Hey all, I have a friend who wants to upgrade his G3 blue tower to a G4 processor so his Photoshop and related programs will run faster. He's got 2 extra internal drives as well, and 80GB and 30GB.
Questions:
1) easy/hard/where to find instructions on install?
2) reputable online dealer for processors?
3) RAM recommendations?
TIA
The B/W G3 (and the beige one) uses a ZIF processor socket, there are many places that sell these and they are a straight swap, but I think you may need to change some jumper settings, but that may only be for faster G3's, G4's may be unaffected, but I am not sure.
OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/accelerators/ZIF-Upgrades/
On the B/W G3 you need to change some jumpers plus enable g4 with a firmware update.
Hey,
Zif upgrade is a pie of cake. The processor has a notch so you can't install incorrectly. I've used several XLR8's G3 and G4 upgrades. The jumper configurations are readily available online. One note: the stock Apple jumpers are ganged so you can't use them, you have to acquire individual jumpers. As for RAM recommendations? The answer is always the same: More.
Unless you go for the cheapest one (The Sonnet G4/500) or go used, you'll be half way to the price of a new Mac mini. The mini is faster in every way, and it would be a fairly easy to use the B&W as a file server to the mini.
There are alot of ZIF's on eBay and you don't have to go Sonnet. I just picked up an XLR8 G4/400MHz that I put into my B&W for $60. Just make sure you upgrade your firmware to 1.1f4. www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4CARDS/XLR8_G4_400Z/index.html has a basic guide that I used to follow.
Awesome info! Thanks.
Jon, good point about the mini, but this particular user is a) cheap, and b) freaked out by any unusual configs, i.e. using the b&w as a server to the mini. He barely understands his extra hard drives as it is. But I'll definitely keep in mind for other users. thanks.
would this be possible using a g3 imac and a mini? i have a 600 mhz processor, 40 g internal h.d., 640 mb memory. What would the advantages be of using a mini? i figure i would just pop open the back drive where the screen gets plugged in and run a cord from the mini to the g3. would the imac be basically an extra hard drive or what?
It all depends on how you set it up. Because your iMac is an slotloader, then you can't use the monitor portion the same way you would for an older trayloader. Youi'd also have to mod it to convince the Mini to run at the right resolution and frequency for 640x480 and 800x600, if you want those. But doing that won't automatically allow you access to the iMac HDD. You'd have to power the iMac, power the monitor, hack the video to allow the Mini hookup, somehow control the iMac and network it to the Mini. In any other normal situation, you'd leave the iMac as-is and just get a monitor for the Mini and setup a standard network between them. Getting the Mini to work with the iMac CRT is going to be much more hassle than the cost of a 15" VGA monitor. Heck, it'll probably be more hassle than the cost of a 17"-19" CRT, or even a 15" LCD.