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tiger · Dec 6, 2010, 05:32 AM

Hey guys,

The title basically says it all... I recently bought a new... (well old) iMac G4 17" 1Ghz 512MB 80GB HD... it came with 512MB RAM, and I have already ordered a 1GB upgrade (it's currently on its way). I've read that these iMacs can be maxed out to 2GB RAM and there seem to be a few other upgrades that are also possible on them... I'm using it right now and it's actually pretty fast, especially since I was expecting it to be excruciatingly slow. The 1GB upgrade should give it a boost but if you guys have some expertise... it's welcome.

First off, is it worth it to open it up and upgrade the factory module to 1GB also, essentially giving it 2GB RAM

Should I upgrade the HD while I'm at it? Any suggestions?

Also, if anyone knows, I'm not really much of a techie but there are some screen artifacts that appear once in a while, for example if I move the mouse and it switches from the text indicator to the pointer, it will create sort of a ghost image/interference like look, and then revert to the pointer. The iMac originally came with 10.5 Leopard but wiped it and installed 10.4 Tiger, at least for now.

Any other upgrade suggestions? and if you guys have any links that might be helpful they would be appreciated!

Thanks

Waragainstsleep · Dec 6, 2010, 07:00 AM

Artifacts can indicate a failing GPU. I wouldn't spend too much on it.

OreoCookie · Dec 6, 2010, 07:06 AM

Ditto. A failing gpu can only be cured by changing the motherboard. Assuming you can get your hands on one, it won't be cheap. I'd start saving on a new machine if I were you instead of upgrading it.

tiger · Dec 6, 2010, 12:43 PM

It was hardly ever used, and didn't cost me much... overall it's in almost new conditions so it's sort of strange that the GPU would be failing, the artifacts I was referring to were in Leopard, say the 3D Dock didn't work properly, but I thought it had more to do with the GPU being inadequate with the computer being so old.

If it is a failing GPU though, I could always sell it for parts, but seeing as I don't want it to die on me I wouldn't spend too much on it (although this might give me a chance to tweak it a bit). Any 'cheap' upgrades you guys think would be beneficial?

reader50 · Dec 6, 2010, 02:06 PM

Opening it up to access the drives & factory RAM slot will break the CPU heat-sink grease. You'll need to restore that on reassembly.

The internal drive bus is PATA, and it has the 128 GB limitation on boot. If you put in a bigger drive, partition it so the boot partition is within the first 128 GB. The rest of the drive can be a data partition, which will mount later in the boot process after the drivers load.

500 GB is the biggest new 3.5" PATA you can buy today, though Seagate once made a 750 GB PATA. There may (or may not) be space inside for one of those mini SATA-PATA bridge boards. There would be space if you substituted a 2.5" SATA drive. There are PATA SSDs, but I'm not sure if there are any bigger than 512 GB, and the price would be outrageous anyway.

You could pull (for more space) or replace the optical drive. Or even pull it and replace with a bigger 3.5" SATA drive + bridge board.

If you do crack it open, take the opportunity to clean the fan and internals. By now it will be cruddy in there. Assuming the GPU has a heat sink, accumulated dust may be causing your glitches.

tiger · Dec 6, 2010, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

Opening it up to access the drives & factory RAM slot will break the CPU heat-sink grease. You'll need to restore that on reassembly.

The internal drive bus is PATA, and it has the 128 GB limitation on boot. If you put in a bigger drive, partition it so the boot partition is within the first 128 GB. The rest of the drive can be a data partition, which will mount later in the boot process after the drivers load.

500 GB is the biggest new 3.5" PATA you can buy today, though Seagate once made a 750 GB PATA. There may (or may not) be space inside for one of those mini SATA-PATA bridge boards. There would be space if you substituted a 2.5" SATA drive. There are PATA SSDs, but I'm not sure if there are any bigger than 512 GB, and the price would be outrageous anyway.

You could pull (for more space) or replace the optical drive. Or even pull it and replace with a bigger 3.5" SATA drive + bridge board.

If you do crack it open, take the opportunity to clean the fan and internals. By now it will be cruddy in there. Assuming the GPU has a heat sink, accumulated dust may be causing your glitches.

Thanks!!!

Is there much benefit to the SATA + bridge board arrangement? Since theoretically it would still be bottlenecked by the PATA bus on the computer. This iMac is a 2003 1GHz model, is it still limited to 128GB by the ATA controller? I thought newer models didn't have this limitation.

Will just generic thermal paste do or would I have to get some type of specialized or mac-specific paste?

reader50 · Dec 6, 2010, 06:34 PM

Your iMac is late enough to make my info wrong - sorry about that. You do have large drive support already. And your PATA bus is ATA-100, giving you about 75 MB/sec actual throughput. Modern 3.5" drives will saturate that across most of the drive. 2.5" drives are somewhat slower. Any modern drive would be a big improvement over the OEM 80 GB.

