PowerMac G4 Problems

I got a PowerMac G4 today. Its a dual 450mhz machine with the sawtooth agp motherboard. No graphics card, ram, hdd, cd drive, pram battery.

I installed some sd ram, installed a geforce 4 420 agp graphics card (its a pc graphics card) and tried to boot it. It chimes and the power button lights up white but doesn't display anything on the screen or power on my USB devices.

I've tried the geforce4, a geforce2, a random elsa erazor iii lt agp card, a PCI s3 virge card. All do the same.

Is this due to a lac of pram battery or is it because none of the cards are flashed to "apple" bios?


I tried pressing the cuda switch, it still did the same thing, I also tried various keyboard commands but as I said i'm not getting any power to my usb devices.


Any help is appreciated!

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Rule one you need a Mac graphics card. None of the PC cards you listed will help. About the best would be an ATI Radeon 9800. Anyway the computer is hardly worth the expense of a Mac card. Originally it came with a Rage 128 Pro but if you find one not much good for gaming nowadays. Even that may be hard to find a 2X compatible card. here is a cheaper, and much much much slower option:-


http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Apple-M...780?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a785162bc

And here is the original card:-

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Pow...109?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item257b588675

If you intend to purchase memory be aware Macs use low density PC100 memory and NOT high density PC memory. Be aware computers sold in the condition you got this one usually have a failed logic board before spending any cash.

harryb2448 said:

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Rule one you need a Mac graphics card. None of the PC cards you listed will help. ABout the best would be an ATI Radeon 9800. Any the computer is hardly worth the expense of a Mac card. Originally it came with a Rage 128 but if you find one not much good for gaming nowadays.

Click to expand...

Hello!

Well I see there is some hope with flashing the geforce2 card?

And I'm not at all worried about gaming, I just want a mac to have it and experiment with it, I'm a pc technician.

Will 2x 256mb sticks of pc133 work? Those sticks worked in an imac g3 a year ago.

Also I bought this from a friend, he said it worked but he removed the items he did because he planned on upgrading it but never got to, and lost all the originals afterward.

harryb2448 said:

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Rule one you need a Mac graphics card. None of the PC cards you listed will help. About the best would be an ATI Radeon 9800. Anyway the computer is hardly worth the expense of a Mac card. Originally it came with a Rage 128 Pro but if you find one not much good for gaming nowadays. Even that may be hard to find a 2X compatible card. here is a cheaper, and much much much slower option:-


New Apple Mac G4 G5 Cube Mac ATI Radeon 7000 32MB AGP VGA Graphics Video Card | eBay

And here is the original card:-

Genuine PowerMac G4 ATI Rage 128 Pro AGP Video Card 109 72700 02 Working USA | eBay

If you intend to purchase memory be aware Macs use low density PC100 memory and NOT high density PC memory. Be aware computers sold in the condition you got this one usually have a failed logic board before spending any cash.

Click to expand...

I might get the original if it's not possible to flash a geforce2 mx 200.

If I use 2x 256mb sticks of pc133 will that be fine? (i assume its fine as it chimes)

Only if the memory you have is low density. Here are the precise specs:-


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/133SD512328/

harryb2448 said:

Only if the memory you have is low density. Here are the precise specs:-


OWC OWC133SD512328 512MB PC133 CL3 3-2-2/PC100 CL2... in stock at OWC

Click to expand...

I don't know if their high density or whatever. All I know is it chimes with that ram, if I take it out it beeps. I'm assuming the ram is FINE if it chimes.

I spent 2 hours yesterday trying to flash two different graphics cards and nothing worked.

Nah give that flashing business a miss. Great way to throw older gfx cards into the trash bin lol!