"new" g4 powermac

L

lilmacuser

Registered
My trusty iMac G3 finally completely died on me, and I'm sick of scouring ebay for parts. At any rate, with my junior year of college approaching very quickly, I purchased a simple 450mhz powermac G4.
Any issues I need to be aware of? I plan on using my 120gb harddrive in the machine with the 20gb harddrive it comes with. The memory I have collected from the iMac (slot-loading) is compatible, with a max of 1.5gb.
Any super upgrades that aren't too pricey that you think are worthwhile? Comments, anyone?
 
I used to have an AGP/450 G4, and I put lots of upgrades into it. I bought a Sonnet 1 GHz upgrade, which was nice, but I found it to be buggy, and you might as well get a different machine for the price of it. Maxing the memory is cheap, and worth it. I would look into a new video card, especially if you have the AGP model. I found that upgrading the video card greatly sped up the graphic-intensive OS X UI (at least, compared to what the card was designed for, under OS 9). I used it with the matching graphite CRT, which was enormous. I use a 19-inch LCD with my PowerBook, and I'll never use a CRT again. An LCD would be a good investment as well, as they can easily be had for under $200.
 
I just acquired a small lcd (I live in a small college apartment), I think I'm going to use a pci slot to add more 2.0 usb ports. I'll look into graphics card, thanks guys. :)
 
I just bought a Giga-Designs 1.54GHz single G4 upgrade, they're $259 new, and the 1.4Ghz version can be had for $229. Very much worth it! Photoshop CS2 now runs great. Plus the upgrade can go with you if you decide to get a prettier G4 such as a Quicksilver, with the faster 133MHz bus.

Sometimes the lower end 1.2GHz G4 upgrades go on sale for sub-$200 and even that would be hugely worth it, the difference in even basic web browsing and email type things is enormous. That and the video card, for sure :)
 
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