The bridge board would be worth it to get a modern drive - all the PATA models are old designs kept on the market. Very slow by today's standards - though the 400-500 GB ones are faster than the OEM 80. HD speeds have moved enough that a modern 2.5" laptop drive is quite a bit faster than the OEM 80 drive.

Any thermal paste should do. A test site once substituted toothpaste for the heck of it - the toothpaste was only a few degrees hotter than Arctic Silver. ps - I don't recommend toothpaste, it will probably dry out way faster than the real stuff.

tiger · Dec 6, 2010, 08:57 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

Your iMac is late enough to make my info wrong - sorry about that. You do have large drive support already. And your PATA bus is ATA-100, giving you about 75 MB/sec actual throughput. Modern 3.5" drives will saturate that across most of the drive. 2.5" drives are somewhat slower. Any modern drive would be a big improvement over the OEM 80 GB.

The bridge board would be worth it to get a modern drive - all the PATA models are old designs kept on the market. Very slow by today's standards - though the 400-500 GB ones are faster than the OEM 80. HD speeds have moved enough that a modern 2.5" laptop drive is quite a bit faster than the OEM 80 drive.

Any thermal paste should do. A test site once substituted toothpaste for the heck of it - the toothpaste was only a few degrees hotter than Arctic Silver. ps - I don't recommend toothpaste, it will probably dry out way faster than the real stuff.

Perhaps the glitches are being caused by dried out thermal paste... the iMac does seem to heat more than reasonable... considering the current weather in socal is in the 40s-60s F I was surprised it still heated up a bit... or maybe it's just the PowerPc processor.

You're saying that say, a 2.5 7200 RPM sata drive + sata bridge would be much faster than the current 80GB OEM drive that I have? From the images I've seen it seems that the drive just sits on the disk drive, don't know if there is a way to attach it or if it's just somehow taped on it, but nevertheless shrinking the drive to a 2.5 would seem to free up enough space to place an sata bridge inside, and the lower heat output and power consumption is probably also a plus. So the current PATA drives, even the new 3.5 ones haven't changed, speed-wise since they were discontinued?

Waragainstsleep · Dec 6, 2010, 09:43 PM

Thats a good point about dried out grease. You used to be able to get away without replacing it on units that were a few years old but I have seen them completely dried out. The heatsink covers several chips so it might well help prolong its life a little bit to replace the thermal grease.

tiger · Dec 7, 2010, 12:58 AM

I've been looking into these two bridge adapters... I'm assuming these are the right ones... one is for 2.5 drives and the other for 3.5 ones... any advice? Any ideas as to how much 'spare' room there is between the HD and the case?

These are two of the best ones I found, (in size and price)

SATA Hard Drive Adapter from CoolDrives.com

2.5" SATA Hard Drive to IDE 44 Pin Adapter for Laptop Drives from CoolDrives.com

this one is a 2.5 only, and I believe it doesn't require separate power... does anyone know if this affects performance at all? does the IDE cable provide enough power without compromising performance? It seems like the 3.5 drives on the iMacs are extremely packed as they are so my other option is going down to a WD Black 2.5 320GB 16MB cache 7200RPM... it's about $50 with shipping so it seems like a pretty good deal, the 3.5's I looked at weren't much different in price...

I don't know what the real difference is in a modern 2.5 7200 vs a 3.5 7200, I have a 15" MacBook Pro with a 5400 and it's still much faster than the iMac when accessing the HD, I'm assuming the WD 320GB 7200 will be even faster...

AKcrab · Dec 7, 2010, 01:02 AM

That second one is not what you need.

Just get an external firewire drive and use that for additional storage. I wouldn't spend a dime on that G4. (Except maybe the RAM.)

reader50 · Dec 7, 2010, 01:27 AM

This bridge board from OWC plugs into the back of a SATA drive (3.5" or 2.5") and then plugs into a PATA ribbon cable.

I once tried such a bridge board from newegg, a generic make. It worked, except for sleep. The OWC model shouldn't have that problem.

tiger · Dec 7, 2010, 02:10 AM

I'm going to buy the HD anyway because it's at a good price... and I'm not just 'wasting' it on the iMac, I have a MacBook lying around that only has an 80GB drive.. and it's pretty full, if anything, I'll just swap that drive out... If it works on the iMac that's a plus... I still want to open it up and take a look around what might be causing problems... I think it's the dried out thermal paste, but we'll see...

