The G4 Workstation Wiki

[MysticCow]

Is your G4 feeling its age? Is it just taking up space? Why not turn it into a WORKSTATION? No internet allowed, because the web is just nasty to our old trusty PowerPC's. Well, mostly no internet allowed, as none at all may prove impossible until later.

With the G4, though, we have a lot more choices for software. We can enjoy limited internet also through the use of @eyoungren 's TenFourFox mod thread.

Models to look for:

• Power Mac G4 Digital Audio. The 733 MHz model packs enough horsepower to run 10.5 decently and any other Mac OS quite well.
• Power Mac G4 AGP graphics. They can carry 2 GB of RAM under Mac OS X, and it makes a huge difference.
• MDD/FW800 DP 1.25GHz/DP 1.42GHz as the best of the G4 towers.

Other decent choices:

• Mac mini G4
• PowerMac G4 Cube. DA CUBE still has its lovers and groups dedicated to keeping them up and running.

Avoid these models:

• There are G4 Road Apples, so place them here.

GPU Upgrades for Towers and G4 Cubes

• Place cards here. Make sure to say whether or not it fits a cube also.

Choice of Classic Mac OS:

• Mac OS 9.2.2 will be the best "Classic" Mac OS on any G4 and will provide the best pre-OS X software choices.
  Recommended minimum 128MB RAM
• Mac OS 9.1 will be the best option for software compatibility on low-end G4s with limited RAM.
  Recommended minimum 64MB of RAM.

Choice of Mac OS X:

• Mac OS 10.5
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will provide the most "up-to-date" and most compatible OS X experience. Remember to keep the Classic layer up by having OS 9 with it!
  Recommended minimum 384MB of RAM. 512MB or more is best.
• Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will provide possibly the fastest OS X experience, however software choices are more limited. All G4 models will run 10.3 natively with full hardware support.
  Recommended minimum 256MB of RAM.
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar introduced Quartz Extreme for compatible GPUs (16MB VRAM or more) and delivered decent performance and some improvements over earlier releases. All G4 models will run 10.2.8 natively with full hardware support.
  Recommended minimum 128MB of RAM.
• Mac OS X 10.1 Puma will provide the earliest, usable OS X workstation, while still providing a small selection of compatible software. Check hardware compatibility, though, as later G4's might not be able to boot into 10.1.
  Recommended minimum 128MB of RAM.

Mac OS 9 apps (remember the goal so limited web)

• iCloud IMAP-Mail: Classilla (BTW: once Classilla installed the rest comes via download from macintoshgarden.)
• Office: MS Office 2001, AppleWorks6, NisusWriter 4, Acrobat5, Print2PDF,
• Music: iTunes for Radio-Stream (sorry, no connection to my other iTunes-libraries)
• Graphic: Photoshop7, Elements2, Paint within AppleWorks6
• webDAV: Goliath
• ScreenSharing: VNCthing
• FileSharing: Transmit (Panic), Fetch. (FileSharing only with OSX 10.5 or earlier or Leopard-Server running in a VirtualMachine (/w VMware Fusion))
• File/Archive handling: StuffIt 5.5; Toast5
• Windows: VirtualPC3/4/5 /w Win2k (Favourites: IrfanView, RDP-Client, Office2000 and PalmDesktop with Conduit-Software: HanDBase, SmartListToGo, DocumentsToGo)
• just for the hell of it: iMovie2

Mac OS X (again remember the goal)

• LineIn (use external audio to passthrough to Mac speakers)
• Microsoft Office 2004 and the Docx conversion app
• AppleWorks 6, common on software restore discs.
• iWork 2009 or earlier
• iLife 2009 or earlier

Useful notes

• Place holder delete when list begins

Or do you have a G3?

Maybe you need a G5 workstation?

Thank you to Mod Squad for converting this to a wiki, because iForgot to check the box.

 

[heyimquinn]

G4 MDD's are not a bad idea. They come in single and dual CPU configurations and their upkeep isn't difficult. They're also the last PowerMac's to boot to OS9. It can address up to 2GB of DDR memory. Another thing that you can do is overclock it by soldering (e.g. boosting the FSB from 133MHz to 167MHz).

Another important factor is that the MDD's power supplies are prone to failure. One can convert an ATX power supply to boot the MDD.

