Depends what you do with it. Using TenFourFox with FoxPep makes almost any G4 useable for basic work & browsing. I mean, as a college student I use my PB G4 12' to read documents, write stuff, connect to my Uni's website, listen to music, etc... As long as it isn't too multimedia based, PPC are surprisingly usable even with their 16 something year old hardware and 14 something years old OSs.
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What have you done with a PowerPC today?
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Depends what you do with it. Using TenFourFox with FoxPep makes almost any G4 useable for basic work & browsing. I mean, as a college student I use my PB G4 12' to read documents, write stuff, connect to my Uni's website, listen to music, etc... As long as it isn't too multimedia based, PPC are surprisingly usable even with their 16 something year old hardware and 14 something years old OSs.
Today, I checked out what the state of ioquake3 was on PowerPC Mac OS X. I noticed 10.5 was a requirement.
Well, now with Panther_SDL2 and some small changes to ioquake3 I'm running the latest ioquake3 directly from github on Mac OS X 10.3.9! Coming soon.
Well, now with Panther_SDL2 and some small changes to ioquake3 I'm running the latest ioquake3 directly from github on Mac OS X 10.3.9! Coming soon.
Ooh, I loves me some Q3A. I have it on my QS & on every single one of my gaming boxes since like 1998 lol. I should put it on my garage mac and use it to host local games over my network. Not that my 3 or 1 y/o are going to play nor my wife as she really is one of those weirdos that does not like video games but it would be cool to me. I guess I could just run a bunch of hellish bots 
Unfortunately, my upload is completely unfit for a pub
Unfortunately, my upload is completely unfit for a pub I am not saying now.. but I predict in the next 5-10 years, PowerPC machines will just be a relic. Sad, but true.. how much longer will Kaiser still update Tenfourfox before the internet gets different protocols which PPC and older machines can’t run on ? Leopard also.
Even if you are right about the impending uselessness of PPC Macs--and I don't believe you are--why would you pack them away now? Just use them and enjoy them rather than speed up the inevitable.
The reason I wholeheartedly disagree with your prognosis is because I use a 25 year old AlphaStation on a daily basis for work and for fun. There's more to a computer than Firefox, and there are more options for PPC than OS X.
I agree with you, but old Mac OS X versions still support the latest OpenSSL versions . I don’t see that changing anytime soon, TLS 1.3 support is on Panther!
Links2 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above is another option for browsing the web on ppc if you don’t care about JavaScript support. It’s very quick compared to TenFourFox, and has optional X11 support.
There's more to a computer than the stupid web.
S.U.E.W. (Signing Under Every Word).There's more to a computer than the stupid web.
I'm probably going to regret replying but nonetheless, into the bear-trap I go... In 10 years, even the most cutting edge technology will be "just a relic" - such is the nature of obsolescence but will it stop enthusiasts from using and enjoying their machines? No. As it stands, we've already been long abandoned by Apple who essentially classify our PowerPC computers as relics (seven years ago, I was informed that my Intel Mac was already considered vintage!) so what difference would five to ten years make to this situation?
Those who enjoy the PPC scene will continue to do so. My Sinclair ZX81 will soon reach its 40th birthday - it's an absolute fossil in computing terms and yet a thriving scene continues with new hardware upgrades and software still being produced today. I can cite other examples with long superseded hardware platforms that are still active - and in many cases, the manufacturers no longer exist but it hasn't been an obstacle for the user base. There's absolutely no reason why this shouldn't apply to PPC Macs as well.
Who knows what developments the future will bring on that front. It's probably better to wait and see rather than sound the death knell for Internet access, especially given the resourcefulness of many miracle working members within this very forum and to reiterate what others in this thread have already expressed, getting online is not the be all and end all of computing - particularly when we all have other machines that can accomplish this anyway.
The wonders never cease! Is there any chance that you could be persuaded to turn your attention to an SDL MAME PPC OS X version for Panther and Tiger?
Yanno it just occurred to me that many of the users on here probably grew up with computers solely as an appliance of the internet and have zero personal experience using computers as stand alone offline appliances like say a Commodore64 (in my case)in the early 80s.There's more to a computer than the stupid web.
Through that lense, I can see a young person coming on here with the opinion that a computer and its OS being obsolete and unusable when it can no longer interact with the internet because from their perspective, the appliance is no longer doing what it was designed to do because yanno in the bible it says "on day one God made the Internet & on day two he made computers to use it".
It's certainly a very narrow & simple definition, (and not correct IMO) but I understand why we get kids on here at least quarterly with this similar talking point. The internet is the entirety of their computing experience. As far as they know, its always been there and as such is a foundational block to their computing experience.
Aside from this meaning that I'm now on the downward slope of life (hey gravity is now on my side), I guess we don't have to worry about them buying up our old, useless macs
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That's a really good point. I'm not sure what the cutoff point was where that shift occurred, but I definitely remember when the internet was kind of an afterthought for me. I used a computer pretty much solely for playing games for most of my childhood. And if I did use the internet, it was dialup 56k and my mom would yell at me to get off when she had to make a call.Yanno it just occurred to me that many of the users on here probably grew up with computers solely as an appliance of the internet and have zero personal experience using computers as stand alone offline appliances like say a Commodore64 (in my case)in the early 80s.
Through that lense, I can see a young person coming on here with the opinion that a computer and its OS being obsolete and unusable when it can no longer interact with the internet because from their perspective, the appliance is no longer doing what it was designed to do because yanno in the bible it says "on day one God made the internet".
It's certainly a very narrow & simple definition, (and not correct IMO) but I understand why we get kids on here at least quarterly with this similar talking point. The internet is the entirety of their computing experience. As far as they know, its always been there and as such is a foundational block to their computing experience.
