Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Post Your PowerPC Setup
- Thread starter Goftrey
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Here is my 2nd setup in my basement. It basically a testing station. The G5 can easily be switched out with another one when testing is needed and the iMac is basically a troubleshooting research machine. Also my DVD player lol. Watching Wall•e right now haha.
Last edited:
Did some dusting/rearranging this evening. Pretty happy as I've managed to actually make more space for my stuff by moving the printer to the side, hahaha. I've been piling everything on it otherwise.
No picture yet but today I received 12" PowerBook G4 from year 2003. Rubber feet have been replaced in bottom, they are however missing from both sides of the display. The bottom side of the machine is bit scratched but overall OK.
867Mhz CPU, 1,12Gt RAM (1 gig stick installed), 120Gt HDD (quite large drive, for IDE drive), Airport and Bluetooth also installed. Fan is probably covered in dust since it the machine seems to heat quite quickly and fans spin. Battery is not totally OK, the aluminum cover is detached and held together by using tape. It does however hold charge but quite obviously doesn't have clue about how long it has power left, shows 14 hours at the moment
I haven't checked if hard disk has bad sectors, but overall not bad purchase for 43 USD including shipping, had to get charger though but they are not expensive if you are ok with third party ones, as I am.
The machine was sold as faulty, the seller said that when he boots the machine there is weird commands running on the screen and then everything stops at black screen. Turned out that it was Debian Linux which was unable to boot for some reason, now running Tiger
867Mhz CPU, 1,12Gt RAM (1 gig stick installed), 120Gt HDD (quite large drive, for IDE drive), Airport and Bluetooth also installed. Fan is probably covered in dust since it the machine seems to heat quite quickly and fans spin. Battery is not totally OK, the aluminum cover is detached and held together by using tape. It does however hold charge but quite obviously doesn't have clue about how long it has power left, shows 14 hours at the moment
I haven't checked if hard disk has bad sectors, but overall not bad purchase for 43 USD including shipping, had to get charger though but they are not expensive if you are ok with third party ones, as I am.
The machine was sold as faulty, the seller said that when he boots the machine there is weird commands running on the screen and then everything stops at black screen. Turned out that it was Debian Linux which was unable to boot for some reason, now running Tiger
No picture yet but today I received 12" PowerBook G4 from year 2003. Rubber feet have been replaced in bottom, they are however missing from both sides of the display. The bottom side of the machine is bit scratched but overall OK.
867Mhz CPU, 1,12Gt RAM (1 gig stick installed), 120Gt HDD (quite large drive, for IDE drive), Airport and Bluetooth also installed. Fan is probably covered in dust since it the machine seems to heat quite quickly and fans spin. Battery is not totally OK, the aluminum cover is detached and held together by using tape. It does however hold charge but quite obviously doesn't have clue about how long it has power left, shows 14 hours at the moment
I haven't checked if hard disk has bad sectors, but overall not bad purchase for 43 USD including shipping, had to get charger though but they are not expensive if you are ok with third party ones, as I am.
The machine was sold as faulty, the seller said that when he boots the machine there is weird commands running on the screen and then everything stops at black screen. Turned out that it was Debian Linux which was unable to boot for some reason, now running Tiger
That is pretty good. There are some aftermarket batteries on eBay that you can buy.
I have purchased a big collection over this past year and I thought I'd show one of the macs I am using tonight. I have an original ibook clamshell pre FireWire. It has max ram and the original hdd and I installed Tiger on it even though it isn't supported. Has a wifi card but it doesn't support my home network so I installed a usb wifi dongle I use on all my macs.
My Tangerine iBook had Tiger on it when i transferred the hard drive from an iBook G3 800. It worked perfectly but i reinstalled OS9 because i have Tiger on other machines.
Today I am using my dual 1.8 Power Mac G5. Got it free with a trade of older mac screens and printers. Have some Apple Cube speakers connected to my Cinema Display. The display is on a guitar stand because I got it with a broken back leg. My fastest ppc Mac for sure.
