Thanks!
Powermac G4?
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pankakes123
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Powermac G4?
I've been working on a lot of old PC/Mac hardware lately, which is why I've made so many posts. Anyway, I've got an old Powermac G4 that displays beautifully on my HDTV. However, aside from its 128GB harddrive, it has the lowest end specs for G4s. It has a single CPU, running at 450 MHz. It also has 512 MB of SDRAM. I would really like to use this machine for late 90s early 2000s Mac gaming. (For those of you who don't know, that was a golden age for Mac ports.) Anyway what I'm wondering is where can I find good upgrades for this machine at a reasonable price. I have found a couple sites, but they price their upgrades at around 200 dollars just for a better CPU. Considering the age of this machine I feel that prices like that are ridiculous. Otherwise, would I be better off just buying a used G4 with better specs off Ebay for around 100 dollars. If I'd be better off doing that, I would be interested in selling this one of you make an offer. It is running Mac OS X version 10.4.11. It also has Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop CS. Other notable software is iLife and iWork 06.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Re: Powermac G4?
It's not worth putting much money into for upgrading, since as you mentioned, you can get a much better spec'ed machine for cheap. Unlike a lot of Macs, the G3-G4 era saw them using off-the-shelf RAM at the same specs that PCs were at the time.
To an extent, it might be easier to just stick with what you have unless things won't cut it. 512MB of RAM is paltry now, but it was a ton for the late 90s. The Rage 128/128 Pro you likely have in your Sawtooth would also stack up fairly well.
Personal opinion
If you don't already have the Mac versions of the ports you want to play, it'd make more sense to go for the PC editions. Mac ports very rarely exceeded the original versions, and you're far more likely to find patches, mods, input accessories, or whatever else for the PC versions than the Mac. Plenty of those era games, for example, are easy purchases on GoG.com.
That being said, as someone who has owned Macs since the mid 90s, I have a (moderate) pile of Mac games and software from that time, and none of my old machines still work. So, last year I bought a G4 for a similar purpose. For about $65 I got a Dual 1Ghz Quicksilver with 1.5GB of RAM, which is why I agree there's little point in upgrading.
Mine just has the base GPU in it, which if you're really looking at playing a lot of 2000+ era games on it, would be the area to focus. Good GPUs for the Mac, BIOS-flashed PC cards aside, have always been a bit on the rare/expensive side. Some of the old Voodoo cards that supplanted the 2D hardware did work - I recall popping mine in my Powertower Pro to play the Quake 3 demo - but I'm not sure of the driver availability now.
You'd want something prior to the FW800 equipped MDD, since those dropped OS 9 boot capability, and that's what you'd probably want to boot for most of the time period you mentioned (OS X's initial retail release was in 2001, the paid Public Beta nonwithstanding). From my experience, if you don't get the discs that came with the machine, piecing together a working 9.2.2 install for a later G4 can be a chore. When I finally found a bootable .dmg from a restore disc, I still had to hunt online for different enablers and system files to actually get all the hardware working.
To an extent, it might be easier to just stick with what you have unless things won't cut it. 512MB of RAM is paltry now, but it was a ton for the late 90s. The Rage 128/128 Pro you likely have in your Sawtooth would also stack up fairly well.
Personal opinion
If you don't already have the Mac versions of the ports you want to play, it'd make more sense to go for the PC editions. Mac ports very rarely exceeded the original versions, and you're far more likely to find patches, mods, input accessories, or whatever else for the PC versions than the Mac. Plenty of those era games, for example, are easy purchases on GoG.com.
That being said, as someone who has owned Macs since the mid 90s, I have a (moderate) pile of Mac games and software from that time, and none of my old machines still work. So, last year I bought a G4 for a similar purpose. For about $65 I got a Dual 1Ghz Quicksilver with 1.5GB of RAM, which is why I agree there's little point in upgrading.
Mine just has the base GPU in it, which if you're really looking at playing a lot of 2000+ era games on it, would be the area to focus. Good GPUs for the Mac, BIOS-flashed PC cards aside, have always been a bit on the rare/expensive side. Some of the old Voodoo cards that supplanted the 2D hardware did work - I recall popping mine in my Powertower Pro to play the Quake 3 demo - but I'm not sure of the driver availability now.
You'd want something prior to the FW800 equipped MDD, since those dropped OS 9 boot capability, and that's what you'd probably want to boot for most of the time period you mentioned (OS X's initial retail release was in 2001, the paid Public Beta nonwithstanding). From my experience, if you don't get the discs that came with the machine, piecing together a working 9.2.2 install for a later G4 can be a chore. When I finally found a bootable .dmg from a restore disc, I still had to hunt online for different enablers and system files to actually get all the hardware working.