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Upgrading Emac G4 1.25. Any RAM, SuperDrive, Hard Drive recommendations?

Hi All,

My emac has served me well for last 3 years and have now decided to upgrade it with 4 things.

1.) Ram - shall slot in 2 1GB sticks as it seems to work for many and would have obvious advantages
2.) Airport Card - since i have a wireless router and should be easy to install

Now this is where i am seeking help..

3.) Changing the Combo drive with a super drive ie burn DVDs as well in the future

How do i do it? Any prefered brand? Any caveats? Any think to look for?please advise

4.) Upgarding my internal HD (trying to avoide an external one to keep it neat)

I saw some instructions on forum and i think i would be up for the job, however

Can i use any standard internal HD or do i need to have a particular specs matched?
Whats the max i could go upto - can i install a 500 GB drive?
Can i use a faster HD - i mean with faster rpm

Lastly - if i carry all of the above Upgrade is it wise to do them all together since i open it any ways or do 1 at a time and see how it goes.

Any advise greatly appreciated.........

Many thanks in advance.

emac G4 1.25, 512 MB Ram

Posted on Sep 22, 2007 2:07 PM

Reply
12 replies

Oct 29, 2010 11:36 AM in response to su30

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86325

identifies your eMac.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107440

tells you if your eMac has any airport limitations.

Once you have identified your eMac, check the RAM upgradeability based on the spec pages:

http://support.apple.com/specs/

Do not attempt to install more than specs recommend, as that may break down Mac OS X.

Installing a Superdrive is not a task for mere mortals. Your Firewire port is a safer bet for installing an external Superdrive such as those by http://www.macsales.com/ or other http://www.patchburn.de/ compatible Superdrives which are frequently listed on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

Note, you may be limited to what hard drive you can install internally according to this article:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178

The eMac only supports Parallel IDE hard drives, and not SATA hard drives for internal drives, and the jumper configuration should match what is inside the machine. The installation should be left to an authorized repair center. If the above article 86178 article doesn't apply to you, yes a 500 GB Parallel ATA drive would work.

Most except the hard drive and internal optical drive you can do yourself.

Oct 29, 2010 11:37 AM in response to su30

su30,

If you really need to minimize desktop space by swapping out the internal optical and hard drives, despite a brody's warning about it being far easier to just use external Firewire drives, refer to Apple eMac Upgrade Guide (and be very, very careful when separating the case not to pull the power button connector apart; it's relatively fragile and not easy to find a replacement).

Oct 29, 2010 11:37 AM in response to su30

Thanks Brody and JMVP,

Those Links were very informative.
I have a emac with usb2.0 serial - QSG
Ram : I shall not excede 1 GB as advised
Airport : A airport extreme card should be good as per he link and should be a easy task.

Now the HD
So i need a Ultra ATA/100 (Apologies if i sound ignorant) and the maximum size seems to be 16 TB
wouldnt go beyond 500 Gb or a 1 TB how ever
If i decide to go in for a external harddrive with USB 2.0 and no power supply , should that be fine - asking only because i had some issues with a web cam in past running off the USB port on the keyboard , swapping the port to the one on the comp directly helped in that case,

As suggested i think an external burner will be ok but would still do some digging around nd see if i can swap the HD - also hoping that a Ultra ATA is easy to get.

Any more info on swapping the HD appreciated, especially some photos for jumper since they need to be matched.

Once again, Thank you guys.

Oct 29, 2010 11:37 AM in response to su30

Took time to understand but do you guys think something like this would slot in or somehing else needs to be checked as well.

Hitachi 400GB 7200rpm Serial ATA HDD

System Info says

ATA-6 Bus:

Vendor ID: 0x106b
Device ID: 0x003b
Revision ID: 0x0000

ST340015A:

Capacity: 37.27 GB
Model: ST340015A
Revision: 3.01
Serial Number: <edited by host>
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: No

Macintosh HD:

Capacity: 37.15 GB
Available: 8.4 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s3
Mount Point: /

Oct 29, 2010 11:37 AM in response to su30

If i decide to go in for a external harddrive with USB 2.0 and no power supply , should that be fine?

No, you would be selling yourself short there. Go with a Firewire enabled external drive, as it is faster but more importantly it gives the ability to boot into a clone. So it can be more than just a backup; with Firewire it can have a completely different Mac OS on it that you could boot into. But even with the same OS, it will allow you to boot up to the external if for any reason your internal has failed or needs repairs. You can't do this with a USB.

Message was edited by: roam

Oct 29, 2010 11:38 AM in response to su30

I am not any kind of expert on this subject but I found 'Crucial' (site link below) very helpful and the lowest prices for memory upgrades. http://www.crucial.com/uk/international_guides/ (then select a country)

This site can automatically test your Mac online and recommend the compatible memory. The eMac 1.25Mhz chip I believe has a maximum memory ceiling of 1Gb, so I suggest you buy one more 512mb memory stick to add to your existing. As for increasing the hard drive capacity, I bought a SmartDisk 250Gb external drive with 7200rpm and it is blindingly fast with FireWire connection. An added bonus with this drive is the BounceBack backup software included which works like a dream and incredibly fast. Files deleted from your main internal drive are not deleted from your external, so you can clear out lots of old stuff from the main internal drive. On average the BounceBack software takes one minute to backup about 500mb of updated files. As for the Superdrive, again I think it might be far easier and also write DVD's faster using an external drive with perhaps Toast 8 Titanium software included in your burner bundle. This would also facilitate copying any files from DVD to DVD, etc..

Oct 29, 2010 11:38 AM in response to su30

Have 2 Gigs in mine. Bought an external USB2 hard drive, instead of opening the eMac, drive that can be use on other Mac for saving precious data. Btw, USB2 external drives are really really low price these days. And if you buy a DVD burner just for saving data, the USB2 external drive would do the job. If you need it for iDVD, go for external. These are also kind of low price too.

Upgrading Emac G4 1.25. Any RAM, SuperDrive, Hard Drive recommendations?

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