Whats left to do on my G4?

The CPU, the hard drive, the video card, and the OS.

 

It'd probably help if we knew what specific PowerMac G4 you have. Then we can give you more specific upgrades to choose from.

 

He has a Sawtooth.

You can overclock it a bit, maybe to 450Mhz. But it isn't really worth it on such an old machine. The stock cooling would be able to handle it.

 

It's doable, but for the money you'd spend on extra cooling, you could purchase a used dual processor G4. They go pretty cheap on eBay. Here's a link to a dual 1GHz from a Quicksilver for $30. You'd need to purchase a heat sync as well. I know on OWC's website, they sell CPU upgrades that are compatible with a Sawtooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, and Quicksilver...so I know the Dual G4 from eBay can physically fit in your Sawtooth. I'd just wait and see if anyone else on here can verify a Dual 1GHz from a Quicksilver will function properly in a Sawtooth.

 

Magic. Actually just deduction based on the specs you listed. Three PowerMac G4's came with a 400Mhz G4. Two can take 2GB of ram and one of those two came with a 10GB hard drive. The Studio Display threw me for a loop, but them I remembered that Apple called their big 17" CRT a Studio Display.

Tiger runs fairly well on a 400Mhz G4. Panther may be a bit faster, but you'd loose lots of compatibility. Once you get around 1Ghz, Leopard can be faster if you have enough ram.

A dual Quicksilver G4 will work in a Sawtooth. But the Sawtooth must have a UniNorth revision of 7 or higher for the Sawtooth to be able to use dual G4's. There was a little utility that could check it for you.

 

Tiger would function on a 400MHz, but it would be a little slow. I'd stick with Jaguar unless you need software that only runs on Panther or Tiger. The reason I chose Jaguar is because it requires less RAM (128MB vs 256MB) and also, Panther is just as outdated in terms of support as Jaguar is. Neither has a stable web browser anymore.

If you decide to upgrade the CPU, I'd run Tiger until you upgrade your GPU. Then I'd run Leopard.

 

Here's some more information on the compatibility of Sawooths with a dual G4: http://www.powerlogix.com/support/agp_dual_compat/index.html

 

I never realized a utility like that existed. I'll be sure to bookmark that.

 

If you really want to, I guess you could get one of those 7448 upgrades. Then, though, it would be essentially a different computer, and those 7448 upgrades are really expensive, even with the significant performance boost. I'm not completely sure your G4 model is compatible with it.

 

A 7448 will work in a Sawtooth. The best of course is the dual 1.8Ghz 7448. They are really hard to find now days and can sell for $550+.

 

550 beans!!! Holy ripoff Batman!

Okay, granted. I know the 7448's are one hell of an upgrade. But DAMN! You could get a newish refirbed mini for that price. Or if you want to stay PPC a really shweet G5 quad. While I get the nostalgia of the Sawtooth (I personally owned 3 in my time). That kinda bread is just nuts.
I agree with the more conservative route. Find a dual proc on ebay for pennies, upgrade the hd to the fastest you can afford. You could even keep the drive you have now for boot/OS and install a nice SATA drive with an adapter. I just did that here with this PB 1.5 and I do not regret it in the least! Took a bit of fiddling to get the keyboard to sit right but well worth it.

 

In 2002-2005 those didn't cost as much and their usefulness was much higher as well.

 

The largest you can go without modification is 128GB, but there are ways around this. Check out this LowEndMac article about it. I'm sure it'll help you find a solution that works for you.

 

Where the heck does somebody find a 128GB IDE hard drive anymore?

Ditch the G4 and get a refurb Mini or a G5 Quad. Both will wipe the floor with your G4 and cost less than what you're dumping into that $30 computer.

 

You don't need to use an ide drive. There are sata to ide adapters available

 

Yes. Lil Chillbil, take note. Many things can be done. See below.

Any particular reason to keep using the Zip drive? CD-R/DVD-R is a wonderful thing - much cheaper and much higher capacity. You could return the Zip disks you bought, toss the Zip drive and use the open drive bay for another HDD. Seriously, unless you really need the Zip drive for some reason, you may want to consider other options. Just a thought.

I have a PowerLogix CPU upgrade in my Digital Audio (upgraded from stock dual 533 mHz to dual 1.67 gHz). Well worth the (somewhere between $400 and $500) I paid for it in 2006.

For that matter, Lil Chillbil could buy a Sonnet PCI SATA card or two (depending on the number of drives he wants to install - they each run 2 drives). Then he could buy either SATA HDDs or SSDs to run off the PCI card(s) instead of off the motherboard's ATA connection. Lil Chillbil this will also solve the HDD capacity barrier per your question below.

You could get an SSD for your boot drive and use HDDs for your data. Many users do that and enjoy the benefits of increased speed from the SSD.

Sonnet PCI SATA card (see above) breaks the 137GB per drive limit. As an example, my Digital Audio has two of those Sonnet PCI SATA cards running a 1TB drive and two 500GB drives.

Here's the card I'm talking about:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet Technologies/TSATA/

It would be a good idea to make sure this will work in the Sawtooth model.

Lil Chillbil, there's a lot you can do to your Sawtooth depending on how much you want to spend. I don't know about video card options but I'm sure a quick search on google or on this website will turn up some results for you. You can do a lot more upgrading if you choose to. About the only thing I haven't done with mine is an SSD upgrade.

 

Lots of useful info on this post. Thanks guys

Without wanting to hijack this thread will the dual 1GHz from a Quicksilver work on a dual g4 450 MHZ mystic?

 

Taylor i used to own a similar machine,and panther run's better then jaguar...however as both have outdated web browsers (could run camino 1.6 on panther) but still to many page errors ect....i would suggest if Lil plans on using as internet browsing machine,to run mac os 9.2 and use classilla...

 

Dunno, do you have it?
If not try to dual 1.6 7455 from OWC (macsales.com)

I love my Digital Audio G4 <3