Hunting for a Power Mac G5

[Daisy81]

After some research last night and looking around on Craigs List and Ebay I found that I can buy a 7800GT made for OSX for about $80. I saw a quadro for about $100 and I'm considering that.

Knowing that I can easily swap out the graphics cards what the machine comes with is inconsequential because I intend to pull the card the moment the machine arrives.

I also found that the late 2005 supports DDR2 which is fantastic because I have 12GB of DDR2 800MHz known to work from retired machines sitting around in static free bags.

I'm hopping that I can score one for a reasonable price.

Is there any other places I could be looking for one of these machines outside of Craigs List and Ebay?

 

[Hack5190]

Local e-recycler's are always a potential source.

 

[eyoungren]

@WalnutSpice can probably vouch for that.

 

[tevion5]

I have two 7800GT's sitting on a desk gathering dust that I was planning to sell. I might be able to save you some cash.

 

[Daisy81]

I have two 7800GT's sitting on a desk gathering dust that I was planning to sell. I might be able to save you some cash.

That would be amazing. If I score the machine I'll send you a PM for sure.

Are they flashed to run on the G5 and give me the Apple logo on the boot screen? If so I would be very much interested in it.

Also does anyone know if I can add Bluetooth and wireless to the PowerMac G5? I have an Airport Extreme for my wireless. If wireless is a no go I do have Ethernet over power that I can use but it is not the most ideal solution.

 

[tevion5]

That would be amazing. If I score the machine I'll send you a PM for sure.

Are they flashed to run on the G5 and give me the Apple logo on the boot screen? If so I would be very much interested in it.

They are original Apple OEM cards so they are 100% genuine and will work properly without any issue.

I recently upgraded to a Fx4500 so I no longer have use of them.

I'm in Ireland mind but if shipping is reasonable id be happy to help you out.

 

[MacCubed]

That would be amazing. If I score the machine I'll send you a PM for sure.

Are they flashed to run on the G5 and give me the Apple logo on the boot screen? If so I would be very much interested in it.

Also does anyone know if I can add Bluetooth and wireless to the PowerMac G5? I have an Airport Extreme for my wireless. If wireless is a no go I do have Ethernet over power that I can use but it is not the most ideal solution.

If you want OEM Apple BT/AP, you need the AirPort/Bluetooth combo card and the sled. The Combo Card is cheap, but the sled costs $75+. You can get PCI wireless or bluetooth cards instead

 

[bunnspecial]

I bought an Apple mini PCIe Airport card and use it via a mini PCIe to PCIe adapter. Apparently this is a common thing to do, as the card I bought had the antenna fittings to fit the card and standard coax antenna leads on the faceplate. The card was less than $10 from China(I used my own junkbox antennas-its a few more bucks if you buy the antennas for it).

I had more luck with a Broadcom-branded card than Atheros(look for an Apple P/N starting with B). Otherwise, though, it was recognized natively in Leopard.

The proper cards are nice-if BT(in particular) is a big deal for you I suggest holding out for one that has it installed.

 

[Altemose]

@Daisy81 Shoot @JaguarGod a message! He has some maxed out Quads available for sale with 16 GB of RAM to start with!

 

[Daisy81]

Everyone thank you for your help.

I think I'll know by this evening if I have one coming on the way. If not I will be following up.

 

[Daisy81]

I hate eBay

 

[rawweb]

I hate eBay

What happened?

 

[Daisy81]

What happened?

Outbid i the last seconds before the end of the auction.

The fact that they call it a auction is a joke. I a auction you actually get a chance to counter bid and not just have it yanked away at the last second simply because someone can somehow place a winning bid $2 above my bid even after I was over $100 higher on the max bid then what the current bid was. I forgot how much I hate the "bidding"with eBay.

On top of that I need a new motherboard for my PC because the board has started shorting out. Freaking MSI .... I knew I should have stuck with ASUS.

 

[redheeler]

Outbid i the last seconds before the end of the auction.

