PowerMac G5 as Daily Driver

[smirking]

I think we all want to tell Mac03ForLife, the way his life should be or the way his parents should be behaving, but nobody here knows enough to do more than just scratch their head and say that the situation is peculiar. It could be that Mac03ForLife is trolling or it could be that the situation is basically as described. He/she lives with very strict parents who may or may not have a reason for imposing the rules they impose. Assuming that the latter is the case, I don't think we should be encouraging anyone to be rebellious and break household rules, especially if they're the rules of very strict parents. If they're that irrational, you just don't know what they may do for punishment and I don't want to have any responsibility for someone getting injured.

Mac03ForLife, assuming everything you've said about your background is true... they're your parents. It's your household. You know how to navigate it better than any of us here. Just do what you need to do to get by until you're old enough to do as you please. That's how I survived my childhood.

 

[Mac03ForLife]

@Hrududu im not trolling. Parents said ask around, see what can be done. Presented them with the possibe solutions, then they said no mods period. Okay, so im screwed. Then moved to PMac G5 as daily driver. Asked them to go out and buy a eopard disk next time they were out near the Mac repair shop near us. They wondered what was up, they said no mods to the powermac either. Now im close to getting them to replace my drive with an SSD, and now they are convinced i need 8GB of RAM , and not a new SSD. So im stuck. I learned yesterday that they had been inside my macbook, and nothing past that

 

[z970]

@Daniël Oosterhuis, thank you for finally getting some actual info. We all appreciate it.

It's your household. You know how to navigate it better than any of us here. Just do what you need to do to get by until you're old enough to do as you please. That's how I survived my childhood.

+1 - That's how I'm surviving mine.

@Hrududu im not trolling. Parents said ask around, see what can be done. Presented them with the possibe solutions, then they said no mods period. Okay, so im screwed. Then moved to PMac G5 as daily driver. Asked them to go out and buy a eopard disk next time they were out near the Mac repair shop near us. They wondered what was up, they said no mods to the powermac either. Now im close to getting them to replace my drive with an SSD, and now they are convinced i need 8GB of RAM , and not a new SSD. So im stuck. I learned yesterday that they had been inside my macbook, and nothing past that

Then they must really be that stupid. Strange seeing people who don't know what they're doing tinkering with computer internals, meanwhile said people ban the person who actually know what he's doing from tinkering. And so parenthood can sometimes transform into tyranny, it seems.

I'm beginning to regret deleting my original post...

 

[macgeek18]

Back in the day and we're talking 10 years ago shortly after I moved out my parents had a Pentium 4 HP desktop with 512MB RAM and Windows XP. My mom was complaining that it was so slow and I offered my dad another 512MB RAM DIMM for it and an older WD Raptor 10K drive to speed it up since they didn't want to buy a new computer. My dad had a no tamper policy with the family computers and I got tired of going over every weekend to clear caches and what not. So while they were gone on a weekend trip I went over and did the upgrades and cloned the original drive the the WD Raptor drive. They never knew what happened till long after it finally died and was replaced a few years later and I went over and pulled my drive out and finally told my dad what I did. He wasn't mad and was actually glad. It sometimes takes years but slowly and kindly educate your parents and maybe one day they will understand. My parents now take all my tech advice and I'm the family IT guy. They used to think I was wasting my time goofing off with computers in high school and going to college and getting a computer degree and now I make my living off of it and now they get it. I won't encourage disrespecting your parents but I agree with the others have them take it to a repair store and honestly 8GB of RAM and a new hard drive is not a bad combo. If I read that right that they think you need new memory and actually not a hard drive then yes... You're in trouble.

 

[MagicBoy]

Yes. but for simplicity for the parents, theyre one and the same

No they're not. A hard drive is a standardised component and Apple class it as user serviceable. For example - fit a new Seagate instead of the Seagate it came with and it's not suddenly going to burst into flames...

Do your parents take the family car back to the main dealer and only fit exactly the same tyres that it came off the line with from new old stock when they wear out?

 

[eyoungren]

This thread is making me realize how different my parents were I guess.

Since I was 10 there was always a computer in the house. My dad brought it home. Technology in the house has never been an issue and my parents never had any problems with me messing around with the computers they gave me.

My dad was an electrical engineer in aerospace who helped design gyros and guidance systems for ICBMs. And my mom taught computer science, first with Apple IIe's and later with TRS-80s, Commodore 64s and VIC-20s and MC-10s. There was ALWAYS a computer in the house. My mom went Mac in 1993.

My parents only issue with me and computers was using them when I was supposed to be doing something else - like homework.

 

[smirking]

It sometimes takes years but slowly and kindly educate your parents and maybe one day they will understand. My parents now take all my tech advice and I'm the family IT guy.

You know, it dawned on me that part of my situation isn't that different from your story and Mac03ForLife's situation. My wife used to absolutely panic if she spotted me walking toward her laptop with a set of screwdrivers even though she was always recommending or volunteering me to fix hardware and software issues with other people's computers. She still gets nervous, but she's learned to trust that I won't break her machine.

 

[eyoungren]

You know, it dawned on me that part of my situation isn't that different from your story and Mac03ForLife's situation. My wife used to absolutely panic if she spotted me walking toward her laptop with a set of screwdrivers even though she was always recommending or volunteering me to fix hardware and software issues with other people's computers. She still gets nervous, but she's learned to trust that I won't break her machine.

LOL!

I got my wife a 12" Powerbook G4 once and it needed a new screen.

I broke the sleep light, a key off the keyboard and I forgot at one point to put the heatsink back on the CPU. A misplaced screw that popped out of the bottom of the case and a hacksaw to take care of it later and I had to redo it all because of the heat sink missing.

She didn't care. Because she knew once I finally gave it to her it would work.

But her idea of high tech is an electric typewriter so there's that.

 

[macgeek18]

I had my wife's MBP for a few hours and she panicked because she thought I was taking it back. (She permanently borrowed it from me). What I was actually doing was cloning the hard drive to a new 525GB SSD I bought for her and upgrading the RAM to 8GB. She loves it now that its snappy and can handle more tasks. She somewhat trusts me now.

 

[AphoticD]

You know, it dawned on me that part of my situation isn't that different from your story and Mac03ForLife's situation. My wife used to absolutely panic if she spotted me walking toward her laptop with a set of screwdrivers even though she was always recommending or volunteering me to fix hardware and software issues with other people's computers. She still gets nervous, but she's learned to trust that I won't break her machine.

Yeah I’ve have had a few head scratching moments when my wife says something like “maybe we should pay someone to fix it”.. this has been with the family PC, her MacBook, an iPhone and on multiple occasions with the family car. She also wanted to start a website and was asking me if I know anybody who can build it.. WTF?? I have only been building websites since 2001.

I just look at her and ask if she ever pays attention to what I do. “Yes, but we should get it done professionally”.... ok. So I should pay someone hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to do a job that I can do for myself? Where’s the logic?

 

[swamprock]

My better half definitely appreciates having a comp geek in the house, especially in situations like today, where she came home with a new Macbook Pro (sans Touch Bar) and said, "New school computer. Now set it up."

At least I get my 2009 Macbook Pro back...