I've recently acquired a Powermac G4 - 500 - AGP model. Where do I get the OS!?!!??

[KlokWyze]

It was being thrown out and missing the HDD and some RAM. I got that covered, so all I need now is the OS. I've searched a little bit and found here, but I'm still pretty confused on if and how this will work.

Will any standard IDE HDD work in this or or do I need some fuckin "apple" bullshit?

Anything else I need to know?

 

[TheStu]

No, you do not need any fuckin "apple" bullshit...

500 MHz G4... you are looking at 10.3 at the most. I would recommend either finding an Apple reseller in your area, or checking ebay.

You also could always just put Linux on there, that would be free.

It will be slow, 10.3 might run the last version of Firefox at best.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

I got one of these too recently, it works perfectly but its too slow to do anything useful. Plus Safari 1.0.3 runs with 100% processor utilization and nothing renders correctly anyway, oh well.

Might dump it on CL and see what someone will pay for it.

 

[vailr]

I could be wrong, but I think Leopard 10.5.8 is the most up-to-date version that could run on a Power Mac G4. Might check eBay for a used install disk.
As far as the hard drive: just re-format in the Apple HFS file system.

 

[TheStu]

I could be wrong, but I think Leopard 10.5.8 is the most up-to-date version that could run on a Power Mac G4. Might check eBay for a used install disk.
As far as the hard drive: just re-format in the Apple HFS file system.

Leopard cut off G4s below 867MHz, so it will run on 6 year old PPCs (like my PowerBooks), but not older ones like the OPs.

Tiger might work, but if it doesn't have Firewire then it will be tricky, that is one of the requirements for Tiger.

 

[mmntech]

I could be wrong, but I think Leopard 10.5.8 is the most up-to-date version that could run on a Power Mac G4. Might check eBay for a used install disk.
As far as the hard drive: just re-format in the Apple HFS file system.

No way it will run on a 500mhz G4. It will barely run on a 1.33ghz G4. 10.3 might work as Stu said. Even then, there's not a lot you could do with it. File server maybe... maybe. Couldn't use it to play classic games unless OS9 is installed. It's just too old.

As for "Apple BS", they haven't used proprietary hard drives or RAM in a very long time.

 

[TheStu]

No way it will run on a 500mhz G4. It will barely run on a 1.33ghz G4. 10.3 might work as Stu said. Even then, there's not a lot you could do with it. File server maybe... maybe. Couldn't use it to play classic games unless OS9 is installed. It's just too old.

As for "Apple BS", they haven't used proprietary hard drives or RAM in a very long time.

10.5.8 runs perfectly fine on both my 1GHz and 1.33GHz G4s. Honestly, even if it did run a little worse than Tiger (which it doesn't seem to), I would still stick with Leopard... I can't really stand Tiger anymore.

 

[Tyranicus]

Did Apple ever use proprietary hard drives or RAM? I know old Macs used SCSI drives, but that doesn't really count as proprietary.

 

[TheStu]

Did Apple ever use proprietary hard drives or RAM? I know old Macs used SCSI drives, but that doesn't really count as proprietary.

They never used 'proprietary' RAM, but older Macs were very finicky about timings.

 

[ViRGE]

They never used 'proprietary' RAM, but older Macs were very finicky about timings.

Correct. It was never proprietary, but besides the timings they also had an affinity for 5v DIMMs when almost no one else did.

 

[Patranus]

10.5.8 runs perfectly fine on both my 1GHz and 1.33GHz G4s. Honestly, even if it did run a little worse than Tiger (which it doesn't seem to), I would still stick with Leopard... I can't really stand Tiger anymore.

The biggest addition you need to make to run 10.5 is RAM. The problem is you are going to max out at 2GB which is a little bit less than I would suggest.