On Thursday, February 27, 2003, at 01:09 AM, Christian wrote: > My Macintosh is a 9500 that I bought off of Ebay for $30 dollars...
I'd say you got a pretty good deal! A bit over a year ago I got a 7500 bare for about the same, and boy would I rather have bought a 9500 (for mostly cosmetic reasons). > I'd also like to do this as cheaply as...possible...It pains me to > think that I may end up spending more upgrading this computer, with a > 50 mhz fsb, than I could have bought another that was OSX ready, but > that's also a little bit of the fun. Yeah it turns out costing *a lot* more than you think, believe me! I set out to do the same thing, I've spent nearly $500 so far, and I *still* don't have OS X running on it yet! That said, it's kind of like having a good lease program, because while I never could have afforded $500 up front for a decent B&W, over the course of a year it has been rather easy to drop $500 on upgrades. > Can I use a PCI nvidia video card? IMO, you can't go wrong with an ATI Rage 128 or ATI Radeon PCI. Both are readily available, and have very few problems (so long as you use the latest firmware) with OS X, Yellowdog Linux, BSD, etc. > I would appreciate any recommendations on what I'll need and the best > ... or do I have to buy the one's that say MAC and cost 4x as much eshop.macsales.com (OWC) is great for said things (no I don't work for them). Also the lem-swap list is an excellent resource for good bargains and nice folks (except I haven't been able to post in a while due to some spam "feature" of maclaunch's... wtf?) Stick with products made for Mac and you can't go wrong. Plenty of Acard/Sonnet ATA/66 and ATA/100 cards are out there pretty cheap. I'm in the market for one myself. > What's the best bang for the buck on cpu upgrade? What cpu upgrade > manufacturer should I use? ... Will a 400-450mhz g4 be enough? How > much ram should I go with? Can I use the cheapest usb pci card > or do only specific ones work? Sonnet and Powerlogix are the two top contenders right now, although I like XLR8 Carrier cards that allow you to use pretty much any old G3/G4 chip on the same card, so you can get hand-me-downs from friends and such. For example, my friend is getting ready to bump his G4 400Mhz tower up to 800Mhz, so I can swipe his old chip and use it with the XLR8 carrier. If I were you, I'd go for a higher-Mhz G3 rather than G4. For the same price as a 400-500Mhz G4 you can get a 700Mhz G3 from Powerlogix. The Mhz (and a good ATI video card) will pay off much more than a G4 with OS X. If you *need* G4 (for Photoshop or whatever), you probably shouldn't be wasting your cash on anything but a G4 tower. Most cheap USB 1.1 cards work fine and dandy in the PCI slot of the PCI Powermacs. Nota bene that many cheap 2.0 cards will not (and you won't get 2.0 speeds anyway). As for RAM, it's always good to buy as much as you can afford. Load 'er up, but nothing less than 256MB if you want OS X to run smoothly (especially on older hardware). I'd start with 256 or 512 MB, and it helps to buy it all from the same vendor at the same time so there aren't any problems with G3 upgrade compatibility. 128MB DIMMS are super cheap right now, so load 'er up! --Chris PowerMac 7500/200, OS 8.6 PowerMac 4400/200, NetBSD iBook 700 OS X.2.4 -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
