Starting from scratch

Discussion in 'Mac - General discussion' started by 21Q, Aug 17, 2006.

  1. 21Q

    21Q Regular member

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    For those who know, I have a mac powermac g4 that I found in the trash and was comlpetely intact, (i think i might of said it was given to me but wasn't) I can't get into it because of a password and login. I was told it was impossible without the cd. Well I bought the cd but know when I try to install it the Mac say's that it is a school edition only. So since the hd is only 10gb sata I want to buy a decent size hard drive but and IDE and the mac has a plrt for it. So I need to know what hard drives I can use in my mac and if I should tiger 10.4 now.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2006
  2. thelox714

    thelox714 Regular member

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  3. 21Q

    21Q Regular member

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    Im very sorry, i posted powerbook, I meant power mac, think you can still help me
     
  4. thelox714

    thelox714 Regular member

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    If it is a PowerMac G4, then it should have an IDE drive in it. Only the PowerMac G5s have the SATA. Unless there was a SATA controller card added in to the machine.
    It being a G4, the max size on the HD would be a 120GB IDE HDD. You can add in a Sonnect ATA controller card if you want to go any higher than that.
    You may also want to check to see how much RAM you have in there. You would want at least 512MB.
     
  5. 21Q

    21Q Regular member

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    well it does have a sata card in it and I can't tell what amout of ram it has because I can't get into the comp only the login screen, the memory sticks don't say what they are.
     
  6. 21Q

    21Q Regular member

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    can i use a os reinstall cd from a macbook
     
  7. johnodd4

    johnodd4 Guest

    no because the mac book cd's do not work on any other system but a mac book


    and on another note you can go to a 200 gig hard drive if your using the sata adapter in the macintosh i have a g3 tower and am using a sata controller in it and have dual sata drives at 200 gigs each without any issues but if your mac exceedes the cards limiter then you cannot use the drives
     
  8. 21Q

    21Q Regular member

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    ok, so which os version do i buy and which hd do i buy
     
  9. thelox714

    thelox714 Regular member

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    I've been away for a while but here we are.

    If you have the SATA controller in that machine, you are of course able to put in the SATA drive in there. I don't know if each controller card has a limit on HDD size.
    You can use any SATA HDD on that card. You can just do a search on:

    http://www.macmall.com

    Search for: SATA HDD
    Then you need to add whatever size you are looking for. Such as: 200gb, 300GB. I do believe the biggest ones i have seen are the 500GB HDDs by Hitachi and, I believe Maxtor. You should have no issue with that.

    You should be able to just pick up a copy of Tiger from the Apple store. Those don't require a special machine type. You just can't use the restore disks that come with the other machines.

    Later.
     

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