Mac question...

[logomantis]

OK....
This might be a dumb question for some, but something just hit me after owning my mac for a couple of years. At work I work on both PC and Mac platforms, and I noticed that every couple of months I defragment my PC. Is there a way to do that on my mac. It's a 700mhz imac G4, you know...the dome and screen.
Another question.....
Where would be the best place for the value to find memory upgrade for this puppy. right now 256 Megs...I want to take it up to at least 512 and I don't want to pay apple store prices. Any help on this would be great.

[Rocketpig]

You don't need to defragment UNIX machines. In fact, it's recommended that you DO NOT try to do it (there are utilities out there for the purpose).

I like http://www.ramjet.com. Cheap and I haven't had any problems with quality (I've purchased two or three sticks from them).

[logomantis]

Thanks Rocketpig....

that is what I was kind of thinking after searching all over my mac for some way to do it...I appreciate the conformation.

[rickself]

And then there's Macsales.com
Purchased a lot of different things from them...memory, dvd drives.
They had memory for my old Beige G3 and my Mirror Door G4.
And they have installation tutorial vids, too!

[patkennedy78]

datamem.com has got the best prices I've seen. Or e-bay if you want to go that route.

[drdesigns]

I've used RamJet and Crucial Technologies. Good experiences with both. I believe, if I understood correctly from researching on the Apple forums, Crucial sells the same brand chips Apple uses. Or at the time I ordered it, I think it was a year ago, it was.

[PrintDriver]

I'd stay away from eBay for Ram. It only has to be mis-handled once and your comp will hate you for it.

[Spindaddydad]

right now 256 Megs...I want to take it up to at least 512 and I don't want to pay apple store prices. Any help on this would be great.

Don't know off the top of my head what the max is for your particular machine but I would think about going even higher than 500. You might look at 1Gb and even 2 Gb upgrades if you can afford it. RAM is always the cheapest way to get the best performance out of a machine. You really can't ever have too much.

Good luck!

[The_Black_Knight]

You don't need to defragment UNIX machines. In fact, it's recommended that you DO NOT try to do it (there are utilities out there for the purpose).

I like http://www.ramjet.com. Cheap and I haven't had any problems with quality (I've purchased two or three sticks from them).The iMac is only running a UNIX OS if it is running OS X. If it is still running OS 9, it may need to be defragmented once in a while, but it depends on if you do a lot of work on the machine or not.

I only pointed this out because logomantis didn't mention which OS was running on the Mac.

[urstwile]

I think the iMacs with the dome came pre-installed with OS X, they were the first ones, I believe. That's the one he/she said they had.

Not sure what the issues would be if it was still also running Classic, which I believe was part of that dome version iMac as well.

[Rocketpig]

The iMac is only running a UNIX OS if it is running OS X. If it is still running OS 9, it may need to be defragmented once in a while, but it depends on if you do a lot of work on the machine or not.

I only pointed this out because logomantis didn't mention which OS was running on the Mac.

He mentioned it was a G4 iMac... Which is running OS X (unless he actually downgraded the OS).

[Rocketpig]

Not sure what the issues would be if it was still also running Classic, which I believe was part of that dome version iMac as well.

In this day and age anyone running Classic needs to be hit in the head with a hammer.

If you need a 9.2 or earlier program, keep one machine to run it and keep your OS X machine clean. Transfer the necessary data and move on. Classic is a burden on your machine and completely unnecessary.

[The_Black_Knight]

I think the iMacs with the dome came pre-installed with OS X, they were the first ones, I believe. That's the one he/she said they had.

Not sure what the issues would be if it was still also running Classic, which I believe was part of that dome version iMac as well.You're right, they did come preinstalled with OS X (the first revision came with 10.1, I believe), but they could also boot into OS 9. The 700 MHz machine is almost certainly from the first revision of the G4 iMac (they were available in either 700 or 800 MHz configurations, IIRC).

I actually ran my G4 iMac on OS 9 when I first got it, because I didn't have any software that ran on OS X natively. Even now, I don't think I would run OS X on a machine like that without at least upgrading it to 10.2 or 10.3; OS X 10.1 just wasn't quite "finished," in my opinion.

[dyers78]

To give your amc a recharge try purging the ram... Restart the system and hold the command key + control + p + R. this will clear all the stale memory from you system. Then try repairing your permissions.

These are the two regular best maintence things for the mac.

[PrintDriver]

Regular maintenance for OSX is to leave it on 24/7. If you don't leave the mac on, get a maintenance program like OnyX (or Cocktail, or Macaroni- or learn the Console method) and learn how to use it correctly. Regularly. Just like you were supposed to rebuild your desktop in OS9 at least once a month.

Zapping your PRAM as suggested above is not recommended as regular maintenance. (edit: Zapping PRAM is P+R+OPTION+COMMAND)Doing that resets a lot of things to factory default or elsewhere (I love resetting the clock, and my monitor, etc :rolleyes: ) and should only be done if you are experiencing system problems that point to corrupted system prefs.

Repairing permissions should be done before and after installing programs as well as when you do your regular OnyX-type maintenance.

[orkaknos12]

Buy a PC.

-Jon

[dyers78]

Regular maintenance for OSX is to leave it on 24/7. If you don't leave the mac on, get a maintenance program like OnyX (or Cocktail, or Macaroni- or learn the Console method) and learn how to use it correctly. Regularly. Just like you were supposed to rebuild your desktop in OS9 at least once a month.

