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iMac G5s recently put into a new Mac Lab!

gavinstubbs09

gavinstubbs09

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
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NorCal boonies ~~~by Reno sorta
Thought you guys would all like this, I know I certainly did! These pictures were taken today (Feb. 3)

One of my friends who goes to school near Saint Paul, MN (spent hours learning how to configure them correctly) had lots of iMacs at his school (intel ones that still run Leopard to this day :eek: ) but he recently convinced the IT to get some more iMacs, and this time it was 50 of the iSight models and 50 of the older non-iSight models. The iSights are 2GHz and 2GB of ram and the pre-iSights I have no clue yet (I believe they are 1.6GHz).

So they are all set up with Adobe CS3, TenFourFox, Office 2008, iWork + iLife 09, they are set! I just think it's really cool that there is a new Mac lab made out of G5s in 2014! The server to these is actually a Power Mac G5 with Tiger Server, I'm told it'll get Leopard here soon, and the other iMacs will go into a different lab and used with a Xserve G5.
 

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eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,773
26,839
gavinstubbs09 said:
Thought you guys would all like this, I know I certainly did! These pictures were taken today (Feb. 3)

One of my friends who goes to school near Saint Paul, MN (spent hours learning how to configure them correctly) had lots of iMacs at his school (intel ones that still run Leopard to this day :eek: ) but he recently convinced the IT to get some more iMacs, and this time it was 50 of the iSight models and 50 of the older non-iSight models. The iSights are 2GHz and 2GB of ram and the pre-iSights I have no clue yet (I believe they are 1.6GHz).

So they are all set up with Adobe CS3, TenFourFox, Office 2008, iWork + iLife 09, they are set! I just think it's really cool that there is a new Mac lab made out of G5s in 2014! The server to these is actually a Power Mac G5 with Tiger Server, I'm told it'll get Leopard here soon, and the other iMacs will go into a different lab and used with a Xserve G5.
Click to expand...
That's cool!!!!
 
iamMacPerson

iamMacPerson

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2011
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Be careful with those iMacs. The G5s have a problem where the capacitors will die prematurely. This is true of most electronics of the time period as there was a bad batch of caps that came into the manufacturing facilities (at many companies, mainly computer manufactures) in 2003 and didn't make it out of the system until 2009ish. Fortunately, the problems only affected Apple for a few years mainly affecting the late PPC desktop machines; iMac G5s, PM G5s, and eMacs. The early-early iMac G5s (non-iSight) NORMALLY don't suffer from this, but they can. Tell your friend that if any computers start acting wonky, report it to IT immediately and pull the machine from service. Or have them do preventive maintenance and replace the affected caps before hand.
 
T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
Very cool! Would be fun to see those in person. Some relatively new computer labs in my area have eMacs still. One middle school built around 2009 has a lab with eMacs. It's rather funny, the school system buys tons of new Macbook Pro laptops, but they rarely buy new desktops, so they have a fair amount of eMacs still around plus the odd iMac G4 and G5.
 
Zotaccian

Zotaccian

macrumors 6502a
Apr 25, 2012
645
7
It would be interesting to know much they paid for a piece. G5 iMacs are not the most reliable computers and atleast rev. A machines are pretty loud when you actually do something with them. Just wondering how long those will function, unless whoever sold them has alreadty swapped caps and solder material under Radeon GPU's.
 
chrfr

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,517
7,027
iamMacPerson said:
Fortunately, the problems only affected Apple for a few years mainly affecting the late PPC desktop machines; iMac G5s, PM G5s, and eMacs. The early-early iMac G5s (non-iSight) NORMALLY don't suffer from this, but they can.
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Oh they certainly do suffer from bad capacitors, both in the power supply and on the logic board.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051001215052/http://www.apple.com/support/imac/repairextensionprogram/
As an academic Mac admin myself, I cannot begin to comprehend the justification of filling a lab with these old clunkers.
 
R

RedCroissant

Suspended
Aug 13, 2011
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micahgartman said:
As a recovering Mac Genius who used to repair 10 of these a day during the Repair Extension Program, I'd say the guy is absolutely insane :eek:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
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Or maybe brilliant. If it's a student lab, the world will be minimal at best for basic tasks and basic projects. I seriously doubt that the students will be asked to overtask the CPU and bringing about the bad capacitor problems that these are "known" for. The reason that I put that in quotes is because I am a current owner of a 20" and a 17" iMac G5 and have not had these problems are using them for more that what these students will most likely use them for.

I'm sure it also saved the school a ton of money bringing in these "old" machines that are still more than capable. Hell, if my 20" iMac G5 handled flash properly for my online school requirements, then I would still be using that as my main machine (2004 1.8GHz iMac G5, 2GB RAM).
 
