Acquisitions and mergers…

[eyoungren]

Some of you are already aware of recent happenings for me on the PowerPC Mac front, some of you don't have all the pieces.

So, I will just summarize here…

Recently a MR member donated a 2.3Ghz Dual Core PowerMac G5 (A1177) to me. And he paid for the shipping. I am very grateful for this and he knows who he is, so thank you!

Unfortunately, UPS did it's usal piss-poor job of shipping and the front handle bent and popped a rivet. The front grill got pushed in (the optical drive door gets stuck at the bottom of it's travel) and the case got skewed to the left. How UPS managed to skew it I will never know.

Anyway, it won't boot, chime or anything. Dead. I'm sure that's something somwehere easy to fix but at the time I just wasn't up to it.

But I got to thinking. I have a Quad coming to me and another G5, a 2.7Ghz Dual Processor in the new year. But what to do with the 2.3 I just got.

Well, I did some searches and failed eBay auctions and nothing came of that. However, there was a craigslist ad for a guy local to me (he lives where I work, Glendale, AZ). He had a 2.3Ghz Dual Core with no ram and no video card for $50.

PERFECT!!!!

After two days of trying to pin him down I finally met with him this morning and scored the Mac.

All that is wrong with the first Mac is the case. And the second Mac works and has a good case. So any parts I need will be transferred. Ram, hard drive and video cards.

BTW. The first G5 came with a Radeon XT1900. That's going to go in the Quad when I get it along with two Nvidia 6600LE cards I've ordered. That lets me keep my six displays.

The 2.3Ghz DC is going to get my new Nvidia Quadro FX (yes, I know, I paid too much) and the Nvidia 6600LE that came in the first Mac. That will give this Mac four displays and it will function as a secondary graphic station.

I will have more on this later as I start to work on the machine. At work at the moment so the best I can do is clean it up before I take it home.

Here are some pics of the new acquisition.

 

[tevion5]

Is there a good reason you're leaving you're mighty Quicksilver behind?!

Also, would it not be best to hunt down a pair of Nvidia 6600's, as opposed to 6600LE's? The former having twice the memory and are noticeably better performers whole also not needing a supply of power aside from the PCI-E slot.

 

[eyoungren]

Is there a good reason you're leaving you're mighty Quicksilver behind?!

Also, would it not be best to hunt down a pair of Nvidia 6600's, as opposed to 6600LE's? The former having twice the memory and are noticeably better performers whole also not needing a supply of power aside from the PCI-E slot.

The Quicksilver has got issues that I am no longer willing to continually invest money on while receiving bad results.

It's blown at least three USB/FW combo cards and at least two PCI SATA cards. This time around it took out my USB drive dock.

It will boot, but then kernal panic. If I can get it to the login screen then it freezes when I log in.

My plan is to pull the SATA card (I'll figure out what I am going to do with the video cards later) and put back IDE drives. Going to turn it into an offsite server with an as yet undetermined role.

As far as the video cards I really only care about the primary card. The largest monitor I am driving is a 20" Cinema Display. The rest are 17" and an 18" HDMI display and they are used really just to show open Finder windows. These were original G5 cards for my model and they were cheap so I got them.

Someone has dibs on my QS Sonnet, but it's not going anywhere right now.

 

[1042686]

Good to hear, Eric! Back around 1998-2000 I worked at UPS as a second job with great benefits (was teamster). Anyhow, I understand exactly how your package could get squashed. Most likely, it got squashed on the feedbelts. Sounds like it was shipped during holiday time. The belts literally get clogged/jammed beyond capacity with the added Xmas gifts shipping along with everything else. It's insane during December. Sorry to hear about that but I am glad it worked out in the end for you with the 2nd score. Anyhow, I was going to say build a hackintosh into the QS case (saw a cool one on another forum) but as it's behaving itself with your ide drives, I think that is great and it is my favorite price lol. Aside from my QS wanting to go to sleep sometimes, it performs well as a file server.

See, this place is full of helpful & generous folks.

On a side note, I want to score another PMg5 or old intel MP and polish it shiny. I saw this guy on YT do this. It looked pretty freaking awesome Put some strong red LEDs in it and it would look like skynet!

 

[eyoungren]

Good to hear, Eric! Back around 1998-2000 I worked at UPS as a second job with great benefits (was teamster). Anyhow, I understand exactly how your package could get squashed. Most likely, it got squashed on the feedbelts. Sounds like it was shipped during holiday time. The belts literally get clogged/jammed beyond capacity with the added Xmas gifts shipping along with everything else. It's insane during December. Sorry to hear about that but I am glad it worked out in the end for you with the 2nd score. Anyhow, I was going to say build a hackintosh into the QS case but if it's behaving itself with your ide drives, a server sounds great and is my favorite price lol. Aside from my QS wanting to go to sleep sometimes, I think they make great file servers.

See, this place is full of helpful & generous folks.

