What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[AshleyPomeroy]

I recently bought a MOTU 828 audio interface - a Mk1 model from 2001. It connects with FireWire 400 so I decided to plug it into my 17" PowerBook G4 and try it out:

It's a very simple arrangement of another tune; the melody is coming from the G4, the bassline from a Korg ARP Odyssey, and the compression and delay are Logic Express 9. The G4 has enough horsepower to run at least two audio channels with half a dozen effects and a couple of instruments, although it's limited by the 2gb memory ceiling, the hard drive bandwidth, and the single-core CPU. It's all being fed into a 2009 Mac mini (I could in theory have recorded it to a separate stereo track in Logic, but I didn't want it to crash half-way through recording).

I was inspired by Sound on Sound's contemporary review of the 828, which mooted it as a portable unit for PowerBook musicians on the go. I have to say that throughout the entire life of FireWire I never used it - not a single time. Now I have no less than four FireWire cables. Four.

There was another FireWire interface at the time, the Metric Halo 2882, which was powered by the FireWire bus, so it was even more portable - the internet archive reveals that the company used this image to advertise it:

 

[originaldotexe]

today's been a bad day lol. i unfortunately ruined my brand new g5 (i wasn't really thinking and was working on it right after getting up when tired, and ended up bending some pins straight off the board and ruining it), so i've been spending the day installing all of my software back onto my g4 mdd.

EDIT: basically what happened was i unplugged the sata connectors from the motherboard and for some reason the pins on them just bent straight off. i'm not really sure what happened there. i will probably end up just getting a 2006 mac pro to replace it once i get paid. the mac pro will end up being faster and more upgradable anyways, which is really what i'm after since i want something that i can put a better GPU and more memory in, and faster CPU's, as opposed to the g4 mdd which will only go up to 2 cores, 2gb of memory and a 7800 gs at the top end, whereas a mac pro can do 8 cores, 32gb memory and even a 8800 gtx (although i will probably stick with only a 7800 gtx on it as i plan to run Tiger on it and i'm not sure how well the 8800 will work with tiger or some of my older games & software)

 

[Amethyst1]

although i will probably stick with only a 7800 gtx on it as i plan to run Tiger on it and i'm not sure how well the 8800 will work with tiger or some of my older games & software)

There are no drivers for the 8800 on Tiger. (Even though the 8600M is supported.)

 

[originaldotexe]

There are no drivers for the 8800 on Tiger. (Even though the 8600M is supported.)

yeah that's what i figured, if i get a mac pro i'll just get a 7800 gtx for it then, as i'm definitely sure that tiger is the OS i want to run, as some of my older games don't work right on leopard.

 

[originaldotexe]

i'm so happy, i found a temporary fix to use my G5 until i can find a new motherboard
basically i took the sil3114 sata card out of my g4 and routed the sata cable up into the g5's sata bay, so i can bypass the onboard sata (which is the one that i bent the pins off the board on) and plug my hdd into the pci sata card. i installed os x tiger on it just now, and i'm currently doing the updates and then i'll start installing my programs

 

[MacFoxG4]

Attempted to install OS 9 on my 700mhz iBook G3 today. I didn't have enough CDs to burn the 3 Disc iBook G3 application restore set, so I attempted to run it by copying the image files to the external SSD I am using with my iBook, mount all three images, and then run the installer from the disc 1 image. It seemed like this plan would work at first until I got to a screen that prompted me to insert a disc. When that failed I burned a copy of the eMac 2003 OS 9 CD, which I heard can boot any OS 9.2.2 capable Mac. That didn't work. I got a screen with a grey floppy icon and a blinking question mark. I then used Jaguar's disc utility to erase and partition the drive into three partitions (one for Jaguar, one for OS 9, and one for the 2002 iBook G3 OS 9.2.2 install CD image). I restored the image to the partition using Snow Leopard's disk utility on my MBP. I got the same result as the eMac CD. Going to buy some more blank CDs so I can burn a copy of the 3 CD restore set, as that seems to be my only hope of getting OS 9 on this Mac.

 

[repairedCheese]

Well, today I finished copying a backup of my Leopard partition from my MDD over to my G5 because for some reason nothing would allow me to enlarge it, and I needed to enlarge it because I wanted to reinstall in place, but there wasn't enough space to do so. So I backed it up and just made a newer, larger partition, and now I'm currently updating a fixed Leopard install.

I'm going to have to do something similar with my Tiger partition, but luckily I shouldn't have to reinstall. This is what I get for making the partitions too small, and I really need a much bigger hard drive, 80gb is nowhere near enough.

 

[Amethyst1]

Attempted to install OS 9 on my 700mhz iBook G3 today.

You could try this - the NetBoot image contains a full OS9 install.

Installing the necessary components to use Classic on a Mac that can’t boot from Mac OS 9

I’m writing this post to be more like a personal reminder in case I find myself in a similar situation in the future. I don’t know if this is the simplest or quickest method to install …

systemfolder.wordpress.com

 

[1042686]

Installing Tiger on my “new“ ibook g4.

 

[MacFoxG4]

You could try this - the NetBoot image contains a full OS9 install.

Installing the necessary components to use Classic on a Mac that can’t boot from Mac OS 9

I’m writing this post to be more like a personal reminder in case I find myself in a similar situation in the future. I don’t know if this is the simplest or quickest method to install …

systemfolder.wordpress.com

Tried it out last night and it works great!

 

[RogerWilco6502]

Finished writing some greeting cards on my iBook and may do a little creative writing a little bit later. I also need to back up my systems and just perform some general maintanence tasks. Things have been busy as of late, so I haven't gotten a chance to check in on every system like I normally like to.

