I'm looking to buy a used Apple desktop to run iTunes on. Doesn't need to do anything fancy. But I would like it to have about 80 GB of HD storage.

Any advice on what I ought to buy?

I'm looking for something in the $200 to $400 range.

tx,

Fox

Pick up an old G4 still plenty useful for net, iTunes, hell, even as a recording rig! I think the 933 Quicksilver single processors only had a 60 from the factory as the base, but you can add another one on top of it, plus, you can mount a hard drive in the zip drive bay and have 3 drives if you want...

Thank you, Michael! Just picked up a G4 "mystic" (gigabit dp 500) off Craigslist for $130 (including bluetooth keyboard).

Now I need a memory upgrade. Any advice on best type (and place) to get memory?

Absatively, congrats! here you go:

http://www.macsales.com/


I believe this should be what you need for that older model, but go through the menus for yourself or call to double check. unfortunately the older memory gets a bit more expensive ( per Mb ), as it's really not in constant production like the new memory. I'd fill it with 512 sticks if it were me... but if only for iTunes, you may find people around you with pc133 sitting in the drawer gathering dust from old systems, I just gave away 3 256 sticks, otherwise I'd mail them to you.

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=159&...upgrds=Show+Upgrades

BTW, these machines can be picky about ram, that's why I recommend OWC, it's their market. You may find some used 100 or 133 ram that will work, but sometimes they won't be recognized by the Mac, even if they work fine in a Linux or Windows box... Now for hard or optical drives, many of the other parts suppliers should be able to get you a better price than OWC, but like I said, you have to know what you want, they already know what works and are not a problem with the returns when you get something that doesn't ( from my experience anyway... )

Peace

Very Helpful.

Thanks, Michael.

-Fox

You're quite welcome, have fun!

Hmmm...you gave me an idea. I didn't even think of throwing trying my old pc ram this G4. Tried it, and it works. Hope that's not too dangerous!

Cool, looks like that system was 100 or 133 so you should be fine with whatever you had on hand, like I said as long as it recognizes it. G4s do have a tendency to severely ramp up fan speeds as you add more ram... which is why some of them became known as the G4 "Wind tunnel" series. but it should run iTunes well on 256, so you should be good to go as is. now just slap in your old pc hard drives for more storage!