PowerTower Pro 225 questions

[TCH]

Hi,

I had one of these (PowerTower Pro) when they were new. Later on I moved onto G4's and gave it to my little brother who was studying graphic design at the time.

I have been active with vintage Macs and have bunch of them but for some reason the PPC 601-604 era is missing from my collection, even though that was the period I was most active professionally with Macs. Well, I do still have a PowerBook 540c + a PPC -upgrade but I don't think I have anything else left from that period. Nor do I have any G3 machines (I think I never had?). Lots of machines prior to PPC era and from G4 era onwards in my boxes though.

Well, now I accidentally ran into another one of them PTPs. It is not complete and I don't yet know if it is any good at all but I will keep my fingers crossed. It is missing its cpu, gpu and the hard drive.

I checked my parts boxes and I did find a PowerLogix G4 450MHz card with all its disks etc. The box specs say PTP is compatible and I think I did use this briefly with my original PTP. I also have some RAM, couple of Adaptec SCSI -cards from those days and I should still have box of SCSI drives, external cases and cables etc. Don't know if the drives work anymore though. And I also do have plenty of ADB keyboards and mice.

So, I need to find a graphics card which works with this machine. I do have many G4 and G5 cards but I believe they will not work (?). Any suggestions what I should look for? Doesn't have to be a high end card but something that will work and produce a picture so I can get going.

What about an hdd replacement if the old SCSI-drives do not work anymore? Would something like BlueSCSI work?

Then an USB card and maybe an IDE card would be nice and would make my life much easier. Would the IDE cards be bootable in this kind of machine? Any suggestions for specific models that would work? Again I have many of these that will work with my G4 and G5 machines but no idea if they work with machine this old (and OS 7/8/9 too).

Thank you for any tips on this.

 

[finkmac]

nice machine. i hope to find one someday.

1) powerlogix card should work and will be a nice flex

2) you need a mac compatible pci card. i'm not sure exactly where you are, but the basic ixMicro cards that usually came with most 9500 clones are usually cheap because people rip them out to install nicer cards. another good choice is probably a rage 128 pci card. alternatively, radeon 7000 pci.

3) you could use a Zulu-compatible SCSI emulator like the GBSCSI2 or SCSI Knife... or you could flash a PCI SATA card and use a SATA drive!
myself, I use the PCI SATA cards in the PCI PowerMacs.

4) i don't know much about USB cards, i don't really use them on pre-Gseries macs... but they're generally cheap to find.
for IDE cards, you usually need specific ones that might not be easy to find. I would just go with a SATA card myself.

 

[TCH]

Thanks,

The ixMicro card and most mid-late 90's era stuff are rare here (probably most are recycled already) and feel too expensive for me. Sellers seem to be people who just part machines and sell parts and as a Mac -gpu it must be made of gold. I can buy complete G4/G5 machines for price of one separate gpu as I am seeing now. I'll try to find something though. Luckily I am not in a hurry.

Hmm....yes, I have SATA cards in my G4s. Maybe I'll try if one them works in this one too when I get to that point. If i remember it correctly the cards I have were supposed to work with OS 9 or something too. I also think I have that is not flashed yet, so there is thing to investigate. Are the SATA cards bootable in these machines?

I don't actually know if I need an USB card, was thinking that more out of habit. Right now I can't think of anything I would need to connect via USB to that particular machine. I think my Zip drive and all other stuff from that era are SCSI.

Some additional "use" for some of those PCI slots would be nice though.

 

[ArbysTPossum]

Some additional "use" for some of those PCI slots would be nice though.

I have a Powertower Pro as well, I couldn't find enough reasons to fill the PCI slots. The board has ethernet on it, and everything else. The only thing outside of the ordinary I put in it was an OrangePC card and a USB/Firewire card.

 

[TCH]

I have a Powertower Pro as well, I couldn't find enough reasons to fill the PCI slots.

Yeah, it might be difficult nowadays. But maybe some kind of sound card with capture capabilities or something? On video side there are stuff too. Not very usable now compared to more modern stuff but if one manages to find some such stuff cheaply then I would gladly save them from recycling. Would make a cool old world powermachine.

Back in the day we used to equip them with tape drives and RAID-towers in ad agency and repro/print environments. I had some contacts in broadcasting and video and music production too but do not remember what special cards they used in their work.

Which USB/FW card do you have?

Ps. I think these machines officially supported something like OS 7.5 to 8.6? But they do run OS 9 too?

 

[The Finale of Seem]

A PTP will run up to Mac OS 9.1 just fine. If you're putting that G4 in it then it'll run OS X as well with XPostFacto if you have sufficient RAM, and you can get 9.2.2 on it with some workarounds.

I have a PowerTower Pro that I recently souped up. Video card, IDE card, USB, Firewire, and gigabit ethernet. As others have said, you'll need a PCI video card. A Rage 128 is probably the best option, especially if you want to run OS X. Just be sure it's a Mac card. Higher than that like a Radeon 7000 may or may not work. I've had issues with newer PCI cards in the old PCI Macs/clones. Just about anything above a Rage 128 is a crapshoot.

SATA cards can be iffy, but if you have any laying around then you might as well try them. I've had better luck with IDE cards, though even some of those can be finicky. Even if Mac OS installs you might start getting ghosts in the machine. A BlueSCSI should work just fine if all else fails.

I've had some bizarre mixed luck on USB/FW cards. Most USB 2.0 capable cards I've tried refuse to work no matter what I do, and these are cards that work flawlessly in newer machines like G4s, even in OS 9, and are explicitly advertised as being compatible with any Powermac with PCI slots. If you're going to look for one then try to find a combo card that was explicitly advertised as Mac compatible, and maybe even look for an older one with USB 1.x and Firewire. I don't think the PTP had issues with cards that had PCI-PCI bridges like some Powermacs did.