Help I am new, I have a few questions

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I was recently given a seemingly decent G5 PowerMac

I think it was the single dual core G5, as there is only 1 giant G5 logo inside it
2gig DDR2 Ram

Am I able to upgrade the video card in this to something WAY more modern like anything by ATI or NVIDIA? it does have 4x pci express slots in it, it came with a stock 6600LE which is complete crap

For RAM Can I just plop any DDR2 Ram on the board? It says it is DDR2 SDRAM with a bunch of empty slots and this would be awesome.

For the DVD Drive, as the one in it is dieing, can I use a SATA one and snake a SATA cable to the hard drive slot as I put a 1tb drive in it and am not hurting for space anytime soon?

As soon as I get this DVD issue sorted out, would I be able to run Windows 7 on this?

I would love to get some awesome applications to make this thing useful for SOMETHING, but it seems like trying to bat at a dead horse to find software.

I did however buy iLife 09 and iWork 09.
 

chscag

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Someone else can answer your questions about the video card and memory, however, forget about running Windows 7 on that machine. Since it's a Power PC machine, it can not run any version of Windows nor can it run any version of OS X later than Leopard (10.5.8).
 

dtravis7


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I will let others answer your other questions BUT, NO WINDOWS will run on a Power PC CPU. It's impossible.

Video CArds have to have a Mac ROM in them.

Pretty much any DVD drive should work.


For what you will be able to do with that machine with OSX 10.5.8 on it, that video card is not that bad.
 
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So I shouldn't buy boot camp then? I guess this machine wasn't built until the end of 2005 according to some sites, odd I suppose, not really an issue, however, it would be nice to know some applications for such a system with 0 apple support, and next to no Internet support for anything modern. Such a shame because it is a relatively powerful system. I may buy Leopard Server then and turn this into some sort of file server
 

dtravis7


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You can use that machine for internet just fine. It's a Power PC. Windows never supported Power PC machines. If you have 10.5.8 installed it's not a bad machine for many things.
 

chscag

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You can't purchase Boot Camp anyway. It was first included with Leopard and is free. A machine built in 2005 is now 7 years old.... that's a long time in computer years. All Apple machines are now equipped with Intel hardware. The PPC is still a very good processor but unfortunately now outmoded.
 
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Yeah it is Leopard, however, 1kw psu and pulling 890 watts at the wall outlet seems a little overpowered for "just the Internet" regardless of the fact that it is a Mac. It is cool to check out and see the other side, it just seems almost painful that it is so outmoded. Being 2.0ghz and dual core why kill support for a processor that I am sure a lot of people use? Oh well I guess. I really like the machine and it seems to work perfectly other than a dead DVD drive which I never use anyway. I may use the PATA port for a third HDD and put Linux on this and run a server. Thanks for the information :)
 

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