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Just scored a G4 450Mhz! (M5158)

Tom2112

Well-known member
I was bored this afternoon - which is usually when I get into trouble... and I came across a PowerMac G4 on Facebook marketplace. He wanted $40 for it, and it looked in excellent condition. It was fully operational too. No keyboard, mouse or monitor, but since they're USB and standard VGA, I don't even care. (I have plenty of those at already.) The seller was a PC repairman, and came across it in his work, cleaned it up, installed a fresh instance of OSX Tiger and put it up for sale. So I decided it was a good day for a drive and went and picked it up. I'm hoping it will serve as a nice bridge Mac between modern devices and my SE/30s and Performa 630CD. I think I'll upgrade the RAM to 2GB from the 1GB installed. That should give it some breathing room on OSX Tiger. I may even have some free RAM lying around that it can use.

Now I just have to figure out how to install OS 9 on it for how "classic" mode works...

Is OS 9 the oldest OS it will run?

Anyway, I was just excited and wanted to share. :)
 

joshc

Well-known member
If it runs OS9 depends on *which* G4 you bought, do you know the model / processor / speed?
 

CC_333

Well-known member
@Juror22 That's actually not quite true. Some of the earliest G4s (namely, very early-production Yikes! and Sawtooth) actually shipped with a machine-specific version of 8.6, and presumably, all Yikes! and Sawtooths can run that 8.6 version if one has the proper restore/install disk set.

c
 

Tom2112

Well-known member
BTW, can anyone direct me to the correct download image of OS 9.x.x so I can install Classic Mode on this beastie? There's so many on Macintosh Repository that I don't know which ones will work and which won't, and that's a lot of downloading burning and testing. TIA!
 

LCARS

Well-known member
I run 9.2.2 on my Sawtooth and its wonderfully stable. Tiger never worked quite right, even with the correct firmware. But YMMV. Max RAM is cheap and easy and running a SATA PCI card with G4 specific firmware is quite a performance improvement. You can also add in an AirPort card and faster AGP card. I use mine as a software repository for 7-9 machines and it does an excellent job of unzipping, mounting, unstuffing...

Sawtooth restore. It has specific 8.6 but if the firmware hasn't been upgraded for OS X, you'll need 9.1 to 9.2.2. The newest firmware should be 4.2.8f1 and listed in Apple System Profiler.
 

Tom2112

Well-known member
I run 9.2.2 on my Sawtooth and its wonderfully stable. Tiger never worked quite right, even with the correct firmware. But YMMV. Max RAM is cheap and easy and running a SATA PCI card with G4 specific firmware is quite a performance improvement. You can also add in an AirPort card and faster AGP card. I use mine as a software repository for 7-9 machines and it does an excellent job of unzipping, mounting, unstuffing...

Sawtooth restore. It has specific 8.6 but if the firmware hasn't been upgraded for OS X, you'll need 9.1 to 9.2.2. The newest firmware should be 4.2.8f1 and listed in Apple System Profiler.

LCARS, thank you very much! I'm gonna grab that restore CD. Extra thanks for the link.

Do you have any recommendations for a SATA card and video card?

My current firmware is v4.1.8f5.

Is this the right firmware?
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/28556-powermac-g4-firmware-update-4-2-8
 

Tom2112

Well-known member
Just for the sake of anyone else finding this: yes, Virginia, that is the correct link to the correct firmware.

I bought a SATA card from eBay, but apparently, I didn't do my research properly. My G4 Sawtooth won't boot with the card installed. In fact, my G4 Quicksilver won't boot with it installed either.

Can anyone recommend where to get a SATA PCI card that will work?
 

waynestewart

Well-known member
I’ve used the Sonnet SATA cards quite a bit but they’re a bit hard to find.

There are some flashed cards on ebay but I have no experience with them
 

alectrona2988

Well-known member
you can use the sil3112 cards and flash it to work on a mac, but they end up being slower than the ATA bus... at least if the system is ATA/100. it's only good if you want to use high-capacity drives...
 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
Hilariously, "M5183" represents:
  • Power Macintosh G3 (blue-white)
  • Power Macintosh G4 (PCI graphics)
  • Power Macintosh G4 (AGP Graphics, Sawtooth)
  • Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
  • Power Macintosh G4 (Digital Audio)
I believe /450 was a speed on both the AGP and the Gigabit Ethernet. The Digital Audio moved that up to /466, due to the move to the 133MHz bus.


but they end up being slower than the ATA bus... at least if the system is ATA/100. it's only good if you want to use high-capacity drives...
Huh

It should be faster, is that primarily if you have a lot of other stuff on the bus, or is the whole bus itself slower than ATA/100?