 

[eyoungren]

08.13.2020: Because OS X 10.13 and Photoshop CC 2020 do not support my scanner (Canonscan N676U), I used my 17" PowerBook and Adobe CS2 to scan in a line drawing I made freehand. Saved the PSD directly to my MacPro though.

 

[Toyface19]

Recently, I've been using my PowerBook G4 17" for some extra-curricular typesetting activities outside of work, using CS4 and Pages, I can save direct to my Mac Pro over the network, which works better than I thought it would tbh. So, today I typeset a few letters for this elderly businessmen we've done print work for before.

Over the weekend, though, I finally cracked getting Classic up and running on my 2004 iBook running Tiger, and I tried the interactive Toy Story book and a Paddington CD game with my 16-month old, but she's clearly too old. I got a few "wow"s and some pointing as she recognised the Toy Story characters and that was enough for me ha ha. I spent the rest of the evening playing Neverwinter Nights on the iBook, which I might have to move to the PowerBook given the better graphics inside of my big beast.

 

[mddguy]

Since November last year, I've been tinkering with DDS Drives, an old storage format based on DAT. Certain Conner/Seagate DDS data drives made for SGI had firmware that can read DAT Audio Tapes. I bought an SGI drive cheaply, but also bought some of the more common Conner/Seagate drives and flashed them with the special audio firmware. Using the drive hooked up to an SCSI card and the DATXtract software on my DC 2.3, I've been able to transfer more than a hundred master tapes for a composer friend of mine, before checking them over in Apple Soundtrack Pro and batch processing them.

We also have DATs where I work, and this past week we were able to recover our old theme tunes on DAT from 20+ years ago with this setup for use on some archive clips, and the G5 was an important part of the production process!

I've set up another drive on '06 Mac Pro and can now ingest two tapes at once.

 

[MacFoxG4]

Experimented with Classic in both Jaguar and Tiger on my 700mhz iBook G3. I started with Jaguar first. The game, Sci-Fi Pinball, played flawlessly on Jaguar. I then did a clean install of Tiger on the iBook and after applying all of the updates, I set up Classic, started the game and it worked, kind of. The audio is kind of glitchy under Tiger and the game will randomly run slower while the ball moves around, making the game almost unplayable.

One thing I often notice about Tiger on G3s is that it feels "heavier" than Jaguar like it pushes the G3 harder. I had a 500mhz iBook G3 before and there is little to no difference in performance moving up to a 700mhz G3. Aqua Trim and Aqua Accelerator do help with Tiger, including making Tiger boot faster than Jaguar, but Classic behaves the same. I wonder if Tiger's classic is just terrible with games or if it would run better if I was using a G4 or G5 instead of a G3?

 

[iluvmacs99]

I am using my PowerMac G5 right now to clean and convert some recent online conference audio files that was recorded at a much higher quality that my old iPad just couldn't handle. Will use it again when I attend another conference online in the fall LOL. I still love the G5 doing my audio stuff!

 

[iceman45575]

I use my PowerMac G3 B&W as a file server

 

[2984839]

Since November last year, I've been tinkering with DDS Drives, an old storage format based on DAT. Certain Conner/Seagate DDS data drives made for SGI had firmware that can read DAT Audio Tapes. I bought an SGI drive cheaply, but also bought some of the more common Conner/Seagate drives and flashed them with the special audio firmware. Using the drive hooked up to an SCSI card and the DATXtract software on my DC 2.3, I've been able to transfer more than a hundred master tapes for a composer friend of mine, before checking them over in Apple Soundtrack Pro and batch processing them.

We also have DATs where I work, and this past week we were able to recover our old theme tunes on DAT from 20+ years ago with this setup for use on some archive clips, and the G5 was an important part of the production process!

I've set up another drive on '06 Mac Pro and can now ingest two tapes at once.
View attachment 945141 View attachment 945142

I dare you to go to Best Buy and ask if they have any DDS drives.

"Did you mean SSD"

"No, DDS"

 

[RogerWilco6502]

I set up my iPod Shuffle with my SLSD yesterday, made a video on it too

Might get out my iBook to work on some writing projects.

 

[bd129]

Today I put new hose into my Quad's LCS.

 

[z970]

@bd129 I read that as:

"Today I put a new horse into my Quad's LCS."

🤣

 

[Macbookprodude]

Officially retired the G5 Quad as its useless and Wicknick's advise on nvidia 6600 did NOTHING to allow Linux to work at all.

 

[Riku7]

I have used GarageBand with some additional sound packs to create beats on my iMac G4. It's a distraction-free environment that limits me to use the very basic tools so I don't stray to tweak too much, which would easily lead to losing the focus. Once I have enough beats, I'm going to transfer those drum feels to the iPod, play them back on repeat from a stereo, and improvise over them. The improvisation sessions are recorded, and I'll take those recordings to my main Mac Pro, where I'll build the actual songs over those drafts. This will be a new approach to composing, one that I haven't tried yet. I want to spend less time sitting at the computer, more time actually playing the instruments; The composing process has been too monotonous and exhausting if 100% is done on the same spot, I need variety and phases. My main computer should only come to the picture at the late stages to do the heavy lifting, and this friendly looking little iMac will handle the beginning.

 

[Amethyst1]

My main computer should only come to the picture at the late stages to do the heavy lifting, and this friendly looking little iMac will handle the beginning.

That's a lovely-looking setup

 

[bd129]

@bd129 I read that as:

"Today I put a new horse into my Quad's LCS."

🤣

I'd need a big ole blender for that - I don't recon the pump'd like it though.