Just bought 2 mirror doors.

[VanneDC]

As the title says, just bought 2 Powermac G4's mirror doors. A dual 1.25ghz and a dual 867 MHz.

Is there anything really cool I can do with these? Looking at Retro gaming like Baldur's gate and return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Can these run leopard ok? I'll prob max out the ram and buy a fast agp vid card..

Any help or what to avoid will be very much appreciated.

V.

 

[AphoticD]

They’ll both run Leopard (1GB RAM or more recommended), but you’d find Tiger better suited to the hardware.

Retro gaming options are wide open as the 867 will natively boot OS9 (and the dual 1.25 can be convinced if you want it to).

Maybe some classic Duke Nukem 3D, Tomb Raider II, Nanosaur, Bugdom, Quake, Doom, A-10 Cuba, F/A 18 Hornet, MDK, Oni, Halo, Unreal, UT, Warcraft II, Driver, 4x4 Evolution, whatever floats yer boat.

Then of course there is the shareware; go for classic Ambrosia titles like Apieron, Maelstrom, Escape Velocity, Ferazels Wand, etc etc

I put a Flashed ATI Radeon 9700 (128mb) AGP(4x?) in my Sawtooth, it almost seems like overkill for the old girl, but runs flawlessly.

 

[0248294]

Both are within Leopard's minimum specifications, as stock Leopard requires at least a single 867MHz CPU (although this requirement is easily defeated). With some slight optimizations, specifically on the DP 867MHz MDD, it should run just fine with a decent GPU, maxed out RAM and a reliable, fast hard drive or even solid state drive. I've ran Leopard on less just fine, and it shouldn't impact gaming much. But as said, you could also install Tiger or OS 9, depending on what games you want to play and what they require. For OS 9 games that won't natively run on OS X, I'd recommend a full OS 9 install over Classic Mode in OS X Tiger or lower any day. It just runs better on the real deal.

 

[eyoungren]

They’ll both run Leopard (1GB RAM or more recommended), but you’d find Tiger better suited to the hardware.

That is debatable.

Certainly I'd allow for that argument if we were speaking of a G3 or an early TiBook or even a G4 PCI. But past the 1Ghz level it's simply a matter of preference.

Leopard runs very well on the last models of G4s.
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As the title says, just bought 2 Powermac G4's mirror doors. A dual 1.25ghz and a dual 867 MHz.

Is there anything really cool I can do with these? Looking at Retro gaming like Baldur's gate and return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Can these run leopard ok? I'll prob max out the ram and buy a fast agp vid card..

Any help or what to avoid will be very much appreciated.

V.

Use it as a server?

 

[heyimquinn]

I own a G4 MDD Dual 867MHz, maxed out with 2GB RAM!

It's a really good machine. Since it runs OS9 and Tiger/Leopard very well it's an all around great machine, both for modern style usage and for retro style usage. All OS9 apps will work without a hitch if you stick to a card that has 3D acceleration in OS9 (I flashed a 9700Pro with a Mac ROM and it lacks acceleration in OS9 but absolutely flies under OS X).
I haven't done extensive tests but I remember 720p playing smoothly (not sure if on VLC or CorePlayer).

The stock GeForce4 isn't too bad either but it doesn't have Core Image which is pretty much crucial to run Leopard at acceptable speeds.

TenFourFox is relatively fast on it but I'm too used to my Intel hackintosh so the performance irritates me sometimes.

Be sure to replace the thermal paste on both CPUs and replace the fans with something less noisy - I did exactly that because I was waking up my family with this little... windtunnel. Also check out the S.M.A.R.T of your system drives. Mine died about 30 minutes after I booted it up with the famous click of death. (IBM Deathstar)

If you have any questions I can probably help you out, given that I own one of those.

 

[VanneDC]

thanks for the heads up guys, i just bought a 9800pro to replace the vid card. Hopefully this should go pretty good.

 

[eyoungren]

thanks for the heads up guys, i just bought a 9800pro to replace the vid card. Hopefully this should go pretty good.

Keep in mind, the 9800 Pros require the additional molex power and tend to run hot. If you're planning on loading out all the slots on the logicboard you may wish to seek additional cooling. If not, maybe give it some space.

 

[Slix]

If you needed any more convincing or anything haha, I own a 1.25 single MDD, and it runs 10.5 just fine (without max RAM, it has 1.25 GB right now, it used to have 768 MB), and I also have it set up to run Tiger and OS 9.2.2, and it's a really nice machine to "do it all", since it runs OS 9 really well, and it's the fastest PowerPC Mac I have that runs 10.5 (well, the iMac G5 does, but that's debatable on if it's faster. ).

I used it as a secondary machine in college last year with 2 displays for viewing homework assignments and playing old games on it and occasionally importing CDs to transfer to my MacBook Air.

 

[Jordy-G5]

Just picked up one as well but a single processor 1.25. Can't seem to get OS 9 to install on the machine, is there a particular version I need or something I have to modify to run the installer. Last time I installed OS 9 was on a Sawtooth G4 that was heavily upgraded, and even then I was running 10.1 and later 10.2 as the primary OS.

 

[AphoticD]

Just picked up one as well but a single processor 1.25. Can't seem to get OS 9 to install on the machine, is there a particular version I need or something I have to modify to run the installer. Last time I installed OS 9 was on a Sawtooth G4 that was heavily upgraded, and even then I was running 10.1 and later 10.2 as the primary OS.

Check the forums at http://macos9lives.com as they have prepared a few different installs of Mac OS 9.2.2 including a Universal ISO and an "Unsupported" version which can boot on certain G4 Macs which didn't support OS 9 native.

I'm not sure of the details, but there were some G4 MDD models which fall into this category. I have a feeling the single 1.25 was the OS9-ready, post-G5 MDD re-release though.

 

[Jordy-G5]

Check the forums at http://macos9lives.com as they have prepared a few different installs of Mac OS 9.2.2 including a Universal ISO and an "Unsupported" version which can boot on certain G4 Macs which didn't support OS 9 native.

I'm not sure of the details, but there were some G4 MDD models which fall into this category. I have a feeling the single 1.25 was the OS9-ready, post-G5 MDD re-release though.

Sounds good, I think it didn't like the drive in my machine. I'm waiting for some adapters to use some plain SATA drives in there, has anybody had luck with the adapters? I have a Sonnet Tempo-X SATA card that seems to read the drive, but even OS X won't let me install on it. I know I can boot off this controller in my G5's but I think that's because of the newer firmware.