Upgrading media center G4 Sawtooth

[applesos]

Hello all,

Some time ago I acquired a lovely Sawtooth PowerMac G4 from @JT737. It runs OS9 flawlessly and after some fiddling I got Tiger onto it as well. I've been using it to play digital copies of my music via a fileshare and it can play DVDs as well- as such I've been using it as a media center.

However, .mp4 files seem to be just too much for the poor thing - I get audio but no frames rendered at all- I've downscaled things in handbrake but the performance leaves much to be desired. It's got a 400Mhz G4 CPU and an ATI Rage 128 with 16Mb VRAM which both I think shipped with the machine originally. I'm curious if upgrading to a GeForce 4MX will be enough to play 720 video reliably or if I'd want to get a CPU accelerator as well. Let me know your thoughts.

 

[waynestewart]

I think that the limitations of the Sawtooth might be too much for higher resolution Video.
If I were going to try, I’d look for a faster CPU and maybe a SSD first. The SSD could be done with either a SATA drive with ide adapter or a CF card with ide adapter.
A better choice if you want to run a G4 tower would be to pick up a DA or QS. They’d give you a higher Bus speed which makes a difference by itself but would come with a faster CPU and video card. You don’t see them every day now but when you do see them locally they’re usually cheap or sometimes free

 

[applesos]

Fair enough. It is running off an SSD but I may just keep it for music then.

 

[herd]

I'm not sure what a "sawtooth" means but at 400MHz it sounds like you have the "AGP" model: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics). The Gigabit Ethernet model came afterwards, so you could try copying the file to the SSD to see if that helps. If so, then the network connection may be the limitation. There are gigabit PCI-X cards that could help with that.

If a local copy of the file doesn't help, then the CPU could be the limitation. You can check with Activity Monitor to see the if CPU is maxxed out while playing.

 

[applesos]

Good point- it is the AGP Graphics model, I was just referring to the generation of PowerPC CPU. I'll check again after copying an mp4 straight onto the SSD. The barrier to entry for a GPU upgrade with the correct Mac firmware is like $30-40 plus shipping on eBay so I guess if I'm dead set on not just playing these off my laptop and calling it a day, it's an achievable goal.

 

[LaPorta]

What are you using to play it? I’d run a version of VLC.

 

[applesos]

I have been- VLC has simply shown a blank screen with audio but otherwise the computer doesn't stutter or anything, which makes me think it's the GPU being lacking.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I'm not sure what a "sawtooth" means but at 400MHz it sounds like you have the "AGP" model: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics).

Sawtooth, is the code name for the PowerMac3,1 first Generation Powermac G4 with AGP graphics, us Apple computer nerds/hobbiests etc use it to refer to that machine since "PowerMac G4 (AGP Graphics)" can be a bit ambigious as apart from the Yikes!, every PowerMac G4 generation has AGP graphics

so PowerMac G4 Yikes!, Sawtooth, GigE, Digital Audio/DA, Quicksilver/QS, Mirrored Drive Doors/MDD, and FW800 MDD, is how a lot of us refer to the different PowerMac G4's