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Diggory Laycock · 07:19 AM

Hello,

I have an ageing Yikes! G4.

The FireWire on this machine seems very flaky - in early versions of OS X I had problems with external FW Hard Drives (although thankfully, that's not a problem any more.)

The Current problems I have with FW on this machine are to do with Quicktime and FireWire - I have a Formac Studio that I use to record and playback Televsion to a TV.

If I unplug the device then often QT will not recognise it until I restart. (which is not ideal - since it's a web server as well.)

I don't have these problems with my either of my powerbooks. (17" 1GHz G4 alBook and 500MHz Pismo )

I suspect that since the Yikes! was such a mutant model that the FireWire is fundamentally rubbish.

Could I solve this by buying a third-party FireWire card and just plugging it in a PCI slot?

Would it work out of the box? Would I need special drivers?

Or are the problems further in the guts of the mac? (on some controller on the motherboard for example.)

Nivag · Jun 26, 2004, 04:50 AM

Well, according to Lacie, their card doesn't need drivers. see here

they also do a Firewire 800 card as well clicky

i'm personally not a great lover of the Yikes! machines, they have always caused me a lot of problems in the past, not sure why, maybe the UK spec'd ones were suspect?

Diggory Laycock · Jun 26, 2004, 05:56 AM

Originally posted by Nivag:
Well, according to Lacie, their card doesn't need drivers. see here

they also do a Firewire 800 card as well clicky

i'm personally not a great lover of the Yikes! machines, they have always caused me a lot of problems in the past, not sure why, maybe the UK spec'd ones were suspect?

The reason they are so unreliable is because of the way they were designed - they shoehorned a G4 procesessor on to a G3 motherboard - thus the name (Yikes!)

Thanks for the links - �20 seems cheap enough to give it a punt - it it doesn't work - at least I've got a few extra FW ports!

I think I can see how to solve this problem for ever - and I think it involves buying a more recent G4.

Diggory Laycock · Jul 8, 2004, 07:28 AM

Yay!

In case anyone was wondering (which I doubt they were!) - the new FW card appears to have worked wonders - I haven't had any Problems since I installed it - I can plug and unplug my Video device as much as I want - without QuickTime losing the ability to output to it. (8 days without a problem so far.)

Thanks.

If you have a Yikes! G4 - I recommend getting another FW card.

d.fine · Jul 8, 2004, 12:08 PM

Diggory : My GF also has a Yikes, and I'd like to install OS X onto it. Since you're running OS X on a Yikes I'd like to know what specs your Yikes has, to know whether OS X would run properly on the one we have ... sorry this is a little off-topic, but it would be of great help, thx in advance !

Landos Mustache · Jul 8, 2004, 12:31 PM

Any old cheapo no name Firewire PCI card should work 100% with no drivers. It worked for me on my old beige g3 tower even.

Diggory Laycock · Jul 8, 2004, 12:46 PM

d.fine:

I'm sure OS X will run fine - mine is 400MHz 640MB of RAM and the standard rage128 Graphics card.

It has the 10Gig HD that was in there at birth and I also put in an 80Gig HD.

I replaced the CD drive with a Lite-On CD-writer, but it wouldn't boot off that - so I put it in a FW case and restored the original CD Reader.

And now it has an extra LaCie FW PCI Card.

I use it as a web server / PVR and MP3 jukebox - it does those jobs perfectly well.

Chito · Jul 8, 2004, 01:04 PM

d.fine...I just gave my trusty Yikes overclocked to 450mhz (originally 400 mhz) to my daughter. It has the original 10 gig drive plus a 40 that I put in some time ago. I too replaced the original cd rom with a cdrw and also mine won't boot, but whenever I need to boot off the drive I just pull out the cdrw and put the cd rom back in....I know a pain in the ass but hey...I just never got around to buying a firewire case like Diggory. It's a good machine and will run OSX fine. I've run every version since it first shipped and each one gets better. The Yikes does have 768 mb ram and an ATI Radeon graphics card. The first G4 case design was my favorite....I think the graphite color scheme was classy.

d.fine · Jul 8, 2004, 01:24 PM

Originally posted by Chito:
d.fine...I just gave my trusty Yikes overclocked to 450mhz (originally 400 mhz) to my daughter. It has the original 10 gig drive plus a 40 that I put in some time ago. I too replaced the original cd rom with a cdrw and also mine won't boot, but whenever I need to boot off the drive I just pull out the cdrw and put the cd rom back in....I know a pain in the ass but hey...I just never got around to buying a firewire case like Diggory. It's a good machine and will run OSX fine. I've run every version since it first shipped and each one gets better. The Yikes does have 768 mb ram and an ATI Radeon graphics card. The first G4 case design was my favorite....I think the graphite color scheme was classy.

I agree, it is a classy case, I also like the colors.
I'm thinking I'll need a lot more RAM to run OS X properly, since she only has 128 MB (at least I think so, I can't check, it's packed since we're moving next week) and has only 32 VRAM. When I got my PB they told me OS X needed AT LEAST 512 RAM, even better it would run just perfect with 1 GB ... so my thought was 'a 400 MHz with 128 RAM, hmmm

'
We tried getting more RAM some time ago, but the PC100 was really expensive, plus they gave us the wrong one (PC133) ... haven't gotten around to it again since. But now she barely uses the Yikes and is constantly trying to snatch my AluPB ...

so I'm looking to put OS X on there, keep her happy

scottiB · Jul 8, 2004, 03:53 PM

PC133 memory will work fine...

Eriamjh · Jul 8, 2004, 07:00 PM

Be careful with cheapo FW cards. I put one in my Sawtooth and the machine would not deep sleep (fans stayed on).

d.fine · Jul 9, 2004, 02:13 AM

Originally posted by scottiB:
PC133 memory will work fine...

We tried PC133, it only recognizes half the stick ...

Chito · Jul 9, 2004, 05:40 AM

Yeah, 512 is a minimum for OSX. It was my underatanding that pc 133 would work but would run at the slower pc 100 speeds. Maybe you had a bad stick?

d.fine · Jul 9, 2004, 05:45 AM

Originally posted by Chito:
Yeah, 512 is a minimum for OSX. It was my underatanding that pc 133 would work but would run at the slower pc 100 speeds. Maybe you had a bad stick?

Got the stick @ local Apple Store ... maybe it was bad, but since they wanted to charge � 80 extra to change the PC133 stick to a PC100 stick we said 'no thanks'. I've tried 1 other stick, a 512 MB PC133 stick from a Pc and it also read as 256 RAM ...
(someone told me once they would work so I just tried)

Eriamjh · Jul 9, 2004, 10:51 AM

Yikes G4s can only take up to 256MB DIMMS. There is nothing wrong with the computer or the RAM.

Chito · Jul 9, 2004, 01:11 PM

I forgot about the 256 Mb limitation. You're right Eriamjh.
This by the way is a shameless way to get my 100th post......

d.fine · Jul 9, 2004, 02:33 PM

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
Yikes G4s can only take up to 256MB DIMMS. There is nothing wrong with the computer or the RAM.

I guess that's an important detail they ' forgot ' to tell me at the Apple Store... Thx !!