[beagle]

Hi,

I recently acquired my first Mac, a B&W G3 (Yosemite), with Revision 1 motherboard. Thinking about possible upgrade paths. Have looked at the PCI UltraATA cards (to get around Rev. 1 IDE corruption problems) and the various G4 ZIF upgrade boards.

Noticed on eBay someone selling a Sawtooth G4 motherboard. They noted that it could be installed into a B&W G3 case as an upgrade although the mounting points would have to be modified. Claimed that power supply was the same.

I have experience building PC's, but am discovering that this is an uncommon activity with Macs. Is there any reason that installing a Sawtooth into a B&W case wouldn't work? Most of the guts are on the motherboard, it seems almost like a clean swap, if the form factor is right (or close to right), and if the power supply will connect. The rest -- RAM, drives, etc. -- would presumably connect to the Sawtooth just fine. It'd need an AGP video card I suppose.

Any comments? Are there "legitimate" places to buy newer Mac motherboards? It just seems like it'd be price competitive to buy a Sawtooth MB plus a G4 CPU compared to these upgrade cards.

thanks for any advice,
Aaron

[davidflas]

There are places that you can buy newer mac motherboards from. Pick up a copy of MacWorld and Madaddict, then check out the adds in the back. You should find several places to try. As far as the physical mounting of the motherboard you might want to check with the people you plan to buy it from, they should be able to tell you how feasible it is. I know that board will fit, but I havent' seen the two machines side by side to see how exact a match it will be. You might want to find someone who has a sawtooth machine and compare the cases first had. Hope that helps.

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"life is pain, Highness, anyone who tells you different is selling something."--The Man in Black from The Princess Bride

[muttfree]

Well, if the mobo is from one of the EARLY sawtooth machines, then it should fit. The only real difference between the last B&W G3 (rev 2 or 3) and the first G4's case is about a 1/8 to 1/4" in overall outside dimensions. And the backplate where all the ports are was exactly the same too, but changed with the first rev to the G4 machines. Some of the mounting points may be a little off and have to be re-drilled, but other than that, it should work fine. Every thing else should work fine, as all the HD's on both are ATA/66, ram is PC-100, PCI bus, ect ect are the same on both machines.

And the early G4's had PCI graphics cards (ATI Rage 128, not the AGP Pro card), so you should be able to find a Rage 128 for way less than even a PCI Radeon.

And yes, you are correct that building custom macs is not that common of a practice. This is simply due to the fact that the mobos and other components are not nearly as widely available as pc parts.
Of course the mac parts that are available are all from one mfgr, and are normally of much better quality and higher priced as well.
But alot of that changed when Apple decided to start using industry standard parts like IDE, PC-100, USB ect ect ect........so as the davidflas said, look around in the magazine and cataloge ads, there are surely several re-sellers/authorized service providers that can get you a mobo and other parts....

HTH