Post Your PowerPC Setup

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

My Belkin was working fine on my MP until Mojave.

M.b. bt chipset unsupported with drivers..?

 

[SebastianNikolai]

I use this opportunity to say 'Hi'.

I am Sebastian, 45 years old, living in Hamburg Germany, two Kids, work at a coffee roastery.

My current PowerPC setup is this:

G5 iMac iSight 20“
2.1 GHz
2.5GB ram
250GB hdd
running Mac OS Leopard 10.5.8

I have stumbled into this hole PPC thing by accident. In august 2020 I unearthed my old MDD FW800 G4 Power Mac at my parents place. The Formac Gallery display I bought with it back in 2001 was broken so I asked people aound if anyone had a display with ADC Connector and somebody had. So I was given a Studio Display and I was struck by the beauty of the whole thing. Connecting display, keyboard and mouse is so elegant and installing Tiger was such a flawless experience updating this old OS during the process in 2020 went as natural as 15 years ago when I went to all this for the last time.

G4 FW800 MDD
1GHz
2GB ram
240GB hdd
M-Audio Delta Audiophile 24/96 PCI
Miglia Alchemy TV DVR+
running Mac OS Tiger 10.4.11

Nevertheless the G4 PM did not give me the performance and usabilty I needed so I gave it away in october.

A little later in december I found a broken G5 DP 1.8GHz PM with 20" Cinema Display, keyboard and mouse for 30 euros on the local classifieds. HD was missing, DVD rom not working. As I had a Superdrive gathering dust in a drawer somewhere I bought it. To install the Superdrive was so satisfying. What a beautiful machine. Plus I dropped in a used 5€ 250GB HDD and I was ready to go. Unfortunately after installing Tiger I discovered that the PM only ran on one CPU. Eversince it is waiting for a new CPU board.

On saturday I bought the ppc iMac mentioned above to keep me busy.

 

[Explelsius]

I am Martin, 38 years old, living in UK, Three Kids, work in Retail

My current PowerPC:

G4 PowerMac Quicksilver Dual 867Mhz
1.5GB ram
250GB Sata HDD
Radeon Pro 9800 128mb Graphics
running macOS Leopard 10.5.8 and 9.2.2

Other G4:

G4 Dual 1.25GHz , FW800 MDD
2GB ram
480GB Sata Drive
USB 2.0 Card
macOS Leopard 10.5.8

 

[Eason85]

Because the G4s, particularly the late model TiBooks are the pinnacle of OS9 capable hardware. While a G3 is capable, it doesn't have AltiVec and it's not as powerful.

That said, no one is forcing you to a G4. Get what you can afford. An iBook G4 is also a good option, just keep in mind that Apple intentionally crippled some features so that people wouldn't buy iBooks instead of the more expensive PowerBooks.

I was under the impression that iBook G4s couldn't boot into OS9. Is this incorrect?

 

[Amethyst1]

I was under the impression that iBook G4s couldn't boot into OS9. Is this incorrect?

This has been fixed, yep.

 

[Eason85]

This has been fixed, yep.

Awesome! I will buy an iBook g4. Do you have any links/instructions for this?

 

[Amethyst1]

Do you have any links/instructions for this?

Latest OS 9 news — Mac OS 9 Lives

Check the forum

 

[Eason85]

Latest OS 9 news — Mac OS 9 Lives

Check the forum

many thanks!

 

[Explelsius]

Some more mods to the MDD 1.25Ghz Dual PowerPC G4, temps now a nice reading.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

What a nice fan !. I suppose you can't close system with it?

 

[Explelsius]

Yeah close's fine, temps stay below 45 which is nice for a MDD

 

[Eason85]

Got an iBook G4 (12" 2005) coming in soon. 1.33Ghz, 1GB ram, will upgrade the HDD to SSD with an IDE/mSATA converter and cage. I can't wait.

 

[chikorita157]

I have a good amount of PowerPC and vintage Macs I collected over the years. I only really use them nowadays to run legacy applications and games, mostly for that nostalgia. Besides the vintage Macs, Performa 630/6200, my PowerPC collection consists of a Power Mac G3 B&W, Mac Mini G4, PowerBook G4 Titanium, PowerBook G3 Pismo, iBook 12” G3 and G4.

