Questions about upgrading an PPC 8600..

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Hi I got a free PPC 8600 tower from work! I want to use it in the basement as a server/music player/legacy device.
It has 360 megs or ram, a 604ev processor (whats dif between 604ev & 604e?), video audio input/output jacks , Zip drive and CD drive.

I have upgraded the OS to 9.1.
Is that as far as I can go?

I want to install a faster ethernet card.
Do they make gigabyte ethernet cards for this machine? Whats the fastest I can get? 10 Based-T is so slooooow

I also would like an ATA controller card, so I can drop a big cheap hard drive and an extra CDR burner I have laying around... any cheap suggestions that work with an 8600?

Firewire and USB would be gravy, but it's a toaster mac and I don't want to spen alot on it...

Thanks in advance if you have any suggestions...
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Aluminium Macbook 2.4 Ghz 4GB RAM, SSD 24" Samsung Display, iPhone 4, iPad 2
Maximum RAM: 1GB
Maximum OS: 9.1
Expansion ports: PCI, so theoretically you could get a 1gigabit ethernet PCI card, not too sure on driver support etc. under OS 9 though.

The ev model featured higher clock speeds (250/300 Mhz versus 200Mhz on the original e model).
 
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Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz (June 2004), 2.5GB, Airport, black 5G iPod 30GB, white MacBook 2.0 2GB
I had a 7600 to play around a bit.
You can put 1GB in it, though finding the right RAM for it will be quite difficult.

It is possible to upgrade it from 9.1 to 9.2.2 (the last OS9 version) on it.
To do that, you need this:
http://www.os9forever.com/os92x.html

The updates to 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 can be downloaded for free at Apple's support site.

You can upgrade the CPU to a G3, or even a G4, and with using the Xpostfacto-hack install OS X.

eBay would be the best place to find RAM and CPU boards...

Now for adding a network and IDE-controller card, as Aptmunich said, there might be problems to find the right drivers...

For more about your 8600:
http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/8600.shtml

:cool:
 

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