If I do open it up though, I'd give the HD swap and factory RAM upgrade a shot and see how it works. Sure it's not as fast as my 2.4 MBP but it's still a pretty good machine that I could bring up to speed at a decent price... If I do the SATA HD swap + 2GB RAM it'll probably end up costing me about $200... (including the cost of the computer). It has an ariport extreme card and I'm just looking to use it to play music, some web-browsing, type up some papers and storage... sort of like a mini server/airtunes type of thing. I'm gonna have a 1TB drive that I already have hooked up to it through FW.

tiger · Dec 25, 2010, 02:14 AM

Hey guys ... so a few updates

The iMac has been running great with 2GB ram... I haven't had a chance to swap out the HD since I'd rather fix the logic board/gpu issue before I really spend much money on it...

A new question, will a 15in 1GHz (USB2.0) iMac's logic board work with my current 17inch 1GHz iMac? I have the opportunity to get a 1GHz 15 inch logic board relatively cheap and was wondering if I'd run into any problems given the different screen sizes/models.

Thanks

anthology123 · Dec 25, 2010, 10:09 AM

The main difference I see so far is the 17" model had 64mb VRAM, while the 15" model has 32mb VRAM. This is noted on the website, Mac Specs, Prices, Answers, & Comparison @ EveryMac.com - Est. 1996

tiger · Dec 25, 2010, 08:13 PM

Any idea if the difference in VRAM would be a problem? My current iMac has the same video card as the 15inch except I have 64MB VRAM which isn't much use when it's failing anyway...

Waragainstsleep · Dec 25, 2010, 09:19 PM

The 17" board should work fine.

shifuimam · Dec 25, 2010, 09:50 PM

Originally Posted by AKcrab

Just get an external firewire drive and use that for additional storage. I wouldn't spend a dime on that G4. (Except maybe the RAM.)

This. With a desktop Mac, you have the flexibility of adding an external hard drive that can be kept out of the way, and you've got FireWire 400, which is plenty fast for a storage volume.

Plus, it means you can get WAY more storage, AND it gives you much more flexibility for the drive in general - if you decide to upgrade to a new iMac, all your data is right there on a portable volume instead of inside the G4. And...if that G4 stops working for whatever reason and won't turn on, your data is much more easy to recover.

tiger · Dec 25, 2010, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

This. With a desktop Mac, you have the flexibility of adding an external hard drive that can be kept out of the way, and you've got FireWire 400, which is plenty fast for a storage volume.

Plus, it means you can get WAY more storage, AND it gives you much more flexibility for the drive in general - if you decide to upgrade to a new iMac, all your data is right there on a portable volume instead of inside the G4. And...if that G4 stops working for whatever reason and won't turn on, your data is much more easy to recover.

Yeah, I'm currently running off of an external Iomega Firewire400/800/USB2.0 500GB drive I use for data (I have a small 40gb partition on it for the iMac's OS), although I can only use Firewire 400 on the iMac, I can use FW 800 on my macbook pro and it is way faster. The 15inch board has USB2.0 on it, my current one doesn't. Would USB 2.0 be faster than Firewire 400? Or should I stick with FW 400?

Would placing an SATA drive (with an SATA to IDE converter which I already have) be much of an improvement over FW 400? I believe FW 400 tops out at around 40mb/s. I was planning on putting in a laptop HD for the iMac that way if it died I could use it for one of my laptops.

reader50 · Dec 26, 2010, 05:27 AM

FW400 is consistently faster than USB2. Not usually by a huge amount, but enough to notice. You'll get 40-45 MB/s out of FW400, and may only get 25-30 MB/s out of USB2 on a Mac.

Common Windows boxes tend to be faster with USB2 (30-35 MB/s) probably because Windows uses drivers that do less polling and fewer sanity checks. Which makes it risky to plug in USB devices on Windows before installing the drivers. I've bought assorted USB devices that came with warnings to install the drivers first. Plugging it in before the drivers caused no harm on a Mac.

A SATA/PATA bridge board should offer negligible speed loss, so the bottleneck will be the PATA bus speed, or the hard drive. For a PATA-100 bus, your practical throughput will be approx 75 MB/s. A new HD (even a laptop HD) will almost certainly be faster than 45 MB/s over most of the drive, so yes, a built-in drive with bridge board should be noticeably faster than FW400 or USB2.

tiger · Dec 31, 2010, 08:02 AM

Alright guys, I did it.

I swapped the logic board... now it seems I'm all set... while I was in there for the n-th time I also put in the SATA HD with the SATA - IDE Bridge Board... so far so good... everything works... I have 2GB RAM in it as well and it's way faster than any iMac G4 I've ever used.

I took your collective advice about investing too much in it and having my data trapped inside it so I installed the new HD on my macbook and swapped the 80GB macbook sata hd into the iMac... it still beats firewire, as well as the old ATA HD I had inside of it before.

Final Specs....

iMac G4 1GHz 167MHz-Bus 2GB RAM 80GB SATA HD

It works.