[Cube13]

Hi All,

Hope somone can help me along with this one.

I work for a reseller and am the closest thing they have to a Mac person in the tech & sales dept. (I'm keeping the faith!)

We have a customer who has an older G4 400MHz tower currently running OS 9 on the original 20GB drive.

Customer has purchased the following software and would like us to install it.

Photoshop and Illustrator CS and Quark 6.1 and OS X

I'm thinking of selling him a memory upgrade and a new hard drive, installing OS X on the new drive as well as all the above apps, making the new drive the startup drive and leaving the original OS9 as a spare storage drive.

Is this the right or best way to go?

I would like this to succeed as it would help pave the way to getting more involved in the Mac world.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[effgee]

Hmmm ... Photoshop/Illustrator/Quark/OS X on a 400MHz machine is - at least for professional use - adventurous ... hope he likes the spinning beachball. Aside from the 100MHz bus speed, this machine has a ton of bottleneckes - RAM, HD, video card, processor ... As far as upgrades are concerned, if he really wants/needs to keep the box, here's what I would consider decent specs:

- RAM: 1GB+ (512MB absolute minimum, 768MB bearable)
- HD: 120GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache
- Video: Radeon 8500 (Radeon 9000 bearable)
- Processor: minimum 1GHz (single), better (single/dual) 1,4GHz

Starting out with memory and a new hard drive is a good idea (processor should be next) but the question remains as to how much sense this makes when looking at the total cost for such an upgrade ...

HTH + cheers

[reader50]

My own system is a G4 350 (AGP), and I will be keeping it a bit longer since the new G5s seem a poor deal.

Graphics: I've upgraded my graphics to a Radeon 8500, mostly for games. The stock Rage 128 Pro is ok for 2D work, but note that it is a 1-monitor card. I know there are two connectors on it, but only one will work at a time. The OSX GUI will benefit from a better card, most other 2D apps will not.

RAM: Agree with the above poster. 512 MB minimum, 1 GB recommended for OSX and those applications. I assume your machine is the 400 AGP rather than the Yikes 400 PCI. The difference:
• 400 PCI: max DIMM size of 256MB, max total RAM: 1 GB
• 400 AGP: max DIMM size of 512MB, max total RAM: 2 GB
If you go for the max DIMM sizes, be sure to get RAM recommended for Mac, especially on the 512 size for the AGP model. The most common 512 modules for PC do not work in these Macs, they went with a different row/column ratio than what the Apple motherboard supports.

HD: 20 GB is a bit tight today. Sounds like he is planning to do photo work, I'd recommend 60 GB or larger. Do not install an HD larger than 137 GB, this motherboard will not utilize more than 137 GB on a single drive. You can get around that with a PCI ATA card, but I do not recommend that for this machine. PCI ATA cards are far more expensive on the Mac than the PC, and 120 GB is actually very large unless he plans digital video work.

CPU: Try to stay away from these upgrades. Anything that can approach modern speeds is horribly expensive, and this motherboard may not support dual CPU upgrade cards. The cheapest upgrades go to 800 MHz, they are around $200. The most expensive dual CPU upgrades approach $1,000. If you did opt for a CPU upgrade, run Software Update on the box first and get the latest firmware offered for this machine. CPU upgrade cards will not function properly except with the latest version. If he never updated his firmware, you may need to apply more than one update - run Software Update again to see if another update is offered after you apply an earlier one.

Other: Make sure he is running the latest OS9 version, 9.22. Since he already has OS9, the updaters are free downloads. Also, run Software Update and watch for other useful updates, like a modem firmware updater. This machine shipped with poor modem firmware, resulting in low connection speeds and frequent disconnects. The modem firmware update vastly improved this. If it is not offered, then the owner already applied it sometime in the past (or this is a BTO model that shipped without a modem).

[DrBoar]

Getting into X with a 400 MHz G4 was not fun despite 640 MB RAM and a ATI 8500 card. Way to slow it was, even fast typing in Word was to much...

With a GigaDesign 1.2 GHz upgrade it feels as fast as the dual 1.25 I use at work. do not spend a fortune on a new CPU but a 800 MHz G4 CPU is avery worthwile investment. Ths is more important than getting more RAM if he has 256 MB or so. Getting more RAM is a good thing but only if you have the CPU for it .

If possible I would stay with the old HD and use the money not spend on a new HD on the graphical card or RAM.
If you buy new HD 100 dollar
a CPU 200-250 dollar or more
a graphical card 80-160 dollar
RAM for some money and you are up to 400 and above dollars that is not smart compared to the price of new eMacs.

So set a upper limit on spending first and then decide if you can make a viable upgrade with that budget.

