What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[powermi]

I used my nearly-new-to-me iBook G4 to share an internet connection via Firewire with my 2007 C2D iMac (using my new 50-cent FW800/400 cable!), so I could do a little browsing. The iMac's wifi hasn't worked since upgrading it to unsupported High Sierra with one of dosdude1's patches (an expected and worthwhile trade-off), so it's been a hard-wired beast. Its former bridged ethernet connection from a Windows machine was unavailable while I installed Linux Mint on the PC. Fun times!

View attachment 1699110

I miss my iBook 1,2 12''.
Today Im setting an VPN connection on my G4 server for just having a safe torrent downloader with Transmission, loading torrents via the webUI.

@Imixmuan At this point, it should handle all Internet tasks fine. Single Board Computers have made incredible advancements in recent years.

At the very least, they definitely have horsepower to spare.

For the price of a working Rpi4 (board + case + charger + wires) you can have a Core powered Mac Mini, that would be way more reliable.

But yes Rpi are an option for basic internet stuff.

 

[m1maverick]

For the price of a working Rpi4 (board + case + charger + wires) you can have a Core powered Mac Mini, that would be way more reliable.

But yes Rpi are an option for basic internet stuff.

Raspberry Pi 400 might be a good alternative. Though it's likely to be higher cost than an early version Mac Mini.

 

[Amethyst1]

Single Board Computers have made incredible advancements in recent years.

They have but the RPi is still a very low-end one. You get what you pay for.

 

[z970]

@Amethyst1 I agree. Hence the 'Single Board Computers', not 'Raspberry Pi'...

 

[eyoungren]

The iMac's wifi hasn't worked since upgrading it to unsupported High Sierra with one of dosdude1's patches (an expected and worthwhile trade-off), so it's been a hard-wired beast.

You might try going to Mojave. When I got my 2009 Mini last December I eventually broke down and installed High Sierra. I too expected the WiFi to go out (and it did). But later on I installed the Mojave patch (dosdude). Unexpectedly the WiFi came back.

Might be worth a shot.

 

[macnerd93]

Yesterday I got my old Mid 2007 Mac Mini out of storage along with my old Airport Extreme base station from 2003/2004 and set up file server and independent wireless network for all my vintage Mac's.

Works great so far with my 12 Inch PowerBook, iMac G3, G4 Cube and eventually my TiBook when it arrives. I can also share my iTunes Libary on all machines without much issue.

In this pic I went back to the year 2000 after I got the Wifi working lol. I was playing about with Classica in OS 9 and the Internet Archive's way back machine on my iMac G3.

My replacement speakers arrived to replace the rotted out ones in my G3, so I swapped them over today as well.

 

[Raging Dufus]

You might try going to Mojave. When I got my 2009 Mini last December I eventually broke down and installed High Sierra. I too expected the WiFi to go out (and it did). But later on I installed the Mojave patch (dosdude). Unexpectedly the WiFi came back.

Might be worth a shot.

Thanks, I may eventually move to Mojave if I have a reason other than WiFi. I always prefer a wired connection on all of my desktops where feasible. Right now, High Sierra meets all my needs and runs so well on this unsupported machine that I'm not inclined to tempt fate.

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks, I may eventually move to Mojave if I have a reason other than WiFi. I always prefer a wired connection on all of my desktops where feasible. Right now, High Sierra meets all my needs and runs so well on this unsupported machine that I'm not inclined to tempt fate.

I have both my Mini and my MBP on Mojave via the patcher and my single biggest reason for it is dark mode. However, with my MacPro, I want to do it stock in order to avoid any problems. The only hangup? I don't own a Metal compatible card and the cheapest ones are out of my price range right now.

I'm hoping to rectify that soon, but we'll see.

I just brought it up in case that was anything that you might have interest in. I ran a powerline adapter, a Gigabit switch and CAT-5 cable in my garage because I wanted the Mini to be connected via ethernet. The fastest WiFi Mac I have is slow compared to my home network (Gigabit) and I pay Cox (my ISP) for Gigabit internet - so I want to take advantage of it. WiFi with the Mini wasn't necessary, but it was just nice to see it enabled again. I tend to spread things around. My MP is connected via both ethernet ports, the default WiFi card and another USB WiFi dongle.

 

[z970]

@eyoungren What's the advantage in using both Ethernet ports?

 

[eyoungren]

@eyoungren What's the advantage in using both Ethernet ports?

I use both to split my traffic.

In the case of my MP (and formerly the Quad G5) the system defaults to using Ethernet 1 for all internet and network connections. So, when I connect my other Macs to my MP I use the IP address of the Ethernet 2 connection. That keeps traffic separate - and in my mind, balances the load.

I'm not sure how the system uses the two WiFi connections but I've seen them transferring data even though both ethernet connections are working.

 

[Amethyst1]

I agree. Hence the 'Single Board Computers', not 'Raspberry Pi'...

Ah yep. Must have missed that one somehow. Sorry.

I don't own a Metal compatible card and the cheapest ones are out of my price range right now.

Do you need boot screens? Because if you don't, something like a Quadro K600 can be picked up for very little. It'll run two monitors (4K at 60 Hz via DP too) so... you'd need (at least) three of them I suppose.

 

[eyoungren]

Do you need boot screens? Because if you don't, something like a Quadro K600 can be picked up for very little. It'll run two monitors (4K at 60 Hz via DP too) so... you'd need (at least) three of them I suppose.

