Hey all - This is long but I hope you don't mind reading my life story and sharing some insight...
I'm a long-time PC user and somewhat familiar with "new" Macs (have an Intel Mac Mini and the wife uses an Intel Macbook). Someone on my local Freecycle gave away a PowerMac G4 and I managed to scoop it up. It's one of the Digital Audio dual-533 models, with a 40gb hard drive, GeForce2 MX, and 640mb RAM. As a Christmas gift to my wife, I thought it might be nice to format this PC and set it up as an audio recording studio, running an older version of GarageBand and Logic Express and plugging it into her Yamaha digital piano through an M-Audio Midisport Uno MIDI->USB adapter. Here are the steps I have taken: 1. Install OS X 10.3 Panther. Upgrade to 10.3.9 through repeated Software Update. This is where all the troubles begin : ) I'm a PC user so I have a stack of PC parts in the garage, and since the inside of the PowerMac looks similar to a regular PC I figured I could beef up the machine a bit. Now I'm having all kinds of hardware problems. * The PC100 128MB RAM stick I put in the spare slot is not recognized. Some research shows that certain Power Macs are picky and require PC133 as a minimum. Is this one of those models? * The DVD burner drive I installed, an IBM-branded Hitachi HL_DT_ST G10N, is recognized only as a CD reader. It won't burn DVDs and blank DVDs are simply ejected. I don't know anything about locating Mac drivers or if that is even necessary. I want to burn some DMGs or audio CDs from here. I've found that Roxio Toast 7 Titanium is supported on 10.3, can this tool burn DVDs even where OS X can't recognize the drive? * The spare hard drive I put in here is having S.M.A.R.T. status of "failing". I know what this means, no advice needed : ) * My firmware is outdated (4.1.8f, latest from what I know is 4.2.8) but now that I have installed OS X I can't use the firmware updater. Okay, so I can put 9.2.2 back on here, does Disk Utility support nondestructive repartitioning so I don't lose my installation? * This was advertised as a Digital Audio PC... but I can't find an input port on this machine anywhere for a Line In or a Microphone?! How am I supposed to connect some audio source for recording? I have a Sound Blaster Live card in the garage but, much to my dismay, I see Creative has been unable to produce OS X drivers for this. The kX project requires at least 10.4 for their drivers. There's some kind of plug on the back of this for a special Apple Pro Speakers that doesn't fit my microphone jacks. I'm thinking I would need to start looking for a USB solution, but even those seem to require 10.4 a lot of the time. * Wireless - this has no Airport card in the little Airport card slot. I have no idea how to go about finding a solution for this and, probably, won't bother. I would imagine the expense would be pretty high for a compatible card. That's a lot of issues and I haven't even gotten to installing the software I want to use. In fact I've been thinking about this project on a "grander scale" and I am wondering if even my Step 1 was a bad choice, and I should have gone with either 9.2 (and really outdated hardware) or 10.4 (though the system requirements seem steep). I would be willing to go 10.4 if I knew that this hardware would run it faster than 10.3. Otherwise I don't want to bother. This is one of those "set it up and let it sit" installations, I want everything perfected the first time so I don't have to get in and mess around with things later. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
