Mac convert questions...

[acemcsword]

yes it is true, i have pulled myself out of the dark void of the PC and am in the process of becoming a full blown MAC convert!

hooray i hear you cry!

i have a few questions for you of mighty MAC knowledge first though....

the MAC i have in my sights is the quadcore mac pro 2.6. however... i have a relatively old boy PC system that i am keen to recycle some components from and want to know if they will work ok.

first things first - i have 2gb of RAM in my machine currently (2x1gb) - with a further 1gb (2x512mb) lying around.

now the worry i have that i need clearing up is that the spec of my RAM is: DDR 400MHz PC3200 Non-ECC CL2 (2-3-2-6-1) DIMM. - is this gonna be compatible with the MAC pro or will it only take DDR2?

please excuse if this is a silly question - i am not a computer brain overlord like you mighty ones!

the other question i have; my harddrives. dont have the spec of em to hand but they re ur average 80gb internal PC HD's - are they gonna be of use in the Mac pro or am i out of luck again.

ooooh, i just remebered - 2 more queries, graphics card and soundcard - whats the situation with PC to Mac compatibility with that? its a soundblaster soundcard, and not sure on graphics spec is a 256 nvidia is all i got...

(p.s. dont know spec right now as am at work on an IMac )

 

[Celeron]

now the worry i have that i need clearing up is that the spec of my RAM is: DDR 400MHz PC3200 Non-ECC CL2 (2-3-2-6-1) DIMM. - is this gonna be compatible with the MAC pro or will it only take DDR2?

the other question i have; my harddrives. dont have the spec of em to hand but they re ur average 80gb internal PC HD's - are they gonna be of use in the Mac pro or am i out of luck again.

ooooh, i just remebered - 2 more queries, graphics card and soundcard - whats the situation with PC to Mac compatibility with that? its a soundblaster soundcard, and not sure on graphics spec is a 256 nvidia is all i got...

Mac Pro will only take DDR2, FB-DIMMS. Your current memory won't work in it. Check Crucial.com for the specifics if you wish to upgrade it.

Mac Pro only takes serial ATA hard drives (SATA). You could possibly put a parallel ata (PATA) in the extra optical drive bay but I wouldn't bother.

Mac Pro has integrated sound as far as I know. I don't think you can use a regular PC soundblaster card. I'm not sure why you would want to in any case.

Mac Pro, and all Apple computers need an Apple video card. Nvidia and ATI options are available, but they are made specifically to work on the Mac.

Sorry to shoot you down on all your queries.

 

[mags631]

i have a few questions for you of mighty MAC knowledge first though....

the MAC i have in my sights is the quadcore mac pro 2.6. however...

...is this gonna be compatible with the MAC pro or will it only take DDR2?

First order of business, the Mac is not an acronym, so unless you are yelling the name each time you are typing it, there is no need to capitalize all three letters.

On your actual questions, this dev note provides a good summary of the technical specification detail about the latest iMacs:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/iMac_06Jan/index.html

 

[Sesshi]

Nothing will recycle.

And what's the point of putting superannuated parts into the latest machine - it's like loading a quad-core Dell Precision 690 with Windows 98.

 

[cepler]

Nothing will recycle.

The hard drives would probably work if they're SATA, or are they parallel?

 

[acemcsword]

thanks

thanks for the responses, and apologies for the incorrect phrasing along the way!

fingers crossed i can trade back the memory i just got for some ddr2 then. and not sure on the spec of my HD's but as they are only wimpy little 80gb things its not really important - was just hoping i could get my old ddr memory involved to save on the pennies until i could afford the higher spec

as it is i guess im gonna have to put it off till i can afford the mac spec stuff...

thanks again!

 

[joachim]

fingers crossed i can trade back the memory i just got for some ddr2 then.

Make sure they can run on Mac Pros because not all DDR2 RAMs are the same. www.macsales.com and transintl.com has more info about Mac Pro RAM in addition to Crucial.

 

[macbubba]

You can easily pop your old HD's in a couple external USB or Firewire enclosures. That'd be very handy way to start backing up your new Mac.

 

[Sesshi]

Well... look at the price of 80Gb HDD's and you'll see it's not worth fiddling around with a ~3 year old one.