[effgee]

Reader50 and DrBoar make some very good points. In the end (and IMHO), when considering what and/or if to upgrade, it all comes down to answering 2 questions:

1. How long will your customer use this machine? Will he have to use this box for another year or longer because he's on a tight budget or is he just trying to stay afloat for a few more months until he buys a new one?
2. I assume it'll be used for prefessional work - who else would buy the apps you mentioned for "casual/hobby" purposes What exactly is he planning to do with that machine? Multimedia and light DTP or heavy-duty print publishing?

Here's an example for a somewhat decent upgrade (prices from OWC):

• $ 100.00, RAM 512MB, 1 Stick (assuming he already has > 256MB)
  $ 160.00, Radeon 9000 Pro
  $ 100.00, HD, 120GB/7200/8
  $ 250.00, Sonnet Encore G4, 1GHz
  $ 610.00, Total

$ 600 is a serious chunk of change if he plans on dumping the box in a couple of months anyway. If, on the other hand, he has to earn a living with this computer the specs above are somewhat at the low end of a decent machine.

When I began upgrading one of the boxes in my office a year or so ago (a Sawtooth G4 dual 450, 512MB RAM), I started with a Radeon 8500 - that made the OS (10.2 back then) more responsive but it was by no means a fast computer. In the meantime, I upgraded to a dual 1GHz processor, 1.5GB of RAM, fast hard drives and now it beats the pants off all but the latest batch of G4's - I'm planning on keeping it for at least another 9-12 months so that by the time I'll replace it, the machine will be (almost) 6 yrs and the upgrades 2 yrs old - well worth the investment for me.

As mentioned above - the question your customer has to answer for himself is how long he has to keep the box running well (as in "he can do his work efficiently").

Cheers

edited because I can't spell worth a doo-doo before I had my 2nd cup of coffee

[Cube13]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the tips!

I'll try and find out how long he plans on keeping the Mac but when I spoke with them I mentioned that on a 400MHz G4, they will be looking at some upgrades and it might be better to go to a newer computer as this one will run slow with all of the updated apps.

Currently this is the only Mac in the shop and the only time they use it is to do some editing and then print the work off.

I completely forgot about the video card

If they still want to go ahead with this instead of purchasing a newer Mac, can it be done as follows.

1. Install a new drive
2. Install OS X on new drive
3. Install all new apps on new drive
4. Leave the original drive as is.

I'll find out more info and post again soon.

Thanks for all the help!

[Cube13]

Hi All,

Bumping up this topic

To the post above.

Can this be done as outlined in the steps above? How necessary is it too replace the video card to run 10.3?

From what the customer has told me, they only work with small files and they are not looking at anytime soon to replace the Mac, they don't mind spending some money but not for a new machine.

Also the requirements for the software don't look that huge according to the customer so its hard to justify pushing for the new machine.

Any comments greatly appreciated as I need to get something done for the customer right away.

Thanks!

[reader50]

You do not need to replace the video card for 10.3, the stock card will work ok. A better video card will make the OSX GUI more responsive, games will (sometimes) run faster, but CPU-bound tasks (like rendering or photoshop filters) will not be affected.

Note that the most likely video card upgrades (Radeon 8500/9200) make the machine unbootable from the original OS9 install/restore CDs - they lack the drivers for the later video cards (OSX boot CDs will work just fine). You will need to let them retain the original video card in case of catastrophic OS9 reinstall - or provide them with a later OS 9.xx boot CD.

In summary, this does not look like a games box. Add a new vid card if you want OSX to feel more responsive.

Your above-mentioned plan will work. Add the new drive to the cradle above the old drive, this G4 shipped with the screws needed to secure the new drive into the bracket. If the customer has lost those screws, substitute ones with the same thread and depth (steal one from the OEM HD and get duplicates).

You want to use the same bus as the OEM drive because that bus is ATA-66, the other bus supplies the optical/zip drives, and it is only ATA-33. Jumper one drive as Master and the other as Slave (Macs don't care which is which - there is no performance gain from being the Master drive). The OEM drive is most likely jumpered as Single, so be sure to rejumper both before booting up with the new drive. Do Not Use Cable-Select, this system does not support it.

Boot from OSX Install disk, install OSX as planned on the new drive. You will have to format it first, do that from Disk Utility, and check the box to "install OS9 drivers", otherwise when you are booted from OS9, the OSX disk will not mount and you cannot do *anything* to change that. Checking this option creates a small invisible partition (less than 32 KB) on the drive which contains an OS9-compatible bootloader which mounts the drive. It does not affect OSX performance in any way.

Add RAM. Especially if you are not upgrading the CPU, please add RAM, the machine desperately needs it to run OSX and those apps efficiently.

After or during the above upgrades, the machine may fail to power up at some point. PowerMacs will do that sometimes after hardware is changed, for no obvious reason. If so, press the CUDA reset button on the motherboard for 10 seconds, then try to power it up again. It should power up fine, reset the clock/calandar and a few other things afterwards. The CUDA reset button is near the battery and looks like this:



If there are any other problems, we'll be happy to help, and let us know how it comes out. Success stories are nice to hear too.