Aside from this meaning that I'm now on the downward slope of life (hey gravity is now on my side), I guess we don't have to worry about them buying up our old, useless macs
How many here remember using the "Gopher" for their internet searches?
The early internet didn't include all those nice web browsers
en.wikipedia.org
The early internet didn't include all those nice web browsers
Gopher (protocol) - Wikipedia
@556fmjoe @RhianB -
You nailed it. I got my first PC, a hand-me-down 386 with a whopping 2 MB of RAM, in 1996/97 or so and spent countless hours playing 80's/early-90's DOS games and figuring out how this "magical" (to me) machine worked. I didn't get dial-up internet access at home until the year 2000 after having seen it at a friend's house and driving my parents crazy with my nagging about it (but they had me pay the dial-up bills - way to teach kids to keep an eye on their "online time"). I absolutely get your point about younger people possibly not even knowing that computers can be used "offline". And I accept their POV, my comment was meant to be somewhat ironic/sarcastic.
You nailed it. I got my first PC, a hand-me-down 386 with a whopping 2 MB of RAM, in 1996/97 or so and spent countless hours playing 80's/early-90's DOS games and figuring out how this "magical" (to me) machine worked. I didn't get dial-up internet access at home until the year 2000 after having seen it at a friend's house and driving my parents crazy with my nagging about it (but they had me pay the dial-up bills - way to teach kids to keep an eye on their "online time"). I absolutely get your point about younger people possibly not even knowing that computers can be used "offline". And I accept their POV, my comment was meant to be somewhat ironic/sarcastic.
That's a really good point. I'm not sure what the cutoff point was where that shift occurred, but I definitely remember when the internet was kind of an afterthought for me. I used a computer pretty much solely for playing games for most of my childhood. And if I did use the internet, it was dialup 56k and my mom would yell at me to get off when she had to make a call.
I suspect most *adults* fall somewhere in between though. We didn't have internet at home when I started using computers, and like you @556fmjoe when we did it was also on dial-up 56k. I remember the excitement when we got 'broadband' - at a whopping 128k of speed! For people who grew up in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, the internet certainly hasn't always been the core of their computing experience.
But there is no denying that this has changed enormously since then, and the Internet has just made the lives of pretty much everyone just easier. Especially when it comes to sharing and consuming media content. When my parents first got a digital photo camera about 20 years ago, you would plug it into the computer using this brand new thing called USB, manually copy the files to the computer (and then probably eventually burn your pictures to CDs as hard drives were not big enough to store lots of media), and then e-mail it to family members etc, probably by lowering the resolution first so as not to clog up their poor inboxes. Remember when Hotmail free inboxes were 2MB? Or you'd go to the person's house carrying this CD with your family pictures.
Now if I want to share family pictures, I take out this micro-computer/camera that I carry in my pocket, take the picture, 'add to album' in Google Photos, and I'm done.
So this might mark me out in this sub-forum. But in my view it is totally fair to measure the usefulness of a computer these days by whether they can access and interact with the internet. That doesn't mean that other 'legacy' machines may not have particular use-cases. For many people, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it': ie if you have been using a PowerMac G4 to make music for decades, and it still does what you want it to do and you have special kit that can only worth with it, then by all means.
But I think we have to be honest that the reason we like to play with them is because they are fun and nostalgic, and it is a nice hobby (especially if you didn't get to, or couldn't afford to, use these machines when they were current). But not because they are 'useful' by most modern definitions of the word.
They were lucky - really early digicams relied on RS-232 to download pictures. Hello, hourglass cursor!
Growing up with dial up like I did, you couldn’t be “always online” like you can with high speed Internet. Because of this, a lot of my memories of my family’s first computer are doing offline tasks like gaming and using Microsoft Word and Encarta Encyclopedia.
Oh yeah I got your great point. It just got me thinking (watch out) while looking at my three year old Using the Internet (YouTube kids) and I realized that he now understands two things about his computing experience 1.) when it dies it needs to be charged & 2.) YTK comes from the Internet.@556fmjoe @RhianB -
You nailed it. I got my first PC, a hand-me-down 386 with a whopping 2 MB of RAM, in 1996/97 or so and spent countless hours playing 80's/early-90's DOS games and figuring out how this "magical" (to me) machine worked. I didn't get dial-up internet access at home until the year 2000 after having seen it at a friend's house and driving my parents crazy with my nagging about it (but they had me pay the dial-up bills - way to teach kids to keep an eye on their "online time"). I absolutely get your point about younger people possibly not even knowing that computers can be used "offline". And I accept their POV, my comment was meant to be somewhat ironic/sarcastic.
Right now, he wants “toonies” which is YTK & a PBS Kids app I let him use & thats 80% of his use aside from simple kid games I have on there, so a kid from say the last 15 years or so (post affordable high speed Internet proliferation) could have a very similar experience and grow up where the Internet is a key part of defining their computing experience.
Remember? Ha, I use gopher all the time right now. Mainly for gopherpedia.How many here remember using the "Gopher" for their internet searches?
The early internet didn't include all those nice web browsers
Gopher (protocol) - Wikipedia
Definitely will be looking into thisThe wonders never cease! Is there any chance that you could be persuaded to turn your attention to an SDL MAME PPC OS X version for Panther and Tiger?
56k? Luxury
When I started on the internet it was 14k, then I graduated to 28k
Cheers
Hugh
When I started on the internet it was 14k, then I graduated to 28k
Cheers
Hugh
Yep, my initial foray into the Internet was 28.8k on my 486. Blazing speed
You n00bz, I was tetherin' ma laptop to ma Nokia 8210 back in da day for 9.6kbps mobail Internetz
Yeah yeah Whatevs. I had to lug my laptop uphill both ways in the snow.
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