upgrading an old g4

Hi-

Welcome to Discussions!

Knowing the specific model of your "old silver G4" would be very helpful, as, for now, only general statements can be made......

Any G4 can have up to 4 internal hard drives, up to 2 hard drives are supported without additional controllers cards.
So, yes, it is very easy to add one more hard drive to your interior. All cables are there, just put the drive in, connect the cables, format with Disk Utility and go.

Depending on the G4 model, you may be limited to 128gb hard drive. Others have no size limit.
Depending on your G4, the drives need to be jumpered either Master/Slave, or Cable Select.
Adding a PCI controller card will allow any machine to use large hard drives, and allow support for up to 4 drives in the tower.

For ATA drives, the Seagate Barracuda drives are cool, quiet, and very reliable. Most recommended.

As for the USB 2.0 PCI card, brand is not as important as chipset. Any brand, with a *NEC chipset* will provide the best results. Avoid Via and Ali chipsets. They are problematic.
My Ratoc works very well.

This is a list of known trouble free NEC chipset USB 2.0 PCI cards:
Adaptec 3100LP
BAFO BF-460
Belkin F5U220
GWC UC-160
IOGear GIC250U
Keyspan U2PCI-5
O'toLink U2-C2B
O'toLink U2-C2A
O'toLink UF-P43
O'toLink U2-P20N
O'toLink U2-P50
Ratoc PCIU5
USBWholesale UII-PCIP

Note, that there can be sleep issues with certain devices connected to USB 2.0 PCI cards, mainly hard drives. Best to avoid USB 2.0 external hard drives. For external hard drives, use firewire.
See Xlr8yourMac for user reports with various cards.

Good morning japamac,

The Sonnet Allegro card has the NEC chipset. I have one in my MDD and looked before I bought!

Wow, great, i needed this list for myself... also, you think the brands tend to stick with the chipset? like IOgear offers a few diff cards, but they all probably have the NEC chip right? Also, what about FW800 cards? Thanks! (particularly)-->[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/FW80 0PCI>...
course i should probably just call them myself tomorrow and ask.. uh, gonna sleep now!
great list!

Good to know, this is who i was looking at for my USB pci cards.
is this the one you have Allan? [http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/USB2>

Hi 1984-I Was1-

For the most part makers stick with a given chipset, but, I have noted some change. *Definitely confirm the chipset prior to purchase.*
One interesting note regarding the Sonnet USB 2.0 PCI card, is that Sonnet has a "does not support Deep Sleep" statement in their description.
2 thoughts, Sonnet changes chipset from time to time (?), resulting in the need for this statement, and second (for sure), because all USB 2.0 PCI cards have problems with Deep Sleep and external USB hard drives and other mass storage devices, they are limiting potential for claims against the product.

The linked FW800 card is a good choice.

Excellent!, also, I am wondering... what's up with "internal" or "Front Bay" usb ports on these cards? I have seen what an internal port looks like... I'd rather have a card with 5 external ports if possible... I have been looking for your Ratoc card... but where can I get it? also where can I see a picture? or what is "3 ports are Front Bay".. what does this mean? Japamac, you sound like someone I would want to talk to about my whole system from looking at your setup (my real baby is the MDD). (Fans etc.).
I am trying to get this card to replace my old USB2.0 hub (from macally i think) from years ago, and it's finally getting too quirky to mess with any longer, i wanna just ditch it, some ports fail, and then come back.. etc... some devices cant run through it even though it's got it's own power supply...
so yeah, my new external quad interface drive is really want I want to get going here on FW800, the USB card is for ALL my other periphs that I have been using for a long time. So my follow up question is if I get a 5 port usb pci card, AND a FW800 card (only use one port for my HD, with it's own ps) should I think about getting a new PSU for my MDD? I missed the swap opportunity with apple, and i've been kicking myself ever since, so I'm running a "338W" PSU, not a 400Watt. And this sucker is hot, so i was also thinking of upgrading the fans too, but i'm on a tighter budget, i don't want to pay 200+$$ for the PSU alone... anyone thanks for the tips... main question is just the two cards, I think I'll start a new thread about the rest of it mb?
Thanks again!