I have a 2TB spinner on SATA in a duallie 1GHz QuickSilver and IME it feels faster than I suspect the machine would have, stock, but I don't have a non-dead stock disk from this era to really compare it against.

EDIT: The only PowerMac G4 with UltraATA/100 is the MDD. I don't remember if the MDD had a /100 and a /133 bus or just a /100 bus.

First-gen SATA is /150 so it's really just a matter of whether or not the bus is poor enough on these that you'll notice a difference.

My guess is that SATA will be a meaningful improvement regardless because most disks that were stock in this era are bad and mostly couldn't even saturate the IDE bus.

This all of course only matters in OS X, since OS 9 is so bad at i/o.

An SSD should be an experience improvement in both X and 9, regardless of which interface it's connected to.

/EDIT

BTW, can anyone direct me to the correct download image of OS 9.x.x so I can install Classic Mode on this beastie?

For Classic Mode on 10.2/3/4 you can usually use OS9General.DMG, which is a late-era image that is primarily for Classic Mode.

If your system is a ~Sawtooth or Gig-Eth, the next recommendation in terms of "doing it right" is typically to use the retail 9.2.1 image and a 9.2.2 updater, but I've had good luck with the eMac'03 CD image on most of my machines.

All of the M5183s shipped with 9.1 or older so you'll be solid with a 9.2.1 CD.

Here's my own notes so far: https://doku.stenoweb.net/doku.php?id=macdex:os9-cds to be eventually transcribed into the 68kMLA wiki proper.

Here's my copy of the 9.2.1 retail CD and the eMac CD: http://vtools.68kmla.org/~/coryw/iso-temp/ (my apologies for the slow upload speed.)

For a machine that boots OS 9, you can honestly leave 9.2.1 in place if you want, the biggest improvements that came with 9.2.2 are to software you should probably run under OS X anyway.

Hit me up if you do use the eMac 9.2.2 CD and end up having trouble (or success) with it, so we can add it to the list.

I think I'll upgrade the RAM to 2GB from the 1GB installed. That should give it some breathing room on OSX Tiger.

Mac OS 9 performs poorly with 1GB or more of memory installed. We had someone in the IRC channel who couldn't get it to install/boot with >1GB installed, although I don't remember how that went when they removed some.
This shouldn't impact Classic Mode, but I would say to back off to 256-896 or so of RAM depending on what sticks you have.

For this reason, my typical recommendation if you can swing it is to use separate systems for OS 9 and OS X. At worst: 10.4 also runs well in ~256-512MB of RAM.
 
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Tom2112

Well-known member
For Classic Mode on 10.2/3/4 you can usually use OS9General.DMG, which is a late-era image that is primarily for Classic Mode.

If your system is a ~Sawtooth or Gig-Eth, the next recommendation in terms of "doing it right" is typically to use the retail 9.2.1 image and a 9.2.2 updater, but I've had good luck with the eMac'03 CD image on most of my machines.

All of the M5183s shipped with 9.1 or older so you'll be solid with a 9.2.1 CD.

Here's my own notes so far: https://doku.stenoweb.net/doku.php?id=macdex:os9-cds to be eventually transcribed into the 68kMLA wiki proper.

Here's my copy of the 9.2.1 retail CD and the eMac CD: http://vtools.68kmla.org/~/coryw/iso-temp/ (my apologies for the slow upload speed.)

For a machine that boots OS 9, you can honestly leave 9.2.1 in place if you want, the biggest improvements that came with 9.2.2 are to software you should probably run under OS X anyway.

Hit me up if you do use the eMac 9.2.2 CD and end up having trouble (or success) with it, so we can add it to the list.



Mac OS 9 performs poorly with 1GB or more of memory installed. We had someone in the IRC channel who couldn't get it to install/boot with >1GB installed, although I don't remember how that went when they removed some.
This shouldn't impact Classic Mode, but I would say to back off to 256-896 or so of RAM depending on what sticks you have.

For this reason, my typical recommendation if you can swing it is to use separate systems for OS 9 and OS X. At worst: 10.4 also runs well in ~256-512MB of RAM.

Thanks for the tips! I found an OS 9.2.2 installer online - I can't remember where - but it was modded with all the latest updates and tweaks to fix known issues. I can't remember what they were specifically, but it sounded good to me. I installed it and it works fine.

I did upgrade it to 1.5GB, and it seems to run fine with it in both 9.2.2 and OSX 10.4. Oh wait, that's my G4 Quicksilver (733Mhz). I can't remember how much I stuffed into my G4 Sawtooth (450MHz AGP).
Though to be honest, I haven't gotten to spend much time on it in the last few weeks. Work has been crazy, and I haven't had much play time.
 
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