Help with g4 and OSx

[Gordy]

Right as you know I've got this cheap g4 , and its got osx half installed on it. Now I got the gf to speak to her it bods at work who were selling them on to see why it hadnt got osx put fully on. They said they couldnt put osx on it for some reason.

Now I've been trying to pin down the exact spec of this machine, the sticker says its a 400mhz g4 with 128mb of ram but that I know is incorrect. It has a gig of ram and twin scsi drives so has clearly been upgraded at some point. The only reason I can come up with that osx didnt install is because it has a processor update card in it. Having never seen a stock g4 chip or one of these update cards I've no idea which is in this machine.

I've taken some pics of the cpu for you to look at , if you could tell me what I have got that would be great.





If I have a processor update card in there what can I do about sticking osx on this machine is it possible to swap the card out for an old 450mhz cpu ?

Cheers

[headbrace]

I think you should be able to swap the processors out, as they are each on their own daughter boards. See if you can see any brand on the processor update card (Probably Sonnet, but there are a few others as well). Like wise with the scsi card.

Also, can we get a pic of the front of the machine? So we know what board, ram, gfx it uses etc.

[Gordy]

The only make I could see was foxconn.

Its using a sd ram pc100 from memory. It looks the same as my mac pc conversion.

Apple call it the Powermac G4 AGP model , the model no. it has on the back is m5183 but searching with that on the apple site draws a blank

[headbrace]

OK, I'm gonna go have a browse around and see If I can find an upgrade card that looks similar.

According to http://www.apple-history.com/frames/...ry&model=g4agp , it is the same as the 450mhz ones, so If you do have the processor then you could put that in- but the 450mhz processors are unlikely to be readily available as they were in short supply.

In the means time, have you tried putting OS9 on it? That might well be ok, as the upgrade card would have been made after it came out, so should be compatible.

[Gordy]

I've got some os9 cds which I am going to try if osx fails. I want to try out osx first really.

[headbrace]

Well, OS9 can still be used as well, as you can dual boot the machine into either, and use OS9 as classic in OSX. Might be worth having a go with it. Also, OS9 will let you play Unreal Tournament, AoE and a few other games natively.

[Gordy]

Ah that sounds like a good idea, is it best to install osx first or os9?