another $10 mac... G4 Tower

[ratdude747]

went to purdue surplus, walked out with a 450mhz G4 tower. had a dvd drive, a zip drive, an ati rage128 agp card, and a scsi card. no hd/ram

i added an 80GB hd and 1.5gb RAM (2x 512mb, 2x 256mb)

i have yet to run it as my mom will not let me take it into the house as we are trying to move out. i will this weekend...

i assume i can install mac os x leopard on it... once i get some dvd-r's, i will torrent it. will that run ok on my setup?

i may someday install debian or fedora on it... i will look in to it.

[Topcat]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

Nice score. You can put up to OSX 10.5 on it. 10.6 doesn't support ppc's anymore, only intel-based.

[Scenic]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

leopard (10.5) won't run out of the box. doesn't wanna install on systems below 866MHz.
even if you work around this, it'll run like crap.

Tiger (10.4.11) is what i'm running on my G4 400MHz @ 450 "Gigabit Ethernet" (codename). and that's already pushing it hard..

got 1.25GB RAM in it (2x 512 + 2x 128), a flashed & modified FX5200, 40GB Seagate HDD.

the only thing i find it useful for is for backing up mac HDDs.

oh and those Powermac G4's with Samsung and AcBel PSUs very often have power supply issues. if it's completely dead, prepare for a PITA PSU troubleshooting session or (like i did) rewire a standard ATX PSU.

another thing is that they are kinda picky about optical drives. all of them work for reading, but booting from CDs/DVDs is a whole different story. LG drives usually work.

[Topcat]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

oh and those Powermac G4's with Samsung and AcBel PSUs very often have power supply issues. if it's completely dead, prepare for a PITA PSU troubleshooting session or (like i did) rewire a standard ATX PSU.

I have one. Tell me more about the workaround for using an ATX PSU?! Those PSU's have a 24v rail in them, so I'd like to know how that's done.

[NxB]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

http://damntechnology.blogspot.com/2...er-supply.html

I second running tiger. Leopard is for newer stuff.

[ratdude747]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

good, as i now do not have to buy dvd-roms... ill use the cd option for tiger.


it has a delta psu...yay...

ill use the stock dvd-drive

[Scenic]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

delta PSU sounds like a "Sawtooth" G4 .. or even a MDD ?

@topcat
that mod is relatively simple. rewire atx psu to fit the powermac pinout and use 2 diodes to feed 12V to 28VStandby while its running and 5VStandby to that line while its off.
drawbacks are that ADC won't work anymore, firewire may get flaky, and if you attach too many USB devices it may not wake up from sleepmode anymore or not all the time.

http://www.atxg4.com/gige-da.html

however.. it's possible to use a laptop powerbrick instead of the 12V/5Vstandby as a source. works much better.

i've modified a powermac G4 like this before. instead of using 12V while running and 5V standby while off (which is obviously a whole lot less than the original 28V), i've mounted a laptop power brick above the optical drives with the primary side hooked up to the ATX PSU's input socket, so it's feeding 19V 3.34A to the 28V line all the time the mac is plugged in to the wall. works a lot better than the method described in the link above.
a 24V power brick (or anything closer to the original 28V and 3A IIRC) would be even better..

sure it's not really professional, but hey.. those boxes aren't really worth spending money on anymore. so i just used what i had handy.. which was an old unused laptop PSU..

[ratdude747]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

pics!

note- they are out of the back of my mom's van... what a mess...

[Scenic]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

yup.. that's a Powermac G4 "Sawtooth" .. direct predecessor of my own "Gigabit Ethernet" ..

doesn't have those powersupply problems. also only has a 20pin "ATX" plug instead of 22pin of the Gigabit Ethernet.
i wrote ATX in quotes because the pinout is still different from standard PC power supplies. only the plug is the same.


little tips before using it:
- take the left (looking from the front) side cover off and clean the dust off the 120mm fan's vents which are hidden underneath that cover. they're usually completely clogged with dust. you may need to remove the top "feet" to get it off
- clean out the powersupply (lotsa dust bunnies in there usually)

oh and i'm pretty sure the PRAM battery (something like the BIOS CR2032 cell) will be dead by now lol
i also did a hackjob on mine by mounting a CR2032 socket there. don't wanna spend 8 - 12 bucks on that special battery type if a CR2032 also works..

[ratdude747]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

looked clean... i will check on it when i have time.

[Topcat]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

that system looks like the one I have. It was given to me about 4 years ago, and it was dead as a hammer (won't even power up), and I just never messed with it.

