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HereBeMonsters

macrumors 6502
Jul 5, 2012
319
9
Fareham, UK
Added another PowerPC machine to my workspace yesterday. Found it sitting unused in one of my classes and decided to enquire about it. Next thing I know, it's sitting on my desk at home!

Image

It's an iMac (17-inch Flat Panel, 1GHz), from the second generation of widescreen iMac G4s. This one has 512MB of memory, the stock 80GB drive, USB 1.1 and currently lacks an AirPort card. Despite sitting unused for so long, it started up without a hitch. Structurally it feels much more solid than my earlier 15-inch model. The school has engraved it along the top edge of the clear display bezel, which is a shame since cosmetically it's in brilliant shape otherwise. I could attempt to fill it with a clear plastic filler of some kind, but I'd imagine the repair would only end up more noticeable than the mark itself.

Now all I have to do is find a space for it and take some photos of it in its new home.

Try something called Polywatch. Took a lot of scratches out of the bezels of my G4 iMacs.
 

Ih8reno

macrumors 65816
Aug 10, 2012
1,383
206
Just added a couple new power macs to my collection. On the left an Imac G4 20 inch 1.25ghz with 2gb ram. On the right I found an Apple Cube 450mhz. Not pictured is the 17 inch Apple acrylic monitor, keyboard mouse and power supply.
376dee553da4f83eb26a1ced1c865c52.jpg
 

robertdsc

macrumors regular
Jan 28, 2014
202
9
OK. I'm cheating a bit because my setup now has an Intel Mac, but I still have PPC machines doing their thing.

MacBat9-23-14.jpg


The Apple Cinema HD Display and HP monitor on the left belong to the newest addition to my stable: a Mac Pro 1,1 2.66 Quad, named Suzan, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with 4 GB of RAM and 2.25 TB of drive space among 4 drives (3x500/1x 750GB). The Cinema HD display and HP monitor are driven by an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT with 512 MB of VRAM.

The HP monitor to the right is connected to my G5 Dual 2.0, named Gretzky. After my first G5 died on me in an unknown manner in early August, I decided to cobble parts together from it and the spare G5 I had that was doing DVD encoding. This G5 now has a 128MB Radeon 9600XT video card from the dead G5, 6 GB of RAM from both machines, and 570 GB of space between two drives (250 GB/320GB). I may add drives later for movie storage later, but that's in the future. Gretzky runs a strong Tiger setup.

The MDD in the middle is a G4 Dual 1.25, named Liz, that I have converted into a server. This G4 has six 500GB IDE drives that I picked up last year. I had originally used these drives across multiple G4 machines, but after two MDD Dual 1.0s flamed out on me and the DA 466 got to be too tiresome to maintain, I took out the DVD drive and cage and installed two hard drives in its place. It is connected via Radeon 7000 to the Studio Display. The Pro Speakers are also attached to this Mac and it functions as a jukebox and movie player when I have other Macs on the bench for repair.

The DA 466 on the far left is currently on hiatus. I re-installed the original CD-RW drive in order to read my MacOS 9 CDs from yesteryear. It has three drives inside: the boot 80 GB and two 120 GB drives for storage. One drive is stacked on top of the boot drive inside an MDD cage on the floor of the Mac, and the other drive is inside the slot reserved for the Zip drive. It works and I'm fine with that.

Eventually, I'll get around to reinstalling Tiger and the PC SATA card I had in there.
 

darkal1en

macrumors newbie
Jul 25, 2014
24
1
Here my PPC G5 it forms the heart of my home recording studio alongside an Intel. I love my PPC it has a special place in my heart being my first foray into the Mac world! Its a late 2005 2ghz dual core model. I have recently upgraded the RAM to 4.5g, and intend to upgrade to 6.5g just to ensure it runs my DAW smoothly.

8b9c35c55f58e1191c5b4fcd98beca92.jpg
 

ctmpkmlec4

macrumors 6502
Jul 4, 2014
373
40
Lyons, KS
Dual 1.25 FW800. I got the display for a decent price from a guy in Wichita. Had to use the good CCFLs out of a faulty display because the lower half of the screen was dim. I'm planning to add a PCI SATA card, and I have a new 120mm fan ordered to replace the noisy Delta one.
 

