PPC and Leopard as Daily Driver

[AphoticD]

I hadn't noticed. But then, Tiger was removed from all my personal installations as soon as I got Leopard. With certain exceptions that's all I use.

Yes, I have tried several times to make Tiger the default OS on my G4s or G5s but I always end up back at Leopard.

If you have don't have a Core Image supported graphics card, 10.5 is slow until you update to 10.5.8. It seems they optimized CI software routines by that stage.

To be honest when running 10.5.8, I don't notice a difference in the UI between my 1.42Ghz Mac Mini with its non-CI supported Radeon 9200, 1.5Ghz PB 12" with the CI supported, but not totally accellerated Nvidia FX 5200 Go and my 1.5Ghz PB G4 15" with a fully supported ATI 9700 mobility card.

After I put an SSD in the 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 15", I found Leopard boots quicker than Tiger from the same drive (53 seconds vs 68 seconds respectively) and Leopard performs better (and more reliably) in file and network operations.

Despite all this, Tiger does provide better battery life on the PPC portables and it does feel "lighter", so it's not entirely bad. I guess I mix it up depending on usage.

 

[z970]

It sounds like it's going to be a solid machine. The PC card won't work on the G4 without flashing it. If it's not possible (or too tricky) to flash, try searching for a Mac AGP 4x card which supports Core Image such as
* Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS
* ATI Radeon X800 XT
* ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
* ATI Radeon 9600
(most to least powerful).

The 9800 Pro Special Mac Edition (256MB AGP 8x DVI/ADC) card has been the only Mac graphics card to fail on me after a decade or so of solid use. Cost me nearly a grand when it was new as an aftermarket addition to my Dual G5. After going through this failure and since rebuilding my PowerPC collection, I've switched all my dedicated PPC cards across to Nvidia.

These include a stock FX 5200 (64MB) and a whopper of a GeForce 6800 GT (256MB) in two different dual G5 7,2's and the ultimate in the form of a Quadro FX 4500 (512MB) in a DC G5 11,2 - These all operate beautifully as Core Image supported cards. I've found however that even the stock 64MB card is smooth as silk for general use. Admittedly, it does struggle with 3D games and apps like Motion. But, I like it as it runs cool, silent and has a generally low power consumption.

The point of my stock card story is you don't always need to go for the most powerful graphics card just because. The more expensive the card, typically, the hotter and louder they run and the more juice they suck. A passively cooled Radeon 9600 would probably suffice as a solid Core Image supported option in a MDD G4.

Max out to 2GB of RAM if you can and to give it peak performance, either drop in an SSD or a new 7200rpm HDD and it will kick along for many many years to come.

The major benefit of the G4 tower over the eMac is expansion (and internal space). Install a SATA 1.5Gbps PCI card (such as the Sonnet Tempo or similar) for bootable internal SATA drive options and a PCI USB 2.0 card for better peripheral I/O throughput.

From my experience, TenFourFox (and WebKit/Safari) run better in Leopard than Tiger on the same hardware. I'm not sure if anyone has noted this, but although Tiger feels snappier, it lags behind Leopard when it comes down to getting work done. File transfers, app loading, web page loading, boot times, etc all appear more responsive, but ultimately take longer to complete. Perhaps Leopard's under-the-hood improvements came at a cost of reducing priority to the UI to deliver better performance from the underlying operating system features.

The G4 Dual 867Mhz with 1MB L3 cache will hum along nicely under Leopard and give you more (modern-ish) software options than running Tiger, Panther (or Mac OS 9). It's always a good idea to keep Tiger (and/or Panther) on a smaller partition in the event you need or want to boot the older OS for Classic support, or a specific app. I tend to keep a small 10GB Tiger drive setup on my G5s with a full OS install, Classic, Xcode Dev Tools, X11 and general maintenance software (DiskWarrior, Speed Tools, Onyx, Carbon Copy Cloner, among others).

