Apple Power Mac G4 Troubleshooting

[Dukefrukem]

what do they mean by Mirrored Drive Doors?

[moidock]

That means that it has mirror finished optical drive doors. They don't do anything special other than look pretty.

[Dukefrukem]

do i need some kind of special mac video card?

[moidock]

Supposedly, PC cards work as well but you're safer picking a Mac Edition card like this one:

(*) ATI Technologies RADEON 9200 PCI 128MB... (100-436014) at OWC

There are more at that same store but the AGP ones are kinda pricey, the PCI models are less expensive.

[Dopefish]

You might not need to reinstall.

99.9% of problems with Macs can be solved by resetting the PRAM.

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

I think the only time resetting the PRAM didn't work for me, I took the side of the case off the G5 and there was a tiny reset button. I pressed that and everything worked flawlessly after that.

Hell, sometimes it's a good idea to just occasionally reset it for the hell of it. It fixes all kinds of stuff usually. I've had people tell me their network was slow, or it would boot slower than before, or other various problems; all of them were fixed by resetting the PRAM.

Give that a shot first before you format and reinstall.

I suggest going with Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). It will run the best on G4s. You really need a G5 or Intel Mac to be able to handle Leopard.

[moidock]

You can also try taking the video card from the functioning G4 and put it on the dual processor one. Sparing yourself getting one if you're not interested in getting the other G4 to work.

(yeah, it was late and my brain was kinda numb)

[Dukefrukem]

thanks guys

i'll update this thread when i get the tools

[DigitalDD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dukefrukem

hot. too bad it doesn't have a video card in it. and no ram.

I have a single cpu G4 1ghz mirror drive door model like yours and I threw an AGP ATI Radeon 9000 Pro from a PC in it, it worked fine. the trick is to find out which model video cards Apple put in the same model and use the same thing. Drivers are built into the OS that way, if you use a video card that Apple doesn't bundle with that exact system then you end up having to grab hacked kekst's like the folks with the PC's running OS X are doing, which is a major PITA..

use the database @ xlr8yourmac to find what upgrades will work with your system.

[Dukefrukem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalDD

I have a single cpu G4 1ghz mirror drive door model like yours and I threw an AGP ATI Radeon 9000 Pro from a PC in it, it worked fine. the trick is to find out which model video cards Apple put in the same model and use the same thing. Drivers are built into the OS that way, if you use a video card that Apple doesn't bundle with that exact system then you end up having to grab hacked kekst's like the folks with the PC's running OS X are doing, which is a major PITA..

use the database @ xlr8yourmac to find what upgrades will work with your system.

good to know. thanks!

[Tulkas]

I'm interested in if this ever got resolved?