Hardware Upgrades: G4 QuickSilver? DVD/RAM/HD

[infaction]

Hello,
I am desperately trying to upgrade my Power Mac G4 QuickSilver (specs below). I need some help because I am clueless when it comes to this . I’d like to buy all of it together from http:/www.newegg.com and my budget is really tight, so if I can get suggestions about specific products on their site it would be great.

What I want to do:

RAM. I have 3 slots available but I need to know what to buy. I guess I’m looking for another 512mb for now.

DVD Burner. I need to get an internal DVD+/-R drive, highest speed possible (18/20x?) I need the cheapest one I can get that will be compatible. LiteOn not necessary, but OK if it’ll work and is cheap. I was told that generic hardware for PC/Mac can be used and I’m not sure about the connection types. IEEE/SATA? No clue. I’m hoping my specs will mean something to someone…same with the hard drive…

Hard Drive. I need a secondary internal drive to replace my crappy external one. But I don’t understand the connection type or what I should be looking for. Again, I heard a generic drive can be used. The cheapest 250gig drive I can get would be preferred.

System Specs:
Machine: Power Mac G4
Model: PowerMac 3,6 (QuickSilver with Mirror Doors)
CPU: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 1 GHz
L2 Cache per CPU: 256KB
L3 Cache per CPU: 1MB
Memory: 512MB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.4.7f1

If anyone out there can sympathize with my ignorance and help me out with some specifics, I would be greatly appreciative. Feel free to contact me via email if you need more info.

Thanks!
Rev

[trevor]

Quote: Model: PowerMac 3,6 (QuickSilver with Mirror Doors)

Quicksilvers and Mirrored Drive Door models are different. And there are models of both Quicksilver and MDD with dual 1 GHz processors. This matters because the type of memory used changed between the last of the Quicksilvers and the first of the MDD models.

You have a Mirrored Drive Door model (I looked up PowerMac 3,6 here).

You need PC2100 memory, although I would advise you to use your preferred memory vendor's memory locater script to select the memory, rather than just trying to buy any old PC2100 memory.

I'd advise that you get a Pioneer DVD+-R drive, not a liteon. A Sony would be an acceptable alternative. They are cheap here. You need an ATAPI optical drive (some people call it ATA, but that is actually the hard drive protocol--optical drives use ATAPI), not a SATA optical drive.

You also need an ATA hard drive. You are not limited in capacity, though. The MDD models can take any capacity ATA hard drive. Again, you do not want a SATA hard drive.

Trevor

[infaction]

Yes, you are right Trevor...it is not a Quicksilver, it is the Mirror Door model...precisely why I needed to talk to people who know their Macs from a hole in the ground
This is very, very helpful.
Does anyone have other recommendations for specific brands or models of the equipment I mentioned? Any brands better than others? Brands I should avoid altogether? As a Mac owner, I rarely have to buy or alter anything so I'm grateful for any insight

[chicorasia]

I've been using an external DVD drive - Samsung writemaster - with my quicksilver 800. It is not explicitly compatible with macs, but works perfectly.

I thought that it would be better to buy an external drive than to try and replace the internal one. Besides, having two optical drives comes really handy sometimes. And it was the cheapest external drive I could find.

Oh, and stay away from 160gb samsung hard disks. I've had serious problems with SP1640N and SP1644N drives.

[trevor]

Quote: Originally Posted by infaction Does anyone have other recommendations for specific brands or models of the equipment I mentioned? Any brands better than others? Brands I should avoid altogether? As a Mac owner, I rarely have to buy or alter anything so I'm grateful for any insight

For memory, go to your preferred memory vendor. For an example, I'll pick Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/

Put in your machine statistics: Apple > PowerMac > Mirrored Drive Door > 1 GHz dual and select the memory you wish to buy from the memory selector.

For optical drive, buy a Pioneer at the link I gave in my previous post. Make sure to jumper it as Master, not cable select. If you have any other drive on the same ATA chain, jumper that as Slave. (Note: yes, I know that the MDD model PowerMac support cable select. However, Pioneer drives have far fewer problems if they are jumpered as Master, which will work just fine.)

For a hard drive, my personal preference is Hitachi brand. You need an ATA drive. Check your preferred vendor for ATA hard drives of the approximate size and price range that you want.

For example, here's a product search at NewEgg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ar+ATA&x=0&y=0

Make sure not to pick any drives marked SATA--they come up in the search because the letters "ATA" are included in the letters "SATA".

