So here's what I'm thinking of doing. I recently bought a 2002-03 17" iMac G4. But I feel like it's BEGGING for more power. What I was thinking is ram upgrades and a hard drive swap but i need to know first if that's even possible, if so what are the best and fastest parts I can get for this machine? Thank you very much! P.S. What else can I do besides ram and HD?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)
All you can change are RAM and the hard drive. Neither will make a speed demon out of your G4.
No amount of upgrading can change the fact that modern web pages are no longer optimized for G-deries processors. We have a number of G-series iMacs here and none are coping well with the Internet.
What you can and can't do depends on your exact iMac G4 variant. A lot happend in 2002-2003. In mid 2003, the logic board was changed to provide USB 2.0 ports and a 67-percent faster system bus. It also gained (unofficially) the ability to handle twice the RAM of the earlier USB 1.1 iMacs.
If yours is a USB 1.1 model, I doubt anything you did to it would show as a perceptible speed increase. If its a USB 2.0 unit, maxing RAM to 2GB may help considering the faster bus. A solid state hard drive might help but it would cost more than any used G4 iMac is worth.
"Legacy" SSD for older Macs are available. See here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro/Legacy_Edition
Also please research the takeapart of the G4 iMac--it is not a trivial matter. If done incorrectly you can fry the computer. Search for "imac g4 takeapart" and see if you are up to the strigent reassembly steps.
All you can change are RAM and the hard drive. Neither will make a speed demon out of your G4.
No amount of upgrading can change the fact that modern web pages are no longer optimized for G-deries processors. We have a number of G-series iMacs here and none are coping well with the Internet.
What you can and can't do depends on your exact iMac G4 variant. A lot happend in 2002-2003. In mid 2003, the logic board was changed to provide USB 2.0 ports and a 67-percent faster system bus. It also gained (unofficially) the ability to handle twice the RAM of the earlier USB 1.1 iMacs.
If yours is a USB 1.1 model, I doubt anything you did to it would show as a perceptible speed increase. If its a USB 2.0 unit, maxing RAM to 2GB may help considering the faster bus. A solid state hard drive might help but it would cost more than any used G4 iMac is worth.
"Legacy" SSD for older Macs are available. See here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro/Legacy_Edition
Also please research the takeapart of the G4 iMac--it is not a trivial matter. If done incorrectly you can fry the computer. Search for "imac g4 takeapart" and see if you are up to the strigent reassembly steps.
Thinking of going crazy with my G4
