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G4 mac was given to me

Shadowmeph

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At my job yesterday I was given a G4 ( I think it is an old 733 mhz) mac with a keyboard after I got home I discovered that I don't have the proper cable to connect to my PC monitor do I need a certain monitor to plug into this thing, I plugged it in and it powered up this is more of a curiosity then anything.
 

MacJunky

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Macs of that age often had "ADC" as a digital video out + display power + USB. It looks kinda like DVI but with rounded ends and more pins. Check the other port on the card more closely.
I could have sworn that all those cards also had either VGA or DVI as well depending on the age. You can get Mac compatible cards as well as sometimes flash Mac firmware to a PC one in some cases. A regular bog standard PC AGP card will not work without modification. Your model should have an AGP 4x slot and four 33MHz 64bit PCI slots, btw. Also three regular PC133 SDRAM slots.
If it is stock it likely has Rage 128 Pro, Radeon, GeForce 2MX... I forget what others. If you are lucky someone might have tossed in a R7500 or GF4Ti or something from a newer model.

These days a G4 like that really is only good for running old software for fun&curiosity though, so it sounds like you have the right expectation.

A 733MHz tower is, IIRC, going to be either a high end "Digital Audio" model(silver side panels, graphite front/top/back), or the low end "Quicksilver 2001" model.(same silver everywhere)

You can run between Mac OS 9.2 and Mac OS 10.4 on that. 10.5 with a little extra work, but I would say to not really bother because it is going to struggle with software from 10.5's day anyway. If you want to run OS X do not bother with 10.0-10.2, they are slow. Stick to 9.2.2 and/or 10.3-10.4.
 

jalmir

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Jun 17, 2015
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Montreal
yeah sounds like a ADC connector ...

something like that?
HT1825_4.jpg



Trying to find another card, with DVI instead of ADC might be expensive! You could always do like I did and see the salvagable parts on eBay ... separately I got almost 150$ for the CPU and GPU :)
 

jalmir

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Jun 17, 2015
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Montreal
Holy crap! People will pay that kind of money for the CPU and GPU?

apparently ... they were sold separately and as "0.99 starting bids", similar items were selling as "buy it now" for MUCH more!

Though the CPU was a rare Gigadesign aftermarket 1.8Ghz ... that might explain the 100+ bid for that alone!!!
 

moocow

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Aug 8, 2011
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Vancouver, BC
I Googled last night and apparently there are conversion kits to make standard ATX and mATX boards to be mounted in the G4. So you could build yourself a Hackintosh in a G4 tower.
 

Shadowmeph

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Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
6,443
Location
Aldergrove British Columbia
yeah sounds like a ADC connector ...

something like that?
HT1825_4.jpg



Trying to find another card, with DVI instead of ADC might be expensive! You could always do like I did and see the salvagable parts on eBay ... separately I got almost 150$ for the CPU and GPU :)
it looks like the apple connecter



what is a good build for hackintosh? I actually the case lol
 

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