When the MDD arrives, post your pics and put the old beast to work! I strongly believe that older Mac hardware can perform as a daily driver if you can live within a few limitations. Sometimes great things have come from such limitations. I would not want to begin to count how many hours I've wasted in my life due to my Macs having too many options - Bootcamp / Windows, Gaming, Linux, THE INTERNET! Just imagine how productive we could be if there were no distractions! Ahem.. speaking of which, I better get back to it.

-AphoticD

Well said.

Speaking of which, I'd better get to my lectures.

(Unfortunately, PowerPC Macs still seem to be capable of distractions via the internet and others. Curse you, high capability!)

 

[AphoticD]

Well said.

Speaking of which, I'd better get to my lectures.

(Unfortunately, PowerPC Macs still seem to be capable of distractions via the internet and others. Curse you, high capability!)

That's what it is. Single-tasking FTW!

Maybe there's a market for resurrecting sub-notebooks as single-purpose type-writers.

1. Buy a G3 iBook (clamshell or white if The GPU hasn't fallen out of its socket).
2. Clean install just Mac OS 9 (or 8.6 on the original clamshell)
3. Install a new battery.
4. Switch off practically everything using Extensions Manager.
5. Turn off Airport, set energy saving settings to Conservative/Slower Processor. Set colors to 256, lower the resolution down to 640x480.
6. Replace the Finder file with SimpleText or WordPerfect, renamed to "Finder".
7. Use ResEdit to change the type/creator of the app to FNDR/MACS
8. Reboot.

You've got yourself a standalone electronic typewriter, with no distractions! Boots within seconds straight to a blank page and battery life will be practically all day long (6-8 hours maybe?)

No file management, no internet, no mess, no fuss

While you're at it, sell your iPhone and get a Nokia 3310

 

[z970]

That's what it is. Single-tasking FTW!

Maybe there's a market for resurrecting sub-notebooks as single-purpose type-writers.

1. Buy a G3 iBook (clamshell or white if The GPU hasn't fallen out of its socket).
2. Clean install just Mac OS 9 (or 8.6 on the original clamshell)
3. Install a new battery.
4. Switch off practically everything using Extensions Manager.
5. Turn off Airport, set energy saving settings to Conservative/Slower Processor. Set colors to 256, lower the resolution down to 640x480.
6. Replace the Finder file with SimpleText or WordPerfect, renamed to "Finder".
7. Use ResEdit to change the type/creator of the app to FNDR/MACS
8. Reboot.

You've got yourself a standalone electronic typewriter, with no distractions! Boots within seconds straight to a blank page and battery life will be practically all day long (6-8 hours maybe?)

No file management, no internet, no mess, no fuss

While you're at it, sell your iPhone and get a Nokia 3310

I'd rather sell my iPhone and get an iPod classic.

 

[AphoticD]

I'd rather sell my iPhone and get an iPod classic.

Even better. Remain out of reach AND listen to your favourite tunes.

 

[z970]

Even better. Remain out of reach AND listen to your favourite tunes.

Two birds with one stone.

 

[Dronecatcher]

You've got yourself a standalone electronic typewriter, with no distractions! Boots within seconds straight to a blank page and battery life will be practically all day long (6-8 hours maybe?)

...If you want battery life of weeks instead of hours

 

[z970]

-

 

[eyoungren]

But it doesn't have the Apple logoooo...

Here you go…

 

[Dronecatcher]

But it doesn't have the Apple logoooo...

No need...Psion were superior to Apple

 

[G4fanboy]

I have better memories from Psion software on the ZX Spectrum...

[doublepost=1500519738][/doublepost]And even better from the QL

[doublepost=1500519921][/doublepost]I still cant understand why QL loose to the 128k Macintosh. Probably just because Sony FDD were superior to turbocassete-microdrives
[doublepost=1500520639][/doublepost]Jonathan Ive is british. He should have seen one of these in its childhood:

 

[Dronecatcher]

I have better memories from Psion software on the ZX Spectrum...

I have dim memories of crashing an awful lot on their flight sim for the ZX81...