Hey everyone I just bought an 867 powermac quicksilver. I was wondering if anyone can give me any advice on upgrading it. I know it has 512mb of memory, and I was looking on ebay at memory to max it out at 1.5gb. Inwould like to be able to put my hard drives in it. A 1.5tb and a 500gb any idea what I need to buy to do this? I previously had a MacBook, sold it and bought an iPad and used a crappy Dell for the last few weeks. I figured this powermac will be better then my Dell i've had.
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Just bought a G4 quicksilver
- Thread starter JSMencer
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The powermac will be pretty slow at 867, so I'd spend a bit more cash and get a sonnet tech daughter card. Anyway, I think the G4 powermac uses the intrepid ASIC, so the max ram is over 1.5Gb (my iMac does 2GB max). The Powermac G4 doesn't use SATA, so you need EIDE hard drives. I haven't seen 1.5TB EIDE drives yet.
Also, get yourself a USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC), and a new graphics card to speed it up.
Also, get yourself a USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC), and a new graphics card to speed it up.
This Power Mac cannot handle hard drives over 128GB without using a 3rd party SATA/IDE card.
If you want to pick one up I have one from my old quicksilver with 4 sata ports.
Only catch is it KPs under Leopard.
Works great on Tiger though.
If you want to pick one up I have one from my old quicksilver with 4 sata ports.
Only catch is it KPs under Leopard.
Works great on Tiger though.
Quicksilver G4s have 3 RAM slots and can use up to 512MB per slot, for a total of 1.5GB.
Quicksilver G4s with bootROM version 4.33f2 have large drive support.
In later versions of OS X, this is listed under Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> More Info -> Hardware.
There's more information about Quicksilver G4s here.
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/quicksilver-power-mac-g4.html
Quicksilver G4s with bootROM version 4.33f2 have large drive support.
In later versions of OS X, this is listed under Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> More Info -> Hardware.
There's more information about Quicksilver G4s here.
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/quicksilver-power-mac-g4.html
That Sonnet daughter card is kind of expensive for me right now. What 3rd party sata/IDE card is recommended. I will be running Leopard on this machine. I dont feel like I need a ton of power out of this machine, just doing some basic internet browsing, word processing, and some downloading. No video editing or anything like that. I do need alot of storage for my music though, and I would like to put those sata drives in my machine instead of in an external enclosure.
Get NEC based USB 2.0 card - like kbfr08 did mention. Others (VIA based) might be not recognized or will need third party drivers (depending on chipset model). NEC based are working plug and play.
To run Leopard smoothly (as possible for machine that meets lowest requirements of this OS) get yourself graphics card which supports Core Image. Look for preflashed (eBay) or flash one by yourself. This will be cheapest way to get hardware CI support. For flashing options check this site.
To run Leopard smoothly (as possible for machine that meets lowest requirements of this OS) get yourself graphics card which supports Core Image. Look for preflashed (eBay) or flash one by yourself. This will be cheapest way to get hardware CI support. For flashing options check this site.
Hello everyone, I am typing this from my g4. I have to say this thing is amazing for 9 years old. It blows my 2005/2006 pc out of the water. after spending an hour and half trying to restore my ipad on my pc last night. this is a redeemer. thanks for all the suggestions. hopefully i will get my usb card in the mail today.
It's always great to hear when somebody can give an old Mac life again.
I gave a dual 500 power mac to a friend last year. With a few simple upgrades, they can get some real use out of it.
I also recommend lowendmac. There are so many great suggestions of how to get extra life out of old stuff.
Cool!
You could upgrade to a Dual 800 even a single 933mhz. I am not sure if the DUAL 1.0 will work or if you need a qs2002 board.
You could upgrade to a Dual 800 even a single 933mhz. I am not sure if the DUAL 1.0 will work or if you need a qs2002 board.
I have a 867Mhz PM G4 QS,it has 1GB of ram and it's moderately fast. I'm currently using my dual 867Mhz PM G4 MDD,with 2GB of ram,and it's surprisingly faster,I would recommend one of these. 