New (to me) PowerMac G4

[schen]

I've added an intruder to the brood of ThinkPads at my house. My brother-in-law who's moving to German soon gave me his "Sawtooth" PowerMac G4... so you can't beat the price! Anyway, it began upgraded to 512Mb of RAM 10+40Gb HDDs, plus the original DVD-ROM and 100Mb Zip drive. This is my first "modern" (meaning capable of running OS X) Mac, however, it's been restored to OS 9.x

Anyway, I'm throwing it out there to you Mac folks to see what I should do with the thing. My LCD monitor has 1 DVI & 1 HD15 inputs, so I can just hook it up next to my regular desktop. My basic thoughts are to upgrade it more if necessary, but would really like to do the minimum since it would be taking resources away from my primary attention (ThinkPads). I'm thinking of using it as a digital photo and video editing machine with older versions of CS and FinalCut Pro.

Any thoughts? Such as which version of OS X, CS etc.?

[AlphaKilo470]

Tiger ran perfectly on my 400mhz G4 with 1gb ram. I used Photoshop 7 on the machine; I really find CS pointless if you already have a copy of Photoshop 6 or 7.

[j-dawg]

I've got 512MB of RAM on my Sawtooth 450MHz and it runs 10.3 (is that Panther?) just fine.

Thing is, while OS X runs fine on those old machines, they really are too old to effectively and quickly do graphic/media work. If you're really serious about it, buy a newer Mac. Otherwise, you're probably better off with a more modern PC, even if the software isn't as popular.

Keep in mind that I don't really use this software at all, but my experience with software like Handbrake is that even though it's a Mac...it's an ancient Mac.

[schen]

I've got 512MB of RAM on my Sawtooth 450MHz and it runs 10.3 (is that Panther?) just fine.

Thing is, while OS X runs fine on those old machines, they really are too old to effectively and quickly do graphic/media work. If you're really serious about it, buy a newer Mac. Otherwise, you're probably better off with a more modern PC, even if the software isn't as popular.

Keep in mind that I don't really use this software at all, but my experience with software like Handbrake is that even though it's a Mac...it's an ancient Mac.

My day to day stuff is on my main desktop PC and various ThinkPads scattered throughout the house. My main thought was that some of the older Mac software such as FinalCut Pro and (as Alex pointed out) Photoshop in older versions will do what I need them to do just fine. About 5 years ago I was atually trained to support the "mirror door G4s" in my previous job and really can't see why the version of that software from that time wouldn't be just fine.

Unfortunately, I not familiar enough with wrenching on a Mac to know exactly what I need to add to make something run well. A good example is that while I know the "Sawtooth" G4s will run OS X up to Tiger, is it better really to run slightly older versions of OS X? Is FinalCut Pro 2 fine with 512Mb of RAM? That sort of thing. I can tell you all that for my ThinkPads and PC desktop, but just not as comfortable with the Mac hardware yet.

[Temetka]

I'd bump the machine to 1 full gig for Final Cut as it loves RAM.

Those machines can take a CPU upgrade and a nice video card upgrade also. I'd go for a GPU upgrade first. Something along the lines of a 9200 should do just fine.

Enjoy your sawtooth, I miss mine it was a great computer. Took everything I could throw at it and just kept smiling.

[john518]

My 2 cents
1-cpu speed 350,400,450 or 500 mhz?
2-video card (rage128 & rage128pro) only has 16mb vram
3-max ram under OS X is 2gb (4 slots)
If I was going to use G4 I would max out the ram and run 10.4 (tiger). I am running Gimp on a 400Mhz G3 powerbook w/ 1gb ram and 10.4 and it is not slow.