On a side note, I want to score another PMg5 or old intel MP and polish it shiny. I saw this guy on YT do this. It looked pretty freaking awesome

It'll also be a test to see if it's my logicboard that is flaky or if it's the SATA card.

If I get the same results I am getting now off IDE drives then I know it's the logicboard.

As to UPS…we apparently have much more in common than we knew.

West Coast Air Hub, Ontario, CA Intra sort, 9pm to 1am. August 1992 to September 1999. I was a bulk/irreg driver and I had sort pay. Intra is NDA. I was hired before HazMat service and I was hired before Over 70s service. And before Roadway was bought out for it's freight service. I started Intra on the north side of the runway at Ontario when UPS did everything out on the ramp. Intra was the first NDA sort to startup when they built the hub.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 63, Rialto Ca. http://www.teamsters63.org/

Your scenario of how this happened is totally feasible. I have my own stories after seven years. I could make a website off of it.

I met my wife at work. She was doing loadside. She eventually transferred over to bulk.

Still have my 100,000 safe work days sweatshirt.

 

[1042686]

I did three years at the Albuquerque primary hub downtown (there are two). I started in unload, then went to preload and then splitter at the front of the PL belt. Cats on the preload belt are relentless if you're having a bad day missing boxes and they have to send them upstream lol. End-Of-The-World you'd think. In hindsite, I vastly preferred unload. The preload gents could be real catty buttheads lol. Yeah I have memories as splitter around Xmas time of parcels coming down the chute 3-4 high across the entire width of the main belt having to split that crap and load my truck. I had one of those big ones that went to a couple healthcare providers. Yeesh, still gives me cold sweats thinking about it. I routinely saw parcels crushed and torn open under the pressure of the sorted unload coming down - especially where chutes came together. That was a bottleneck that was bad for larger parcels during holiday time.

On a side note, I do recall one time where a big parcel broke open full of porn, used sex toys and dirty panties. The guys behind me were being particularly douchey that day, so I turned back to them and screamed "Merry Christmas guys!!". Also, the breakfast burrito guy who came by every morning had KILLER redchile bacon breakfast burritos & coffee. So-Good.

The sh*t people send through the mail lol.

 

[jbarley]

Still have my 100,000 safe work days sweatshirt.

100,000 safe days, that's about 274 years, my Erik you're much older then I thought.

 

[eyoungren]

I did three years at the Albuquerque primary hub downtown (there are two). I started in unload, then went to preload and then splitter at the front of the PL belt. Cats on the preload belt are relentless if you're having a bad day missing boxes and they have to send them upstream lol. End-Of-The-World you'd think. In hindsite, I vastly preferred unload. The preload gents could be real catty buttheads lol. Yeah I have memories as splitter around Xmas time of parcels coming down the chute 3-4 high across the entire width of the main belt having to split that crap and load my truck. I had one of those big ones that went to a couple healthcare providers. Yeesh, still gives me cold sweats thinking about it. I routinely saw parcels crushed and torn open under the pressure of the sorted unload coming down - especially where chutes came together. That was a bottleneck that was bad for larger parcels during holiday time.

On a side note, I do recall one time where a big parcel broke open full of porn, used sex toys and dirty panties. The guys behind me were being particularly douchey that day, so I turned back to them and screamed "Merry Christmas guys!!". Also, the breakfast burrito guy who came by every morning had KILLER redchile bacon breakfast burritos & coffee. So-Good.

The sh*t people send through the mail lol.

I'll just respond with one comment and leave it at that. I could go all day but the mods will eventually remind me that this forum is about Macs. I don't like the kind of reminders they usually give.

Drop frames and L9s are the absolute WORST for unload. Add in broken rollers on the drop frame and you have a winner!

Anway, going to be cleaning this Mac up after lunch. Bit of dust inside and I have no idea what the crap is inside the bottom handles. Already determined I'll replace the side door with the one from the other Mac. There's some sort of plastic liner around the inside of the door that is coming off on the one I got today.
[doublepost=1483042805][/doublepost]

100,000 safe days, that's about 274 years, my Erik you're much older then I thought.

Yes, James!

"No, I am your grandfather!"

--quoting Vader here, slightly modified.

I think though they counted it as per person on the sort. Maybe it was hours, IDK. Have to take a look now.

 

[Lil Chillbil]

Good ****, I still don't understand why you need 6 monitors but seeing someone so excited to get a powermac g5 reminds me so much of the summer of 2013.

 

[eyoungren]

Cleaned up pretty damn good. Got all the gunk and dust off it as well as the stickers and sticker residue.

It's got scratches but there are NO dents and there is no warping of the case.

I can live with scratches, gives it character. I cannot live with dents or popped rivets. Or skewed cases.

Thank you Dysart Unified School District and nameless craigslist guy!

 

[eyoungren]

[doublepost=1483051859][/doublepost]

Good ****, I still don't understand why you need 6 monitors but seeing someone so excited to get a powermac g5 reminds me so much of the summer of 2013.

Because I want six displays.

