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nimbus123 · Mar 18, 2006, 07:09 AM

hi,

i'm using a sawtooth g4/450 and planning to upgrade it with a 1.0 gb sonnet processor. figured some additonal ram would not hurt either for photoshop and layout/graphics work. no gameing.

i see ram on ebay sold used or new between 12 and 40 usd. some higher priced with explicit reference to macs ("Macintosh compatible 512MB SDRAM PC133 CL3 168Pin"), some "generic", but much cheaper.

i'm puzzled by several issues:
* would it have to be "mac compatible" ram, or would "any" sort do, as long as it is SDRAM 168Pin?
* the sawtooth has 4 slots for ram, theoretically fitting 4x512mb.
but i hear of an ominous 1.5 gig barrier, which _might_ be either hardware related or due to the os (right now 10.3.9, but i could move to 10.4.x if that helped).
* horror stories about mis-matched ram eventually frying the motherboard.
right now i'm running without noticeable problems
DIMM0/J21: 512 MB SDRAM PC133-333
DIMM1/J22: 256 MB SDRAM PC133-333
DIMM2/J23: 128 MB SDRAM PC100-222S
DIMM3/J24: 128 MB SDRAM PC100-322S
and would replace one or both 128mb chips.

i'd appreciate your expert ideas on my problem.

nimbus

bowwowman · Mar 18, 2006, 08:26 AM

Being "mac" compatible & being compatible with a Sawtooth is 2 slightly different things

The Sawtooth's main issue with ram is that it can NOT take high-density sticks, meaning those with only 8 x 64mb chips on 1 side of the board. To be compatible, they must have 16 x 32mb chips, with 8 on each side of the board.

As for the ram limit, that is ONLY when running OS 9, which can only address 1.5GB. All versions of OS X will address the full 2GB that can be installed in your machine, just like mine does right now.

Never heard of the mobo-frying-mismatched-ram thing.......

And BTW, another thing that will speed up your PS work is a seperate, fast HD to use as a scratch disk. I use SATA Raptors for both my OS (36GB) & PS (74GB) disks

Lateralus · Mar 18, 2006, 01:21 PM

Originally Posted by bowwowman

Being "mac" compatible & being compatible with a Sawtooth is 2 slightly different things

The Sawtooth's main issue with ram is that it can NOT take high-density sticks, meaning those with only 8 x 64mb chips on 1 side of the board. To be compatible, they must have 16 x 32mb chips, with 8 on each side of the board.

As far as I know, the only Power Mac G4 incapable of taking high-density DIMMs is the B&W based Yikes! G4. The Sawtooth should be able to take pretty much anything.

doucy2 · Mar 18, 2006, 01:48 PM

i suguest putting 4x 512mb pc133 in there if you can so all the ram works at 133mhz if you put even one pc100 stick in ther it brings all the other ram sticks speed down to 100mhz with it.

BTW that sonnet 1ghz you're gonna put in is a great processor, I had one in my old sawtooth and it never gave me any problems

Another note if you cant afford a raptor hd just put in like a WD 80gb 7200rpm drive
7200rpm is great to run a OS off of and it won't hurt your pocket

Lateralus · Mar 18, 2006, 03:08 PM

All of the RAM will clock down to 100MHz regardless since the system bus is 100MHz.

bowwowman · Mar 18, 2006, 06:37 PM

As far as I know, the only Power Mac G4 incapable of taking high-density DIMMs is the B&W based Yikes! G4. The Sawtooth should be able to take pretty much anything.

All I know is that when I recently decided to max out my s/t, one of the sticks I bought was of the 1-sided 8X64mb variety, and the machine would NOT recognize it, regardless of what slot I put it in, or combination of sticks I tried, zapping the pram and nvram ect ect

But when I put it my windblows box, which is spec'd for H/D ram, and it ran fine in there....go figure

SSharon · Mar 21, 2006, 02:47 AM

feel free to PM me if you are looking for a buyer for whatever ram you take out.

lothar56 · Mar 21, 2006, 12:03 PM

My friend's Sawtooth took a HD 256MB chip just fine that my beige G3 recognized as 128MB. :shrug:

dave49er · Mar 23, 2006, 08:20 PM

I have two high density sticks that worked incorrectly in a Sawtooth but perfectly in a GigE. The first was a 256MB stick that registered as 128 MB in the Sawtooth, and also in a B&W, but no problems at the full 256MB in a GigE. The second was a 512MB stick that was not seen at all in the Sawtooth (but caused no problems, either) but works at the full 512MB capacity in a GigE.

It makes sense that the B&W, Sawtooth, and GigE all had different memory controllers that recognized the type of RAM that was readily available at the time the logic boards were being produced.

BTW, I have the Sonnet Encore ST 1.2GHz CPU that was in the Sawtooth but is now in the GigE. It's awesome.

Waragainstsleep · Mar 24, 2006, 03:50 AM

I never heard of G4s having these kind of memory issues. The B&W and the Wallstreet and Lombard PowerBooks have a similar memory controller and so suffer from RAM limitations. Having said that the Yikes G4 has the same board as the B&W.
There are alot of obscure types of RAM about though, so not too surprising that some don't work right.

Even the correct RAM has been known to play up in the G3s I listed above. The memory controllers are just flaky under OS X.

mountainash · Mar 24, 2006, 04:44 AM

Originally Posted by lothar56

My friend's Sawtooth took a HD 256MB chip just fine that my beige G3 recognized as 128MB. :shrug:

Yeah, this is pretty normal. The Beige G3 can only address half the memory because it can't cope with the hi density chips. I was using a 512Mb chip in a beige as 256Mb. It's just the memory controller.

mountainash · Mar 24, 2006, 04:54 AM

This is what you do to add RAM to a Mac. First find out what kind of RAM it takes (PC-100, DDR, SO-DIMMs etc), then check what the size limits are. For a Sawtooth you can plug in four PC-100 (or PC-133) SD-RAM modules of 512Mb each for a total of 2Gb under OSX or 1.5 under OS 9. For a yikes/B&W/beige you can only use lowdensity (try double sided) PC100.

Now the next step is to go to eBay or any second hand type market and buy a whole lot of generic PC modules. Brand doesn't matter, apple certified doesn't matter. Keep the ones that work, and on sell the ones that don't. This is the cheapest way to do it, in my experience.

How do you tell if it works? This is a little bit hard (to be 100% certain). First, you want to see if it shows up correctly in the OS (system profiler). Then you can run the apple hardware test. Run it in loop mode for a few hours. Techtool is also good. Then go into OSX (or 9 or whatever) and open a whole bunch of programs to try to fill the RAM (you can check RAM usage in "activity monitor"). Now, if there aren't any problems, it should be all good.

A word of warning, I have had RAM that has passed all the tests in Apple Hardware Test and Tech Tool, but has still caused problems.

If you want the easy way, then just get the RAM from a reputable dealer, who will exchange it if it faulty. Most quality dealers will have lifetime replacement warranties on their RAM.