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New owner of Old G-4 (1 Viewer)

Michael Harris

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Yesterday I bought a surplus Power Mac G4 with OS X 10.3.9 for $599.00 and included a 17" Apple digital LCD monitor. I bought because I thought the price was right for learning an OS that I've never used before and I'll use it for photo editing since my Photoshop Elements can be loaded on a Mac.

Here are the specs:

733MhZ (can this be upgraded?)
512 MB RAM (but I bought and installed another 512 stick)
40 GB Hard drive (but I bought a $40 80GB, which I'll install shortly)
32 MB Video (any recommended upgrade?)

One odd thing, I can't seem to access the CD drive. It is in there, it is hooked up, but there is no eject button on the front of the machine. Also, the face looks a bit different then the ones I've seen in the .pdf manuals that I've downloaded. I'll have to call the seller and find out. I think this machine was used more as workstation and the CD was locked out to keep users from loading stuff.

I do like how easy it is to access the innards. Very clean on the inside. Also like the way the monitor just requires the DVI cable to provide power and USB connectivity.

Looking forward to playing with this.
 

Carl Johnson

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I just bought a new used emac and it took me a week to figure out how to open the DVD drive. Are you using an Apple keyboard? If so look in the upper right hand corner above the numerical pad. That's where I found the eject button.

After having owned a PC for five years there are plenty of features that I used to be able to access without even looking at the screen but that's ok. I'm looking forward to mastering the art of being a MAC :)
 

Michael Harris

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I am using an Apple keyboard but the only keys above the numerical pad are the page up, page down, help, and home keys. Fortunately I bought it from a business with a real location, I'll just give them a call.
 

JohnRice

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That's not an Apple keyboard, which would have volume up/down, mute and eject keys. There is a free app called Ardiem which allows you to program your own key command for eject.

I think that processor is probably upgradeable, but if you can find out the exact model, it is possible to find out for sure. Check with macsales.com.


As far as display cards, most of the ones you would want are not current anymore, but are easily available on ebay. A Radeon 7200 or 7500 are nice, particularly if they are AVP (it's not AVP, but I completely forget what it is) instead of PCI. Make sure it is manufactured as a Mac unit, not a flashed Windows one. The Radeon 8500 (not the LE, it should drive 2 monitors) is basically the best you can get for your computer. Even a 7200 is worth the very small price. You will probably have to get an adapter for the monitor.
 

Michael Harris

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Not to sound silly but doesn't the fact that there is an Apple logo on it and the label underneath says "Apple USB Keyboard" with an Apple copywrite date of 1999 make it an Apple keyboard? Possibly an old Apple keyboard?
 

Michael_K_Sr

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Sounds like the keyboard they included was probably not the one it originally came with, as all of the machines that didn't have manual CD eject buttons on the CPU had an eject key on the keyboard. Since your keyboard apparently doesn't have one, here's instructions on other ways to eject a disc.

As for the other questions, there are processor and video card upgrades available for your model. Go to macsales.com and check out what's there.
 

Michael Harris

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Thanks Michael K for the link. I was able to get a lot of info on my Mac, especially its exact model number. Looks like I have a G-4 "Quicksilver". Seems it was made for the educational market. Here is a link if anyone is curious: http://eshop.macsales.com/Descriptions/specs/g4qs.html. Looks like I'll be able to do some upgrading. I'll check out the instructions on accessing the CD drive and will get a new keyboard with the all important "eject" key. Fortunately not expensive.

Last night a friend stopped by and had an OS X "Panther" book that he had no use for. Looking forward to playing with this thing.
 

Ken Chan

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That link has the thing you should try first:
As far as upgrades, a 733MHz is either a low-end Quicksilver or high-end Digital Audio Power Mac G4. Those pages have links to upgrades. (That site does not seem to render correctly with IE 6; the bottom half is cut off.)
 

JohnRice

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Well, yeah. I didn't think Apple made any USB keyboards without an eject button. guess they did. Anyway, I have an earlier model Mac, a Gigabit Ethernet model, and upgraded both the processor from 400 MHz to 1.4 GHz and added an Ultra ATA card as well as the Radeon 8500 video card. Your Mac should have a 133MHz bus, where mine is 100MHz, so you should get a good boost in speed up to a 2GHz processor. Beyond that, the payoff diminishes. It just depends on how much you want to spend.
 

Michael Harris

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And it worked. Thanks everyone for all your help. Now to enter Apple land. This is my third Apple, but my first Mac. My first ever computer was an Apple IIC then an Apple IIGS.
 

Ken Chan

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Was there ever a version 6 on the Mac? I was actually on an XP machine at the time. Vista at this moment with IE 7....
 

Ted Todorov

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I don't want to rain on anyones parade, but in case someone else here gets a similar idea, please stop now.
The $599 Apple Mini runs rings around any G4 ever made, and with what you are spending on upgrades you could afford a perfectly decent 3rd party LCD. OS X 10.4 (Tiger) costs $129 alone, add to that the upgrade to iLife, another $79, and you are totally screwed.