The MacPro at work has three. My Macs double that. I may have to do voodoo to make it work but it works. But for practical reasons…

One main display. Two additional displays for InDesign palettes and Photoshop/Illustrator palettes. That's three. Two more for showing Finder folders that I consistently wish to have open and the final display for video (my HDMI display).

There, I can justify it.

 

[jbarley]

I think though they counted it as per person on the sort. Maybe it was hours, IDK. Have to take a look now.

Sounds like a possibility, made my 25yr gold watch seem pretty insignificant though.

 

[1042686]

Gold watch at 25 years? Very cool Jbarley

That DC PMG5 looks really nice Eric. I love how they clean up. Mine also had a few scratches but cleaned up well. The internal engineering on these I think is visually beautiful. I often leave the side off with just the air deflector in just to look at it.

 

[jbarley]

Gold watch at 25 years? Very cool Jbarley

Just checked the inscription on the watch back, 1965-1990, hard to believe I received this watch 27 years ago, it's true what they say, time does fly by.

 

[eyoungren]

UPDATE:

Last night I transferred ram, installed NVIDIA 6600 card and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 card and my hard drives.

It seems the Mac does not like my Hitachi 1TB hard drive, even when I tried to jumper it. I had a no boot situation. Thanks to @LightBulbFun I was able to deduce that it was the drive and not logicboard/CPU. Which is good because I was ready to transfer the guts of the Mac with the messed up case.

After having determined this I got everything straightened back up and used my USB doc to clone drives. Unfortunately, my poor PowerBook was overwhelmed by the capacity of the main drive even when using a sparse disk image.

So, that meant having to take the Hitachi the G5 does not like and the WD Black the G5 is ok with to work. Just got done cloning from one to the other about 20 minutes ago.

Fortunately for me, my server 4TB drive, which is SATA 3, was able to be jumpered and my G5 recognizes and can use that drive. So, looks like all WD for this Mac. As soon as I can get home, I've got some ram sticks to replace as they are not showing up, the main drive to install and I should be good to go.

I've only been able to use the Mac a little bit because I've had to boot from the installer disk but so far what I can see I like this G5 a lot.

My two NVIDIA 6600LE cards are on the way and I will slip one in when it gets here so I have my six displays back (I can only run 4 at this time).

Will be posting pics of the Mac later tonight.

 

[eyoungren]

PROOF OF LIFE!

 

[1042686]

Yeesh. 10.5GBs of memory in a PPC?!?! I feel inadequate all of the sudden

I have a question about all those video cards. So all you do is stick them in and then plug in the monitors and OSX doesn't get confused? How do you know which monitor goes where? Do you assign them in syspref? How does that work?

 

[eyoungren]

Yeesh. 10.5GBs of memory in a PPC?!?! I feel inadequate all of the sudden

I have a question about all those video cards. So all you do is stick them in and then plug in the monitors and OSX doesn't get confused? How do you know which monitor goes where? Do you assign them in syspref? How does that work?

Yep. OS X keeps track of them and you use the displays menu to arrange them.

I normally have six, but I need the third video card first. Only have two in this Mac right now.

When you arrange the displays OS X highlights the particular monitor in red so you know which one is being arranged where.

See the little white bar too? That's where the menu bar is. You can move that to any display you want.

Oh…the Late 2005 G5s take 16GB of ram.

 

[Hrududu]

Gotta lose those 256MB sticks of RAM!

 

[eyoungren]

Gotta lose those 256MB sticks of RAM!

Yeah. I'm just glad I have ram. All the ram I have came with the Mac.

The most I've personally every had in any Mac I've used is 4GB, so this is a new thing for me. Probably be ordering some 2GB sticks soon.

 

[Hrududu]

Yeah. I'm just glad I have ram. All the ram I have came with the Mac.

The most I've personally every had in any Mac I've used is 4GB, so this is a new thing for me. Probably be ordering some 2GB sticks soon.

I've got 12GB in my quad and if I had any excuse at all to replace my 1GB sticks with 2s to get it up to 16GB I would, but I've never even been close to needing that much.

 

[eyoungren]

I've got 12GB in my quad and if I had any excuse at all to replace my 1GB sticks with 2s to get it up to 16GB I would, but I've never even been close to needing that much.

Just because of who I am, both the Quad I end up with, the 2.3 DC and the dual 2.7 that is coming will eventually ALL have max ram.

I always have to take things to the ridiculous extreme.

 

[eyoungren]

Pics of the damaged G5. It doesn't look like much but this was after I got done bending things back as best I could.

The last pic shows where the grill got pushed in.

What you can't see is how they managed to convert a rectangle to a trapezoid by warping the entire case to the left.

 

[eyoungren]

Gotta love Apple for some things.

When the G4 went crazy in May I left my Apple Magic Mouse on. And I didn't turn it off, even when I eventually realized it was on.

So after seven months, how much charge do I have left when I check yesterday?

74%

Nice!

 

[Lil Chillbil]

Where do you go from here? is this now basically your main home mac?