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Power Macs' G4 'Trio' Collection

redhatcode29

redhatcode29

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2014
471
53
Kuala Lumpur
Though i was having difficulties in obtaining the last piece of my collection of the Power Mac G4 Tower series...the wait is now over !

The Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) model had put an end to it, thus completing my Power Mac G4 'Trio Collection'. It is smoothly running 10.4.11 though a physical clean up of the tower was much in need!

However, i am a bit curious of the add on card, which i am not sure of its purpose .... Any of you guys can enlighten me ?
 

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redhatcode29 said:
Though i was having difficulties in obtaining the last piece of my collection of the Power Mac G4 Tower series...the wait is now over !

The Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) model had put an end to it, thus completing my Power Mac G4 'Trio Collection'. It is smoothly running 10.4.11 though a physical clean up of the tower was much in need!

However, i am a bit curious of the add on card, which i am not sure of its purpose .... Any of you guys can enlighten me ?
Click to expand...
What does the card look like?
 
redhatcode29 said:
...

The Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) model had put an end to it, thus completing my Power Mac G4 'Trio Collection'. It is smoothly running 10.4.11 though a physical clean up of the tower was much in need!

However, i am a bit curious of the add on card, which i am not sure of its purpose .... Any of you guys can enlighten me ?
Click to expand...

The only needed card is a video card. The AGP Graphics G4 would have one in the AGP slot, but could have that AGP slot empty when using a PCI video card.
Or, an AGP video card, with an additional PCI video card for additional monitors. There's a variety of other possible PCI cards, and could be one that someone added at some point.
Maybe you could describe the ports on that card, and there may be internal connectors on the card - for a SCSI card when someone wanted to have a SCSI drive, or multiple internal drives - which could be up to 4 internal hard drives.
So, lots of possibilities.
 
DeltaMac said:
The only needed card is a video card. The AGP Graphics G4 would have one in the AGP slot, but could have that AGP slot empty when using a PCI video card.
Or, an AGP video card, with an additional PCI video card for additional monitors. There's a variety of other possible PCI cards, and could be one that someone added at some point.
Maybe you could describe the ports on that card, and there may be internal connectors on the card - for a SCSI card when someone wanted to have a SCSI drive, or multiple internal drives - which could be up to 4 internal hard drives.
So, lots of possibilities.
Click to expand...

sorry...there was an up load error, some how the pictures which i loaded did not make it with the initial post...i have rectified it.

true, it must be a card added by the previous owner...
 
System Profiler should tell you exactly what the card is unless it is dead.
 
The connectors along with the BNC plugs would lean me toward thinking that they're interface cards for a scientific instrument of some sort.

If this is indeed what they are, the cards are likely marked with the name of the instrument company on them somewhere. If you post all the markings on the cards, this could help confirm my thoughts.

Also, if you are still running on the original install of the OS(or have the hard with that install) any software installed can give a clue.

If they are indeed instrument interface cards, those can be worth fair bit of money to the "right" person. Scientific instruments often have a fairly long lifetime and are kept in service "past their prime" as they are still needed and the money doesn't materialize for replacements. I use a TGA (thermogravimetric analyzer) from the early 90s on an almost daily basis, and we have a couple of potentiostats from the mid-80s kicking around our lab. Often times, a computer and/or interface card is the least durable part of the set-up.
 
Could you post clear pictures of both the top and bottom of both of the mystery cards? You'll have to remove them from the machine first.
 
bunnspecial said:
The connectors along with the BNC plugs would lean me toward thinking that they're interface cards for a scientific instrument of some sort.

If this is indeed what they are, the cards are likely marked with the name of the instrument company on them somewhere. If you post all the markings on the cards, this could help confirm my thoughts.

Also, if you are still running on the original install of the OS(or have the hard with that install) any software installed can give a clue.

If they are indeed instrument interface cards, those can be worth fair bit of money to the "right" person. Scientific instruments often have a fairly long lifetime and are kept in service "past their prime" as they are still needed and the money doesn't materialize for replacements. I use a TGA (thermogravimetric analyzer) from the early 90s on an almost daily basis, and we have a couple of potentiostats from the mid-80s kicking around our lab. Often times, a computer and/or interface card is the least durable part of the set-up.
Click to expand...

Instrumental interface huh.....maybe 'twas a connected to a music device...
Anyway, your comment has now made me ....ever more curious to find the facts.....:)

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Intell said:
Could you post clear pictures of both the top and bottom of both of the mystery cards? You'll have to remove them from the machine first.
Click to expand...