Let me repeat that -- if someone is trying to sell you a G4 Mac, DO NOT BUY IT -- the right price is $0. There exceptions -- you are buying a fully configured ProTools rig complete with the PCI cards -- but in that case you are probably an experienced Mac user and wouldn't be posting questions here. Yes, I can also see someone buying a G4 Cube or the "iLamp" G4 iMac for their esthetic beauty, and in the case of the "iLamp" incredible adjustability of the display position.

But anyone new to Mac should just spend the $599 (or less from Amazon or with an educational discount) to buy a Mini. The Mini is not just a little bit faster than your computer -- it is like 5 times faster -- it is a very powerful machine, and has all the up to date Apple software.

Ted
 

MarkHastings

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Michael, if you haven't gotten the CD drive to open, you can try this...I believe you are using one of the color G4's? (i.e. Blue?)

If so, you can open the CD cover manually by getting a fingernail under it. The CD drive behind it is just a regular CD drive - the cover is just a plastic 'spring-loaded' cover that's only job is to hide the CD drive. It basically gets pushed down when the CD drive ejects.

Once you open this plastic cover, you should be able to see the eject button behind it.
 

Dennis*G

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Don't feel too bad Michael, but in the future, if something in the computer world is over 3 to 4 years old, it really is not worth more then $100 (unless it's a laptop, then a little more, but still no where near $600)
 

DaveF

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What's interesting (to me) is that Mr. Harris is the second person here to recently buy a used G4 system (http://hometheaterforum.com/htf/show...2&postcount=24)

I see a few possibilities:
* People are unaware of Apple's online store (http://store.apple.com)
* People don't realize the value of the Mac Mini compared to used macs
* Old Macs have incredible resale value
* The lack of an LCD with the mini dramatically skews its perceived value

I don't wish to beat up Michael -- I've made my share of purchases that weren't as shrewd as I first thought. But I am curious what prompted him to buy an old system for the price of a brand new one?

I think it was the LCD monitor that swayed him.
 

MarkHastings

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I think it's the fact that new Macs are so expensive...well, at least what people think is expensive (compared to PC's), so when they see a Mac under $1,000 it feels like a "Steal".

But yes, Macs have horrible resale value. But the LCD might be worth at least half the price of the system, so it might not have been a major mistake.

Some might say "But for only a few more hundred and you could get a Mac mini with an LCD montior", but considering Michael got an Apple LCD, that doesn't translate into a $200 "non apple" LCD. Most $200 LCD's are pretty crappy.
 

Michael_K_Sr

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Since when is an item retaining a healthy percentage of its value considered "horrible"? Only when you're looking to get something on the cheap, I guess. There's a reason why Macs retain their resale value...quality. Instead of beating Michael up, he should be offered encouragement. He's just getting started with Macs and to get a feel of the MacOS and to use Photshop Elements (a non-Universal app, I might add), his system is perfectly adequate for his needs.
 

Ted Todorov

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They do, and for a reason. Those old G4s towers can be very, very valuable, but not for the casual user.

They are the most powerful Macs out there that can still boot into OS 9, and I am sure that there are music and other specialty programs that were never ported to OS X, so people still use them. If they need an additional machine, or a replacement, they need to buy one second hand. Even under OS X, I was just in a very, very fancy recording studio where the ProTools rigs were running on G4s.

Also, if you happen to have one (I have a DP MDD 1.25 Ghz G4, mostly gathering dust) you can use it to run a website, or as a media server. You can stick 2.25 TerraBytes of internal disk space in that machine, it has gigabit ethernet, FireWire 800, etc. -- make no mistake, it is a professional machine that could be useful for the next five years. I just happen to set up a demo website on my old Powerbook this afternoon, and from idea to firing up Apache, to a couple of rounds of testing and tweaking the HTML with CDPedia and TextWrangler it took only 10 minutes!!! And it ran very, very fast.

The G4 towers aren't overpriced for the pro or the MacGeek with a project in mind, but for everyone else...

Ted
 

Michael Harris

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OK, here we go. First of all thanks for the last three posts above.

Yes, the Apple digital LCD monitor was a bit of a siren's call. I've seen the prices on new Apple brand LCD monitors and they have a good reputation. The salesman pretty much said that I was buying the monitor and the computer just came with it. Their marketing department did a good job with that. If I move on to another Mac, I'm sure it will go along with me.

As you can tell, I'm not Mac savvy. I was not aware of the value of Apples since Apples have always been more expensive then their PC counter parts - all things being equal that is.

As stated above, this is a way to learn OS X 10.3. Do I really need to upgrade to OS X 10.4? This weekend I'll install a wireless card so I can go online and download any updates. I'll also install my Photoshop.

I do like the quality of the build. Wish more PCs made it so easy to access the innards. And yes, it looks nice. So yes, I may have over paid but I may just become a Mac person. I'll provide updates on my Mac adventure.

PS: Just so you know, I work in the computer security field, used to be a sysadmin on both PC and UNIX systems, and am taking the CISSP exam later this month (fingers crossed). Of course that doesn't make me a smart consumer.
 

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