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waddington01274

macrumors newbie
Oct 9, 2012
10
0
Transfer data & media from Power Mac G5 (June 2004) to Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008)

Hi, can you tell me the best way of tansferring data & media files from a 2TB Western Digital Caviar (WD2001FASS) on a Power Mac G5 (June 2004) Dual 2Ghz SuperDrive 9455LL/A with one FireWire 800 port, two FireWire 400 ports (one on front); three USB 2.0 ports (one on front), two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard); AGP 8X Pro slot with graphics card installed, including ADC connector and DVI connector; Networking Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem System software is Mac OSX 10.5.8 Leopard - On to a MacPro 3,1 (Early 2008) MA970LL/A “Eight Core” 2.8 with 5 (2.0) USB Ports 2 (400), 2 (800) Firewire Ports Memory 14GB, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, Conectivity Airport Extreme 802.11a/b/g and draft-n (n-enabled) 2x Gigabit Ethernet Optional 56K V.92 USB modem System software is Mac OSX 10.6.3 Snow Leopard which is connected to Cinema HD Display 23-inch widescreen M9178B/A Input DVI-D.
Does the Power Mac G5 need to be connected to a keyboard & mouse whilst carrying out this operation as well as it’s own separated Apple Cinema Display? What cables & adapters would i need, how would I be able to have the Power Mac G5/2TB Western Digital Caviar (WD2001FASS) be shown as an icon on the MacPro 3,1 (Early 2008) MA970LL/A “Eight Core” 2.8 connected to Cinema HD Display 23-inch widescreen M9178B/A Input DVI-D or is it easier for me to remove a 2TB Western Digital Caviar (WD2001FASS) and put in any one of Mac Pro 3,1 expansion bays? I look forward to your solution.

Kind Regards
 

harrymatic

macrumors 6502
Dec 30, 2013
331
23
United Kingdom
Dual 1.25 FW800. I got the display for a decent price from a guy in Wichita. Had to use the good CCFLs out of a faulty display because the lower half of the screen was dim. I'm planning to add a PCI SATA card, and I have a new 120mm fan ordered to replace the noisy Delta one.

Very nice machine, gorgeous monitor! Have fun upgrading it, the SATA card allows for some really useful storage upgrades. What video card is installed currently?
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,835
3,514
Hi, can you tell me the best way of tansferring data & media files from a 2TB Western Digital Caviar etc etc

I would have thought that Gigabit Ethernet would be the quickest route between the two. Just enable file sharing, screen sharing and remote log in/SSH on the G5 if not done already and then link the two with a bit of Cat5e. Finder should mount your G5 machine in the Sidebar/Desktop. Log in, locate your files and then drag and drop.

You can run the G5 headless. To shut it down after copying the files, just open the G5's screen in Finder and then shut your G5 down from your Mac Pro.
 

ctmpkmlec4

macrumors 6502
Jul 4, 2014
373
40
Lyons, KS
Very nice machine, gorgeous monitor! Have fun upgrading it, the SATA card allows for some really useful storage upgrades. What video card is installed currently?
Thanks for the compliment (on behalf of the Mac)! It still has the stock Radeon 9000 Pro. When I got it, the original Superdrive would always eject upon boot, so I pulled the Superdrive out of a faulty PM G5 and it solved the problem. Now, it actually has identical SDs from the June 2004 PM G5. I finally replaced the noisy Delta 120mm fan with a comparable Panaflo model and the noise reduction was significant. I still want to replace the fans in the power supply, but I can't seem to find any 60mm fans that flow as well as the originals. Oh well, I'm in no hurry. I fire it up and play Diablo II when I'm feeling nostalgic, and it satisfactorily (is that a word?) surfs the web. Tell me about your Mac.
 

harrymatic

macrumors 6502
Dec 30, 2013
331
23
United Kingdom
Tell me about your Mac.

Well since you asked... :D

It started out as a single 1GHz MDD model with 1GB memory and no hard drive. I first upgraded it to the full 2GB and added a USB 2.0 and AirPort extreme PCI cards. The first graphics upgrade I did was to a modded ATi Radeon 9600XT. This provided a tremendous improvement over the GeForce 4MX that it came with, but it still wasn't quite as good as I wanted. Later I replaced the 128MB Radeon card with the 256MB Pro version which had dual DVI ports. At this time I was running out of storage on the 80GB hard drive I found in my junk box, so I went about flashing a PCI SATA card so I could use my 250GB hard drive instead. I then upgraded the CPU with a dual 1.33GHz module from an XServe server - I also had to modify the logic board for this to work. Eventually I was given a broken 256MB ATi Radeon 9800XT which I repaired and flashed - it performs very well.
 

