Also, don't blame the 6200 because it didn't meet your unrealistic expectations. You expected to see performance gains in areas that no card would improve things.
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Should I put Leopard back on my Sawtooth?
- Thread starter MacFoxG4
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I like the translucent menu bar, but I don't feel like I need it. The performance gains from the 6200 were small on my Mac. The 6200 also worsened OS 9. I would've let OS 9 go if I was getting significantly better performance in Leopard, but in my case I wasn't. Leopard wasn't any faster for me on the 6200 than on the 9000. So I figured that I might as well go back to the 9000 and keep my Leopard/OS 9 dual boot configuration. I'm not saying the 6200 is a bad card, it just doesn't seem to make a big enough difference on my setup.
Rather than starting a new thread, I decided to just keep posting my relevant Sawtooth experiences in this one.
I added a FW card that has 2 800 ports and one 400 port so I could use a new external SSD I just bought. The Sawtooth was the first Mac I owned that I put expansion cards in and now its the first Mac I owned to have all expansion slots filled. I've only used the 800 ports on the card, but it works for my purposes.
I finally decided to do the SSD upgrade, only I decided to go for the SATA to IDE adapter route instead of the flashed SATA PCI card plan I had previously decided upon. I found out that Sawtooth G4 towers shut off the power to the PCI slots when in sleep mode, and the only work around is to never put the Mac to sleep, which isn't something I want to do. I bought the 120 GB SATA SSD with SATA to IDE adpater + 2.5'' to 3.5'' bracket bundle from Other World Computing. I've had good experiences with them in the past and I know their focus is on Macs, so I was confident that it would be compatible. I also purchased an external SSD (SATA SSD inside an FW 800 + USB 3.1 enclosure) from OWC to use as extra storage. I later decided to clone my iBook G3's HDD to it. After I did that, I decided to swap out the drive that was in the enclosure with the one I bought for the Sawtooth. This ended up being more of a pain than I thought it was going to be.
Opening the enclsoure and putting it back together was not as easy as it seems. When putting it back together, you have to tilt it a certain way so the heatsink sits evenly inside the enclosure. The cloning process itself was a breeze. Wish there was a Windows version of CCC since I'm going to be doing an SSD upgrade on my PC soon. Hopefully whatever software Samsung includes with the drive works as good as CCC does on my Power Macs. Anyway, after the cloning process was done, I once again went through the frustration of disassembling and reassembling the enclosure. Lost a screw in the process, but thankfully I had a spare screw that fit from another project.
The SSD bundle from OWC included a 2.5'' to 3.5'' mounting bracket with the drive already screwed in. Unscrewing the drive was easy enough, but getting it back in got difficult when I lost one of the screws. The kit came with a bag of four screws that were meant to attach the bracket to a computer's existing hard drive drive bay. I only needed two of those screws to attach to the Sawtooth's HDD bay, so I used one of the other screws to replace the missing screw. Installation was fairly easy after that, just plug the SATA to IDE adapter into the SSD, attach the Sawtooth's existing IDE cable to the adapter, connect the adapter to power using one of the molex cables I used for the HDD and that's that. The SSD works! Performance-wise, it doesn't seem that different from the Western Digital mechanical drive it replaced. That WD drive did feel pretty fast though, so maybe that's why I didn't experience a big speed difference with the SSD? I have more free space now (free space is now 88 GB instead of 54 GB) and the Mac runs quieter with both of the mechanical HDDs removed (I decided to ditch OS 9, more on that below). I think the Sawtooth generates less heat now too.
Another decision I made was to ditch OS 9 on this Mac. I was initially going to try to make two partitions on the SSD, one for Leopard and one for OS 9, but I decided to scrap that idea based on past experience. I have never been successful at getting 9 to boot from a separate partition on the same drive as X, I tried it on a mechanical drive I got for free once and OS 9 froze halfway through the boot process. Another factor was that I knew I used Leopard way more than 9 on this Mac. 9 runs great on the Sawtooth, and while most programs run fine others don't because the processor is too fast. The Sawtooth is the only Mac in my collection that can run Leopard. Every other Mac in my collection can run some version of classic Mac OS. As cool as it is to run OS 9 on a 1.5ghz CPU, it's not really necessary and can break some older programs. I did toy with the idea of making the Sawtooth OS 9 only and getting another Mac to use as my Leopard rig, as well as the possibility of keeping Leopard on the Sawtooth and getting another G4 to run OS 9 only, but I decided to shelve those ideas for now. My iBook G3 will be my main OS 9 machine now.
