Comments on: Project: upgrade a ‘Yikes!’ PowerMac G4

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:38:29 +0000

I also just acquired a G4 350 Yikes from a friend of mine who found it at a foreclosure home that he bought. I had to delete the administrator account and create my own in order to log in. It’s also running Panther with 320 mb’s of PC100 Ram. It is bone stock with the original 10 GB HDD, 8 MB ATI PCI 128 Rage video card, and an old Adaptec 32 bit 50 pin narrow SCSI card. The Safari browser kept crashing on certain web pages, so I down loaded Camino 1.6 and it works perfectly, I’m using it now. I then down loaded Neo Office 2.2.6 which also works perfectly even on the 320 ram (it calls for 512 minimum). It came with Photo Shop 7.0 which seems to run fine other than an error message when I start it saying something about OS 9 and to re-install it under OS X for some features to work. I haven’t figured out which features aren’t working yet, it seems to run without a hitch. I tried getting Quickbooks 4.0 pro to work but it won’t because it doesn’t seem to have an OS 9 folder. There is an 8.6 start up disc option, but when I tried that, I got the flashing ?/folder on start up and had to go into open firmware and change the boot device in order to get it to boot back in to OS X.

I also want to add a USB 2.0 card. I tried adding a VIA firewire/PCI 2.0 combo card I had laying around, but only the firewire worked which I don’t need since the Yikes has firewire already built in. I also tried adding a stick of Kingston PC133 256 mb, but it didn’t work either. Made the system VERY unstable. PC100 low density 16 chip ram is the way to go I believe. 256 mb’s are the largest the Yikes will support. High quality PC133 may work, I don’t know. The stick I tried was the “Value Ram” high density 8 chip.

I believe the ATI Radeon 128 mb 9200 PCI Mac edition is the best video card for the Yikes. I’m debating on buying one of those off Ebay, or trying to flash one of my old PC PCI cards I have laying around.

Other than that, I’d like to upgrade to a faster, larger hard drive. I have a bunch of old SCA 80 Ultra 160 SCSI hard drives laying around. I just need the 80 pin to 68/50 adapter which I saw on Ebay for $1.00 and either a 50 pin cable to hook it to the existing narrow SCSI card or buying a 64 bit PCI-X Ultra card and a 68 pin cable which would probably be better but may be over kill on a Yikes. Anyone tried this?

Or maybe a SATA 300 card with a new 7200 RPM SATA hard drive would be better if there’s a SATA card that will work on the Yikes. If so, I understand there’s a 128 gb hard drive limit. I don’t know if that only applies to the built in ATA 33 controller or what. I’m open to suggestions on the hard drive upgrade as this is my first Mac and I don’t know much about them.

By: davelawrence8

davelawrence8 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:31:30 +0000

Thanks Tyler. I did pop a USB 2.0 card in the Yikes! G4 so I can sync my iPod and whatnot. Worked perfectly.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:23:51 +0000

I started out with a G4 350, it was a good machine with a gig of ram, it ran tiger 10.4.11 fine, and still dose, when i upgraded to a Quicksilver 2002, i gave my old girl to my parents and they still use with out any problems, however i think a USB 2.0 card is essential to make it feel more modern, i.e with faster ipod syncs etc thats the only big thing that dates them other than that they still keep up quite well

By: Soccermom

Soccermom — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:13:33 +0000

I have one machine just like yours. G4 Dual, high end though. I want to keep for kids use, but I’ll like to upgrade the monitor/LCD display. Can help me with that option?

Thanks,

By: Jordypants

Jordypants — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:19:46 +0000

My yikes runes youtube videos great, with both the original video card and the radeon 7000! However, it has got 750mb ram and a gigabit ethernet card, so it is a little unfair.

By: Mr

Mr — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:33:44 +0000

Ha, the G5 was a powerful processor, but it ran so hot that it was entirely unsuitable for a mobile computer. It was hardly suialbe in the iMac, and needed extensive cooling to bring the chips to their full potential. Meanwhile, Intel had these fast effficient cool mobile processors.

By the way, my G4 Yikes is bad at playing YouTube videos. The graphics card is a Radeon Mac Edition. The CPU is 450 Mhz. their is no way that it is 3 x faster than a 600 MHz Pentium iii, because I have an hP Pavilion 8665c with a 600 Mhz Piii, and 4 MB Intel-grated graphics, and it plays YouTUbe videos fine.

By: davelawrence8

davelawrence8 — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:39:12 +0000

Alex, I’ve thought of upgrading my graphics card as well, but I haven’t had any issues with the stock one in the PowerMac. I guess when I find I need, I’ll make the switch. Let me know how it goes!

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:32:17 +0000

I just got a G3 Blue & White and 2 G4’s. I’m loving playing with them as well (have maxed out ram on all 3 to 1GB) but I’m really hoping to upgrade the graphics adapter to something better. Mac cards are a little pricey and I have several PC cards that I’d like to flash but I’ve seen mixed results on the web. Does anyone have any ideas? I have an ATI 9600 and a Nvidia 6800GT that I’d like to move to the Mac.

By: steven

steven — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:17:18 +0000

Wow, lovely!
i also have a g4.. it needs serious ram upgrade though.
I was wondering… can a g4 dual 500 mHz use a 512 pc-133 sdram?

By: davelawrence8

davelawrence8 — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:01:24 +0000

Will do, Scott. I’ll keep everyone updated on the G4’s progress.