I just got the Powermac G4 in my sig. last week and I'm in the process of upgrading it. It currently has a Sony cd-rw optical drive(original?) and I would like to swap it out with a DVD drive. I currently have 2 extra Creative DVD drives(12X/6X) available to use but I don't know if they are compatable. I would like to know if one of them will work and if the system would be able to play DVD movies with the original ATI video card. Has anyone used a Creative drive and had problems? Any other manufactures recommended? I would like to use one of the ones I have on hand but willing to pick up something else. Note: I already have an external dvd-rw/cd-rw drive so I'm just looking to put in a standard dvd drive. Thanks.
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Compatable G4 optical drive?
- Thread starter Yoursh
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Just install the drives. They will work. I've swapped out many drives in G4's and G3's and have never bothered with compatibility because I have faith in Mac OS X to just make them work.
I've never had a problem with any drives (including Creative drives).
I've never had a problem with any drives (including Creative drives).
At my school, myself and a couple other kids put some money together and bought an old, out-of-warranty G3 PowerMac (the see through blue one, you know) and we said, "Ah, what the hell, it's out of warranty anyway" and began souping it up in our free periods - here are our results:
-Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2 (will update when school begins again) *no problem installing*
-Replaced original 700MHz processor (or.. 900, i don't remember) to a 1.9GHz;stripped form iMac G5 *was a breeze*
-8x superdrive stripped from an iMac G5 *no problem installing*
-500GB hard drive, 2x 250 drives *easy*
-2GB RAM *quick and easy*
-Installed a cheap, modded airport card *works*
Basically- everything you do/change on a Mac, it adjusts to it and it just works.
-Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2 (will update when school begins again) *no problem installing*
-Replaced original 700MHz processor (or.. 900, i don't remember) to a 1.9GHz;stripped form iMac G5 *was a breeze*
-8x superdrive stripped from an iMac G5 *no problem installing*
-500GB hard drive, 2x 250 drives *easy*
-2GB RAM *quick and easy*
-Installed a cheap, modded airport card *works*
Basically- everything you do/change on a Mac, it adjusts to it and it just works.
THat's interesting...the CPU's don't match with a G3 socket and G5...the G5 chips coincide with the FSB so they have to match... n the G3 motherboard used a 100mhz FSB, if not less instead of the 600mhz/700mhz on a G5 iMac...... the HD's in the imac G5 are SATA...whereas the G3's used ATA-66/100....but hey...if you did it...that's one crazy frankenMac...
I don't believe it is possible to put a G5 processor in a G3, or a G4 for that matter. You must have bought a G4 card to get that processor upgrade.
Well, there were 8 people who pitched in money to work on this machine, and my free period was 4th period with 2 other friends. So, I only know what these two guys and I did... the other 5 guys could have installed something or whatnot- but hell I don't know, I'm only 14.
It works great though!
Once the school year starts, I can post up some pics if you'd like.
It works great though!
Once the school year starts, I can post up some pics if you'd like.
GimmeSlack12 said:
Ha. I don't live on a farm, but my famliy does own a farm in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas.
Got the ram in yesterday and went ahead and swapped the drive out while upgrading the ram. The creative drive was detected correctly and is running fine. The only problem I encountered was trying to get the apple DVD player installed. Had to eventually download Pacifist to extract the player installer from my Panther install disc. Other than that it plays fine. On to the HDD upgrade....
One note--I have a third party DVD-RW dual-layered drive I got for $30, and it works fine, but it only burns with Toast (which is true of every third party drive I've bought). I'm sure it would work with other third party software as well, but desktop burning and itunes burning don't work (or at least didn't with my sony DVD/cd-rw I had, I never bothered testing itunes with this one).