The fact that they call it a auction is a joke. I a auction you actually get a chance to counter bid and not just have it yanked away at the last second simply because someone can somehow place a winning bid $2 above my bid even after I was over $100 higher on the max bid then what the current bid was. I forgot how much I hate the "bidding"with eBay.

On top of that I need a new motherboard for my PC because the board has started shorting out. Freaking MSI .... I knew I should have stuck with ASUS.

Is it this listing you were bidding in? Yeah, I didn't win it either. Ridiculous Quad G5 auctions, this one sold for the nearly the cost of my upgraded 2006 Mac Pro (in excellent condition with original box no less).

 

[Daisy81]

Is it this listing you were bidding in? Yeah, I didn't win it either. Ridiculous Quad G5 auctions, this one sold for the nearly the cost of my upgraded 2006 Mac Pro (in excellent condition with original box no less).

Yeah thats the is the one. It was at $80.00 and $45 shipping right up until the last second then bam I lost and by $2.50. How the hell did they make something like 10 bids in seconds. It's unbelievable crap and should be against the terms of the website. It's going to be a long time before I use that damn site again.

All the rest of the machines where either ridiculously priced or too rough around the edges for my taste so I gave up and ended up buying a fully loaded late 2015 iMac off the Apple store that night.

It would be nice to have a PowerMac or cMP but it needs to be spotless and have the CPUS but I don't need the rest of the stuff jacking the price up. I can do it myself.

 

[jbarley]

How the hell did they make something like 10 bids in seconds.

They did not have to, they were more then likely using ebays "Auto-bidding" which trumps any bid you place up to the maximum limit they had input.

Edit: according to the bidding history it seems the winning bidder of this G5 only made 1 bid, so they were either very alert and placed the bid at the last possible second or used some robot type software to monitor and place the bid for them.

 

[rawweb]

I hate that! I always wait till the very last second, but it's never a guarantee unless you do auto bidding. This week I somehow managed to find a functional quad on CL for 50 bucks. I really only bought it for a part machine, it was a little beat up on the outside from an office environment. Swapped it's processor to get mine back into peak shape.

Sorry about the PC. What did you primarily use it for?

 

[Daisy81]

They did not have to, they were more then likely using ebays "Auto-bidding" which trumps any bid you place up to the maximum limit they had input.

Edit: according to the bidding history it seems the winning bidder of this G5 only made 1 bid, so they were either very alert and placed the bid at the last possible second or used some robot type software to monitor and place the bid for them.

Sadly I wasn't right by the computer at that moment because I was working on my windows machine.

All I knew at the time is one moment I looked and it was cool and the next it was I lost. It still made me really mad.
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I hate that! I always wait till the very last second, but it's never a guarantee unless you do auto bidding. This week I somehow managed to find a functional quad on CL for 50 bucks. I really only bought it for a part machine, it was a little beat up on the outside from an office environment. Swapped it's processor to get mine back into peak shape.

Sorry about the PC. What did you primarily use it for?

The machine that went down was my primary work machine. 3.5GHz Core i7 5930K MSI X99S SLI Plus 32GB DDR4 2xGTX 970 SLI.

I use it for Crestron programming, GUI design for the touch panels using Illustrator and Photoshop. 3D modeling to visualize installations for the clients and provide mockups of large projects using AutoCAD. On my own tinker with Maya LT and Unity and do some gameplay videos on youtube using Premiere Elements. Although I just purchased a maxed out late 2015 iMac 5K that I intend to use Final Cut and Logic on to do the video editing and soundtrack editing on.

I had to pull out my Core 2 Quad Q9650 8GB DDR2 ASUS P5N-D 2xGTX 560 SLI machine from the mothballs and keep going. Overall this machine is still very capable but it is slow in the rendering.

I have a ASUS X99-Pro on order from newer to replace the board. When it arrives I'll spend a evening cleaning the machine and reinstalling it into he case with the new board.