Lord Help US All Now

[Kazz]

Guess what Ole Kazz went and did?

My New Mac G4 (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=220286014022)


It was listed as a MAC PowerPC G3 400mhz I did some looking around before I bid, because I thought the G3s only came in B/W (blue and white) The pictures look like it is teal so I immediately thought it was a G4.

What arrived surprised me even further....it is actually the gun metal gray or graphite color and it is a G4 and has 640mb of ram in it and I believe I can upgrade to as much as 2gb if I can find PC100/PC133 SDRAM.


Can you believe this....a fully working computer for $20.00.....$55.00 total with shipping....personally I think the $35.00 for shipping is a bit ridiculous but it is a pretty heavy machine.

I loaded OS X 10.4.6 "Tiger" last night and got as far as getting the network going so I could use it for my morning web surfing this morning.

I have no idea what all this thing can do really but for only a 400mhz process it runs pretty quick.

Onboard network did not work, however there is an add on card included and it worked right away.....will probably spend some time over the weekend trying to figure out if the onboard is just disabled or if it does not work. I would rather use the onboard than the add in if possible.



Now before all you MAC lovers start rousing me because I openly call MACs toys......

The long term plan with this is to strip the guts out of it and build a Windows Vista machine using the case and light it up with lots of blue leds and blue cold cathodes.

The Blue and Silver case is pretty sexy if you ask me and this has Windows LAN BOX written all over it.

So I posted this in hopes that some of you that run MACs daily might offer up a few pointers as to how to make the machine work to the fullest of its potential.


What tips can you offer?

[ted s]

sump'n funky with your links Kazz, one goes to a "Tesla the Band" forum and the other goes to a reply to post..:confused:

[Robert]

Fix your link, Kazz.


The long term plan with this is to strip the guts out of it and build a Windows Vista machine using the case and light it up with lots of blue leds and blue cold cathodes.


:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

[Kazz]

Link fixed....

[sunvalleylaw]

Wiki has some info on PowerPC's for your knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh

Apple has some G4 support info here: http://www.apple.com/support/imac/g4/

It is about G4 iMacs (the machine I am on now, and that I use at work. My paralegal gets the nice Intel iMac), but the support info would be generally the same. In "troubleshooting", there is a link for "Zapping the PRAM" which tends to help performance. Though I must confess, I have not done any sort of maintenance on this machine in months at least. It just plugs along. This G4 machine has 10.4.11 on it. Oh, that is one point, run updates to get all updates of the op system, and set it to notify you when one comes out, or to just install it. That is about all I do regarding upkeep, other than backups of course.

Re: Performance on G4s, this one is a 1.25ghz chip and does not have that much ram. I can use Garageband on it fine, surf the net, run all the programs I need to, etc. My Intel Macs are faster though, and I use them for movie projects because the "rendering" of effects is slower on the G4. It can do it, it just takes a while and you must be patient. Warren may have more to add on that.

I have OS X (can't remember which version on the laptop) on an old G4 laptop that works pretty ok for a machine purchased 7 years ago, but I do not expect tons out of it. I basically use it for internet, email, and book keeping.

Re: Windows: I am running Parallels to run Windows XP pro on my intel iMac (the only reason I do is because my boy loves Lego games and for some reason, Lego does not release a Mac version). I have not run Vista, so I cannot advise. I know some here love Vista, but there is no reason for me to run it if all I am going to do is run a lego game and maybe a billing program or child support calculator program. XP runs just fine on the Intel chip iMac, at the same time as OS X. I can run windows in its own little window on my OSX desktop, or in full screen version. Pretty cool really.

On your machine, remember that is an old Power PC chip, not an Intel chip, so while it may run windows, I am not sure how well, and you may have to use an emulation program like Softwindows or something. I never really used it on that chip. EDIT: I just checked and Parallels requires any 32 or 64 bit Intel based mac.

[warren0728]

congrats on the mac! the best thing you can do is max out the ram....cheapest quickest way to improve performance.

the hard drive is pretty small and might be a 5400rpm one (not sure)....a larger faster hd would be good too....

you cannot run windows natively on that machine so you would need an emulator and they are notoriously slow (better with the new intel processors)....so if you want to turn this into a windows machine you will need to start from the ground up with a new motherboard and processor....don't do it....just enjoy having a mac and you might be surprised....next time you need a new computer you might get another mac.

btw....word is apple will be announcing new laptops tuesday with prices starting at only $800!!

ww

[SuperSwede]

www.everymac.com/systems/apple is a GREAT resource for finding info on older Macs.

[Kazz]

Highly doubt I would ever be swayed that direction, when I can build an awesome AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ machine for under $700 and a comparable MAC would be at least $2000.

When I said I was going to run Windows on it, I mean I would take out all the MAC components and mod the case to house an aftermarket ASUS or Gigabyte Motherboard with an AMD processor on top. Basically the only thing that would remain Apple would be the case itself.

Going to do some reading this weekend and see what I can get out of it.

I did buy a really slick case for my next pc build so there is a slight chance that this could stay a MAC for a little while anyway :-)