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You could get another PowerMac for cheap on Craigslist.   Pull the hard drive out of the old G4 and put in the "new" one.

I just got a new 20" iMac and it is superb for ordinary tasks.    Some professional graphics people report they have to change the lighting of their room or to lower the brightness on the new iMacs.

You could also get a previous generation iMac, either 17" or 20" or 24" and save about $ 200 over the most recent models.

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My opinion:  1.  the more you need screen space and to save money, the obvious thing is to stay away from MacBooks.

2. The intermediate price option is to get a previous model iMac from the Apple Store "Special Deals" section, or to get a new iMac.

3. The lower priced option is to get a Mac Mini IF you already have an acceptable mouse, speakers, keyboard and monitor.   In this case, a mini will get the job done.  However, disk space is still on the low end and the disk is slower than average.    The CPU is up to the task.  The graphics card is probably tolerable, but I'll let others speak on that issue.

I tend to think students should cut costs wherever possible.  iMac or Mac Mini.

Welcome to the Forum.

That "click, click, click" noise is likely the hard drive's arm unable to reset itself for some reason. My guess is that you can get your Mac running again by replacing the hard drive and re-installing software (but it is likely that the contents on the old drive are not recoverable short of extraordinary--and expensive--means). Remember that your system does have the internal hard drive size limit of 128 GBs so do NOT get any hard drive larger than 128 GBs for your Mac.

Your Mac is still quite usable for many applications aside from the latest games. Since it is likely that you can get it running again for only the cost of a hard drive, you probably can continue with it for a while longer (but REALLY get more RAM as well). You can max out the RAM with 4*512 MB sticks for about US$215 or at least upgrade it  to 4*256 MB stick for about $77 (using the cheapest RAM found here and assuming that you have a single 256MB stick in there now).

Altogether you probably can get it running better than before for between $130 and $270 (depending on how much RAM you get and assuming about $50 for the hard drive).

Just FYI:
Here is a selection of CPU upgrades such as Pariah mentioned. Generally speaking I wouldn't recommend using this path because now getting one of these isn't cost-effective when compared to getting a new Mac mini.

If you insist on trying to upgrade the video, here are the options offered by OWC.

EDIT: made corrections per dvpierce's observation below.

Last edited by D'Eyncourt (2007-09-14 1:59 pm)

D'Eyncourt wrote:

KB

Sorry, pet peeve.

<snark>I haven't used a 256k memory chip since I upgraded my Mac Plus.</snark>

It's MB. Cut it out. Don't be like those dingleberries at Best Buy that can't distinguish between kilobytes and megabytes, then go ahead and confuse people more by failing to differentiate between gigahertz and gigabytes.

Put in your Zip Code here  http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/index.html?q=10001

In the results that appear, choose a re-seller that has a circle in the "service" column.   In the 10001 zip code wide area, there's B&H on page 1, Tek Serve, SafeNet Computer and Transbean on page 3, in addition to the Apple Retail Stores themselves  http://www.freemacblog.com/applestores/NY/New%20York  With this link, you can zoom out to see the Greater NYC retail stores.

good luck

anomaly wrote:

[snip]
I'd like someone to take a look at the old Mac to see if the data from the old mac is beyond recovery and how much it would cost (because I'd like to salvage it if possible and not grossly overpriced). Any recommendations on where I can go for that?
[snip]

In my experience with hard drives (and I've handled literally thousands of them through work, and about 20 or so with your problem), when a drive is having symptoms such as yours it usually isn't recoverable by any means available to most people. If you can get it running again, then prepare for the next time by having an external drive available so you can copy what you can off of the bad drive.

There are hard drive recovery places like DriveSavers, but know that these place are quite expensive--you might notice that it's difficult to find a price posted there. The one time I dealt with them (and this was about 5 years ago), it was US$150 just to look at the drive to see if it might be recoverable and about $10 per MB of data recovered. These places are more for corporations whose data may be worth at least a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, so spending up to $5K would be reasonable.

If you are going to try to do some data recovery disconnect that drive NOW and absolutely do not power it up until you are all set to try a recovery.
I would install a new drive in the G4, get the OS all installed, shell out for a copy of DataRescueII and then install the dead drive in the other bay and see what you can get. If the data can be recovered by software DataRescueII will do it and if that fails it's off to a data recovery service for you.

CPU upgrades actually can extend the life of your Mac greatly but you need to take into account the differences in CPUs and also the other limitations of your older Mac. Paying top dollar for a 2Ghz 7447 probably won't be as cost effective as paying $100-200 for an older 7455. Performance is just not there on those high end 47s and many times the upgrade companies won't tell you that you could just buy a cheaper 47 and clock it up to save over $100 or more.

Yeah you could buy a Mini and all but your just going to be getting yourself trapped in a small form factor nightmare which forces you to buy another one down the line. Doesn't matter how cute or economical these junk Macs are, they are not built for the long haul. You cannot someday down the line upgrade them and get it feeling like a new Mac. The worthless integrated graphics make that impossible.

Now your G4 sadly is a 100Mhz bus model. Its old and it's life is coming to a close as far as upgrades go. If you want to go with a higher up model, that would be a viable option. But don't go anything lower than a Digital Audio...133Mhz bus Macs. For that old G4...if you want to keep it longer...gotta be thinking RAM past 1GB, 1.2Ghz CPU upgrade (at least that), and GPU upgrade. Because you are using a Rage 128, you probably aren't using the GPU as heavily as others. A simple Radeon 7500, Geforce 2MX, or other Quartz Extreme capable card will definitely speed up your GUI experience. I hesitate to recommend a R9800 Pro unless you really need that much power.

For photo editing and such, I don't tink a new Mini would be your best bet.  With integrated video and no viable upgrade path, it's not my top choice, especially if you are USING the Mac (by which I mean, not just browsing online with it). 

As for the upgrades to the G4, I'm in the same position.  I have a Gigabit Ethernet (DP500mhz) as well, and have upgraded the ram to 1.25gb, insalled a 500gb SATA HD via a SATA controller card (to get past the 128gb limit), found a third party wireless card at Best Buy that is recognized as Airport Extreme and installed Tiger.  I was lucky, and my Mac had a Quartz Extreme card when I got it.  I'd like to make the RAM out at 2gb and get a processor upgrade down the road.

As for whether the processor upgrade is economical, it depends what you get.  A dual processor 1.8ghz 7447, as was mentioned above, is not economical.  However, a single 7455 or even dualie for a good price is.  I had found a dual 1.2ghz upgrade for $300, but it was discontinued, and they are gone now. I wish I would have bought it, but I'm sure similar deals will be available soon enough.

If I were you, I'd pick up a new hard drive and push the RAM to at least 1gb.  I got my RAM on ebay.  1gb for about $80.  You do need to be careful, but if done correctly, ebay is your friend.  As for the processor, leave it for now, unless OWC has a good special going.  The hard drive, as was stated, is limited to 128gb, unless you get a SATA controller to put in one of your PCI slots and then hook up the hard drive that way (can anyone confirm whether or not you can boot off of a HD plugged into a SATA controller?  I never checked).

What I'm getting at, is that you can get your Mac up and running for not too much money.  My 500gb HD was $130, the SATA controller was ~$50 and the RAM was $80.