Zapping your PRAM as suggested above is not recommended as regular maintenance. Doing that resets a lot of things to factory default or elsewhere (I love resetting the clock, and my monitor, etc :rolleyes: ) and should only be done if you are experiencing system problems that point to corrupted system prefs.

Repairing permissions should be done before and after installing programs as well as when you do your regular OnyX-type maintenance.


????. These are two methods that do not hurt anything, purging the ram does nothing more than clearing fragmented bits of info that keep ram bottled up. As far as the permissions, it is reccommed by Mac World amoung others as part of a regular maintence issue. You mentioned it is only recommended after a program install??? If people are like me I add and delete programs on a reular basis... that would mean I need to repair the permissions on a regular basis. If you have never done either of these two things, it should be done. If you think I am wrong, call a mac shop and ask for yourself.

[logomantis]

I'm running on osx 10.4 (Tiger), I checked my info and I do have one open slot for more ram.

[PrintDriver]

Dyers78:
P + R + OPTION + Command is not clearing your Ram. It is clearing your PRAM. Different animal.
When clearing your PRAM you hold that combination of keys for 3 chimes then let go and let the system boot. Otherwise it does nothing at all. After 3 chimes you will have to reset your clock etc.

If you read a little more carefully on the Repairing Permissions you will see that I said 'as well as" when you do your regular maintenance.

If you are not doing the cache and temp purges manually and not letting your comp do them by itself, it will slow down, bog down, or start behaving erratically eventually.

Logomantis, have you actually looked inside the machine to see if the slot is empty or if you have only one slot total? I'm thinking, based on some quick reference searching, that you only have one accessible slot that you can put either a 256 or a 512 stick into. The second one is inaccessible but can be swapped by a tech.

[logomantis]

I have not been in there in quite a while, but 2 years ago when I put my airport card in I noticed that there was a slot open, and when I checked my more info....it said there was one slot open. I'll have to check when I get home tonight. It is the 700mhz powerpc g4 imac and not the 800mhz. I'm really curious to try that command though, because my mac does act speratic at times and bogs, but I was figuring that it was because of my lack of decent Ram and trying to run all of these adobe programs. I appreciate your sharing of knowlege, I might repost again tonight to let you know for sure if that is an open slot or not.

[PrintDriver]

zapping pram is not where you should start.

Repairing permissions is probably a good first step.

You should do a little bit more research before jumping in with online repair suggestions.

[logomantis]

Could you go into a little more details at repairing permissions? I don't mean to be ignorant, I'm just more of a know how to use the hell out of a program than I am a how do I fix that so I can use the program kind of guy.

[MD]

Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities

Read this article:
Everything you need to know about repairing permissions (http://www.macworld.com/2006/08/secrets/repairpermissions/index.php?pf=1)

[dyers78]

Dyers78:
P + R + OPTION + Command is not clearing your Ram. It is clearing your PRAM. Different animal.
When clearing your PRAM you hold that combination of keys for 3 chimes then let go and let the system boot. Otherwise it does nothing at all. After 3 chimes you will have to reset your clock etc.

If you read a little more carefully on the Repairing Permissions you will see that I said 'as well as" when you do your regular maintenance.

If you are not doing the cache and temp purges manually and not letting your comp do them by itself, it will slow down, bog down, or start behaving erratically eventually.

Logomantis, have you actually looked inside the machine to see if the slot is empty or if you have only one slot total? I'm thinking, based on some quick reference searching, that you only have one accessible slot that you can put either a 256 or a 512 stick into. The second one is inaccessible but can be swapped by a tech.

Not trying to argue and I see your point, should have read more carefully. I did not know about the pram, This is a "trick" a tech buddy of mine got me doing when my Mac acted up. What does this do entirely.. besides reset the clock that is?

[MD]

Your computer's clock, startup speaker volume, sound volume, recent kernel panic information, and the DVD region code settings are stored in the pram under osx.

[PrintDriver]

It dumps parameter ram.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194

Before just blindly doing this or that, do a search for the symptoms your machine is exhibiting. Saying "it doesn't work" or "it's acting weird" isn't descriptive enough. Freezing, stalling, spinning beach balls of death if you do a certain function, error messages, all that stuff helps pinpoint your problem without creating others.

[The_Black_Knight]

I have not been in there in quite a while, but 2 years ago when I put my airport card in I noticed that there was a slot open, and when I checked my more info....it said there was one slot open. I'll have to check when I get home tonight. It is the 700mhz powerpc g4 imac and not the 800mhz. I'm really curious to try that command though, because my mac does act speratic at times and bogs, but I was figuring that it was because of my lack of decent Ram and trying to run all of these adobe programs. I appreciate your sharing of knowlege, I might repost again tonight to let you know for sure if that is an open slot or not.Bolding mine.

According to your first post, you only have 256 MB installed in your machine. If you are trying to run more than one Adobe application, then 256 MB of RAM is nowhere near enough, and you will experience severe slowdowns, especially when switching between applications. Adding 512 MB more RAM should help speed things up tremendously.

Edit: Although, even with 768 MB of RAM, you might still have some slowdowns with larger files.

[PrintDriver]

If you are using CS2, 512 is the minimum Adobe recommends. On top of what's being used for you OS...

[urstwile]

I'd get as much RAM as you can afford and your machine allows, particularly with Tiger and Adobe applications being run.

Here's a link from a Macworld article Prevent Mac Disasters (http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/features/preventmacdisasters/index.php) that might be helpful for you in terms of maintenance issues. It's dated January 2005, but there's probably a lot that's still applicable.

[doubting_thomas]

A very foolish person once told me a very wise thing:

"RAM is like good looks. You can never have enough"