Good information on OSX, I didn't know that. I have 10.5 on my 20" imac in my house. The one I rebuilt last night has 10.4 on it. My 10.5 is on a dual layer DVD, the lab rat 20" wouldn't read teh disk (has a DVD drive, but won't read the dual layer disk I'm assuming, I put the disk in, and it spits it right back out). It will read a regular DVD just fine, just not the dual layer, so I had to use 10.4, which is on CD's. I have a copy of 10.3, which belongs to a customer....I tried to make ISO's out of it, but a win machine wouldn't read the disk at all for some reason. Sees the cd as blank (strange because I could copy the 10.5 dvd).

[seanc]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

PPC Macs will enter dead as a dornail syndrome if their PRAM (stupid expensive battery) is dead.

Also, I wrote a guide for converting ATX PSUs to work in G4s back when I had my Quicksilver. I think I just fed the 28v line 12v - it only cares that it has some voltage - I'm wasn't using ADC and am not a heavy Firewire user. I sold it with those conditions as well.

[ratdude747]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

the pram battery is good-3.68v... but unlees i can get ma to letme bring it in and hook it up, it will likely not be for long.

[Scenic]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

that system looks like the one I have. It was given to me about 4 years ago, and it was dead as a hammer (won't even power up), and I just never messed with it.

Good information on OSX, I didn't know that. I have 10.5 on my 20" imac in my house. The one I rebuilt last night has 10.4 on it. My 10.5 is on a dual layer DVD, the lab rat 20" wouldn't read teh disk (has a DVD drive, but won't read the dual layer disk I'm assuming, I put the disk in, and it spits it right back out). It will read a regular DVD just fine, just not the dual layer, so I had to use 10.4, which is on CD's. I have a copy of 10.3, which belongs to a customer....I tried to make ISO's out of it, but a win machine wouldn't read the disk at all for some reason. Sees the cd as blank (strange because I could copy the 10.5 dvd).

there's a little windows tool named Transmac .. sent you a PM..

edit

PPC Macs will enter dead as a dornail syndrome if their PRAM (stupid expensive battery) is dead.

my mac works fine with an empty PRAM battery (or without one) but as soon as OSX starts it's complaining that jan. 1st 1970 can't really be the right date

[deckart]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

Or,if you have another Mac going,check to see if it has D/L by going to the Apple Icon on top left,click on About this Mac,click on more info,click on Disc Burning and it will give optical properties.If it can read/write D/l,find a Firewire cable connect the two macs,restart the Mac you want to install OSX on,whilst pressing T on the keyboard,chuck in 10.5 in the other Mac.then install by choosing the HDD on the other Mac,remember to format disk to APT.Or just hook up an external optical,reboot whilst pressing alt and selecting 10.5.

[seanc]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

OK Scenic, replace 'will' with 'can'.

My old Powermac 4400 would not boot until I replaced the battery. My Performa 475 requires turning on, off, on before it will boot.

Yes they're older Macs, but the same thing happened with the G3 iMacs and G4 PowerMacs too.

[ratdude747]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

well... i may have found the fix for the pram battery...

as it turns out, a cr2 camera battery fits. the lithium ones go for $10 for a two pack:



they are a bit longer...



but still fit....



note- they are 3v, not 3.6v... but if a 2032 cmos battery worked, then 3v is fine.

i bet you could get the cr2 cheaper...

[JOHNBOY]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

You got lucky , that version of the mac with the cpu socket off to the side actually supports a dual cpu. you might be able to get a dual 450 or 500 for pennies. The ones with the cpu by the rear panel do not fit a dual cpu as the cpu would cover the ram slots, but yours does so if you like it and want to keep it you might want to double the speed with a small upgrade. people actually pay $60 or so for a dual as they make good fileservers.

10.4 is already pushing it . If you had 10.3 it might even be better, but both will run. Don't even bother with 10.5 , it barely runs on a dual 1ghz

[pentium]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

Nice find. Sawtooths make good Rhapsody boxes.
Personally I got a Mirror Drive G4 that I upgraded to a dual 1.5ghz processor module for $2 and it rocks.

[Scenic]

Re: another $10 mac... G4 Tower

upgrading the graphics card on those is kinda easy too.
there are Geforce 2MX's out there which don't even need reflashing a mac BIOS to them. they just work out of the box in both PCs and those old powermacs o.O
notably the
- ASUS V7100 (GF2 MX400) and the
- ProLink / Pixelview GF2MX400 (MVGA-NVG11AM)

FX5200's also work, but need reflashing a mac BIOS and modifiying the AGP connector (cut 2 or so traces to force it into AGP 4x mode)

2 sites related to Mac graphics cards (flashing them, compatibility etc)
http://themacelite.wikidot.com
http://xenomorph.net/?page_id=575

Mac graphics card BIOSes
http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2