Hi All,
I was wondering
I am going to receiving a G4 Mac Cubef rom my sister who is a graphics artist, she will be buying a new G5 machine
her G4 has 512 megs of ram can I upgrade it to the max 1.5 gigs ??? Do I need "special memory or will any PC133 or PC100 work ??

Also the 20 gig hard drive is a 5400 RPM model can I upgrade that to an 80 gig 7200 8 cache drive ???
if so is there a way to transfer or image the entire hard drive to the nbew one so I won't have to re-install everything as she does not have any of the original CD to do this ???

I also read some where that there are CPU upgrades available for this machine I would like to possibly go to 800 MHZ or so what processor is the best bang for the buck ??

lastly what about a video card upgrade from the current 16 meg to possibly a 64 meg card ???
Can the card be from a PC machine or does it specifically have to be for a mac ??
which cards will fit the original cube case without alot of modifacations ??
I do not play games, however I do alot of digital photography,converting Canon 10D RAW files to jpegs and then editing them, I also use Photoshop CS quite frequently and other imaging programs, basic office apps,burning CD's and the web
my wife however plays
casino,card and On-Line Pogo games which I also think is 2D also
this machine is not really my main machine, it more or less is going to used as a learning tool to enter the world of Macs
in addition to my Windows PC's

WOW, you got lots of questions!

I dont know the Cube much, but I know there are kits to upgrade to 1.5GHz, 1.5GB ram, 120GB hdd, GeForce 3 etc...
A good place to search for info are: http://www.cubeowner.com

I used to have a Cube and did some upgrades to mine, so i know a fair bit. Best bet however is post your questions on the forums @ 'CubeOwner.com'. You'll get the best responses there.

However, i can tell you -

HDD upgrade to 120Gb Maximum (7200 RPM? Sure!)
RAM upto 1.5Gb - Will take regular SDRAM PC100/PC133. It can be rather fussy with the modules however - like most Macs!
GPU - The most powerful card to fit into a Cube was / is the GeForce3 ADC (64Mb). These are not easy to get ahold of, and fetch around $300-400 on eBay. I paid $350 for mine last year! *sigh* The cards need to have the Mac ROM, either via Flashing or from new. Be careful however if you flashed PC Cards, they can differ in size. For example a PC GeForce3 might not fit!
CPU? Err, this is no easy process, but sure it can be upgraded. Check out Powerlogix (Google )

I'd also recommend putting in a base fan also. The cube chassis actually has a space allocated for Fan, i guess they never thought it'd be a complete failure! Adding a Higher Capacity/Speed HDD might cause heat problems, as will a new GPU, so i'd deffo recommend it. I know it goes against the initial idea of the Cube, but this cube wasn't built with newer kit in mind!

Hope thats helpful to ya!

For all the trouble you'll have to go through and all the money you're gonna spend on upgrading, you might as well sell the cube and get a used eMac from eBay (for example, This). It won't cost you that much!