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Finding a use for a G4

Lil Chillbil

Lil Chillbil

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 30, 2012
1,335
111
California
Some of you may recall my g4 power mac upgrades thread a few weeks back before I got my g5 and my powerbook. for the past 2 weeks it has just been sitting there feeling sorry for itself that it can't keep up with the big boys. Needless to say I want it back in my life after all of the work I put into that thing. It saved my a%$ when my dell stopped working at the end of 6th grade and I needed a computer for middle school. It was only supposed to be temporary but it ended up serving as my main mac from July 2nd 2010 to July 4th 2012.
The specs are
400mhz PowerPC G4
1.5gb RAM
Radeon 7000 32mb video card
duel hard drives
160gb 7200rpm Master
20gb 5400rpm Slave
Dvd/cd reader/burner combo drive
zip 100 drive
Modded case to include 2 blue led cooling fans
1 usb 2.0 card

Its running os x 10.3.9 has an apple keyboard and mouse with a 17" studio display monitor.

Any ideas as to how I can get it back into service and into my life would be appreciated
 
could always use it for basic tasks like when your just gonna kick it looking at websites or u could set it up to play music in the back ground etc i still use mind for things like that :)
 
I agree on light web browsing and music, that's what I use my Sawtooth for - as well as writing. I just took a distance course in writing and I did all my assignments on it with my favorite free textapp: Bean. I just felt happy sitting there hammering away, even though two other computers (beasts) sat right next to me with power and new games and flash and poopery... :)
 
I'll hook it up to a sub woofer and speakers, upload my entire itunes library onto the hard drive and use it for music. and maybe some light web browsing as a company computer cause nobody is going to be aloud to use my g5 or my powerbook but me.
 
We have a PowerMac G4/400 at work. I use it as an Applescript server. It processes our editorial photos, files email attachments from the sales reps, moves editorial pages over to our side (Composing) and routes proofs (PDFs) back to the sales reps.

It's running Tiger with less than 256mb of RAM. I pulled the graphic card and put it in my coworker's G4/450 so she could have dual monitors. Consequently, I run the G4/400 headless and connect to via VNC.
 
It would probably make a good dev machine, and you could probably fool around with Linux as well. They make pretty good emulators/retro gaming machines.
 
music jukebox. Im using my G4 mini as a headless unit to play my music and spotify, etc. I might use it for other stuff int he future, im just not sure what yet...
 
If you need to invent a use for a computer then you really don't need it in the first place. If you had a role for it then it would already be filling it no?
 
zen.state said:
If you need to invent a use for a computer then you really don't need it in the first place. If you had a role for it then it would already be filling it no?
Click to expand...
If a computer crashes in the forest and no one it around to here it does it make a sound
 
Lil Chillbil said:
If a computer crashes in the forest and no one it around to here it does it make a sound
Click to expand...

Only if it cries loudly.

Seriously though.. file server or sell. I might possibly be interested to add parts to the arsenal of Sawtooths I have. I have no interest in the screen though.

Think about it.
 
Nah man i'm not gonna sell it besides its already found its place on a A.V cart in the closet whenever company comes over and wants to use a computer to show my mom some stuipid facebook photo (which happens almost every single fricking day) I simply roll it out of its very own empty closet out into the kitchen plug it into the outlet and its ready to go online via airport card.
 
Lil Chillbil said:
Nah man i'm not gonna sell it besides its already found its place on a A.V cart in the closet whenever company comes over and wants to use a computer to show my mom some stuipid facebook photo (which happens almost every single fricking day) I simply roll it out of its very own empty closet out into the kitchen plug it into the outlet and its ready to go online via airport card.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you already have a use for it.

Problem solved.
 
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