• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Advice on restoring a Dual G4

I got into collecting the 68K mac stuff over 20 years ago when it was almost e-waste and managed to keep grabbing whatever was interesting as it got into the recycle stream and I tend to like G3/G4/G5 towers, so I saved a few plus interesting cards and upgrades along the way.
 
What interesting peripheral cards even exist for the G4?

I've been told sound cards weren't a thing(despite apple being all about pro-audio?). I don't really need disk controller cards, or firewire/network(all built in). I upgraded the graphics card a while ago and am happy enough with my geforce 4. The system is otherwise pretty good, dual 500mhz CPUs + 2gb of RAM, more than adequate.

What else is there to stuff in this thing?
 
By the time G4 tower came around PCI cards were on their way out. Built in sound on a G4 is OK, but there were a few products that used firewire for sound mixing.

The reason I converted a G3 B&W to a G4 back in the day was because my Matrox RT Mac (PCI-X card) needed a G4 to work and full blown G4's were still useful and expensive. The RT Mac was a video capture and editing card.
I tend to collect old analog video editing gear, so I also have stuff like AJA Kona boards that work in G5 towers (PCI-X versions and PCI-U versions).
 
Then why does the G4 tower have 4 PCI slots? I am very confused as to why it has so much space for peripheral cards if there are no peripherals for it.

I tend to collect old analog video editing gear, so I also have stuff like AJA Kona boards that work in G5 towers (PCI-X versions and PCI-U versions).
I LOVE me some analog video editing gear. This stuff is endless fun even if here is no use for it. The older cards look FRIGGIN RAD. But finding the break out dongles is nigh-impossible these days.

I mean, look at this thing:

MAMZLqq.png


That is two full-length PCI cards connected by a ribbon cable! What does it do? Why does it exist? Is it really in any way superior to a device from 5 years later?!

(for the record, according to eBay that is a Sony DVBK-1/A P6000 PCI Capture Card. The auction does not include the breakout dongle in the $75 price so its probably not very useful. If it ever was).
 
That is a Media 100 PCI board set. The P6000 on the bottom was the original board and you can find breakout boxes for them (be aware there are Nubus versions with different cables).

The card on top is from a later add on so not sure of functionality.

There was an ADB dongle for software that came with Nubus cards and the first revision PCI, no idea what they used for this set (probably USB dongle of some kind).
 
Back
Top