I also decided to try out the Nvidia Geforce 6200 again. I ran AuroraTrim and AuroraAccelerator on this Mac prior to trying the 6200 again and when I switched from the Radeon 9000 to the Geforce 6200 this time around I noticed a subtle positive difference in performance. I think AuroraAccelerator is what made the difference since it takes advantage of Core Image cards. With all of these factors in mind, I decided it was best to let OS 9 go on this Mac. With all of the upgrades made to the Sawtooth it's a good Leopard machine now and holding it back by using a non-CI card would be kind of a shame. I wish there was a way to hack the 6200 so you could get 2D/3D acceleration in OS 9, like a modified driver for OS 9 or something, but that is not possible as far as I know.
I added a FW card that has 2 800 ports and one 400 port so I could use a new external SSD I just bought. The Sawtooth was the first Mac I owned that I put expansion cards in and now its the first Mac I owned to have all expansion slots filled. I've only used the 800 ports on the card, but it works for my purposes.
I finally decided to do the SSD upgrade, only I decided to go for the SATA to IDE adapter route instead of the flashed SATA PCI card plan I had previously decided upon. I found out that Sawtooth G4 towers shut off the power to the PCI slots when in sleep mode, and the only work around is to never put the Mac to sleep, which isn't something I want to do. I bought the 120 GB SATA SSD with SATA to IDE adpater + 2.5'' to 3.5'' bracket bundle from Other World Computing. I've had good experiences with them in the past and I know their focus is on Macs, so I was confident that it would be compatible. I also purchased an external SSD (SATA SSD inside an FW 800 + USB 3.1 enclosure) from OWC to use as extra storage. I later decided to clone my iBook G3's HDD to it. After I did that, I decided to swap out the drive that was in the enclosure with the one I bought for the Sawtooth. This ended up being more of a pain than I thought it was going to be.
Opening the enclsoure and putting it back together was not as easy as it seems. When putting it back together, you have to tilt it a certain way so the heatsink sits evenly inside the enclosure. The cloning process itself was a breeze. Wish there was a Windows version of CCC since I'm going to be doing an SSD upgrade on my PC soon. Hopefully whatever software Samsung includes with the drive works as good as CCC does on my Power Macs. Anyway, after the cloning process was done, I once again went through the frustration of disassembling and reassembling the enclosure. Lost a screw in the process, but thankfully I had a spare screw that fit from another project.
The SSD bundle from OWC included a 2.5'' to 3.5'' mounting bracket with the drive already screwed in. Unscrewing the drive was easy enough, but getting it back in got difficult when I lost one of the screws. The kit came with a bag of four screws that were meant to attach the bracket to a computer's existing hard drive drive bay. I only needed two of those screws to attach to the Sawtooth's HDD bay, so I used one of the other screws to replace the missing screw. Installation was fairly easy after that, just plug the SATA to IDE adapter into the SSD, attach the Sawtooth's existing IDE cable to the adapter, connect the adapter to power using one of the molex cables I used for the HDD and that's that. The SSD works! Performance-wise, it doesn't seem that different from the Western Digital mechanical drive it replaced. That WD drive did feel pretty fast though, so maybe that's why I didn't experience a big speed difference with the SSD? I have more free space now (free space is now 88 GB instead of 54 GB) and the Mac runs quieter with both of the mechanical HDDs removed (I decided to ditch OS 9, more on that below). I think the Sawtooth generates less heat now too.
