[Beatleboy]

I have many questions. I own a Power Mac G4 which I bought in August, 2001. I am currently running OS X 10.4.11. I have 128MB SDRAM in the IMM0/J21 slot and 512MB in the DIMM1/J22 slot and the original 60 GB hard drive. I know I can add another 512MB to the third open slot, but can I also swap out the 128MB for a third 512MB? I'm attempting to speed up the "old girl".

Also, I added an EIDE internal hard drive made by Western Digital. The Mac Genius insisted that, based on my Mac's specs, it would certainly recognize it as 320MB. It is listed as 320GB on the box, but my Mac only recognizes 128GB. What do I need to do for this Mac to recognize the full capacity? I didn't want to install anything larger because I didn't want to go through the expense of adding additional cards.

[mdawson]

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Beatleboy wrote:

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I know I can add another 512MB to the third open slot, but can I also swap out the 128MB for a third 512MB?

You have not indicated which Power Mac G4 you have, as there were two models released in 2001: the Power Mac G4 Digital Audio and Power Mac G4 Quicksilver. Both can be upgraded to 1.5 GB RAM.

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Beatleboy wrote:

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Also, I added an EIDE internal hard drive made by Western Digital. The Mac Genius insisted that, based on my Mac's specs, it would certainly recognize it as 320MB. It is listed as 320GB on the box, but my Mac only recognizes 128GB. What do I need to do for this Mac to recognize the full capacity?

Both of the Power Mac G4s sold in 2001 had ATA-66 buses for the internal drives. That bus is based on the ATA-5 standard?nice of them to use the same nomenclature for the bus, ATA-66 indicates a 66 MBps maximum theoretical bandwidth, and the standard, ATA-5 indicates that it is the fifth generation ATA standard?and has a hard limit of 128 GB. So any drive you install in your Power Mac G4 will be limited by the ATA bus.

One software option does exist that may help you overcome this issue. Intech Software?s SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver is a utility designed to allow you to use higher capacity drives on G3/G4 Macs with the older ATA bus. A number of issues can arise by going this route and Intech does address those issues on its Website. I have no experience with SpeedTools, so I cannot vouch for how well the utility works. Given that OWC has sold the SpeedTool utility as both a separate item and bundled with drives that they sell, I would have to guess that it lives up to its advertising.

Your best option is to get a controller card to eliminate the hardware issue. At his point, most of the controller cards are for SATA, so the hard drive you just purchased will not work with them, but SATA will provide you with much improved drive performance. That stated, OWC does have four PCI-based ATA controllers available with some interesting options and features. I can see some definite uses for the Sonnet card. All of the cars on the page I linked will work with your Power Mac G4.

[Beatleboy]

Thank you. Your answer was very informative. Regarding the version of my Mac, if the one with the shiny silver drive doors is the Quicksilver, I have the Digital Audio version. I will give the software route a try, but I will also keep the card option open. You've been a great help.