Hello,
I've just purchased a G4 Dual 500mhz, 512Mb Ram, Radeon 32 meg AGP Video Card, 60G Harddrive, SuperDrive, w/OSX Panther.

I plan to put in an additional 160G Drive, or both 120G & 80G drives. I also plan on upgrading the memory to around 1G. But I wont be upgrading for at least another month and I plan on doing some editing with FCP4 on this machine before I uprade.

So do you guys have any recommendations for using FCP4 on this machine before I upgrade? (i.e. the way I should setup the harddrive, video file storage, etc..) and the best ways to upgrade? (i.e. buy from ebay and self-install)

Also, I haven't got an apple monitor as yet. Am I able to use a PC monitor plugged into the VGA socket or must I buy an adaptor for a one-screen PC monitor setup?

Thanks to anyone that helps with any of the questions!!

Also guys, does anyone know about the video card in my machine, do you recommend I upgrade that as well?

below is what the seller of the machine quoted;
"Mac Radeon 32 meg AGP Video Card (not the regular ATI Rage pro, this supports quartz extreme and great for games)"

The video card is fine for video, it may even support dual monitors. The HD controller will not recognize drives larger than 120Gb, so you'll be wasting money on 160Gb drives. A new PCI HD controller card will cost about $100 USD if you want to upgrade to take advantage of larger drives. I consider 1Gb of ram a minimum for video editing with FCP. It works at 512MB but you can never have too much ram when you're editing.

Thanks Jeff!!
Do I need to put two memory chips in when upgrading (i.e. 1G (2x512mb) or 512mb (2x256mb) or can I just buy one 1g or one 512mb chip and put it in. I read that in g5's two equal memory chips must be added at a time to upgrade. Also, how many empty memory slots do i have to play with?

Only the G5's need ram installed in pairs. Single sticks of memory is all that needs to be installed in a G4. Your G4 should have four slots and is capable of 2Gb of ram, maximum.

THANKS JEFF

I've upgraded the memory to 1G, but I used PC133 memory and my machine (gigabit ethernet g4) is meant to have PC100 in it. The memory seems to work fine, OSX tells me there is now 1G in it. There shouldn't be a problem with this should there?

I've also put a 120 GB (8mb cache, 7200rpm) drive in. This works great!

HOWEVER....... my video card has 1 vga, 1 dvi and 1 s-video out ports. I thought I could hook up a dual monitor desktop by buying a dvi-to-vga adaptor and plugging in 2xvga monitors. They both work but I found out my video card doesn't support two monitor extended display. damn! i was looking forward to the extra space.
Does anyone know of a cost effective solution to having an extended desktop with 2 displays? (a particular new video card model?)

The ram is fine, I have some PC133 in one of myMacs with no problems. The ATI Radeon 7000 (http://www.ati.com/products/radeon7000/radeon7000me/index.html) Mac will fit in a PCI slot and drive an additional monitor.