Under the HoodLynn Lewandowski

PowerMac G4 1.25 GHz 

This computer earned the title of "Wind Tunnel" because of the

amount of noise generated by the fans, to cool the CPU.

The Front

The front of the tower  -visible are the power button,

a small speaker andthe Superdive door.

There are also some vents along the bottom.

The tower... opened

There are several fansvisible - a large housing along the top, and a smaller fan at the leftcenter of the picture.The copper heat sink (right center) improved cooling, and helped the fans work more efficientlyat a lower speed.

The motherboard and components

 

The Back

  Visible:

Power sourceDVI and ADC Video USB PortsFirewire Ports 400 & 800Ethernet PortModem Port Audio Out/in

Inputs for periphial hardware

This is a closer view of the inputs:

2 USB2 Firewire 4001 Firewire 800Ethernet and modemAudio out

 

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

  The brains of the outfit......

 The Central Processing

Unit is located under the copper heat sink. If you line up the ports on the

back, you notice that they line up with the

CPU

Hard Drive

  There is identification on the hard drive.  Ours was

made in Thailand, has 120 GB capacity, and runs at

7200 RPM. 

Hard Drive

The hard drive, is a 3.5" PATA Drive.  You can see space for other drives, to increase storage capacity. This tower can house up to 4 hard drives; we had installed 2 others.  You can see a connector at the lower portion of this picture. PATA= Parrallel Advanced Technology Attachment.

 

Modem Card

  This Mac Tower was built in 2002.  Modem ports were

standard, usually located next to the ethernet port on the

back of the computer.

You are looking at the modem card.

You can also see the battery on the far right of the picture.

RAM Chips

  The RAM chips allowed us to run

large files much more smoothly.  The

tower was purchased with one chip, we

added the rest, and all chips match.  That

was a requirement on this tower.

Superdrive

  Our tower also includes a Superdrive.  This was how

you identified a product that could burn DVD's from one that burned CD's, but only

played DVD's.  At the time of purchase, DVD burning was

just becoming standard on the G4 towers. 

Video Output/Graphics Card

This is the video output  It plugs into one DVI and one ADC port provided by all stock graphics cards.   There is another view of the RAM chips to the left of the video componentDVI = Digital Visual Interface, and is a standard for connecting computers to digital monitors.  ADC= Apple Digital Cinema and is the standard for connecting Apple Monitors.

 

PCI Expansion

Peripheral Component Interconnect allows for connection of other hardware.  This Mac has slots, rather than circuits.  You can add TV tuners, extra ports, or extra graphics cards.

 

Airport

  The Airport Card was added in after purchasing the tower. We paid $50 for it on eBay.

It was much easier to install than drilling holes through concrete block for wired connectivity.

In ConclusionThis tower was used for four years in our home studio, and saw us through many recording projects; some for friends, some for business, all of them fun!  It was connected to an older Apple VGA monitor.

When it was retired, about one year ago, we decided to hang on to it, because it can still function as a storage server.

We did remove the extra hard drives.  We have not had a reason to remove the Airport Card, and the RAM chips are device specific, and will live with the tower.