[sir_hc]

Quick question - I have a sawtooth G4 450 with a stock hard drive. It's had the RAM upgraded to 512MB and is running Panther 10.3.2. I would like to upgrade the hard drive to a larger one and also the RAM too.

What's the largest size drive I can put in? Is it true that these machines don't support large ide drives (>128GB)? I was told only later models support the big drives.

Is the maximum RAM also 1GB for these machines?

Thanks

[Kevin Moon]

You can put drives larger than 128GB if you get an ATA 133 PCI card. But without the PCI card you are limited to the 128GB drive size. I have a sawtooth machine and it has three drives in it a 200, 80, 27. I'm not totally sure about the RAM as I'm up to 768MB.

[Luca Rescigno]

On the onboard IDE controller, you can have up to 128 GB per drive (128 GB according to the computer, 137 GB according to the manufacturer). There aren't a whole lot of 137 GB drives, so the largest drive where you could read the entire thing would be 120 GB. The earliest PowerMac to support drives larger than that was the Quicksilver 2002, unfortunately.

Sawteeth have four RAM slots and can put a 512 MB DIMM in each slot, for a maximum of 2 GB. However, in OS 9, only 1.5 GB will be recognized. In OS X, you'll be able to see the full 2 GB.

[sir_hc]

Thanks for both your answers. I don't have any IDE card and won't be getting one so I guess I'm looking at a 120GB drive. As for the RAM, it is 128+128+256 so I'll probably just stick a 512 inside and be done with it. I don't need over 1GB anyway in such an old machine.

[sir_hc]

Aarrgh! Had a problem with the memory. I got 3 sticks of 512MB PC133 168pin SDRAM and none are recognized by the computer.

I took out all existing memory and one by one tested each 512 module and none are recognized. Computer just starts up with black monitor, hard drive and fans work but main power button pulses and it makes intermittent bong tones.

I then put in an old 256MB PC133 stick that works and one by one a 512. Computer starts up but every 512 does not show up in system profiler.

Even though the sawtooth specs say PC100 I thought PC133 was backward compatible as shown by my working PC133 256MB stick.

Could it be bad memory or wrong specs?

NEW- I jsut spoke to the customer service rep and he said maybe the 512 module with 16x32MB chips is too large to be recognized by the older motherboard. Also since all 4 modules don't work suggests not bad memory but some compatibility issue.

[SSharon]

I don't know the answer to your ram questions but if you just need more storage space and this computer may get replaced in the next year or so consider getting a firewwire hard drive. The current G5's don't have enough hard drive bays and this will allow you to keep your investment in a non serial ata drive and let you go past the 128gb limit. There are still some size limitations, but I think they are more dependant on the chip in the case. I bought a 160gb drive for my MDD which only supports large drives on the newer ata controller (which is full) and put it in a firewire/usb 2 case and it works great writing at about 30mb/s.

[BZ]

I put a WD 120GB SE drive in my Sawtooth and it liked it just fine. Took the 45GB I had and moved it to the second place. Took the 10GB drive that was there and threw it into a Firewire case ($35 from OWC) and it is just as happy.

You should max more of the Ram though as you do this. 512MB is not enough for OSX. It likes more so give it more. I brough mine upto 2GB and that is as far as it will go.

You might also want to do the video card, an 8500 is really cheap now and will get you all the Expose goodness you need.

BZ

BTW: That is exactly what I did, drive/ram/video and added a 1 GHz PL G4.

BZ

[Freeflyer]

I just added a 120Gb drive to my sawtooth, and have a 200Gb in a firewire case externally. Both work just fine. The firewire case option is the way to go. Very cheap and very upgradeable.

Not all pc133 memory is compatible. There's a bunch of threads on here about it, I just went through the memory upgrade a few weeks ago. If you can get pc100 compatible you'll be fine.

J.