I'd prefer boot screens. Being able to select what drive I want to boot from remains useful to me. While more expensive though, the cards I'm looking at have four ports so I'd only need two cards - the new one and one of my current ones.

 

[Amethyst1]

While more expensive though, the cards I'm looking at have four ports so I'd only need two cards - the new one and one of my current ones.

Can you mix Metal and non-Metal cards without problems though? Ideally, you want to have a Radeon with six outputs - one card to rule drive them all.

 

[eyoungren]

Can you mix Metal and non-Metal cards without problems though? Ideally, you want to have a Radeon with six outputs - one card to rule drive them all.

I have heard that you can and cannot. I was going to give it a try. Right now I have three of the exact same card. Cost me $55. So, if I burn out a card, no biggie. In that case I would simply go and get one of the cards (as you mentioned) that does NOT have boot screens and take it from there. I just need ONE metal card that has boot screens. My primary displays would be attached to that card.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Yesterday I got my old Mid 2007 Mac Mini out of storage along with my old Airport Extreme base station from 2003/2004 and set up file server and independent wireless network for all my vintage Mac's.

Works great so far with my 12 Inch PowerBook, iMac G3, G4 Cube and eventually my TiBook when it arrives. I can also share my iTunes Libary on all machines without much issue.

In this pic I went back to the year 2000 after I got the Wifi working lol. I was playing about with Classica in OS 9 and the Internet Archive's way back machine on my iMac G3.

My replacement speakers arrived to replace the rotted out ones in my G3, so I swapped them over today as well.

How did you get OS 9 Classila to work right displaying Apple's website from 2000 ?

 

[macnerd93]

How did you get OS 9 Classila to work right displaying Apple's website from 2000 ?

it was done via the oldnet.com

 

[Macbookprodude]

Figures.. oldnet.com is just an archive of websites long gone.. but it was a much cleaner internet.. 2000’s were the best.. 2010s sucked, and humanity will end in 2020s.

 

[Strategia]

Exported old home videos on an old camcorder onto a Mac Mini G4 with a FireWire port; which modern Macs sorely lack.

 

[Amethyst1]

a FireWire port; which modern Macs sorely lack.

Oh the irony.

 

[bse5150]

You get what you pay for.

Yeah, well, there's something to be said for paying for more than you need too. My youngest niece wanted a television for Christmas. My mother and second youngest niece went shopping for a television for her and ended up buying this 720p plain jane television. As soon as I saw it my first words were, "Bring it back." My youngest niece ONLY watches YouTube so she was going to need something that could either do YouTube on it's own or a box like the Apple TV to go along with it. My mother doesn't know much about such things so I wasn't really surprised that she bought what she did, but she was shopping with my twenty-something niece who really should have known better.

Anyway, I ended up keeping that 720p thingy for myself. I'm not big into watching television so I don't require the whole cinema experience of 4K (or even 1080p for that matter) or elaborate sound systems and stuff. Once in a very rare while I do want to watch something though and that 720p television more than meets my needs.

Keeping this on topic...

I didn't use my Powerbook today but I did fire it up for the first time in a very long time the other night. I used it to ssh into another machine to backup the drives to another machine. I also connected to my little Western Digital two-bay NAS (which I was actually surprised that it was even able to connect to) to play a couple of songs from it. Which, incidentally, is what brought me here in the first place.

What is a good music player for a Powerbook running Leopard? I don't really like the user interface of the iTunes available in Leopard and I'm not thrilled about playing music in Quicktime player... Which is what I did the other night.

 

[wicknix]

What is a good music player for a Powerbook running Leopard?

VLC is nice. https://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/2.0.10/macosx/
Audion is nice as well. https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/audion

 

[bse5150]

VLC is nice. https://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/2.0.10/macosx/
Audion is nice as well. https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/audion

VLC I don't like at all on any platform. It's clunky, it's ugly, and it's just atrocious... Of course, that is just my personal preference but my personal preference is the only thing that matters when it's software that I have to use. I will look at Audion. Thank you.

 

[macnerd93]

Installed an SSD in my Cube

 

[Dronecatcher]

Made videos for Cornica

 

[CJRhoades]

Spent much of yesterday and today getting a recently acquired ($41 + shipping on eBay) beauty of a 15" PowerBook G4 setup how I like. It's a 5,4 machine with the 1.5GHz/512MB/80GB configuration. I'm convinced that it was purchased, used for 2 weeks, and then put into storage. There are a handful of dings on the outside case and a strange circular stain on the top of the lid, but the inside of the clamshell shows absolutely zero wear. In fact, no part of the notebook shows any typical wear at all. Even the feet are in immaculate condition.

When I powered it on, it booted into Panther and none of the files had been touched since 2004. The battery also showed just 9 (yes, NINE) cycles. I thought maybe that was an error but after letting it fully charge up, I got a full three hours of use on battery before it went to sleep. I have no idea how the cells have held up for so many years with so little degradation.

Not really sure what to do about the stain on the lid. I tried Lysol wipes and 99% alcohol, neither of which did anything. It seems like whatever was left on it may have etched permanently into the aluminum. Other than that I couldn't ask for better cosmetics on a 16 year old computer. Hardware wise, everything that I've tested functions normally. I've ordered a couple upgrades, namely a 2x1GB kit of memory and a 128GB mSATA SSD + adapter which should breathe some new life into it. The 4200RPM hard drive is abysmally slow.

I hadn't even planned on buying this but I've spent the last month looking for either a new display or a parts donor system for a TiBook I'm trying to restore and came across it. It's been a fun little adventure to cap off a crap year.