Buying an 800Mhz eMac - is this wise?

Hi. I have been considering buying an 800Mhz eMac from eBay, but I have heard some discouraging stories about logic board capacitors going bad.

Could someone please put my mind at rest; was it ONLY the 1.25Ghz model eMac that had problematic capacitor syndrome, or did this extend to the 800Mhz eMac as well?.

The spec I am buying is:

800Mhz G4 processor

40Gb IDE hdd

640Mb RAM

~~~ I hear that this model can be overclocked to 1.33Ghz - right? ~~~

CD-ROM (I think, but it's irrelevant as I have an upgrade drive ready for it!)

I am paying £124 which includes shipping, from a bulk refurbishing company. I do NOT want to pay over the odds, and I refuse to be ripped off. If anyone has any suspicions, would you tell me please.

I'm mainly concerned about the capacitors dying on me - nothing else. Thankyou so much!.

PS: VERY IMPORTANT - can this eMac take a 250Gb IDE hard disk, and does the 800Mhz eMac support ATA100?. I forgot to mention this initially, but it is one of THE most important factors in my decision, thanks again.

be careful because overclocking a processor can be dangerous and there is a high risk of failure

redsoxreed said:

be careful because overclocking a processor can be dangerous and there is a high risk of failure

Click to expand...

Goes without saying really, but that wasn't what I asked!. Thanks anyhow, but I knew that.

PS: Dangerous would imply that the overclocker was in some way at risk... this is not so, as I'm not going to blow myself up, or die from having done so. It is risky in as much as the machine may die.

Having had 72 views on this thread, and only ONE reply, it's a good job I wasn't relying on you good folks, to make my purchase decision. I thought these forums were stuffed FULL of people, brimming with Mac knowledge?. I was evidently mistaken.

Well, I thought you were going to ask if you should buy an 800MHz eMac. It sounds like you will be.
It's a old, underpowered dinosaur with a heavy CRT display. It also sounds a bit expensive.
It will support slow RAM, it's only 800MHz so it can't run Leopard, it only has USB 1.1 ports, and so on.
It's an old machine you're going to dump a ton of money in. Not worth it to me.

I just bought a used G4 1 GHZ for 200$. It sat in the box for half it's life and it runs great. It's my first Mac. I have no complaints with this box as I know it now won't be my last Mac once I learn the capabilities of OS X. My suggestion to you would be to shop around a little more and try find a little better of a deal. Good luck.

Doug11 said:

I just bought a used G4 1 GHZ for 200$. It sat in the box for half it's life and it runs great. It's my first Mac. I have no complaints with this box as I know it now won't be my last Mac once I learn the capabilities of OS X. My suggestion to you would be to shop around a little more and try find a little better of a deal. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Already purchased!. I love it - installed a 250Gb WD drive, a Liteon DVD±RW drive and clocked it up to 1.33Ghz!. I ran CPU stress test, and no problems AT ALL!. So pleased!!

Well,
to be honest, you were quite rude over the history of this thread IMHO, but anyone that's known as PMS (Pre-Mac Syndrome).

Okay, I thought of that, that's pretty clever if you ask me!
WOW!
Didn't think my brain was capable of that.
Watch, i'll google it and i'll find out that about 3 billion people have already said it.
Oh well.

Anyway,
glad you are happy with your Mac!
(Wipes slate clean)
Hope you learn to love it here!
Remember, if you don't like the number of replies your thread got, YOU can change that for somebody else in the future!

Happy computing!

w/e. Cool.