Upgrading old mac

[47ronin]

hello,

I inherited an old powermac 4400 with a 200mhz 603e processor,32 ram, 2 gig hd....not sure about the soundcard.

My question is whether it is worthwhile to consider upgrading or even using this computer as is.....I have seen some G3 400mhz upgrades available for this machine.....i think it maxes out at 64mb though...plus will need another hd...cdrw...etc

I record one instrument at a time and i like lo fi (sebadoh, palace)

any advice thank you in advance,

47ronin

 

[Chucko]

Don't bother upgrading

Yeah, you can upgrade the 4400. But IMHO it's not worth the expense. Any iMac can outrun it, and you can transplant a nice big IDE drive in most iMacs if you need more space.

Use the 4400 as is, and enjoy!

 

[SN]

old Mac

RAM is very cheap now, add as much RAM is reasonably affordable to you. 32 MB is not good for audio. I'm confident the 4400 can accomodate more than 64MB RAM.
Leave the HD as is. If all you use this machine for is music, then 1 GB just for audio should be fine.
As far as CD-RW is concerned, an external SCSI cd-r is expensive. ($400-600 CDN) Get the cheapest used one you can. SCSI is fading away and won't work directly with an new imac. A new G4 will need an additional SCSI card. So when you switch computers in 2 years your scsi CD-r will be costly to accomodate.

Think hard about upgrading the processor. It is expensive, and a 200 mhz 603 should be fine for less than 6 tracks.
If you really want more HD space, forget about a new SCSI Hd. Add the Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 PCI card and get a cheap ATA (IDE) hard drive.

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

Sell the 4400, save up some money, then purchase a newer computer.

 

[thebear]

not a war..just an opinion.....

Howdy, just learning digi recording, don't really have a clue, but gaining buckets full of knowlegde HERE!! But, I am a computer nut.....I am one of those BAD PC guys and don't know much about macs, but I agree with all of the above. By the time you upgrade a machine, you will always find that there is "something" that is not upgradeable. I would suggest saving funds and getting into some "new" hi-tech stuff.

For instance, and this is from a PC view, like I said, don't know much about macs, but I suppose a lot of the "theory" is the same. Right now you can buy a 40 gig ata100, 7200 rpm hard drive for about 130.00 at the computer shows, 256mb pc133 ram for 60.00, but if your mother board can only handle or run at a bus speed of 66, all of the upgrades are useless. And for whatever the reason, supply and demand, trying to get older upgrades for older systems is more expensive. And just like musical/digital equipment, it moves and changes fast!!

Not trying to get you to change Operating/Computer systems or drag you over to the "dark-side" of PC's, but check out some of the computer shows, I live in CT, and they have them every weekend, and the prices are unbeleiveable for top name/brand hardware. On a side note, it has gotten really easy to build your own machine these days, and is not that hard. Good luck!!!