Trevor

[infaction]

Excellent, so this is what I ordered from OWC, taking Trevor's excellent advice on the Pioneer superdrive and an ATA hard drive:

Quantity: 1 OWC2100DDR512, $36.95 each
512MB PC2100 DDR 266MHz 184 Pin Module

Quantity: 1 PIODVR112DBK, $43.97 each
Pioneer DVR-112D-BK [Black Bezel] 'SuperDrive' 18X DVD w/DL + CDRW Burner

Quantity: 1 MAX6L250R0, $69.99 each
250GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 7200RPM ATA/133 HD

(by the way, UPS ground shipping was less than $3 for all of this!)

I heard the OWC brand RAM is crap based on customer reviews, but I took a chance on it considering my tight budget.
Now as for the master/slave issue with the optical drive...I was under the impression that I could have 2 optical drives since I have two door slots. Am I wrong or am I misunderstanding you? Should I make my original factory-installed 1x optical drive the slave and this new 18x the master?

I'm sure I will have more questions about hooking up the hard drive also...like where to physically put it exactly. I assume there will be a similar master/slave situation?
I appreciate all the help. Now that the "what to buy" phase is over, I'm looking forward to hooking all of this up when it arrives and giving my G4 the extended life it deserves!

Daryl

[trevor]

Hi Daryl,

Quote: Originally Posted by infaction Now as for the master/slave issue with the optical drive...I was under the impression that I could have 2 optical drives since I have two door slots. Am I wrong or am I misunderstanding you? Should I make my original factory-installed 1x optical drive the slave and this new 18x the master?

The MDD Macs are fine with two optical drives. In most cases (in other words when neither of them is Pioneer), you can just jumper two optical drives as Cable Select and be done with it. Even with Pioneer drives, some people can do that with no problems.

However, there have been a lot of Pioneer drives (only) that seem to require being jumpered as Master. Other brands don't have this odd issue. So, just jumper your Pioneer drive as Master, and your old drive as Slave. That will work fine.

Quote: I'm sure I will have more questions about hooking up the hard drive also...like where to physically put it exactly. I assume there will be a similar master/slave situation?

With your hard drives, you can choose to jumper both as Cable Select, or one as Master and one as Slave. Either scenario should work fine on your computer.

Trevor

[Tr2n]

Quote: Originally Posted by chicorasia and stay away from 160gb samsung hard disks. I've had serious problems with SP1640N and SP1644N drives.

Hello there.. what kind of problems did you had? I am trying to install a SP1644N on a G4 and it only recognizes 31.5gb.. is there a way to make it see the full capacity of the drive?

Thanks a lot!

[stewiesno1]

Have you formatted the drive ?
If you go to Disk Utility and choose Erase and then format you should see the full amount less a bit of overhead.

Stewie

[trevor]

Tr2n, your SP1644N is jumpered incorrectly. There are different jumper settings for Max < 32GB and regular, and you must have it jumpered for Max < 32GB. See the install guide http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...Eng_200704.pdf for correct jumper settings.

Trevor

[Tr2n]

Thanks for the help!

Besides removing the 32gb limit jumper, I used the Open Firmware hack found here, to "jump" over the 128gb limit on the G4:

http://nanchatte.wordpress.com/2008/...-with-leopard/

And now it works like a charm. Hope it helps for more people out there!

[Spaceman323]

I have a Mac G4 Quicksilver 533 MHz, with 896 MB memory, running OS X 10.2 and Classic 9.2.

I want to install OS X 10.4.6 which will require a DVD reader.

I intend to install a Pioneer DVR-116D internal SuperDrive. The documentation on the drive says that it is natively supported under 10.4.3 and later.

Does this mean I will not be able to use the new DVD drive to read the new OS A 10.4.6 DVD's while still operating with OS X 10.2? The drive documentation says that it is possible to patch this drive for support under earlier versions of Mac OS X using Christian Moller's PatchBurn software but in checking that software it seems that it applies more to writing of CD's and DVD's.

Should I install the new drive as a second drive or should I replace the old drive?

I will appreciate any help on this subject.

[marchutch]

This may be worth checking out for your purposes:

http://www.patchburn.de/

cheers

Mark

[trevor]

Quote: Originally Posted by Spaceman323 I intend to install a Pioneer DVR-116D internal SuperDrive. The documentation on the drive says that it is natively supported under 10.4.3 and later. Does this mean I will not be able to use the new DVD drive to read the new OS A 10.4.6 DVD's while still operating with OS X 10.2?

When you install OS X, you are booted to the DVD. The 10.4.6 DVD is running a special version of OS X 10.4.6, so the DVR-116D will be functional and there should be no problem.

Actually, even if you were booted to 10.2, I *think* that the read function of the DVR-116D should work fine, it just will not write. But don't quote me on this.

Trevor