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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

mikas said:
It's got OS X 10.5.8, which is not supported by Apple in this iMac of mine. Can't even remember how it got there, must have been XPostFacto or something similar. But that's probably the most you can put in to it, wouldn't you think?
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This is a G4 iMac. If it's 800mhz or above it will run 10.5.8 natively. There are other methods to get 10.5 on to these systems, XPostFacto being one of those.

mikas said:
Ok, now I got in. Seems to work ok. Pretty slow though.
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There are two stickied threads at the top of this forum that tweak T4Fx for better speed. One of the extensions to install that will help is either uMatrix or NoScript. Most of the slowness is due to javascript garbage. Block that and things speed up.

MacRumors uses Javascript and when you have the WYSIWIG editor for posts active then JS is active. Turn it off and learn to use tags for bold, italics, etc and MR will run faster.
 
mikas said:
It did not want to mount my iPod neither, maybe there is some copyrighted stuff, or it's too new for this iMac and iTunes I don't know. Too complicated for me, so I'll let it be. Instead I started to play those streaming radio stations for fun.
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If your iPod uses a lightning connector iTunes will never mount it. iTunes stopped supporting iDevices that use the lightning connector when it was introduced.
 
Thanks. I'll check those.

That iPod is a 30-pin model still. That must be a 6th gen 8GB iPod Nano I believe. I used to have a 1st gen Nano, but apple wanted to change that to a 6th gen Nano, because a possibly blowing battery. I do have the first or second generation iPod touch too. I have no idea if that would make a difference somehow. I will try for sure.

btw. I thought you'd need a 867 MHz iMac for official 10.5.8 support.
 
mikas said:
I need to get in there too and replace that HDD with a SSD. I've got the adapter, and tested for sure too, and tools of course, just waiting the right time for that. Oh, I haven't checked if the ODD is alive.
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The optical in mine had stopped working a long time ago, so I sourced a Pioneer 110 on eBay, and took the opportunity of replacing both drives at the same time.

Not a difficult job of course, but it is fiddly. Well worth it though - the SSD makes it run much more quietly and quite a bit faster, but more importantly, more smoothly. And the new DVD burner was good value for $25 I think - and works very well.
 
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mikas said:
Thanks. I'll check those.

That iPod is a 30-pin model still. That must be a 6th gen 8GB iPod Nano I believe. I used to have a 1st gen Nano, but apple wanted to change that to a 6th gen Nano, because a possibly blowing battery. I do have the first or second generation iPod touch too. I have no idea if that would make a difference somehow. I will try for sure.

btw. I thought you'd need a 867 MHz iMac for official 10.5.8 support.
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Your nano should be able to be recognised by iTunes on your iMac, if iTunes 10 is installed. You'll know iTunes 10 is installed if the icon looks like the modern iTunes icon instead of the classic disc note from iTunes 9 and before.

If it doesn't, it's more than likely a problem with your nano; try getting it into recovery or disk mode (if the nano 6th gen still supports that).
 
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Macbookprodude said:
Good find ! But make sure this PowerBook G4 doesn’t have the memory issue - one memory slot faulty and not working - I believe these issues took place on the models before the DLSD came out.
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So I finally got some time today and I replaced the one 512 MB RAM chip that came with my PowerBook G4 17" with two 1 GB RAM chips.

Powered it up, and all 2 GB of RAM shows in the About This Mac screen:

About This Mac - PowerBook G4.png


And in the System Profiler:
System Info - RAM.png
 
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I hope I'm not being annoying or anything. I have some freetime now (some unkept summer vacation days from last year), and I like to tinker. Next patient to check if alive still: G4 Mac Mini.
1621177616343.png

Yep, it's alive and ticking. With a hard drive that one too. I did dwell a little about into replacing that with an SSD. It seems more complicated than with a sunflower iMac or the Cube. Well informed suggestions welcome, as always, and as with previous PPC babys already gotten. Thank You very much for those to everybody.

There was not so much to enjoy with another Leopard install again, so I just pop opened it. And after that, I realized theres not that much to do. No Airport means that I can't install it either. I might have had the Card, but need more to install. And a lot more. And the SSD stuff was not so straightforward either. Sigh. I mean, great - a challenge it is.

So I put it back as it was, and let myself study things necessary to it.

They are of the same genre I can tell, the G4 and intel Mac Mini, with which I am more familiar to tinker inside. The thing next to the G4 is from my project box. The antennas are redesigned and attach in a different way between those two. And the memory of course might be the most eye catching differency.

Should have removed the ODD for better looks. Did not bother, until next time it is.
1621178258065.png


Oh boy I did have some PPC stuff laying around. That's mostly because I very rarely sell anything. On the contrary. I buy stuff if it's reasonably priced and at least somewhat in working condition, or I can tell there is a good chance I can get it up and working again.

I might take a wild guess and say this is some sort of self therapy or something like that for me. At least it is freetime.
 
