I found a silver tower computer shimmering in the sunlight at my local recycling center. I approached the object casually as to not bring any attention to what I was going to do. I bent down and looked at it. There was no mistaking at what I was looking at--a bonafide mac tower discarded like any old PC.... A sticker on the top handle read, "Ok." Is it "Ok?" I quickly checked its guts, which is easily done by flipping up the latch on the rear. Everything seemed to be in place... a GPU, there were even RAM sticks, and then a giant embossed sign reading, “G5” behind an acrylic shroud. I remembering feeling slightly disappointed because of the infamy of the G5 Powermacs and that if it is, indeed, garbage and non-working, I wouldn't be able to part the parts for my own working Mac Pro 5,1 at home. At the same time, I was thrilled because as infamous as the G5 was, it was also famous for being infamous, if you know what I mean. In fact, the last time I saw a Powermac G5 was when I was a lot younger than I man now, 18 years younger, in fact, in 2005 when I worked for a reality-TV production company as a production assistant. And, as everyone knows, the bread and butter of reality-TV shows is to make fame mundane. Or, make the mundane seem famous. Anyway, a Powermac G5 showed up in the office one day and a couple IT guys were working on the machine. I remember it because there was only one at the time. They must have been testing it on whether they can use it for Avid since that was the company's NLE of choice at the time. Months later, and as the company moved to a bigger office, every editing suite had one of these silver cheesegrater-looking towers.
But, here it was... 18 years later and that same Powermac G5 is now being thrown out for any brave soul to take. But, should I even bother? It's 2018... and I already have a Mac Pro 5,1. And, I know--having a Powerbook G4 that I would be limited to an antiquated version of OS X (OSX Leopard, to be precise). But, the nostalgia... the nostalgia got to me and the spirit of something "great" and "different" got to me. And, it did get me... the different part thing got me because I couldn't power the thing on when I got home with the spare power cord parts I had laying around.
It turns out that what I salvaged was a late 2005 Powermac DC 2ghz G5 with an Nvidia 6600 LE GPU and it uses a C19 power cord. A cord that is different than any power cords I had laying around. It's so different that finding it is a bish! The only place I could find one was 2 hours away at my not so local Micro Center for $34!!!!
So, I went online to find a cord that was at a more reasonable price. It is on its way. And, the price was still unreasonably pricey. But, it is what it is. I don't even know if the computer works.... But, if it does work, what do you guys do with your Powermac G5?
There isn’t even a forum for Powermac G5 on this forum. So, will this post be deleted for even talking about the Powermac G5 in a Mac Pro section?
