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iOS Would a powermac G4 be good to learn programming on?

C

chris7777

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 27, 2008
287
0
We recently found A powermac G4 the specs are the base required to run leopard,

Would this be good enough to use to download the development kit, as well as to use to begin learning programming on, (I figure we wont be able to run the emulator) but mainly I just want to begin playing with it on the development code side. While I wait on the macbook pro upgrades.

I just want to get into learning the thing plus it gives me more time to wait on the Pros to update then I am going to get a couple for our business.
Would this be good enough to get a feel for things on coding mostly?


I Also have a couple of minor questions if anyone happens to know

1) where can I get a copy of Leopard to install? Its currently running panther

2) It only has 2 usb ports which are currently used for the keyboard and mouse, should I add an expansion slot to add usb, and is there anything else I might want to add to it , like firewire for example.

OR should I just write it off and wait or just buy the current macbooks and not waste our time, I know I have to download some program to get it to even be able to download the sdk.

Thanks fo any advice.
 
chris7777 said:
2) It only has 2 usb ports which are currently used for the keyboard and mouse, should I add an expansion slot to add usb, and is there anything else I might want to add to it , like firewire for example.
Click to expand...

If you mean this model:
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/sawtooth-power-mac-g4-agp.html

or one similar to it, then it already has Firewire: two Firewire-400 ports, to be precise. See the following article and look for corresponding 6-wire Firewire-400 ports on your computer's back panel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394_interface

And you don't need to add an expansion slot to get more USB ports. Just buy a powered USB hub and plug it into one of the computer's ports. Then plug your peripherals into the hub. Powered hubs are in the $20 price range. You can repeat this for each of the two builtin ports (i.e. put a hub on each). You can even chain hubs together, within reason.

One reason to add a USB card would be to get USB 2.0, which has much higher speed than the USB 1.1 that shipped on G4s. That would make sense if you plan to use USB flash drives, or USB external hard drives. Those devices are painfully slow on USB 1.1.
 
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