'Mystery Cards'. Ha ha.... That makes it mysterious. I took a peek into the tower....My Goodness...the cards are almost A feet in length! It shocked me, honestly I've nvr seen an add on card such as this ....

Will post sm pics whn I get back home
 
Altemose said:
I am probably about to be proved wrong but those look like external SCSI ports.
Click to expand...

SCSi ok, thanks for the keyword. i googled but dddnt find any SCSI which was an exact match. I guess it was some version of SCSI. I just wished that it was a SAS card, coz i have a need for a SAS card.

Thanks.
 
redhatcode29 said:
SCSi ok, thanks for the keyword. i googled but dddnt find any SCSI which was an exact match. I guess it was some version of SCSI. I just wished that it was a SAS card, coz i have a need for a SAS card.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

See if any of these ports exactly matches. I couldn't tell really when zooming in on your image.

scsi-ports.jpg
 
What does System Profiler say? It should give you at a minimum a Vendor ID and Device ID, which should help you identify the card from googling.
 
weckart said:
What does System Profiler say? It should give you at a minimum a Vendor ID and Device ID, which should help you identify the card from googling.
Click to expand...

oh yeah, i did check...but it says nothing much. just mention about ...(ok, i forgot, what it actually mentioned !, but nothing out of the ordinary)

The thing is, i dot have the G4 connected to a monitor, every time i boot it, i have to haul a monitor from another machine. I did take a screen shot of the system profiler, but forgot to copy it out.
I know that i can share screens through my local network, which i rushed to do...sadly i dot know the password for the user account !

Ive seen posts about getting around a password in an Intel Mac, i guess i need to google that first.
 
It would be easier to get the monitor connected, look at the aforementioned IDs, which SP will give you and google for the answer than to pull the cards out, photograph and hope for someone to guess what they are.

And FWIW, they do look like external SCSI connectors to me.
 
Power Macs' G4 'Trio'

Can anybody tell me what the latest version of OS these G4s are capable of running. You mentioned you are running 10.4, but I think an update to 10.5 is possible. Please confirm.

Have two out of the three models, no MDD though.

Thanks!
 
All G4 PowerMacs can run up to 10.5.8, but not officially and sometimes not without unacceptable performance.
 
Last edited:
Intell said:
All PowerMacs can run up to 10.5.8, but not officially and sometimes not without unacceptable performance.
Click to expand...

Isn't a G4(or G5) in some form or fashion required for Leopard? I know that there are "tricks" like Leopard assist, pulling the drive and cloning, or using target disk mode to get around the 867mhz G4 requirement, but had understood that these would only work with a G4 and up.

I was under the impression that G3(and lower) machines required a processor upgrade to run Leopard.
 
I appear to have left out a critical part of that post. Correction: All G4 PowerMacs can run Leopard.
 
I have heard of some mythical Leopard/Darwin kernel that was modded for the G3. Never looked for it, though. I always thought that Tiger was optimised for the G4 and Leopard for the G5.

The question is, when does performance become acceptable as opposed to a proof-of-concept installation? Leopard offloads a lot of processing to the GPU so limited VRAM is going to be an insurmountable bottleneck on all but the G3 desktops even with a G4 upgrade.

I wouldn't want to run Leopard on my Pismo if I got hold of a G4 daughtercard. The 8MB of VRAM would be too painful.
 
weckart said:
I have heard of some mythical Leopard/Darwin kernel that was modded for the G3. Never looked for it, though. I always thought that Tiger was optimised for the G4 and Leopard for the G5.

The question is, when does performance become acceptable as opposed to a proof-of-concept installation? Leopard offloads a lot of processing to the GPU so limited VRAM is going to be an insurmountable bottleneck on all but the G3 desktops even with a G4 upgrade.

I wouldn't want to run Leopard on my Pismo if I got hold of a G4 daughtercard. The 8MB of VRAM would be too painful.
Click to expand...

I have a handful of G4s that are officially Leopard capable(i.e. over 867mhz). Just for the heck of it, I stuck a Rage 128(with 16mb VRAM) in one of them and booted it up just to see what the experience was like. A lot of the "fancy" effects of Leopard like the bouncing icons are just too much for that particular card, and the system bogged down really quickly. Tiger is doable with a Rage 128, but a a better card like a GeForce 4 MX makes a big difference there too and actually makes the system useable under Leopard.

----------
Intell said:
I appear to have left out a critical part of that post. Correction: All G4 PowerMacs can run Leopard.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up! I was wondering if there was a G3 trick that I just hadn't heard/read about. I'd do it for proof of concept, although the G3s I have kicking around are pretty much exclusively OS 9 machines and I reserve OS X(in any form) for G4s and up.
 
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