Mac Recommendation Advice

[Blackg]

Hi all,

Excuse me if post on the wrong forum.

I currently specialize on PC repair and I want to start repairing Mac as well because I do occasionally have Mac customers.

I want to buy a used Mac for lab purposes so that I could gain hands on experience on both the hardware and software.

What will you recommend for the above mentioned purpose?

Any advice and tips will be highly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

 

[Blue Velvet]

If all you're going to do with it is mess with it, then maybe a G4 tower of some flavour single 733 up to dual 1.25.

You'll find the hardware very similar but they can run Tiger well enough.

 

[robbieduncan]

I'd say (as someone who does not do this) that repairing some Macs is going to be nearly impossible for an individual. Can you buy the specialised parts for non-tower Macs from Apple?

Let's say I have a Mini which refuses to boot from the internal drive. You open it up and see that the problem is with the riser card to connect the drive to the motherboard (yes Mini's use a small board for this, not a cable). Where can you get one from?

I know that's a single example, but with the exception of the towers Macs of recent years have had unique enclosures and many unique parts to make that work. Perhaps the solution is to buy broken Macs off eBay to get a stock of parts?

Anyway best of luck!

 

[Blackg]

Hi robbieduncan,

I disagree with your comments; I have been in the PC repair business for more than 5 years.

I agree with what Blue Velvet said, buy one and mess with it that is the whole idea which is what I am going to do anyway.

As in PC world most repair work is software issues and I believe it will be similar to Mac computers.

 

[robbieduncan]

Hi robbieduncan,

I disagree with your comments; I have been in the PC repair business for more than 5 years.

I agree with what Blue Velvet said, buy one and mess with it that is the whole idea which is what I am going to do anyway.

As in PC world most repair work is software issues and I believe it will be similar to Mac computers.

If it's software you'll be fine. I was simply pointing out that if you end up need Mac parts you may find them significantly harder to come by than PC ones.

 

[Blackg]

If it's software you'll be fine. I was simply pointing out that if you end up need Mac parts you may find them significantly harder to come by than PC ones.

Are you saying that you can cannot replace Mac hardware? What do you do if you need to repace a failed hard drive, Cdrom etc?

As a beginner which of the Mac os would be ideal for learning/practicing?

 

[robbieduncan]

Are you saying that you can cannot replace Mac hardware? What do you do if you need to repace a failed hard drive, Cdrom etc?

As a beginner which of the Mac os would be ideal for learning/practicing?

Harddrives, optical drives and RAM are standard components and shared with PCs. Everything else is different (well Intel Macs obviously have Intel CPUs).

I'd recomend concentrating on OSX as almost everyone should have given up on OS9 by now, although if your customers tend to have older machines they may be more likely to have OS9. The current version of OSX is 10.4 (Tiger) and has been available for quite a few months now. Either that or the previous version (10.3, Panther) would be good bets.

 

[Blackg]

Harddrives, optical drives and RAM are standard components and shared with PCs. Everything else is different (well Intel Macs obviously have Intel CPUs).

I'd recomend concentrating on OSX as almost everyone should have given up on OS9 by now, although if your customers tend to have older machines they may be more likely to have OS9. The current version of OSX is 10.4 (Tiger) and has been available for quite a few months now. Either that or the previous version (10.3, Panther) would be good bets.

Thanks for the info