(on the far left of course) My one and only PPC mac. I came across a STEAL of a deal on this 1.25ghz 768mb ram 80gb 17" 2003 iMac G4 in almost MINT condition. I have always wanted one, and this is the first ive ever owned!
I already have a 1GB primary full size ram stick on the way to replace the 256mb chip thats "Not user friendly to replace" but easy for me. I have already had it all apart, interesting design how the cpu heat pipes go to the metal dome inside! It will up it to 1.5gb ram. A friend is giving me a 400gb hard drive to replace the old tired 80 gig in it.
Below is my main video editing rig/gaming/whatever I want it to do 8-core 2008 mac pro.
I also own a few more macs as well, all intel.
You guys and the Quicksilvers and MDD's. I used to have a 933 mhz Quicksilver, they are as beautiful as I find the iMac G4's. Didnt have room to keep it around, the iMac G4 is much more manageable :3
Last edited:
Sadly no photos due because i am in moving process, i have 4 Power PC macs.. and acquired them in the order listed:
Power Macintosh G3 (beige desktop) project name (Gossamer)
This machine has the stock 233Mhz CPU however has been upgraded by the previous owner. Has a 20gb Hard drive (apple labeled.. believe its from an imac g3) 224mb of Ram, and a CD-rw drive. running Os 9.2.2. Bought it about 6 years ago for $10 with the original keyboard and mouse.. apple display to VGa adapter.
Imac G3 DV model- A Tangerine 400Mhz, 320mb Ram, 20GB hard drive. Dual booting Mac os 9.2.2 and Jaguar 10.2.8 (original firmware still as im afraid that if i do the firmware i might screw it up or the CRT might burn out.) With original keyboard and hockey puck mouse.
Emac G4- Paid a woopin $40 dollars about 2 months ago, its a 1.42Ghz model, 80Gb hard drive, wireless. came with 256mb ram now its at 1gb, running leopard now too. The Combo drive keeps getting stuck though..
Power Macintosh Performa 5200CD- This junker i picked up for free about a month ago.. 75Mhz CPU i think 8mb ram not entirely sure.. 800mb Hard drive i believe too.
Power Macintosh G3 (beige desktop) project name (Gossamer)
This machine has the stock 233Mhz CPU however has been upgraded by the previous owner. Has a 20gb Hard drive (apple labeled.. believe its from an imac g3) 224mb of Ram, and a CD-rw drive. running Os 9.2.2. Bought it about 6 years ago for $10 with the original keyboard and mouse.. apple display to VGa adapter.
Imac G3 DV model- A Tangerine 400Mhz, 320mb Ram, 20GB hard drive. Dual booting Mac os 9.2.2 and Jaguar 10.2.8 (original firmware still as im afraid that if i do the firmware i might screw it up or the CRT might burn out.) With original keyboard and hockey puck mouse.
Emac G4- Paid a woopin $40 dollars about 2 months ago, its a 1.42Ghz model, 80Gb hard drive, wireless. came with 256mb ram now its at 1gb, running leopard now too. The Combo drive keeps getting stuck though..
Power Macintosh Performa 5200CD- This junker i picked up for free about a month ago.. 75Mhz CPU i think 8mb ram not entirely sure.. 800mb Hard drive i believe too.
I've got a spare brand new battery for one of those. Been looking for one for a while!
I scavenged a battery from another one I got for free (only lasts 20 min though) and the other one is an early model with a German keyboard, 867mhz.
i really hope it will work for few more years. i just upgraded the ram to 8gb and put 120gb SSD
anyone have a clear step by step on how to put raid drive? my mac g5 have this card for the raid i don't know what it is called. and it also have this card that has something for TV Antenna but no idea how to use it.
im only interested on the raid.
So, this isn't really a setup, but these are my PPC macs. The first mac left to right is an iBook G3 14" with a 933 MHz processor (the highest end G3 iBook made), 640 MB of RAM, and a 20 GB hard drive. It has a battery but it isn't in it right now. It no longer works properly because the GPU died, but I can get it to boot by putting pressure over the GPU. It had OS X 10.4.11 installed.
