G4/400MHz OSX?

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shemina

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I've been working for a very poor theatre company (the last 2 months). I was delighted to see Macs in use but then horrified at how poorly kept the systems are. So, I've had nothing but trouble since I started. My office seems to be the land where old computers go to die. I have piled up on my desk 3 computers that just don't seem to be working. Well, the oldest (PowerPC G3/233MHz) is working best, so not quite:)

Here are my questions about my 3 messed up kids:

1) the newest computer is a PowerPC G4/400MHz. Do you think it can handle OSX (Jaguar)? or would I be better off going with OS 9.1? I'm going to do a clean install in either case.

2) the middle is an imac G3/350. Its ethernet socket doesn't seem to be working. I can't get a consistent connection. Is this a common problem or has anyone ever heard of this happening?

3) how do I keep myself from going crazy?

Thanks in advance
 
About your 2nd question: does "can't get a consistent connection" mean you get a instable connection or no connection at all? Plug them and define certain ip-Adresses to certain macs and see, if you can ping the machines. Hope you are familiar with this step, otherwise I will tell in more detail. Just let me know.
3rd question: keep on posting your probs here. That should stop you going crazy ;)
 
I'm currently on a 400 MHz B&W G3 with 448 MB of RAM and a 40 GB HD that works fine... with Panther.
 
I have a G4 400MHz (Yikes! model) with 768MB of RAM. After using my Powerbook (1.25GHz) the interface speed on the G4 is, well, crappy to put it plainly.
 
Nummi said:
I have a G4 400MHz (Yikes! model) with 768MB of RAM. After using my Powerbook (1.25GHz) the interface speed on the G4 is, well, crappy to put it plainly.
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How did I login with that account ? :p

It depends on the use of the G4. I tried working with iMovie on my G4 400Mhz, not good. General webpage development on the other hand is fine.

3) how do I keep myself from going crazy?
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Lots and lots of drugs...
 
Zammy-Sam said:
About your 2nd question: does "can't get a consistent connection" mean you get a instable connection or no connection at all? Plug them and define certain ip-Adresses to certain macs and see, if you can ping the machines. Hope you are familiar with this step, otherwise I will tell in more detail. Just let me know.


Sometimes the imac gets a connection and sometimes it doesn't. At first I thought it was the ethernet cord but I tested it on another machine and it worked fine. I thought perhaps it was the wall outlet but I get a very consistent connection using the very old power pc G3; so it can't be that either. It just seems that sometimes I turn on my system in the morning and I can print from the shared printer and I can go online and sometimes (more frequent) I can't. BTW what's ping?
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On your second unit... I had Jaguar running on an old tangerine iBook (g3 300 384 meg RAM and 3 gig HD) and I thought it was fine (basic processing, light database stuff, light photoshop). I wouldn't want to go back to it, but I don't think you should have problems with the 350, depending on the use. More RAM means better performance.
 
Up until recently I've been using an old g3 300 beige desktop with OS X and it's worked alright. Not the faster experience in the world, but overall a better experience than with the pre-X OSs. I installed 10.3 on the beige after some creative playing and it seemed to run alright (faster), but the whole built-in USB thing was causing some issues so it's back on 10.1.5 now. The general consensus is Panther is faster than Jaguar, which is faster than Puma or whatever they called the 10.1 series.

RAM, RAM, RAM. The more you have, the better it'll be.
 
Panther is more stable and much faster, although on the downside, Safari seems to be garbage under panther for me. It use to be fast, now it lows down for all types of stuff, like Ultrashock forums. But you need a lot of memory, but it still runs fine for me.

And window scaling is painfully slow in some apps, ESPECIALLY Safari and iTunes.
 
Ever thought about selling all three computers and getting an eMac for that office of yours? Might clear up a little bit of deskspace. :)

OS X works on G3's and above. Just not the 604 chips and earlier. You need a good video card and RAM to make it a satisfying experience.
 
Its going to be very dependant on RAM and how many Apps you need to run.
I have a 400Mhz G4 at work with 768Mb RAM, it ain't quick when I'm running a lot of Apps, especially things like Apple Remote Desktop and iPhoto, with a fair bit of network activity going on, but at home I had the same (its upgraded to 500Mhz now) and it ran a lot faster, but then I pretty much only run Safari and iTunes at home - there is a noticeable drop in performance when running things like Photoshop CS and iPhoto (I haven't installed iLife 04 yet).
When I upgraded from 400 to 500 at home, the performance improvement was a moment of joy - likewise when I went from 512 to 640 to 768 RAM, its quite amazing the difference, wish I could speed up PCs considerably just by bunging some more memory in...
 
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