknown reason, occasionally I still hit cmd + n to create a new folder. Then there is the forced home folder and that the desktop can not be used directly by all hard drives. Eventually I got used to the changes but occasionally miss the OS 9 way of doing things.

 

Make sure your G4 media drive matches your install media! I tried installing OS X on a G4 tower only to find out my OS X DVD wouldn't load... because the G4 only had a CD drive. Easy to check, but will save you some grief.

 

A G4 processor works best with Tiger. Leopard runs slower on a G4.