E

ElectronGuru

macrumors 68000
Sep 5, 2013
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RedCroissant said:
I'm sure it also saved the school a ton of money bringing in these "old" machines that are still more than capable.
Click to expand...

There's different kinds of savings. People doing things for themselves are essentially volunteering their time. Something goes wrong and it takes 20 hours to fix - there's essentially no-cost beyond the original investment.

But when a school or business has to pay for those hours, the cost of repairs can easily exceed the initial savings. And you end up paying more for an older machine with less performance. To say nothing of the other projects the person doing the repairs no longer has the time to do.

Where it could make sense is if a student team use the repairs as learning / training opportunity.
 
gavinstubbs09

gavinstubbs09

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
1,386
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NorCal boonies ~~~by Reno sorta
ElectronGuru said:
There's different kinds of savings. People doing things for themselves are essentially volunteering their time. Something goes wrong and it takes 20 hours to fix - there's essentially no-cost beyond the original investment.

But when a school or business has to pay for those hours, the cost of repairs can easily exceed the initial savings. And you end up paying more for an older machine with less performance. To say nothing of the other projects the person doing the repairs no longer has the time to do.

Where it could make sense is if a student team use the repairs as learning / training opportunity.
Click to expand...

The cost ratio does surprise me. I'd love to have a class at my own school to fix computers but that class was long gone before I got into High School. I had my own fun project this past summer was take out Core 2 Quad optiplexes and replace them with 2012 iMacs which was very stressful making them all work and crushing bugs with student accounts and whatnot.
 
R

RedCroissant

Suspended
Aug 13, 2011
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ElectronGuru said:
There's different kinds of savings. People doing things for themselves are essentially volunteering their time. Something goes wrong and it takes 20 hours to fix - there's essentially no-cost beyond the original investment.

But when a school or business has to pay for those hours, the cost of repairs can easily exceed the initial savings. And you end up paying more for an older machine with less performance. To say nothing of the other projects the person doing the repairs no longer has the time to do.

Where it could make sense is if a student team use the repairs as learning / training opportunity.
Click to expand...

I agree with that, but if something goes wrong with a newer machine, the tech would still be out that time and the school would still be out the money. If it's still under AppleCare or they have an awesome contract for service though Apple; that's another thing.

I still think that getting 50 computers for the price of 5 (especially when the most likely thing is that the brand new machines would still be used about as much as these oder machines will be), will still end up costing the school less in the long run.
 
T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
As far as repairs go the iMac G5 is a little easier than some other Apple machines, particularly the original Intel iMac to the newer iMac - at least IMO.

Compared to other iMac systems the G5 is easy to get into and replace parts with, so as it goes, if the tech is handy with replacing any bad caps time spent in repair could actually be less than a newer iMac. That is saying that these even end up with the bad caps.
 
jrsx

jrsx

macrumors 65816
Nov 2, 2013
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18
Tacoma, Washington
tampasteve said:
As far as repairs go the iMac G5 is a little easier than some other Apple machines, particularly the original Intel iMac to the newer iMac - at least IMO.

Compared to other iMac systems the G5 is easy to get into and replace parts with, so as it goes, if the tech is handy with replacing any bad caps time spent in repair could actually be less than a newer iMac. That is saying that these even end up with the bad caps.
Click to expand...

They seem pretty easy to upgrade, a couple screws and the whole back of the computer comes right off!
 
tom vilsack

tom vilsack

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Nov 20, 2010
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gavinstubbs09 said:
That was the nice thing about the pre-isights. I hate taking apart the iSights.
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Reason I miss my old 1.8GHz G5...way so easy to upgrade! meanwhile my daily Imac (2006 20" 2,16GHz) is a frigging pain in the *** to take apart (where did I leave that extra credit card to slide up that frigging air vent to fiddle and unlock those darn medal clips)
 
Altemose

Altemose

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Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
If they have made it this long then they aren't going to fail any time soon. Provided you watch out for the signs, they should be fine. Let me know if you need any information on networking these G5s together. I am an admin of an Apple AirPort network as well as a large school network.
 
gavinstubbs09

gavinstubbs09

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
1,386
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NorCal boonies ~~~by Reno sorta
Altemose said:
If they have made it this long then they aren't going to fail any time soon. Provided you watch out for the signs, they should be fine. Let me know if you need any information on networking these G5s together. I am an admin of an Apple AirPort network as well as a large school network.
Click to expand...

Might need your help with some permission issues with the Intel lab I control since the IT guy is Windows-only :D
 
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