Next is an iBook G4 14" also with a 933 MHz processor, a similar 640 MB of RAM (I am looking to upgrade that to 1 GB soon), and a 40 GB hard drive. It is running OS X 10.5 (updating to 10.5.8 as I type), which is why I need more RAM
All the way to the right is an iBook G4 12" with an 800 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM (I put the old 640 MB in the 14" since that could run leopard with more than 512 MB of RAM) and has no hard drive. It died also because of GPU failure and I have used it for parts for my 14" (I put its airport card, RAM, and DC input board into the 14" because the 14" either didn't have these or the part was broken)
I also have a Mac Mini G4 with a 1.42 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 60 or 80 GB (I think) hard drive. It is running 10.5.8 and I currently use it as a time machine server with the firewire 400 hooked up to hard drives and it is also used to charge my iPod with USB.
Finally, I have the first mac I ever owned, a PowerBook G3 with a 233 MHz processor (Not pictured as it is in my garage and I am too lazy to dig it out). I think it has (yes, again) a 640 MB of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive from the 12". It is dead because of the PRAM battery but I haven't fixed it yet because I don't have the TORX screwdrivers to remove the display. It had OS X 10.2 (which I couldn't get updated because the wifi card I had refused to work.)
Next is an iBook G4 14" also with a 933 MHz processor, a similar 640 MB of RAM (I am looking to upgrade that to 1 GB soon), and a 40 GB hard drive. It is running OS X 10.5 (updating to 10.5.8 as I type), which is why I need more RAM
All the way to the right is an iBook G4 12" with an 800 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM (I put the old 640 MB in the 14" since that could run leopard with more than 512 MB of RAM) and has no hard drive. It died also because of GPU failure and I have used it for parts for my 14" (I put its airport card, RAM, and DC input board into the 14" because the 14" either didn't have these or the part was broken)
I also have a Mac Mini G4 with a 1.42 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 60 or 80 GB (I think) hard drive. It is running 10.5.8 and I currently use it as a time machine server with the firewire 400 hooked up to hard drives and it is also used to charge my iPod with USB.
Finally, I have the first mac I ever owned, a PowerBook G3 with a 233 MHz processor (Not pictured as it is in my garage and I am too lazy to dig it out
). I think it has (yes, again) a 640 MB of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive from the 12". It is dead because of the PRAM battery but I haven't fixed it yet because I don't have the TORX screwdrivers to remove the display. It had OS X 10.2 (which I couldn't get updated because the wifi card I had refused to work.)Attachments
Last edited:
Finally got the Quicksilver out of the dining room. Moving it was the easy part, compared to trying to get a third party USB/wireless device to work. That messed up my boot caches (which my processors are dependent on) when I uninstalled it. Spent all of last night and today getting the QS back up after an archive and re-install of Leopard.
Should have just run ethernet cable, like I did today and avoided the whole damn mess. OTOH, it seems to have eliminated a lot of little buggy issues as the previous install was from the G5 at work when I was using that.
If you notice the Apple lid on the wall, that's the back of my 17" PB's old LCD screen. At some point I'm going to put a lite in it so it shines. Kind of like that G3 lamp that someone posted a while back. My intention anyway.
Should have just run ethernet cable, like I did today and avoided the whole damn mess. OTOH, it seems to have eliminated a lot of little buggy issues as the previous install was from the G5 at work when I was using that.
If you notice the Apple lid on the wall, that's the back of my 17" PB's old LCD screen. At some point I'm going to put a lite in it so it shines. Kind of like that G3 lamp that someone posted a while back. My intention anyway.
Attachments
@Erik, I've seen people take the screen lid from an iBook G4, and put a clock behind it so the hands (obviously) stick out and you have a nice little iClock! Now if the person also put light behind the Apple logo, that would be amazing!
That's my intention. I want to set up a light behind the logo and around the outside edges (so you get a glowing effect). It's a project I have had on my mind for some time, but I know what I'm trying for and I don't want to take shortcuts to get there. So, when I get enough of all this other crap off my plate I will eventually look into that.
The cool thing is that because the back came from a 17" PowerBook, it will be as big as I can get it!