AGP x8 cards have to be modified (scotch tape trick or cutting traces) to run in the MDD as the extra AGP x8 pins are already used by ADC and the machine won't even chime with a stock AGP x8 card.

The fans are the reason why people called this G4 the "Windtunnel". Replacing the fans and the thermal compound is probably the first thing you'll want to do unless you'd like to either go deaf or insane or both.

My own Dual 867MHz MDD is running at 1.08GHz I believe with a PC-flashed Radeon 9600 Pro and it's plenty fast under OS X.

I had plenty of fun getting this machine to run.

 

[Amethyst1]

Would it make sense to list Mac OS 8.6 for the Yikes! and Sawtooth, considering it's likely to be faster than Mac OS 9 on these machines while still providing a decent level of compatibility?

 

[09872738]

Just for the records: its the MDDs PSU fans generating most of the noise.

And yes, converting an ATX PSU is possible, but it comes with a few caveats; e.g. ADC connectors won‘t work.

I happen to have an MDD 1.25 Ghz single processor - and its loud as hell. I‘ll look into replacing the PSU fans one day to resurrect the monster

 

[originaldotexe]

models to look for:
MDD/FW800 DP 1.25GHz/DP 1.42GHz - basically the cream of the crop for g4 towers

video card updates:
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, ATI X800 XT, BFGTeK GeForce 7800 GS OC (towers)
nVidia GeForce 5200/nVidia GeForce 6200 (cube)

 

[pipetogrep]

• ANY iBook G4, due to the graphic card failure. You're downright lucky to have one working at all.

I guess I'm downright lucky. I just got a 2004 12" model and I'm loving it. It's in perfect shape.

 

[Amethyst1]

I guess I'm downright lucky. I just got a 2004 12" model and I'm loving it. It's in perfect shape.

My 1.2 GHz 12" hasn't had its GPU fail yet, but the 256 MB of soldered RAM have disappeared. Interesting...

 

[Project Alice]

Avoid these models:

• ANY iBook G4, due to the graphic card failure. You're downright lucky to have one working at all.

This is just plain incorrect... I have never in my entire existence heard of iBook G4s having a GPU problem.
I used a 1.2GHz from 2008-2012 in school. I’m sure it still works, but I sold it back then.
I currently have 3 other iBook G4s. They all work, including the one that looked like somebody used it as a shield.

There are some iBook G3s that have failed GPUs. No G4s.

 

[MysticCow]

This is just plain incorrect... I have never in my entire existence heard of iBook G4s having a GPU problem.
I used a 1.2GHz from 2008-2012 in school. I’m sure it still works, but I sold it back then.
I currently have 3 other iBook G4s. They all work, including the one that looked like somebody used it as a shield.

There are some iBook G3s that have failed GPUs. No G4s.

I will defer to you then and remove it. Or you could have done it and then explained because it's a wiki post.

 

[Dronecatcher]

This is just plain incorrect... I have never in my entire existence heard of iBook G4s having a GPU problem.

G4 iBooks did have the airport card problem though which resulted in a useless iBook unless remedied.

On my 1.33 G4 iBook I had to remove the airport card and delete all airport kexts to fix it.

 

[Project Alice]

G4 iBooks did have the airport card problem though which resulted in a useless iBook unless remedied.

On my 1.33 G4 iBook I had to remove the airport card and delete all airport kexts to fix it.

Yeah I’ve read about that. I have a supposedly affected model, but haven’t experienced the issue. Nonetheless I wouldn’t consider this a laptop breaking issue. It’s fixable, and a lot of us use ethernet anyways.

I will defer to you then and remove it. Or you could have done it and then explained because it's a wiki post.

Most wiki posts are locked to certain authors, so I usually don’t bother.
But thank you for fixing it😊 Absolutely nothing wrong with iBook G4s, save for the seldom airport card issue that only affects the late 2005 12” 1.33GHz models. As stated above, I have that model and it works fine airport card and all.

 

[lepidotós]

Power Mac G4 AGP graphics. They can carry 2 GB of RAM under Mac OS X, and it makes a huge difference.

I would say that the Gigabit Ethernet is probably a better pick for this spot since it's the pinnacle of the Sawtooth lineage. As much as I love the AGP, dual-processor is huge for OS X; 1x450 is kinda sluggish and hitches with Tiger even when maxed out with 2GB RAM and a 9800 Pro. They knew what they were doing shoving a second G4 in there even if it couldn't be felt from OS 9.