Now even poorer

[sinclair_tm]

I just got a steal deal on a digital audio g4/466. it came with 1.25gig ram, geforce 2 vid card, 60gig hd, and 2x superdrive. its got 10.3.9 on it. some questions for ya'll out there.
1. i want to use it for turning tapes and vinly into mp3s, whould the griffin imic be a good choice being the mac lacks a mic jack.
2. what vid card would you recommend. i'm poor, and many looking for a card with a dvi connecter on it. i don't do much gameing on the mac ( i have a win xp box with a 6600gt vid card for that, hl2 rocks!), just quake 2 and hexen, so i was thinking something with 64mb on it. or should i just get a adc to dvi adaptor?
3. how would tiger run on this thing?
4. i will be upgradeing the cpu. what would you recomend? i was looking at the powerlogic 1ghz g4 from owc for around $180. i think $100 for .2ghz over that is alittle much, and would it really be that big a difference form 1ghz to pay 100 more for 1.2 or 200 more for 1.4?
5. did this computer have any sleeping issues with hard drives? when i got it, the hd kept clicking off and on ( heard the heads park and drive spin down, then spin back up). i went into the pref panes and turned off put hd to sleep, that didn't fix it. so i turned off all sleep options and put in a second hd ( from my macinstine) and it hasn't clicked sence. so i don't know if it was the power management or the second hd that fixed it.
6. lastly for now. when the hd started clicking, i tryed to back up the hd, i have a superdive, and it made a coster out of my blank dvd-r 1/2 way through the burn with the os. i then used toast and it got 95% and then locked up after showing a diag that there were permission problems. i forced quit, the os told me i inserted a blank disk, i told it to eject it and stuck it back in and it mounted?!? it is a pioneer 103, and it is updated. what is with these drives? is it my 8x fuji media? i would like to burn dvd's with out making costers.

i know its alot, but i would like all the ideas and help you got.

 

[ngcomputing]

when i got it, the hd kept clicking off and on ( heard the heads park and drive spin down, then spin back up). i went into the pref panes and turned off put hd to sleep, that didn't fix it. so i turned off all sleep options and put in a second hd ( from my macinstine) and it hasn't clicked sence. so i don't know if it was the power management or the second hd that fixed it.

If it's a "tick tick tick" or tapping sound it's probably a bad sector on the drive, probably someone powered down the machine (without shutting it down) and the head pinged the drive platter. I would really consider tossing the bad drive --

 

[Natobasso]

Griffin's iMic (I have it) is a great basic choice to use for recording your tapes. Remember it's BASIC so don't expect miracles, but it does what it says it does. http://www.griffintechnology.com/

You will need an RCA/1/8" adaptor to connect your tape player to your iMic.

 

[riccbhard]

I agree with ngcomputing, if the hard drive has a bad sector is best to clone a copy of it to another hard drive and make sure it can boot of the new HD and then disconnect or remove the old one. I've had PCs make these noises before and it always turned out it was a bad sector(s).

One time I had an older PC running Linux sitting across the room from my Mac. It was on, and later that day there was a power outage. This didnt affect the Mac from what I can tell, but the PC harddisk does the same thing you described.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

6. lastly for now. when the hd started clicking, i tryed to back up the hd, i have a superdive, and it made a coster out of my blank dvd-r 1/2 way through the burn with the os. i then used toast and it got 95% and then locked up after showing a diag that there were permission problems. i forced quit, the os told me i inserted a blank disk, i told it to eject it and stuck it back in and it mounted?!? it is a pioneer 103, and it is updated. what is with these drives? is it my 8x fuji media? i would like to burn dvd's with out making costers.

You can't just drag-and-drop all the files on the hard drive to a DVD and then burn it. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your system to a disk image that you create, then burn that disk image file to a DVD for a backup.

 

[sinclair_tm]

as far as copying the drive, i created a disk image the size of a dvd, then opened terminal and used ditto ( which i learned from my macaddict mags, love them, you all should subscribe ::love:: .) then tryed to burn the disk image. but why has it gone away after installing a second hd, and turning all power saving and sleep off?