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Panther on a Sawtooth, is it risky?

I

iDu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 2, 2004
13
0
Olathe, KS (Kansas City)
I've been looking at getting a Sawtooth G4/400 to tide me over until I get my Xmas bonus. All I want is to experience OS X and begin learning all of its nuances. The problem is that I keep reading these horror stories of kernel panics and screwed up windows (when moving/resizing). It seems that the problem only exists with 3rd party AGP cards, but I have a found a few examples online of completely stock Sawtooth CPU's having similar problems. Do I have much/anything to worry about? I really want Panther for Expose' and the "new" Finder, but I don't want it to render my first Mac unusable before I even get to chance to revel in its splendor.

FYI: The computer is stock, except for 512MB RAM (don't know what brand), it still has the original ATI Rage 128 Pro in it

Thanks
iDu aka Du
 
A friend of mine has one of these with 1.5gb RAM and has 10.3.4 on one partition.

I've used it -- it's OK but window resizing is verrrrry slow, minimizing windows to dock too. Classic is also clunky but usable.

If you can put up with that for a few months till you get your bonus, it'll be worth the familiarisation process as there are loads of new things to discover... don't spend too much on it, though.

When you get your new Mac, your fingers will fly!
 
Awesome, everyone keeps trying to convice me to spend more money on this thing. The reality is that this machine is only going to be used for web, email, and OS X familiarisation for three, maybe four, months. I might drop the extra $50 or so to get the Digital Audio G4/466 and get a 32MB GPU just to help smooth things a little better, but no more than that. Thanks for your input, and if things go well, I'll be an official Mac user in a week or so. Here's to seeing the light
 
I'm running a 450 MHz Sawtooth and not having any problems what so ever. Sure its slow, but it works.

Good luck,

D
 
Brother Michael said:
I have a G3 iBook with an 8 Meg Video Card. Panther runs like a champ.

Mike
Click to expand...
Killer, that REALLY helps put me to ease. Although it didn't really matter anyway, the computer is only a stop-gap until I get my new PB or iMac G5 (haven't yet decided) it will then be relagated to music server duty, which kicks ass.
 
I have two different Sawtooth machines and both run flawlessly.

Mac #1.
Gigadesigns 1 gig upgrade, 1 gig RAM, flashed Radeon 8500 AGP card, 10.3.4

Mac # 2
500 mhz. Stock Video, 784 RAM, 10..4 server.

Both run just fine all the typical stuff. Even apps liek Photoshop run if you are not using super large images, etc.

Its a nice sturdy Mac, with the ability to upgrade processors. Some models of Sawtooth can accept up to dual 1.4, although most are limited to a single CPU.

Good luck with it.
 
450 Sawtooth here too. 1280MB ram and an ATi 8500 AGP card in place of the stock Rage Pro.

Seriously, I may even make it to a G6 before an upgrade, the improvements with OS X have really kept this one G4 going, it's 4 and a half years old and still chugging through with all the tools I need.

The only pain is Flash MX, that was such a crap upgrade and I refuse to give the b'stards any more of my cash however good they say MX 04 is.

I was wondering if it was actually a Sawtooth rather than a 400mhz Yikes.
You say Rage Pro and I think the pro was in the Sawtooth version, so yesh prolly a Sawtooth.

Anyway, Ram and an ATi 8500 will see you through nicely.

hell, even bog standard it'll be lovely.

Good luck :)
 
kettle said:
450 Sawtooth here too. 1280MB ram and an ATi 8500 AGP card in place of the stock Rage Pro.

Seriously, I may even make it to a G6 before an upgrade, the improvements with OS X have really kept this one G4 going, it's 4 and a half years old and still chugging through with all the tools I need.

The only pain is Flash MX, that was such a crap upgrade and I refuse to give the b'stards any more of my cash however good they say MX 04 is.

I was wondering if it was actually a Sawtooth rather than a 400mhz Yikes.
You say Rage Pro and I think the pro was in the Sawtooth version, so yesh prolly a Sawtooth.

Anyway, Ram and an ATi 8500 will see you through nicely.

hell, even bog standard it'll be lovely.

Good luck :)
Click to expand...

Yeah it is a Sawtooth, its got AGP graphics, not PCI. I am making sure to steer clear of the Yikes! G4's, they have the modified Yosemite Logic Board, making upgrades more difficult (or less effective, which is it?).
 
Yeah, my first generation Sawtooth is about to enter its sixth year of existence. I actually go to a college where 2 ghz G5s are readily available at school computer labs, so, if I were you, if you're thinking of getting a Sawtooth and running 10.3 on it (I still have 10.2 on mine), I'd suggest using that computer exclusively until the day you buy your new one. Using a new mac and then going back to your dorm room to use a mac almost half a decade older can turn you into a bit of computer brat.
 
no problems...never a panic...and more than usable. Btw wont run Doom3 or so I've heard. :D
 

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It will be fine. I have seen Panther run on 233Mhz G3 iMacs and it is usable for web browsing and stuff. A G4 will have no problem.
 
There was a bug with panther 10.3.0->10.3.2 that the system wasn't able to detect the videocard correctly IF the videocard was a Geforce card, 10.3.3 fixed it. (the was also an unoffical fix for 10.3.0->10.3.2)

btw, i have a Sawtooth with Geforce 4 mx and panther 10.3.5 and it runs great!!!

-tb
 
Two Sawtooth G4s running flawlessly with 10.3.5 and 10.3.2. One's a 450 with a radeon graphics card and 1.5 gb ram, the other a 400 with a stock rage pro card and 576 mb ram. Biggest booster of function is lots of ram. Defintely running everything you're interested in doing. Speed is fine. Never had a kernal panic.
 
I have two sawtooth machines at work, the 400 and dual 500.

The 400 runs Panther fine, and with 1gig RAM, I haven't noticed any slow resizing.

The 500 won't run it at all. At all. Fine with classic, ok with Jaguar, but won't touch Panther. Panic. Panic. Panic.
 
Panther on Yikes?

I have a 350mz "Yikes" G4, 384mb ram, and am also looking at upgrading to Panther. How well do you think it will work? Thanks.
 
No rick involved whatsoever. The Sawtooth will run OSX perfectly, the DigitalAudio model, even better. I have a 667 D.A, and it will even do photoshop :eek:. Just be sure to load it up with ~1 gig of ram, and the computer will run better than some high spec G3's ever would!
 
Its very impressive that a Mac circa 2000 will with a modest RAM update run the latest OS with nice functionality. With a little investment, you can get a lot of life out of your old Mac.

Some ideas:

GPU upgrades
RAM
IDE support via PCI card to latest and fastest
Processor speeds up to 1.4 Ghz

My Quicksilver with PCI RAid, 1.5 Gig Ram and dual 1.4 benchmarks very well. In my case, it was better to update it piecemeal rather than buy an entire new system and migrate.

The Sawtooth forward are all solid Macs.
 
Awesome! Thanks for all the input everyone, I went down to a local reseller who has used/refurb Macs and had a chance to fiddle with a G4/500 tower running Panther. It was faster than I expected it to be, it also had 1GB RAM, so I'm sure that helped considerably. Can't wait to get my "new" Sawtooth, and finally OWN a Mac.... only a few more days... :D
 
I run panther on my 500 G3 powerbook ... runs great ... little slow cause i only have 256mb of ram.

my friend on the other hand has a 500 Sawtooth with 1.28 gigs of ram and original radeon and it runs alot nicer. much smoother than my comp.

window resizing ain't to pretty on my 800 emac... but as long as quartz extreme works it is fine<< unless resizing windows is your favorite passtime, i doubt it will bug you. :D
 
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