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Wanting to buy a PowerMac G4

D

davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,886
430
Alice, TX
Ok, so I've been in love with Apple since 2006 and I'm having a desire to purchase an older Mac to play around with and see what I missed out on.

After looking around, I've decided I want a PowerMac G4. The main reasonings are I can run OS 9 and it has the ADC and Pro Speakers port.

What do I need to look for? Any models to look for or stay away from? There's a Quicksilver 800Mhz with 15" Cinema Display on CL right now for $100. It's been up for a few weeks but they guy will not reply to my emails. :confused::confused:

I'd like to ultimately get a G5 but I think this will sooth my desires for now.
 
davidg4781 said:
Ok, so I've been in love with Apple since 2006 and I'm having a desire to purchase an older Mac to play around with and see what I missed out on.

After looking around, I've decided I want a PowerMac G4. The main reasonings are I can run OS 9 and it has the ADC and Pro Speakers port.

What do I need to look for? Any models to look for or stay away from? There's a Quicksilver 800Mhz with 15" Cinema Display on CL right now for $100. It's been up for a few weeks but they guy will not reply to my emails. :confused::confused:

I'd like to ultimately get a G5 but I think this will sooth my desires for now.
Click to expand...


The only G4 I can suggest to avoid would be the G4/350 PCI. I have that Mac at work and although a capable G4 I hate it for the fact that it's the only G4 that cannot use Target Disk Mode. It makes me have to get very creative sometimes when I need to do things with the hard drive. I understand that it's basically a Blue & White G3 with a G4 processor upgrade and that therefore the bus is unable to support TDM.



That said there are lots of people here who can suggest mods and upgrades who are more familiar with that than I.
 
davidg4781 said:
Ok, so I've been in love with Apple since 2006 and I'm having a desire to purchase an older Mac to play around with and see what I missed out on.

After looking around, I've decided I want a PowerMac G4. The main reasonings are I can run OS 9 and it has the ADC and Pro Speakers port.

What do I need to look for? Any models to look for or stay away from? There's a Quicksilver 800Mhz with 15" Cinema Display on CL right now for $100. It's been up for a few weeks but they guy will not reply to my emails. :confused::confused:

I'd like to ultimately get a G5 but I think this will sooth my desires for now.
Click to expand...

The G4 is a great machine, i suggest the Dual 450 Gigabit Ethernet, i have one and a 400 with a 1GHz upgrade and the 450 runs circles around it!
 
If you want one with a ADC port, OS 9 bootability, and Apple Pro Speaker support, don't get a Sawtooth/APG Graphics or Gigabit Ethernet or the FireWire 800 G4. The Sawtooth doesn't support ADC displays, the Gigabit Ethernet doesn't have a Pro Speaker mini-jack, the FireWire 800 can't boot into OS 9.

That leaves the Digital Audio, Quicksilver models, and the Mirrored Drive Door models. You could possibly use a Cube, but you'd have to use the Cube's hard to find USB Pro Speakers if you want to use Pro Speakers with it. Of all of them, I'd suggest a Quicksilver model.
 
Intell said:
If you want one with a ADC port, OS 9 bootability, and Apple Pro Speaker support, don't get a Sawtooth/APG Graphics or Gigabit Ethernet or the FireWire 800 G4. The Sawtooth doesn't support ADC displays, the Gigabit Ethernet doesn't have a Pro Speaker mini-jack, the FireWire 800 can't boot into OS 9.

That leaves the Digital Audio, Quicksilver models, and the Mirrored Drive Door models. You could possibly use a Cube, but you'd have to use the Cube's hard to find USB Pro Speakers if you want to use Pro Speakers with it. Of all of them, I'd suggest a Quicksilver model.
Click to expand...

Quicksilver over a MDD one?
 
The MDD's tend to be very loud and are known to have power supplies that like to die. But if you can find a dual 1.25Ghz 2003 MDD, it should be fairly quite. Apple made improvements to the last MDD's fan configuration.

One more thing to note: If you are planning to run Tiger or Leopard on this machine and use an ADC display, you will not have CoreImage support. Only one CoreImage capable video card with an ADC port and PowerMac G4 compatibility was ever made. I forget the exact model, but I do know that they where a BTO option and are currently very rare and expensive.
 
There are two graphics card option with ADC and CI support. ATI Radeon 9700 and nVidia GeForce 4 Titanium. I have both, one each on my two PowerMac G4, one is 1.42GHz FW800 and one is 1.25GHz 2003 upgraded to dual 1.42GHz. They both run 23" Apple Cinema Display HD.
 
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If it wear me i would go for a QuickSilver G4 i think they are more reliable then a MDD G4:) If you can live without the ADC port/Apple Pro Speaker's then the Sawtooth is the most reliable G4.
 
Reliability of QS PSUs is quite similar to MDD (especially Rev. A and B PSU).
No advantage here for QS. If OP would need a machine mainly for OS 9, I'd suggest Digital Audio, last batch i.e. 733 MHz with L3 cache. It's quiet, cheap and easily upgradeable to QS CPUs if more power is needed.

BTW, GF4Ti does not have HW CI acceleration. Of ADC ones (G4 compatible) only 9700 has it.
 
OS 9 is cool for an afternoon, but once the novelty wears off, it would be nice to run OS X with decent performance. I've always fancied the dual 1GHz Quicksilver. The MDD is faster, but it's notoriously noisy and the QS is better looking, IMHO.
 
Intell said:
The MDD's tend to be very loud and are known to have power supplies that like to die. But if you can find a dual 1.25Ghz 2003 MDD, it should be fairly quite. Apple made improvements to the last MDD's fan configuration.
Click to expand...

I vote for that 2003 dual MDD, I bought one last year so I can run Mac OS 9 on it and it works very well with Leopard too.
 
I've been pointed to the fact that this thread was 4 years old. Why did you necro it, mode11?
 
thread-necromancy-jpg.1299
 
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