Another decision I made was to ditch OS 9 on this Mac. I was initially going to try to make two partitions on the SSD, one for Leopard and one for OS 9, but I decided to scrap that idea based on past experience. I have never been successful at getting 9 to boot from a separate partition on the same drive as X, I tried it on a mechanical drive I got for free once and OS 9 froze halfway through the boot process. Another factor was that I knew I used Leopard way more than 9 on this Mac. 9 runs great on the Sawtooth, and while most programs run fine others don't because the processor is too fast. The Sawtooth is the only Mac in my collection that can run Leopard. Every other Mac in my collection can run some version of classic Mac OS. As cool as it is to run OS 9 on a 1.5ghz CPU, it's not really necessary and can break some older programs. I did toy with the idea of making the Sawtooth OS 9 only and getting another Mac to use as my Leopard rig, as well as the possibility of keeping Leopard on the Sawtooth and getting another G4 to run OS 9 only, but I decided to shelve those ideas for now. My iBook G3 will be my main OS 9 machine now.
I also decided to try out the Nvidia Geforce 6200 again. I ran AuroraTrim and AuroraAccelerator on this Mac prior to trying the 6200 again and when I switched from the Radeon 9000 to the Geforce 6200 this time around I noticed a subtle positive difference in performance. I think AuroraAccelerator is what made the difference since it takes advantage of Core Image cards. With all of these factors in mind, I decided it was best to let OS 9 go on this Mac. With all of the upgrades made to the Sawtooth it's a good Leopard machine now and holding it back by using a non-CI card would be kind of a shame. I wish there was a way to hack the 6200 so you could get 2D/3D acceleration in OS 9, like a modified driver for OS 9 or something, but that is not possible as far as I know.
I know you’ve basically decided against OS 9, but maybe my OS X+OS 9 on one HDD dual boot guide could help? It’s written specifically for a Mac mini G4 but should be all the same on any other capable Mac.
Thanks for the guide, I'll keep it in mind if I ever try to have OS X and OS 9 on the same drive, but in separate partitions again.
Have you tried Norton Ghost? I've used that since 2004 and with great results. Whenever I set up a WinBox, I always Ghost the new installation as a precautionary measure in case of a HDD crash or virus/malware infection. So in the worst case scenario, I could restore the Ghost image and save myself the arduous task of reinstalling the OS and looking for drivers. Acronis True Image is also popular and I've used it too but prefer Ghost.
Have you tried Norton Ghost? I've used that since 2004 and with great results. Whenever I set up a WinBox, I always Ghost the new installation as a precautionary measure in case of a HDD crash or virus/malware infection. So in the worst case scenario, I could restore the Ghost image and save myself the arduous task of reinstalling the OS and looking for drivers. Acronis True Image is also popular and I've used it too but prefer Ghost.
I've heard of Norton Ghost , but never used it. I think Acronis is what Samsung offers. If Acronis doesn't work out, I'll try Norton.
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After reading Alex’s post and his guide, I got inspired to rethink my plan for this Sawtooth. I came to the realization that the only reason I was doing this whole Core Image thing was out of a fear of missing out. Comparing Leopard without Core Image vs OS 9 without 2D/3D Acceleration and the latter is, in my opinion worse than the former. I can still do the things I want to do in Leopard without Core Image as long as I have enough VRAM (in my case 128 MB does the trick for what I do). Without 2D/3D acceleration in OS 9, I can’t do things like watch a DVD or play some of my games. That’s why I say I have to ditch 9 when I use the Geforce 6200. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need OS 9 on this Mac and that making the Mac Leopard only was the logical thing to do, but I miss having OS 9 on this Mac too much. The iBook G3 runs OS 9 great, but it’s just not the same as running it on this Sawtooth. It would be easier if there existed a card that could do both Core Image for Leopard and 2D/3D acceleration for OS 9, but no such card exists.
So I decided to once again return to the Radeon 9000 and dual boot Leopard and 9, but this time I partitioned the SSD into 2 partitions and so far everything seems to work. I did a clean install for both partitions instead of using cloning or images. One thing I forgot to mention about the SSD is that while it says 120GB on the label, OS X reports it as 111GB. This happens whether the drive is connected to the SATA to IDE adapter or FireWire. Not sure what that’s about.
That's normal. 120 gigabytes printed on the drive is to say 120,000,000,000 bytes which translates to 111.75870896 gibibytes (what OS X means when it says "GB") when divided by 1024×1024×1024.