My Dillema

[BlingBling 3k12]

If you haven't heard me rant on already about it... I got a Power Macintosh 7200/75 today for free. I am really looking forward to upgrading this machine. I have done all the math and it's cheaper than a new system (partially because it was free)

Anyways... there are 3 PCI slots in this Mac... I need 4 of them

Slot 1 - 400MHz G4 Upgrade Card (I could also use a 400Mhz G3)
Slot 2 - USB/FireWire Card
Slot 3 - ATA100 Card for a new hard drive

I need a Slot 4 for a Radeon 7000 graphics card

I have looked into SCSI drives for this but they are too (let me stress this... TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) expensive for me.

Is there any way that I would be able to boot OS X off of the FireWire drive or am I stuck?

What I need and WHY I need it:

The G4 upgrade card includes it's own 66 MHz bus so I don't have to worry about those limitations. I will add 384 MB to the 3 built in RAM slots on the G4/G3 card.

I need the USB/FireWire card for the work that I will be doing in OS X (light iMovie use along with iPhoto and iTunes... this won't get much work)

Unless I can find a pretty cheap SCSI drive (LOL!) then I need to have this ATA100 card... I was going to get a 60GB IBM DeskStar... but now I really only need about 20 GB since I won't be doing much. If there's a 7200 RPM SCSI Drive around 20 GB for under $150, I would be very happy and would have no use for the ATA100 card.

From what I've heard, I'll need a better graphics card for OS X, so the ATI Radeon 7000 looks like a good choice, since their regular Radeons don't recieve any more support. Therefore, I need the extra PCI slot.

I have a External SCSI port, so if there are any external SCSI solutions for cheap also, that would be a great help.

Thanks for listening to me and help me if you can.

Thanx

[serpicolugnut]

But even with the G4 upgrade, you are still going to have a hard time running OS X on this upgraded machine. OWC's XpostFacto tool will probably get it to work, but every update (especially the 10.2 upgrade) will probably cripple the OS installation.

I would forgo OS X. Run OS 9.2. Skip the internal ATA card. Get a good SCSI drive to run the main volume. Go ahead with the Radeon 7000 upgrade and the USB/Firewire card. You can then buy a nice 7200 RPM EIDE HD, stick it in a FW case (for about $60), and you can add as much external storage as you like.

[dricci]

Yeah, as stated in another post, OS X isn't support (read: Probably won't install without a lot of haxx0ring) on a 7200 even with upgrade card, and if it does work each update will pose new issues.

For as much as you spend in upgrade cards and your new drives, you could probably get a used CRT iMac.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Doesn't the Radeon 7000 PCI card have issues with older Macs, or was that just with the Beige G3s?

[Nummi_G4]

Can you even put a G4 in a 7200 ?

[.dev.lqd]

The 7200's PCI slots are wierd... from what I understand they're basically NuBus slots with PCI slots glued on top of them.

[JohnnyV]

Just save you money Bling and get another used mac or new mac

[homer]

Originally posted by JohnnyV
Just save you money Bling and get another used mac or new mac

I heartily agree. I've considered trying to upgrade my iMac, but by the time I'd be done buying a G3/G4 upgrade card etc., I'd be about halfway to a brand new machine. Why bother with the upgrade? Go whole hog!