[sra]

I have a dual 500 MHz PowerMac, one of the first machines of its kind. When I bought it, I had a lot of legacy SCSI peripherals that I wanted to keep, so I ordered a SCSI based machine instead of the standard ATA configuration.

To make an all too long story short, this machine has been an enormous amount of trouble ever since I got it.

If I want to recover this machine (which has just died for umpteenth time, visits to service facilities under AppleCare notwithstanding), what can I do? I intend to get rid of the (ATTO) SCSI controller, and put in ATA disks: is there an ATA controller on the motherboard? What else do I need to do and/or look out for? Is there any point in replacing the CPU card, for example with a PowerLogix dual 1.4?

[reader50]

There is a standard ATA-66 controller on the motherboard. Plug the drives in, boot from CD, format the drives and install OS, and you are home free.

Note: this motherboard controller does not support Cable Select. Set a single drive to Single, or dual drives to Master and Slave. A single drive set to Master or Slave will result in a delay on bootup, but will do no other harm. The motherboard also does not support drives larger than 128 GB (137 GB advertised).

By now you may be reaching the time to replace the battery too.

A dual 1.4 CPU card is rather expensive ($1,000+), especially if you are already buying a pair of drives ($180+ for a pair of 120GB drives). It seems to me that spending $1,200 + new vid card on upgrades is getting into rough territory. You can get a new dual 1.25 G4 for $1,600 with faster memory, a single G4 1.25 refurb for $1,100 ... or a refurb/new G5 for a little/somewhat more.