Got a G4 Mac Mini for basically nothing

[iGrant]

Hello,

I have always wanted a Mac Mini ever since they were introduced January 11, 2005!!! However at the time I was in college and my Dad convinced me that an iBook would be better . . . I only had the money for a Mac Mini so he put up the rest, which I was eternally grateful for and still am.

Anyways long story short, one of my buddies at work just bought a new Mac Mini from Apple and has order the exact ram and hard drive for it. I was talking with him at lunch about it and he said "Yeah I am so excited but I don't know what I am going to do with my old G4 Mac Mini, I don't really want to keep it because I will never use it once I get my data off of it."

So jokingly I told him "Well hey I'll give you 50 bucks for the Mac Mini once you have your data backed up off of it!"

To my total surprise he told me sure, and I gave him cash!!! Its a 1.25Ghz G4 Mac Mini with 256 ram and a 40gb hard drive with a combo drive. It was the cheapest Mac Mini you could buy in 2005.

I looking forward to the Mac Mini, it actually going to replace my G4 Cube that I am using right now to write this message. I love the Cube that I have hooked to a 20 inch widescreen Dell Monitor, its really laggy on everything but I just love the huge screen. The lag is mostly from me having 10.5 on my G4 Cube . . . . which is SSSSLLLLLOOWWWWWWWWWWW . . . . . . . . .

Anyways I really looking forward to getting my "new" G4 Mac Mini and using it. Question, does Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard run ok on the G4 Minis? Also how hard is it to upgrade the Ram and Hard Drive, and would upgrading the hard drive to like a 8mb cache help with performance at all?

Thanks
iGrant

 

[qtx43]

I opened my G4 mini to upgrade the ram, and it's not too hard. You just constantly feel like you're going to break something as you're taking to case off. They say use really thin putty knives, and it's true, they need to be very thin to slide in initially, but they also need to be strong, so I used secondary ones also. And it's difficult to do without putting some scratches in the plastic, but other than that, there's no big risk of breaking anything as long as you're careful. I'm sure you can google the guides for doing it, I suppose they're still up on the internet somewhere.

 

[bc008]

haha thats how a lot of purchases go

have you got any plans for it? once you update the HD it could be a good media center living room thing

 

[G5power]

Check out a couple of the online video guides or pictures on opening the mini and just take your time and be careful and you can do the job.

The G4 mini only has one RAM slot so you will need to find a 1GB stick of memory to replace the 256MB. You can check OWC and Crucial online for the memory they recommend.

 

[iGrant]

haha thats how a lot of purchases go

have you got any plans for it? once you update the HD it could be a good media center living room thing

HEHEHEHE I have a Dual 1.8Ghz G5 Power Mac that is Media Center right now through EyeTV!!!! I love that Mac, its got 8GB of ram with 1TB of hard drive total at the moment, upgraded Super Drive and everything, the computer screams!!!!

I'm thinking about taking two sticks out of the G5 since they have to be in pairs and installing one of the 1GB sticks into the Mac Mini. I really just want the Mac Mini to surf the web, listen to music and use Screen Share to edit Videos that I record with my Power Mac G5.

It would also be nice to be able to watch trailers and videos on the computer which my G4 Cube simply can not do anymore .

I will keep the G4 Cube because it is a beautiful machine and I will never get rid of it. I will probabely throw 10.3 Panther onto it and make it a backup file server or something . . .

-iGrant

 

[ADent]

I have a upper level G4 mini with an apparently dead motherboard.

Cheapest main board or working G4 mini I have found is just under $300.

If I were you I would eBay the thing (or pass it along to me for $50 + shipping).

Some of the minis come with 4500 rpm drives, so almost anything is faster, even Firewire 400.

Memory is easy. Hard drive and such is a bit trickier with little screws, but not too hard.

OWC has videos on how to upgrade the unit. http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm

 

[iGrant]

I have a upper level G4 mini with an apparently dead motherboard.

Cheapest main board or working G4 mini I have found is just under $300.

If I were you I would eBay the thing (or pass it along to me for $50 + shipping).

Some of the minis come with 4500 rpm drives, so almost anything is faster, even Firewire 400.

Memory is easy. Hard drive and such is a bit trickier with little screws, but not too hard.

OWC has videos on how to upgrade the unit. http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm

I thought about putting the Computer on eBay and selling it for 300 ~ 400 bucks. However, like my G4 Cube, I am not going to get rid of the Mac Mini, mostly because I have a use for it.

I really miss surfing the web on a desktop computer with a big monitor. I am currently on my Macbook Rev A which is a great laptop, but I like surfing the web on a bigger monitor.

The other reason I am not going to sell the computer, is I think I am going to regret it. I had found about a year and a half ago I Power Mac G4 Digital Audio with a 733Mhz G4 processor, no hard drive, Super Drive and 256mb ram on the side of the road to be thrown away with the trash. I picked up the Power Mac G4 and went to the door and asked the owner want was wrong with the Mac. They said it was slow and did not want it anymore, and if I wanted it, I could have it for free . . . it would save them from having to put a trash tag on it.

So I took it home and spent about 200 bucks on upgrades. I already had a Sonnet 1.6Ghz G4 CPU upgrade card that my dad never used, I installed a Sata PCI Card from Sonnet, USB 2.0 Card from Sonnet, and added a 250GB Seagate SATA hard drive. I also upgrade the ram to 768 total from ram I had from other computer.

I loved that G4, it was a freaking TANK. I encode videos for 74 hours from stuff I had recorded with EyeTV, the CPU was at a 100% the entire time and the machine never once crashed on me. Well back in march this year I got a Power Mac Dual G5 1.8GHZ which I love, but it replaced my Power Mac G4. So I sold that computer and I got my money back out of the machine.

However I miss that computer. I wish I had just kept that computer instead of selling it like I did. It was a tank, it was fast, it could everything I wanted to do.

That is probably why I will not let go of the Mac Mini, I have wanted one since they came out in 2005 and now I have one. I think I am just going to keep it unless I just really don't like it.

That was a way longer explanation than you were expecting so yeah sorry!!!

-iGrant