So, I picked up the machine yesterday afternoon. The complete inventory of stuff in it was as follows:
2x 1.25Ghz CPU
2 GB RAM
Airport
250 GB HD
1x Radeon 9000 Pro AGP with DVI and ADC ports. (W/ADC->DVI dongle)
1x Radeon 9200 PCI w/DVI, VGA, and Svideo
1x 2 port USB 2.0 PCI
1x 4 port USB 1.1 PCI (previous owner just added ports instead of using a hub.)
1x 4 port Firewire PCI
The best part was I got it for $20 instead of $50. ;^)
Rather than futz around with using the (Panther) restore disks and updating from there I grabbed a Firewire cable and my Macbook, booted the machine in target disk mode, partitioned the hard disk into two chunks of 10 and 230 GB, and used Carbon Copy Cloner to image the larger part with a Tiger image I'd built when prepping some PB G4s last year. It took the essentially the rest of the evening to download software updates over my snot-slow Internet connection so I haven't had a chance to futz with OS 9 booting yet. My plan for later today is to drag a copy of the 9 system folder to the small partition and see if it:
A: boots from that, and
B: if once booted it sees the larger partition
Anyway, I guess I'll see what version of the MacOS ROM is present in the 9 system folder I have... it's one off a Tiger restore disk included with a late-model Aluminum Powerbook. If there's issues I'll look into extracting the OS 9 from the restore disk that came with it.
I do have to admit I'm pretty impressed how fast OS X feels on the MDD. Basically every G4 (other than my sluggish B&W) I've ever used has been a Powerbook, and I don't think even the last 1.67Ghz one felt this quick. (Undoubtedly the fast desktop drive helps a lot.) Woot.
2x 1.25Ghz CPU
2 GB RAM
Airport
250 GB HD
1x Radeon 9000 Pro AGP with DVI and ADC ports. (W/ADC->DVI dongle)
1x Radeon 9200 PCI w/DVI, VGA, and Svideo
1x 2 port USB 2.0 PCI
1x 4 port USB 1.1 PCI (previous owner just added ports instead of using a hub.)
1x 4 port Firewire PCI
The best part was I got it for $20 instead of $50. ;^)
Rather than futz around with using the (Panther) restore disks and updating from there I grabbed a Firewire cable and my Macbook, booted the machine in target disk mode, partitioned the hard disk into two chunks of 10 and 230 GB, and used Carbon Copy Cloner to image the larger part with a Tiger image I'd built when prepping some PB G4s last year. It took the essentially the rest of the evening to download software updates over my snot-slow Internet connection so I haven't had a chance to futz with OS 9 booting yet. My plan for later today is to drag a copy of the 9 system folder to the small partition and see if it:
A: boots from that, and
B: if once booted it sees the larger partition
Anyway, I guess I'll see what version of the MacOS ROM is present in the 9 system folder I have... it's one off a Tiger restore disk included with a late-model Aluminum Powerbook. If there's issues I'll look into extracting the OS 9 from the restore disk that came with it.
I do have to admit I'm pretty impressed how fast OS X feels on the MDD. Basically every G4 (other than my sluggish B&W) I've ever used has been a Powerbook, and I don't think even the last 1.67Ghz one felt this quick. (Undoubtedly the fast desktop drive helps a lot.) Woot.