10 year old G4

[ThatsABigOne]

I got a crappy G4 from my father who is an Apple fanboi. It has 10.4 Tiger with latest updates, but boy, it runs very slowly. Safari would always run at 100% load. Youtube is just a slide show with normal working sound.

Would installing OS X 10.3 on it would be a good idea? The reason I am reverting is that we do not have 10.4 disc but have 10.3 disc. I am also hoping that an older OS will not be as demanding as a more recent OS.

BTW, I put in the disc, then what do I do in order to boot onto a CD? For some reason mac's do not have bios....

Specs (Apple G4 QuickSilver)
733mhz G4
1GB of Ram
80GB HDD Western Digital Caviar Blue
Geforce MX2
180watt PSU

I was hoping to get some use out of it by letting it fold. I know that PPC work units are rare, but hey, some contribution is something.

 

[TheStu]

I do not think that 10.3 will do you any better, the system is just too slow to handle really anything current. And trust me, I use a 1GHz G4, it will playback AVIs and DVDs, do some web surfing, and other light tasks, but past that... not really an everyday system.

Hold C or ALT immediately after booting, that will bring up the boot menu. And no, Macs do not have a BIOS. Intel Macs have EFIs, and although I cannot recall what earlier Macs used, but it was also not a BIOS.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

K thank you for your suggestions! I will try it out, since I will not loose anything! hehe

 

[Kadarin]

10.3 is old enough that things will start not working due to incompatibility soon.

 

[Emulex]

just put a PATA 7200rpm drive in place. like a 500gb maxtor. that should give it some pick me up. you can't run 10.5.8 on that?

 

[TBSN]

You could try some type of lightweight linux on it to speed things up.

 

[Nothinman]

I do not think that 10.3 will do you any better, the system is just too slow to handle really anything current. And trust me, I use a 1GHz G4, it will playback AVIs and DVDs, do some web surfing, and other light tasks, but past that... not really an everyday system.

Hold C or ALT immediately after booting, that will bring up the boot menu. And no, Macs do not have a BIOS. Intel Macs have EFIs, and although I cannot recall what earlier Macs used, but it was also not a BIOS.

I believe it was called OpenBoot/OBP, but essentially it's the same as a BIOS. They're both a set of firmware designed to initialize the hardware to a known state so that an OS can be loaded.

You could try some type of lightweight linux on it to speed things up.

It would most likely still be too slow for Flash. There may be ways to make it better than it is now, but it'll never be "good".

 

[Eug]

10.4.11 bare minimum.

10.5.8 might actually be an improvement, because Safari 5 runs on 10.5.8 and is faster than Safari 4. You'll need to run LeopardAssist to get 10.5 to install though. Even if 10.5.8 with Safari 5 isn't faster, the OS is just nicer.

10.3 is simply too old.

P.S. I echo the sentiment about the drive. An 80 GB old drive will be slow as molasses. If you have a more modern IDE drive lying around, you might want to put that in. The drive speed will go a long way to make it feel responsive.

Flash will suck no matter what you do, but make sure you're running Flash 10.1.

 

[TheStu]

Yea, 10.5 requires at least a 867MHz G4, so you would have to use some sort of work around if you wanted to install it.

A higher capacity, newer, faster platter drive could help, the higher rotational speed at the very least will help. And depending on how many platters it has, the areal density may yield its own benefits.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

With all of you saying to upgrade the HDD, I am afraid that it will be impossible as the hardware limitation on the motherboard will limit the HDD size to 128GB. This 80GB is only about 1.5 years old, as the old 4200RPM IBM HDD 40gb was starting to form bad sectors.

Now, if I want to install the 10.4 with current updates, is there any way to wipe the HDD before the installation? Granted I have never installed mac OS before.:\

Thank you so much for all of the responses on here. ^_^

EDIT: with the current installation, the computer is running 56 processes and using up in upwards of 700mb of ram easily with safari 4 running. I tried downgrading to flash 9, but my father always update this update that...

 

[Eug]

If the drive is new then you're fine. However, just to be clear, even a 160 GB should work. You'd just be wasting 32 GB.

If you already have 10.4 installed then just run Software Update. Click on the Apple symbol in the top left corner.

Otherwise the install disc has a Disk Utility that allows you to wipe the drive if necessary.

 

[Patranus]

The G4 is 10 years old?

Wow, I feel old.

 

[Eug]

Actually, 11 years old. It came out in 1999.

 

[Patranus]

Actually, 11 years old. It came out in 1999.

Ug. Buying my B&W G3 seems like yesterday.

I mean that thing came with ADB AND USB. What more could I ask for?

(Sorry for going off topic)

 

[Emulex]

your iphone is more more powerful. lol.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

your iphone is more more powerful. lol.

Actually no... Hehe.

K, I will go with the suggestions on OS, but I am determined not to dump any more money on this POS.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

your iphone is more more powerful. lol.

Actually no... Hehe.

K, I will go with the suggestions on OS, but I am determined not to dump any more money on this POS.

 

[Eug]

I have 10.5 running on a G4 450. It's slow as hell, but I just prefer it to 10.4, which is also slow as hell on a G4 450. However, I have since retired it. My slowest now is a G4 800, which is actually tolerable for light surfing... but note: The biggest "upgrade" you can do for surfing speed is to install the free ClickToFlash.

The biggest drag on surfing is due to all the wasted CPU cycles from background Flash ads. ClickToFlash allows you to block all of it, but if you really want to view something, you can just click on it.

That will make your G4 733 feel sooooo much faster.

 

[Emulex]

yeah firefox 4.0b6 or chrome9 really flies especially with click to flash - immensely helps the battery life of my old 2008 model macbook air

 

[TheStu]

Absolutely true Eug. I had created a throwaway account on my PowerBook over the weekend, and it didn't have ClickToFlash installed... noticed it IMMEDIATELY. Safari 5 will usually run ok on the PBook, but only if ClickToFlash is in place. That plus SafariAdblock. Both can be obtained from extensions.safari.com once you install Safari 5.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR the ClickToFlash.! G4 has a new life for a better browser...!

 

[Patranus]

Actually no... Hehe.

K, I will go with the suggestions on OS, but I am determined not to dump any more money on this POS.

You can always try a PPC build of a Linux distribution like Fedora depending on what you really want to get out of the machine.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Will linux even work on PPC? Do you have a link to your suggestion of OS?

 

[Nothinman]

Will linux even work on PPC? Do you have a link to your suggestion of OS?

Linux has run on dozens of architectures for a very, very long time. Most of the major distros have dropped official support for the lesser used architectures though, although Debian still supports everything they can get their hands on.

 

[Compman55]

Will linux even work on PPC? Do you have a link to your suggestion of OS?

Where do you live? I have a free ibm netvista P4 2.0Ghz, 1GB, 40GB, Winxp/SP3/Office2k/ you could use for folding if this old timer does not pan out. I know its apple and its cool to mess around with, but they are too slow for todays tasks. P4's still run internet and email great.