Home » forums » Discussion » PowerPC Macs

SD Card Adapter slowing down iMac G3 500mhz to a crawl. Need help.

Submitted by MaxTek on July 8, 2009 - 10:32pm. PowerPC Macs

My daughter has an iMac G3 500mhz with 768MB of ram and running OS X 10.4.11. Everything works plenty fast (iphoto, itunes, games, etc., etc.). Until I plug in an USB extension cable and a Motorola SD Card adapter to upload pics from the SD to iPhoto.

Will all the SD adapters do this, or is it the SD Card or just USB.

Any ideas? Thanks.

» login or register to post comments | previous forum topic | next forum topic

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
MaxTek's picture

forgot to mention I checked A

Submitted by MaxTek on July 8, 2009 - 10:34pm.

forgot to mention I checked Activity Monitor and the SD Card/Adapter is taking 48.8% of the CPU!!

» My name it means nothing. My fortune is less. My future is shrouded in dark wilderness.

login or register to post comments
Dr. Webster's picture

My inclination is the problem

Submitted by Dr. Webster on July 8, 2009 - 11:28pm.

My inclination is the problem is with the card reader itself. They're very cheap these days; I'd just buy another one (preferably of a reputable brand name).

» Applefritter Admin
7 stories posted
login or register to post comments
MaxTek's picture

So you don't think it is with

Submitted by MaxTek on July 9, 2009 - 9:22pm.

So you don't think it is with the SD card? The SD card is a SanDisk 2GB (regular card, no high speed) and the reader is a Motorola Secure Digital Reader SYN1114A.

Thanks.

» My name it means nothing. My fortune is less. My future is shrouded in dark wilderness.

login or register to post comments
Dr. Webster's picture

Re: So you don't think it is with

Submitted by Dr. Webster on July 9, 2009 - 10:58pm.
MaxTek wrote:
So you don't think it is with the SD card? The SD card is a SanDisk 2GB (regular card, no high speed) and the reader is a Motorola Secure Digital Reader SYN1114A.

Thanks.

SanDisk is a manufacturer that is well-known for making quality flash media. Motorola is known for making cable boxes, CB radios and crappy cell phones. I'd be surprised if the media itself was to blame.

» Applefritter Admin
7 stories posted
login or register to post comments
Hokusai's picture

Hmm

Submitted by Hokusai on July 10, 2009 - 1:19pm.

You never really mentioned it but what exactly is saying it is taking up 40+% in Activity Monitor. This is probably a clue as to what is going on.

» Macbook 2.1Ghz / 4GB / 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD
GamingPC: Phenom II X3 710 / 2GB / 2x80GB / Radeon HD 4850
Server: 1.3GHz G4 / 1.25GB / 80GB / Superdrive / USB 2.0

login or register to post comments
Eudimorphodon's picture

Just for sanity's sake...

Submitted by Eudimorphodon on July 10, 2009 - 3:30pm.

Do you have a USB thumb drive or other USB storage device you can plug in and try transferring files from? What you're seeing may not be that unusual.

The G3 iMacs only have USB 1.1, (which means the file transfers will be pretty achingly slow anyway), and beyond that the USB chipset in those models was known to be CPU intensive. (I remember ol' Dr. Bob claiming that just driving the USB speakers on the Cube sucked up about half the CPU compared to having them shut off.)

If the thumb drive is fast then it could well be your reader, but it might be worth ruling out limitations of the machine itself.

»
login or register to post comments

Sony

Submitted by TheUltimateMacUser on July 10, 2009 - 11:22pm.

I have a 7 in one Sony card reader that works really well. My 2ยข

» <> AppleFritter Chat: #AppleFritter on irc.freenode.net <>

login or register to post comments