Ooh a G4 QuickSilver, nice! I've got its successor (MDD, 1GHz DP), it's a bunch of work but it'll be worth the effort.

Ahem, sorry I digress... What are the specs on this bad boy?

If you want I got a couple of pointers, first, the PSU, on these it's a common weak spot (more so on the MDD) more often than not, they tend to stop working out of a sudden.

Those can be replaced with an ATX PSU (using a adapter harness) but with this approach, you'll lose the ADC 28V supply (which means you won't be able to use a ADC monitor), or if you want to retain the original power supply, you can always try recapping the original PSU.

The second part... The GPU. Depending on what OS you intend to run, you'll have constraints on what GPUs you can use... In that area unfortunately I can't really help (other than that, I recall the fastest OS9 supported card would be the GeForce4 Ti4600 but it often commands big bucks on the used market, but for OSX you can go as far as using a X800XT (or it's FireGL equivalent, flashed with a PPC ROM) from a PMG5, that or the other PMG5 cards such as the 9600Pro/9600XT, or a flashed 9800Pro, though with those modified cards you'll also lose the ADC port and on the Pmg5 cards you have to do a trace cut or tape over a specific pin.

The QS (and its older brother, the PMG4 Digital Audio) has trouble with certain cards, notably SATA cards, the affected cards will cause the Mac to not go to sleep or behave erratically (I haven't yet been able to find out what exactly happens as I don't have a QSG4).

There's an optional Zip drive bay cover for the Quicksilver if that's your fancy using Zip disks.. Not essential but it exists.

The QSG4 tends to really get toasty, so putting PCI slot bracket blower fans will definitely help a bit.

Vynix wrote on 2023-11-29, 21:40:

Ooh a G4 QuickSilver, nice! ….

Thank you very much for the invaluable spontaneous information.

These are the specs.

Currently as an upgrade it has two 80GB disks and 512MB of RAM, the rest is as indicated in the label

Speaking of the power supply, I hope it doesn't break, even if I read that the MDD is the one that has overheating problems but above all noise. This is also why I chose this model, of the 3 G4s released it is the one I find most beautiful and fastest, the first, the most colorful one is very beautiful, but more limited in power, the last one has that mirror window which I find it awkward. In short, quicksilver is what I find most beautiful.

I don't plan to heavily upgrade the Mac, but to leave it original, I was only thinking of changing the CPU but I'm not very convinced, I would only need it to install Leopard because with the current CPU I can only install Tiger...but I'm not sure it's worth it…

I was also thinking of installing a zip drive to simply exchange data between PC and Mac but I'm undecided because it ruins the aesthetics and I'm not sure if OS9 reads PC formatted zips.

I recently grabbed a couple of G4s myself. I've never been a Mac guy but got interested due to all the educational and scientific software for them. Seems like they had a lot more available in those areas compared to PCs. It's also interesting to have something with a different CPU architecture.

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-11-30, 08:11:

[snip]
I was also thinking of installing a zip drive to simply exchange data between PC and Mac but I'm undecided because it ruins the aesthetics and I'm not sure if OS9 reads PC formatted zips.

OS9 can read PC formatted Zips, up until OS8 you needed a set of extensions (Macintosh PC Exchange), but iirc OS8.x and OS9 has this built-in. You'd still need the Iomega guest driver or Zip extension if you want to reformat a MS-DOS formatted Zip disk into a Mac disk.

Speaking of the MDD versus Quicksilver overheating problem, G4s do get pretty warm in general, from my experience, my MDD didn't get that hot with the case closed (but it was noisy, although it wasn't that bad), so as a starter, I'd personally replace the thermal paste just to err on the safe side.

Though, if your QSG4 starts overheating, you'll immediately notice it locking up or throwing a kernel panic, my MDD did that when I ran it case open, but since the QSG4 seems to have a fan directly on the CPU heatsink, that should not be a big problem.

In any case, the PSUs on these will eventually require a recap if you want to keep them going, though definitely the MDD really lives up to its "Wind Tunnel" reputation (there actually was a kit that Apple sold that consisted of a revised main fan and power supply that both ran quieter than the original MDD fans, though both parts aren't really easy to come across) although mine (which I put the revised fan and PSU in) was still fairly tolerable IMHO, compared to my other machines.

Vynix wrote on 2023-11-30, 18:08:

OS9 can read PC formatted Zips, up until OS8 you needed a set of extensions (Macintosh PC Exchange), but iirc OS8.x and OS9 has […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-11-30, 08:11:

[snip]
I was also thinking of installing a zip drive to simply exchange data between PC and Mac but I'm undecided because it ruins the aesthetics and I'm not sure if OS9 reads PC formatted zips.

OS9 can read PC formatted Zips, up until OS8 you needed a set of extensions (Macintosh PC Exchange), but iirc OS8.x and OS9 has this built-in. You'd still need the Iomega guest driver or Zip extension if you want to reformat a MS-DOS formatted Zip disk into a Mac disk.

Speaking of the MDD versus Quicksilver overheating problem, G4s do get pretty warm in general, from my experience, my MDD didn't get that hot with the case closed (but it was noisy, although it wasn't that bad), so as a starter, I'd personally replace the thermal paste just to err on the safe side.

Though, if your QSG4 starts overheating, you'll immediately notice it locking up or throwing a kernel panic, my MDD did that when I ran it case open, but since the QSG4 seems to have a fan directly on the CPU heatsink, that should not be a big problem.

In any case, the PSUs on these will eventually require a recap if you want to keep them going, though definitely the MDD really lives up to its "Wind Tunnel" reputation (there actually was a kit that Apple sold that consisted of a revised main fan and power supply that both ran quieter than the original MDD fans, though both parts aren't really easy to come across) although mine (which I put the revised fan and PSU in) was still fairly tolerable IMHO, compared to my other machines.

And you prefer to share file between pc->mac using zip drive or USB key? Os9 can read usb key fat32 for example?

I don't have a set preference, but generally speaking, OS9 does read and write on FAT32 disks, although it's gonna be capped to USB1. 1 speeds. Not sure about Zip drives (I only have one SCSI drive that is hooked to my PM7500) though but I'm guessing it's gonna be a tiny bit faster.

In these instances I generally set up a network share when I need to put files on one Mac or the other

Vynix wrote on 2023-12-01, 11:35:

I don't have a set preference, but generally speaking, OS9 does read and write on FAT32 disks, although it's gonna be capped to USB1. 1 speeds. Not sure about Zip drives (I only have one SCSI drive that is hooked to my PM7500) though but I'm guessing it's gonna be a tiny bit faster.

In these instances I generally set up a network share when I need to put files on one Mac or the other

ok thnaks. I have two hard disk inside my mac, can i install os9 in one drive and osx in the other ine? to make them separate?

Yup and yup, and you can either hold the "ALT"/Option key at boot and select which drive to boot from, or go into the OS' settings, select the "Startup drive" and select which drive you want to boot from at next boot.

The Alt shortcut is the same thing as striking F12 on a PC, it's temporary, if you want the option to stick you have to set it from the OS.

This morning I tried to reinstall OS9.1. Inserting its original CD (which is listed as restore and not installation and I don't know why) I can't complete the restore. The CD starts and loads the restore interface but once you have chosen one of the two disks where to restore the .img image it does not continue and the "start" button is grey. As if the hard disk was no good. But they are the two disks with which it was delivered to me and I also tried to format them with the utility present on the recovery CD. I entered the Mac world with "Tiger" and x86 Macs so I know well how the classic Mac thinks... can you help me? Thank you

That probably won't change much but I've always used a retail OS9.2.2 image when I needed to reinstall OS9 on my Macs (unfortunately, I cannot provide a direct link to one such image as not to run afoul of the moderation here).

It sounds like to me there's something that is tripping up the restoration utility, like it doesn't recognizes the hard drive (System 7 had the same issue, the drive setup utility would only recognize OEM hard drives).

Under 10.4, you can try to fully erase the drive where you want to install OS9 (you'll have to select "Install OS9 disc drivers" or something like that) and let it do its thing. If the restore disk still doesn't want to recognize it, either you somehow got the wrong disks (iirc the QSG4 shipped with OS9.2, I'm not too sure) or something else is at play there and you'll have to go the retail OS9 iso route.

Edit: Confirmed, it shipped originally with OS9.2.2 and OSX 10.1, it sounds like to me that you wound up with disks that were for the "Sawtooth" (AGP Graphics) or Gigabit Ethernet G4s

Vynix wrote on 2023-12-02, 13:37:

That probably won't change much but I've always used a retail OS9.2.2 image when I needed to reinstall OS9 on my Macs (unfortuna […]
Show full quote

That probably won't change much but I've always used a retail OS9.2.2 image when I needed to reinstall OS9 on my Macs (unfortunately, I cannot provide a direct link to one such image as not to run afoul of the moderation here).

It sounds like to me there's something that is tripping up the restoration utility, like it doesn't recognizes the hard drive (System 7 had the same issue, the drive setup utility would only recognize OEM hard drives).

Under 10.4, you can try to fully erase the drive where you want to install OS9 (you'll have to select "Install OS9 disc drivers" or something like that) and let it do its thing. If the restore disk still doesn't want to recognize it, either you somehow got the wrong disks (iirc the QSG4 shipped with OS9.2, I'm not too sure) or something else is at play there and you'll have to go the retail OS9 iso route.

Edit: Confirmed, it shipped originally with OS9.2.2 and OSX 10.1, it sounds like to me that you wound up with disks that were for the "Sawtooth" (AGP Graphics) or Gigabit Ethernet G4s

Probably restore wants to restore on the original disk and can't find it, even simply due to the different capacity. I'll have to get a full 9.2.2 disc

I doubt it would be the hard drives that causes this, I'm guessing the restore utility tries to find the machine's ID and since the QSG4 has a different machine ID compared to its older brothers, the utility then locks itself out.

Theorically past system 7.x, Apple did away with the "OEM only" hard drive restrictions, I can't find what version had that restriction ommited but I can definitely tell that OS9 doesn't really checks if it's a original hard drive or not

Vynix wrote on 2023-12-02, 20:36:

I doubt it would be the hard drives that causes this, I'm guessing the restore utility tries to find the machine's ID and since the QSG4 has a different machine ID compared to its older brothers, the utility then locks itself out.

Theorically past system 7.x, Apple did away with the "OEM only" hard drive restrictions, I can't find what version had that restriction ommited but I can definitely tell that OS9 doesn't really checks if it's a original hard drive or not

i'm 90% sure that my disc restore come from this computer.... but, if i want to install 9.2.2 from scratch.... how can i do? exist a "generic" and universal CD for instal 9.2.2 like what happen in OSX?

Yeah there's indeed a generic OS9.2.2 image floating around somewhere (again, I can't give a direct link, per site rules), you just burn it to a CD and with the CD inside the Mac's CD drive it should get picked up by the boot picker (hold ALT/OPT), once you boot into it, you should have the option to prepare the disk and install onto it.

As for OSX Classic, you just need a working OS9 system folder (you can even use one from another partition if your drive is partitioned in two), in fact, on all Classic Mac OSes, you could just transfer the whole OS by moving the system folder over to another drive.