Second hand machine for game development advice

Hi,

i'm hoping someone can advise me in what i should be looking for/expect to get for the price i can afford.Money is very tight(have a family/unemployed currently etc)so its important in making the right choice.

I'm an indie game dev and am a newbie to Mac.But after using a friend of my sisters machine for a couple of days with OSX,i really love the design of the Mac and the look and feel of OS X.

So i set my mind on getting one.I got a loan for 700 british pounds,i had 75 pounds saved so i had 775 pounds to get a second hand Mac.

I made the mistake of 'jumping in' after scanning the local papers,and found a G3 I-Mac 333 (grape colour) revision D i think,with 64mb of memory.The asking price was 275 pounds..i bought it.After getting it home,i realised this would be no good to me for what i needed it for.

Although i asked when viewing it if it would run 3D stuff quite well(he demonstrated poser 4 and some 3d open gl app's running well)because i thought i was getting such a great deal(only 275 for a mac) i didn't check out (or was really up on) finding out what gfx card it had,memory,OS etc etc for game development.

After a lot of googling and looking on e-bay,and spending another 40 pounds on another 128 mb memory from crucial,i realised that i had payed too much(i couldn't even upgrade the video card in it) 😱

I have always been a windows only developer mainly c/c++/DirectX/OpenGL and more recently Blitz3D,Blitz Max and REALBasic.Though now BlitzMax supports windows/mac/linux,i want to develop 2D/3D stuff for the Mac also.The min requirments for BlitzMax(Mac version) is MacOSX 10.2...the i-mac i had bought was only Mac OS 8.6.

I have cut my losses with the i-mac G3 now,and put it in the kids bedroom for them to mess around on.

I now have 500 pounds (UK)and the choice of either to buy a used/second hand Mac(that would be good enough for developing opengl 3D stuff on)or just upgrading my PC for developing windows only stuff on 😕

Iv'e spent 2-3 days looking/hoping to find something fairly decent for this price via e-bay(obviously the G5 models are way out of my price range)and was hoping to find a good G4 model(that can be upgraded easily..i.e replace video card when i have the money,more memory etc etc).

But since i am completely new to these comps,i have no idea what i should really be looking for,or (realisticlly)expect to get,for 500 pounds.

Iv'e seen a lot of G4-IMac's on e-bay(but they are all-in one/built in type)machines like the one i had just bought,and only have the older G-Force 2 32 Mb gfx cards in them.

Someone recently mentioned getting a Mac-Mini with good memory,combo drive...but these also,only has a 32mb gfx card with it,and wouldn't be very easy(if not possible at all) to just buy a newer card and upgrade like with my pc in a year or so..(if i'm wrong about this,please let me know).

I'm really thinking of in a year or so's time.At least if i use the 500 pounds to upgrade my current PC,i will be ok for a while longer.

So,realisticlly(i know that Mac computer's are much more expensive than PC's)but what should i really expect (second hand/used)to get for 500 pounds?,that would last me for a while,and be fast enough/good enough for what i need it for? (developing low budget 2D/3D games and applications for the Mac),what would be my best bet on a budget like mine?.

Thanks for any help/advice,and sorry for the long post 🙂

Cheers!

Thanks JSW,it makes sense in what you said about the system specs of the customers i will be developing for.

"Do you have a monitor, KB, and mouse, or will you need those as well - i.e., does the £500 need to cover everything or just the CPU?"

No,i have no other Mac hardware(i.e monitors)though i do have 3 PC's in total with monitors( i don't know if i could use a standard PC monitor with a Mac).

My set up is i have one high spec PC i use P4 machine,1GB RAM,has a good/latest DX9 Radeon card(bought 2 weeks previous),also has 3 other gfx cards in it for DX7/8 stuff(for running stuff on lower spec systems,mainly the Blitz3D stuff i develop),a lower spec machine(still good for DX8 stuff)and a really low machine just for the internet.The lower 2 have '17' inch moniters,and my main dev machine has a '19' inch monitor.So,i don't know if it might be possible to use one of these PC monitors somehow?

@Patmian

Thanks,i saw a couple on e-bay,but they wasn't dual.(though i'm still looking /searching).

About selling the imac,i would be quite happy to get around the 150 pound mark back for it(its just sitting here not being used at all now) it came with a lot of app's...poser4,photoshop 6,Amapi3D,Infini D,AfterEffects,Illustrator,Flash5,Director,Freehand,Quark Express,Virtual PC etc...quite a good deal software wise,but just not good for me developing my 3D stuff on.

The guy i bought it from was a student that had just done a design degree,its a well looked after machine though.

Let me know if your interested in it around that price and we can sort something out via e-mail.I have no idea how much it will cost to post if you are interested,though as said if i get around half of what i bought it for,that would be nice...also allow me to bid a bit higher on e-bay 🙂

Cheers!

Hi,

sorry,i should have checked back here earlier this morning(wasn't sure if that price was too much after posting prices etc)...
i sold the i-mac this morning to my brother for £125.00 for doing his website stuff on.

Lost £190 with buying the memory for it,but at least i got something back for it ;-)

Hopefully i will find something on e-bay for that price,otherwise it looks like the Mac-Mini will be what i will be getting.

Thanks again guys for the help.

Cheers!