G4 Sawtooth

#1 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 - 18:39

Can anyone give me info on how to correctly Identify a G4 Sawtooth?

#2 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 - 19:09

easiest way is to put your serial number on the back into the mac identifier on everymac.

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

#3 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 - 19:12

APPLEMANMAC1969 said:
Can anyone give me info on how to correctly Identify a G4 Sawtooth?

There is another discussion about different Sawtooths: https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/5527-macos-86-on-sawtooth-g4/

You can ask "Apple System Profiler" when running MacOS 9, you can open the Mac and identify the number of the mainboard, you can compare the power connector here: http://www.outofspec.com/frankenmac/wire.shtml, look for a heat sink on the ethernet chip (-> Gigabit), ...

But you cannot clearly identify a Sawtooth by the model number written on the back side.

HTH, Ralf

#4 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 - 19:31

You can tell the Sawtooth/ GE by the horizontal sound ports

If you can open it, the Sawtooth has an internal firewire port

#5 Wed, 10 Dec 2014 - 22:50

RalfK said:
But you cannot clearly identify a Sawtooth by the model number written on the back side.

Yeah, the g4's all have the same model number for the sawtooths, but the serial number will tell you what shipped in it.

#6 Thu, 11 Dec 2014 - 15:59

Well I confirmed I have a Sawtooth.

I downloaded OS 8.6 from a link posted from another member.

Works great thanks everyone for your help.

#7 Thu, 11 Dec 2014 - 17:15

I thought the main difference between Sawtooth and Yikes was AGP vs. PCI video. Then after the "original" Sawtooth G4 were all the variations like GE, etc.

#8 Thu, 11 Dec 2014 - 17:19

What confirmed it for me was the Internal Firewire port.

#9 Fri, 12 Dec 2014 - 00:40

Does anyone actually use the internal Firewire port?

#10 Fri, 12 Dec 2014 - 14:03

I tried it out booting OS 9 from a firewire drive.

It definitely works. Why they have an Internal Firewire port who knows?

#11 Wed, 17 Dec 2014 - 18:10

Internal Firewire would've made some sense for drives if it'd caught on, as an IDE replacement.

#12 Wed, 17 Dec 2014 - 18:25

At the time it was hot swappable and faster than USB which made a lot of sense with the iPods and the amount of transferring data.

My FireWire iPod takes less time to load than my USB iPod of the next iPod in the line.

So again if it had caught on it was great. A lot like apple all in one cable for the X100 series powermacs that literally to me is early HDMI.

#13 Wed, 17 Dec 2014 - 18:51

Too bad we aren't going to see a Thunderbolt iDevice any time soon.