The one that is in my main setup is the Mac mini G4, since it’s currently the fastest system besides the iBook G4 are my fastest PowerPC machines I have. I found out that the Mac mini G4 can run Mac OS 9 through a modded installer. It works well, although there are a few glitches. Also, volume control does not work, so I went out and bought a Mac OS 9 compatible audio interface, which will sound at least better than the built in one. Need to upgrade it to an SSD eventually.

I do not daily drive PowerPC machines as my Macbook Pro 2018 15” and M1 Mac mini. I do have a collection of old Intel Macbooks, but they aren’t that special compared to the PowerPC Macs and the now new Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[wur10]

Covid boredom brought me back to the PPC Mac. So far I've resurrected three of them. Every machine has its own appeal to me and every one of them needed some heavy cleaning and more or less work.

12" PowerBook G4 - 1.33GHz - 1.25GB RAM - 60GB 7200rpm HDD - SuperDrive - Leopard 10.5.8
15" PowerBook G4 Titanium - 400MHz - 768MB RAM - 10GB 4200rpm HDD - DVD-ROM - Classic 9.2.2 + Tiger 10.4.11
12" iBook G4 - 1.33GHz - 1.5GB RAM - 40GB 4200rpm HDD - Combo Drive - Tiger 10.4.11

 

[Eason85]

Well, shoot. Turns out the iBook G4 1.33GHz is not capable of running OS9 even with hacks. Anyone want to buy it off me? Really good condition. Will sell at cost.

 

[CJRhoades]

The (second) 23" Cinema Display I ordered from eBay for my G5 Quad finally arrived today. Mfg date is 40th week of 2006 so I think it's a post refresh model but I'm not certain. I was very disappointed with it at first because it was much dimmer than my post refresh 20" and had a yellowish tint to the picture. Once the backlight was warmed up though it looks pretty comparable, but it isn't entirely without issue. On a pure black screen there is a fair amount of backlight bleed on the bottom edge and bottom left corner. Haven't had great luck with the 23" ones. The first one I ordered had a horrible yellow discoloration all the way around the perimeter of the screen and the top 1/3rd was very dim. I think I'll keep this one though.

I also found a brand new old stock NEC display to use with my newly headless TiBook. I thought about finding another 20" CD for it (planning to use mine with my G4 Mini) but I thought a non wide aspect ratio LCD would play nicer with classic MacOS games.

 

[pipetogrep]

Void Linux on the iBook G4. Using i3 wm. I wrote the battery, CPU history, and memory history monitors in the bar.

 

[friscotxp]

Hi everybody,I would like to post my configuration. It's a lovely machine, fully functional on 2021...

 

[marcosfisica]

Void Linux on the iBook G4. Using i3 wm. I wrote the battery, CPU history, and memory history monitors in the bar.

Hi everybody,I would like to post my configuration. It's a lovely machine, fully functional on 2021...

View attachment 1734155

with Linux these machines are useful regarding internet? or still the same thing that in Leopard or Tiger?

@friscotxp what you mean with "fully functional in 2021"? can you watch youtube in this powermac without any issue?

Cheers!

 

[pipetogrep]

with Linux these machines are useful regarding internet? or still the same thing that in Leopard or Tiger?

Fairly useful. ArcticFox is pretty capable but is about as good as TenFourFox.

 

[wicknix]

No problem.

Cheers

 

[wicknix]

More standards compliant web browsers as well.

Download

Web Browser for PowerPC Linux and Mac OS X 10.6 and above - wicknix/SpiderWeb

github.com

 

[marcosfisica]

No problem.

Cheers

Niiiiiiiiiiiiceeeeee!!!!!!!
btw, I love Pencilmation! I watch with my 4 years old son. it's really funny.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Leopard #metoo

 

[friscotxp]

with Linux these machines are useful regarding internet? or still the same thing that in Leopard or Tiger?

@friscotxp what you mean with "fully functional in 2021"? can you watch youtube in this powermac without any issue?

Cheers!

Hi, I just recorded this video, it's not perfect, but my resolution is at 1920x1080.
So it works pretty fine for me, I did it in Leopard because I'm new in Void Linux and still configuring it...