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Totally forgotten until recently, I have two G4 minis, which I have had since new. I tested one of them and it booted (10.5) perfectly. The other hasn't been powered up in probably 5 or 6 years - might even be 10! I've never opened either of them up, but I'm tempted to try and replace the HD with an SSD in one of them.

I was also intrigued to discover that the G4 mini can natively boot MacOS 9, so I've grabbed an install .iso and think I'll give that a try.
 
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It seems something like about ten years for me too, according to time stamps on those files. I really don't know for sure. Battery is empty though, will replace.

edit. checked it, 26th of feb. 2012 seems to be the newest file stamp in downloads. So no, not been unbooted for 10 years yet. Only 9 yo and some.
 
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I fired up one 17" that had left in the closet for some time. Updated Tigerbrew, installed python37, then Wicknix's Leopard Ports which include mplayer for use in mps-youtube, which installed fine.
Found that 17" had only one 1Gb RAM chip, installed a 512Mb spare chip and ordered two 1Gb chips from Taiwan... that 17" will wait few weeks to get 2Gb Ram.
Here it's "Timbuku-ing" to my BasiliskII System 7.5.3 VM running on a R-PI3, from which I connected to the Captain's Quarters II BBS . There found out in the news that the Captain has now a web page too :) How cool is that ?

Eldon-Tyrell-160521.jpg
 
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Finally got the old beast running Tiger, now installing the updates from mgarden.
This is a G4 GigE model, I think it was 400mhz PPC. There is a GigaDesigns upgrade running at 1.3GHz in it. It has an ATI card with DVI and the funky Apple connector, a 4 port usb PCI card, a TV tuner PCI card. I bought an OWC firewire 800 2.5 drive case, stuffed a 250GB Crucial SSD in it, using a 800 to 400 cable but it is not mounting in Tiger.
The original boot drive is toast I think, which is too bad, I glimpsed a lot of old stuff on it that would have been fun to look at again (my old Go Live CyberStudio web page, lol) but o well.
I think I now qualify for membership in the G4 club.
 
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za9ra22 said:
I was also intrigued to discover that the G4 mini can natively boot MacOS 9, so I've grabbed an install .iso and think I'll give that a try.
Click to expand...

It works!!

That was rather surprising, but very easy thanks to MacOS 9 Lives! Now for a repeat of all the frustrations trying to get software installed!
 
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za9ra22 said:
It works!!

That was rather surprising, but very easy thanks to MacOS 9 Lives! Now for a repeat of all the frustrations trying to get software installed!
Click to expand...
Interesting. I have a G4 Mac mini (base model, 1.25 GHz) - I may try this when I get some spare time.

Since I have a PowerBook G4 17", I really don't have a need to use the 2005 Mac mini with OS X. And this would let me get some more use out of my 2005 Mac mini (the first time around it meet my needs from 2006 - 2016, when I replaced it with an Intel 2014 Mac mini (again, base model).
 
Captain Trips said:
Interesting. I have a G4 Mac mini (base model, 1.25 GHz) - I may try this when I get some spare time.

Since I have a PowerBook G4 17", I really don't have a need to use the 2005 Mac mini with OS X. And this would let me get some more use out of my 2005 Mac mini (the first time around it meet my needs from 2006 - 2016, when I replaced it with an Intel 2014 Mac mini (again, base model).
Click to expand...

The mini I used was the same 1.25 base model. OS 9 seems to work on it rather well.

I like pre-OS X versions of the system, though I'd be hard put to explain why, other than that OS X has always been too distracting and busy, and that doesn't help me concentrate on getting any work done!

I've been looking for ways to get it running on more modern hardware rather than vintage computers like the Classic and Classic II compacts, and the 630CD that I have. Emulating it on a Raspberry Pi seems possible, but getting it onto a mini is a great compromise - and it runs quite fast.
 
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Ugh. So I installed iTunes 9.2.1 since it's the latest for OSX 10.4.11. Now I get the notification that only G4/5, and intel processors work with it.

Any links or advice to get at least iTunes 7+ on my G3/600?
 
Built a small indoor growing area this weekend for seeding this year's hot pepper harvest, after having been away for quite a while for work. Set up the G4 Mini on the end of the table as the official "let me google that really quick" machine. Tiger installed with a Panda wireless-N USB dongle. (By the way if anyone wants some Carolina Reaper seeds or some other varieties drop me a line and I can put a couple seeds in an envelope).

Been relaxing after work with SimCity 4 on the 17" PBG4, haven't played that since I was a kid.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
That's fantastic news @iF34R! :)

More often than not, you can find whatever you need on Macintosh Garden. ;)

Enjoy. :)
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Can't thank you enough for sure. While being SLOW lol, and not being able to do much at this point, just staring at the screen is enjoyable. It's so beautiful! I forgot how much I love the look on crt. The UI from back then is so pleasing for me compared to the latest release on my 27" iMac.
 
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