Motlimmaj

macrumors newbie
Oct 8, 2014
5
2
DF5a1Ez.jpg


From left to right
Indigo iMac G3 500Mhz 128MB RAM 20GB HD
iMac G4 15" 80GB WD800 768MB RAM 700Mhz 7450 G4
Apple Pro keyboard and mouse (shared)
Acer 1080p monitor (connected to G3)
 
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ctmpkmlec4

macrumors 6502
Jul 4, 2014
373
40
Lyons, KS
Well since you asked... :D

It started out as a single 1GHz MDD model with 1GB memory and no hard drive. I first upgraded it to the full 2GB and added a USB 2.0 and AirPort extreme PCI cards. The first graphics upgrade I did was to a modded ATi Radeon 9600XT. This provided a tremendous improvement over the GeForce 4MX that it came with, but it still wasn't quite as good as I wanted. Later I replaced the 128MB Radeon card with the 256MB Pro version which had dual DVI ports. At this time I was running out of storage on the 80GB hard drive I found in my junk box, so I went about flashing a PCI SATA card so I could use my 250GB hard drive instead. I then upgraded the CPU with a dual 1.33GHz module from an XServe server - I also had to modify the logic board for this to work. Eventually I was given a broken 256MB ATi Radeon 9800XT which I repaired and flashed - it performs very well.
I always interested to learn how folks mod their PPC Macs. I tend not to do any major modifications, simply because I don't want to stray too much from the original hardware nor do irreparable damage. I think I mentioned earlier that I have been wanting to add a PCI SATA card, but I have installed a new (as in unused, but manufactured a couple of years ago) 250GB IDE drive. Other than allowing you to use newer, larger drives, is there a noticeable speed difference when using a SATA card?
 

HereBeMonsters

macrumors 6502
Jul 5, 2012
319
9
Fareham, UK
None at all - due to the PCI bus speed, you get more or less the same data transfer rates as the onboard hard drive IDE channel.

I find the SSDs I have on my PPC macs make a noticeable difference. Obviously they're limited to the speed of the IDE bus, but they consistently perform at that maximum speed every time. No waiting for the disc to spin up or the heads to find the bit it wants.
 
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hamis92

macrumors 6502
Apr 4, 2007
475
87
Finland
This is a half of my collection. My three Power Macs live elsewhere.

On the top level is a 450 MHz iMac DV+ (Summer 2000) in Sage, acquired today. I accidentally came across it and just couldn't resist :eek: It's quite beautiful, there are no cracks or visible scratches anywhere in the enclosure and it works perfectly. A nice original keyboard and mouse followed suit.

Next is a 1,25 GHz eMac, that too is fantastic externally. After hearing how much better the iMac speakers are compared to this eMac I kind of wish I had one of the older models which still had H/K sound systems in them. To draw another comparison: the iMac is featherweight compared to the eMac :D

There's also my beloved 12-inch PowerBook, 1,33 GHz. I use it frequently so it doesn't always reside in the shelf. However, the CRT Macs are seldom used – the reason I bought them and keep them here is mainly that they're nice to look at.
 

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2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,240
I find the SSDs I have on my PPC macs make a noticeable difference. Obviously they're limited to the speed of the IDE bus, but they consistently perform at that maximum speed every time. No waiting for the disc to spin up or the heads to find the bit it wants.

I have found this to be true as well. It's only a modest improvement, especially when compared to a SATA SSD, but still worthwhile.
 

AlecZ

macrumors 65816
Sep 11, 2014
1,173
123
Berkeley, CA
Image

From left to right
Indigo iMac G3 500Mhz 128MB RAM 20GB HD
iMac G4 15" 80GB WD800 768MB RAM 700Mhz 7450 G4
Apple Pro keyboard and mouse (shared)
Acer 1080p monitor (connected to G3)

Beautiful! Can the G3 actually drive the monitor at 1920x1080 resolution, or is it something lower?
 

PowerMac G4 MDD

macrumors 68000
Jul 13, 2014
1,900
277
Beautiful! Can the G3 actually drive the monitor at 1920x1080 resolution, or is it something lower?

I know that my iBook G4 doesn't support high-enough resolutions for this 2005 19" HP monitor I found on the sidewalk. The Macs that supported actual desktop expansion, and not JUST mirroring, also supported higher resolutions. There is a sketchy application that enables screen expansion and the higher resolutions, but I would never trust it on my iBook or any other unsupported Mac. I bet it leaches the little video cards in these things... One of my iMac G3s was connected to a V.G. Varun ViewSonic monitor, and it displayed fine, but it's a really old monitor.

There is really no point in mirroring the screen on an iMac G3, unless you really want to use one but don't want to look at the CRT(?) That's sort of what I did...
 

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
ScreenSpanningDoctor, the application that enables extended desktop mode on some Macs, isn't that sketchy. All it does is set one value in NVRAM to enable it. It doesn't push the video card any more than the a comparable GPU as most GPU's from about 2001 and newer are designed to be able to drive at least two displays. The reason why Apple didn't enable it is because at the time it was a pro feature that was used to sell people on their pro line. G3 iMacs are not able to mirror their display with ScreenSpanningDoctor. They use an unsupported GPU.
 
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