Questions for Mac gurus

[guitar man]

I just scored a free Mac, it was in a medical office, the doc that owns the place is a Mac fanatic so everything there is Mac stuff, and he's replacing all the machines. A friend of mine works there and was able to snag the machine for me.

It's a Power Macintosh G4 (FireWire 800), Dual 1.42ghz processors. 2gb of DDR ram.I'm planning on using it in my recording studio to run audio production software etc.

What I'm a little concerned about is the power supply. It's a 7 year old machine and it has run pretty much round the clock because it was the one that backed up all the other machines in the office. So, my question is, are replacement power supplies for these expensive, and are they hard to replace?

thanks!

:)

[HopeHoops]

1. They're available at a variety of prices.

http://computers.shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=mac+g4+power+supply+-powerbook+-ibook&_sacat=58058&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313&_dmpt=Laptop_Adapters_Chargers&_odkw=mac+g4+power+supply&_osacat=58058&bkBtn=

The search (in "Computers and Networking") was for "mac g4 power supply -powerbook -ibook".

[guitar man]

2. thanks!

:hi:

[guitar man]

3. for reference

here's the machine I'm getting

http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=g4_800&sort=date&performa=off&order=ASC




:D

[HopeHoops]

4. I've got one just like it in the basement - fucker won't start at all.

It is probably a power supply issue, but it isn't high priority for me since I've got a fairly new Mac Mini that hardly takes up any space.

[guitar man]

5. that sucks

I hope I don't have the same problem with this one :scared:

[MilesColtrane]

6. Good luck with it.

Despite having decent dual processors, I see its bus speed is only slightly faster than my last Mac (G4 Quicksilver).
Back then I could only barely play back 2 or 3 tracks of digital audio when running Perfomer or Logic.

I've got a duel processor G5 with a bus speed of 1.25GHz now, so I don't have to deal with that any more.

[guitar man]

7. wow

that seems really odd that you couldn't play back any more tracks than that?

Back in 05 I took a set of 24 bit tracks to LA to mix down for an album I recorded. The guy that mixed it was running pro tools (not sure which version) on an old g3 and it was running 12-16 tracks flawlessly , and even some waves plugins on some of the tracks. Not sure what all he had done to that box but it ran very nicely.

[MilesColtrane]

8. I'm sure all three of his NuBus slots had audio cards.

IIRC that was the only way the older Power Macs could process audio fast enough for multiple tracks like that.

Let me know what kind of performance you get once you're up and running, OK?

:hi:

[guitar man]

9. Yeah, I think you're right

the pro tools stuff has hardware that goes along with it that takes a lot of the load off the cpu.

I think my PCI raid card will work in this mac I'm getting too so I'm going to try and set up a SATA RAID-0 array like I have on my windows box, I bet that will help it a lot too

I'll let you know how it does :hi: