morning, everybody, happy new years day!

I have an old g4 tower, and I have a few questions about it

my primary concern is the keyboard and mouse. the g4 uses usb, but my kvm to my other computers (all windows, of course ) use ps2 connectors. and having an extra keyboard and mouse taking up precious space on my already cluttered desk is really annoying...
I have found usb to ps2 adapters (to connect my ps2 keyboard/mouse to a usb port on my mac) but I wanted to know if anybody had experience with them.

next, and not nearly so important, is which model do I have. looking at the wikipedia page for g4's, it shows a quicksilver, and a mdd. my case looks more like the quicksilver case (single speaker in the front), but have seen ebay auctions, and craigslist listings, with the same looking model, listed as mdd.

it uses sdram, so I am totally confused...

also, what the heck can I use this old thing for? my main pc does anything I need it to, and a lot quicker, my server has a ton more storage space, and, well the laptop is my portable, so it cant do that. I want/need to learn mac stuff, and this older box should be a great way to do it, if I can find a suitable use for it in my arsenal. seriously, guys

thanx, and have a happy new years.

Ok,I'll try some of this. FIRST Belkin made, (and still may make) a keyboard switch. It allows you to use one keyboard on multiple systems. I believe you can use a PS 2 keyboard with this. You should be able to hunt one down, either new or maybe eBay.

As far as your model, here's the deal...

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The Apple Power Macintosh G4/450 (AGP Graphics), based on the Sawtooth architecture, features a 450 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) processor with the AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processing unit and 1 MB of backside cache. It shipped configured with either 128 MB or 256 MB of RAM, a 20 GB or 27 GB Ultra ATA/66 hard drive, a 5X DVD-ROM or DVD-RAM drive, and either a 2X AGP ATI Rage 128 or Rage 128 Pro graphics card with 16 MB of SDRAM. AirPort (802.11b) was available by custom configuration

There effectively are four different versions of this model that shipped between August 31, 1999 and July 19, 2000.

It was introduced with model number M7232LL/A on August 31, 1999 with 128 MB of RAM, a 20 GB hard drive and ATI Rage 128 graphics for US$2499.

Due to a shortage of 450 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) processors, on October 13, 1999, Apple infamously "speed dumped" this model -- introducing the Power Macintosh G4/400 (AGP Graphics) with the model number M7824LL/A and the same configuration and price as the 450 MHz model (differing only in speed), and introduced the M7825LL/A configuration of this model -- equipped with 256 MB of RAM, a 27 GB hard drive, a 5X DVD-RAM drive, and a higher price tag -- US$3499.

On December 2, 1999, Apple upgraded the graphics card to an ATI Rage 128 Pro -- which added a DVI port and support for 1920x1200 -- and changed the model number to M7825LL/B.

Finally, on February 16, 2000, Apple dropped the configuration back to that used by the original model (with the exception of the graphics card) -- 128 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive -- reduced the price to the original (US$2499), and assigned model number M7628LL/A.

If you compare the specs of your mac with the these, you should be able to nail it down. Your best info comes with "About This Mac" ubder the "Apple" menu.
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One of the really great things about macs is their longevity. They simply run nearly forever. Your G4 can run at least up to OS X 10.3, and maybe 10.4. You can run MS office if you wish. Also a nice graphics machine. Will handle photoshop, Quark, etc easily.

It has 3 internal drive bays so you can put a ton of storage in it. It also has built in Gigabit ethernet, so while it handle 10base T and 100 base T, it can use 1000baseT, which is screaming fast if you have other gigabit machines and a hub. Would make a great ftp server.

Also with OS X, you can learn unix too. OS X has a Berkley Standard Unix kernal under the hood. You can use the Terminal window, standard unix apps, AND the built in Apache Web server if you wish. So much more I could ramble on forever!

Its an oldie but a goodie, so have fun, and welcome to Mac!

Thanks, kalamazookid, yeah, its a nice machine.
unfortunately. the onboard nic does not work (who need a gigabit nic when my network only supports 100m, anyway:)) as well as one of the two usb ports. so I have added a usb 2.0 card, as well as the mac coming with a netgear nic installed.

I have thought about moving my 70gig scsi drives into it, but I still need to find out if my mac will support the scsi card I have.(dont have the model handy, but I can find that out on my own.)

I got it for free, since it didn't work, so I opened it up, and took a look, and found the power button switch board had been unscrewed, and was dangling inside the case. mounted it back up, and it powered on.

yeah, aside from the damn usb and nic not working (could fix the usb, if I wanted to replace the jack, but I suck at soldering, and it would cost more than a new usb card to have somebody else replace it.

yeah, I have a little experience with unix (took a couple of linux classes, and have dabbled quite a bit with ubuntu... gonna switch my old laptop to linux, as soon as i decide on a distro I would like for it. another subject for a different forum.)

one more Q.
is the internal slot for the airport card a standard pcmcia slot, or is it another proprietary slot?

Hi, The best thing you could do is to use it on Internet by example to keep it downloading and uploading 7/7 24/24
the slowest computer will always be much more quicker then the fastest internet .
You can download and convert PC stuff on a mac and transfer it by ethernet on your pc when downlod or upload is done, but in FAT 32
Bye GhostByte