[geeks] Princeton Univ. Surplus haul today...

[velociraptor]

On 8/23/06, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net> wrote:
> I threw a NOS (New Old Stock) 100 Gig IDE HD drive in as the primary, I am
> really limited to 128 Gig or less with the system as-is, no matter what O/S I install,
> correct?

Yeppers.  Doesn't apply on the USB or FW busses, though.

> OS/X 10.4 gives me the option to do a mirror (RAID 1) or striped (RAID 0)
> filesystem, if I put another 100 Meg IDE HD on the same on-board controller
> will I get a performance improvement with RAID 1, or is the on-board
> controller "bad"?

You'd be happier buying an after-market IDE or SCSI controller and
using it. I'd vote SCSI since you probably have more of that kind of
hardware lying around, and the SCSI cards have fallen out of favor
with Mac types, so they aren't very expensive.  And you are more
likely to find a bootable SCSI card for cheap (Adaptec).

> What is a good *cost effective* graphics card upgrade - this is an AGP system
> (2x!), and I am ignorant about video cards in general, esp. on Macs - is there
> a low-cost card that will have a profound impact on the performance od Tiger
> (OS/X 10.4)?

Can't really speak a lot to that; probably something in the RADEON
line.  The AGP cards are more available than the PCI models, so that's
something.  My last Mac video card purchase was a MacRADEON PCI in
2003, and it ran me $90 and I considered that a good deal.

> The machine currently has an IDE DVD-ROM drive, any reason I can't just pop
> in a new DVD-R/W drive and burn DVDs under OS/X 10.4?

I would advise hitting up www.xlr8yourmac.com and verifying that the
DVD-R/W drive you want to use is supported.  Some are spotty, though
this is less of a problem in 10.4.  I use Toast on my box, rather than
the built-in tools for burning media.  If you want unix-type cd tools,
I recommend Fink over darwinports.  Fink has a lot more activity.

> The machine currently has 1.25 Gig of RAM in it (I had a spare 512 Meg
> PC133 DIMM to throw in ;^) - 1.5 Gig is the Max RAM, correct?

I can't say for sure, but a lot of Macs will take more than the stated
max (Pismo's are stated to only support 512MB, but can handle 2x 1GB,
for example). If you have 1GB sticks, there won't be any harm in
trying them.

> Also, there is a bunch of software on the old 20 Gig HD (MS Office, etc.) any
> ideas on how to transfer it to the new 100 Gig HD? I asume I COULD run it
> off the 20 Gig HD if I made it a spare drive, correct?

I think the thing Sammy was getting at is that there is a utility in
10.4 to automatically migrate your apps and home dir from another HD
or computer on the local network.  It offers at the end of the OS
installation process to do this, but you can also start up the tool
later--not that I can remember the name of the danged program at the
moment.

You can continue to run the apps from the 20G drive, too.  OS X won't
freak out about having two different OSes installed--something that
can be very handy when you are testing or have a problem with your
system.

Carbon Copy Cloner is another option, though it's generally intended
for a full backup.  You will have to tweak the directories  included
in the copy to just get what you want.

One thing to be aware of when using the command line on OS X.  Unix
"cp" won't pick up the legacy forks that may be with older software.
So, use "CpMac" or the version of rsync that understands HFS+.

> Finally, how do you "properly" close the side - I can't seem to really "lock in" the
> MB tray/side panel - I figure I'm missing something...

Common problem.  Check the metal mesh that goes around the side to
assure that all parts of the case are connected to ground.  If it gets
crunched up wrong it can prevent closure.  I can't get mine to stay
"locked" either, so I just am careful with it when I move it.  I don't
want to break the plastic latches--you have to remove the whole side
panel to fix it. :-/

Have fun with it!

=Nadine=