On Feb 8, 2004, at 22:24 , David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > The single piece of hardware I've replaced most, over the years, is > the *power supply*. > > I've added SCSI, IDE, multi-serial, and firewire cards to PCs. Yes, > I've added IDE cards to PCs with two IDE channels on the motherboard > already. > > And of course video cards. I've replaced a lot of those (not because > they broke). > > Your list of what you might want to replace or change seems very > limiting to me. > > (And I hardly ever even play computer games. *Never* play fancy > modern ones.) Ok, so just to let you know then, in Power Macs (the desktop tower machines), really almost everything is replaceable by a knowledgeable PC builder, if you don't mind eating the cost: - motherboard - power supply - AGP video cards (ATI & nVidia right now) - PCI extension cards (modem, FireWire, USB2, add'l video cards, specialized DSPs, etc.) - memory - processor(s) (probably the single most expensive thing) - hard drives - optical drives - zip/tape drives Hell, I can't think of anything that is in a PC that you can't put into a Mac, except specialized hardware that has only Windows support. However, please remember that Macs are very heavily used in the video and digital art/publishing markets. Almost every part of a Mac is standardized to PC hardware because they are trying to get their costs down and make it easy for companies that have lots of Macs to repair them in-house. Now, granted, in a G4 iMac (the new, flat-panel ones), you don't have PCI expansion, and no room in the case to do anything with expansion. Of course, the parts are replaceable, but not from off-the-shelf components, because the case of the machine is so specialized. All normal parts (HD, optical drive, memory) are replaceable/addible by the owner, if you're brave. Sorry I didn't put in a complete list before; I completely forgot AGP video cards... -- Matthew S. Klahn Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc. http://www.codetek.com