MP 1,1-5,1 Squeezing the most out of my 5,1

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Very terrible idea. Sell the MP and buy an iMac 5k from 2017 (has TB3) on. Potential drawback:
- Cannot use older macOS/OS X. 2017 shipped with Sierra.
- Upgrading internal storage is possible but painful.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

And I originally liked macs because they were simple. Once upon a time.

You made me looking up the original Macintosh, turns out not much expansion was allowed

Macintosh 128K - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[kohlson]

but I don't think an RX 580 will work on Sierra

It does, at 12.6. I have installed one on a friend's 2010 cMP. He stays at Sierra because FCP7. Note that it works sub optimally. It does not report as an RX580. And the drivers improved through 14.6.

You seem concerned about heat. Without knowing your specific situation, in my experience this is not an issue. I work in FCPX and the fans barely spin up at all. (Do be sure to vacuum out the case every year or so). I live in a moderate climate, and do not have air conditioning. And I work in a converted garage. But the summertime ambient is often 80 degrees F. And there are the occasional days like today where it is expected to hit 100 outside, and probably 94 in my office. My laptop fans are noticeable in times like this. My 4/5,1 cMP (4 HDDs, 2 SSDs) just keep on working.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Another terrible idea. On Sierra one could go NVIDIA + Web driver.

 

[Melbourne Park]

You made me looking up the original Macintosh, turns out not much expansion was allowed

Macintosh 128K - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It had SCSI though, I think? It was beautiful to use IMO.

I trialled for three days in early 1986 (while doing a masters and was told a computer was mandatory) I think what was called a "Fat Mac". It had two floppy drives. I think it also was capable of Excel; it had Word on it I think. There was a Uni special going on at the time. Via the computer science faculty. Those guys were keen on the Apple stuff. At that time, an Apple 5MB SCSI hard disk was $5,000. The computer was around $3,000. It was totally awesome though. I was computer illiterate and I could use it. Amazing. My young wife though - not impressed at all. Get real, your a father now.

I bought a clone from the husband of my best friend's sister. He was a math genius of sorts - but he ended up a gambling addict and their marriage broke up. He was a Chinese Malaysian. I bought a PC with an 8086 with a green and black screen, with a 20MB hard disk. Awesome. Cost me just under $2,000. It weighed heaps. Even back then the keyboard felt cheap compared to the Apple's one. And two very floppy drives. And it had pirated Wordperfect word processor (Microsoft stole their tech and blew them away) and Lotus 123 (Microsoft stole their tech and blew them away), and I got a dot matrix printer too. Lotus spreadsheets and graphs were phenomenal.

Next computer I bought through a Bank I worked at, was an SE30 Mac. Wish I still had that - lovely thing. It had Word and Excel. Back then, you could get Excel to draw a graph, you could copy and paste just that graph into a free Apple Draw program, and you could pull the graph apart, and re-assemble its bits, and type text and arrows. All so easy to do. Back then. Not so easy to do years later though. And when I tell finance people that Excel was invented on the Mac, they think I am crazy. Two years ago I tossed out my Newton which I had used, and its case, but I forgot the password and I stopped using it, I think I got a Blackberry, which felt primitive but it was a phone. The Newton was in brand new condition. Now, they are worth something. Sheesh.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Nice stories. A PowerMac was my dream machine in my teenage years. Was excited about Mac mini too then Intel transition happened. My Mac "career" started with a random base model 13-inch MBP.

 

[Melbourne Park]

I've also got a system 9 and have system 8.5 CD (and others) and a tower ... it must be a PowerPC - it was a very noisy machine. I think people referred to it as the turbine or something like that - its fans were very noisy.. It looks sort of like a greyish Mac Pro with a sort of grey look. I tell my wife it has data on it that belonged to my father (I gave to him but he's gone now). I really should through it out ... I've got a bunch of mac "books" as well ... the most dissapointing was the titanium 15". It flexed a lot - not enough titanium I guess. It would flex on top of its CD drive, which was below your right palm. It was great for maybe 6 months.

 

[fastlanephil]

I bought a 512E(enhanced) Mac in 1987 for about $1500. It had two 3.5 1.44 MB floppy drives. I was able to upgrade it to a MB of ram with a third party upgrade so it was essentially a Mac Plus. I purchased Lacie’s first SCSI(pronounced scuzzy) HD for $900. The Lacie Cirrus 60 (MB) which was quite a lot of storage for the time.