Gonna double down on the waiting-for-the-right-deal approach. I managed to get quite a few PowerPC Macs fairly cheaply that way, with my favourite and PowerPC-purge surviving MDD. I've thinned out my PowerPC Mac collection a bit over the years, but my 1.42GHz DP MDD is staying. It's so, so overpowered for OS 9, I love it.
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Best cheap PowerPC desktop
- Thread starter retta283
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QuickSilvers cannot run Mac OS X Server 1.2, so it's off the table at least for now. Thanks though
AL1630
macrumors 6502
Project Alice
macrumors 68020
I know. That would be the ideal option. But the sawtooth is essentially the same thing if you don't mind losing one of the PCI slots for an ethernet card. I would swap out my sawtooth for a gigabit Ethernet model if I could find one. The extra PCI slot for me would be nice. As of now all my PCI slots are filled
Adamscomputerrepair
macrumors 6502a
Well brothers and sisters, I did it again. Though this time I screwed up a little.
I bid on a Mac mini for parts (because apparently the flashing folder icon is impossible to fix) and won a Mac mini for the insanely expensive price of $1.
Here’s the issue. I thought it was a G4 like I wanted. It was in fact a core duo.
So, one power cord ordered later, I get an email from eBay saying I have a $5 off $5 coupon. I just so happened to find the core 2 duo upgrade for, you guessed it, $5.
Total cost: $15.
Not sure if it was a victory because I have no real use for a early intel Mac mini, or a defeat, but it’s something.
I bid on a Mac mini for parts (because apparently the flashing folder icon is impossible to fix) and won a Mac mini for the insanely expensive price of $1.
Here’s the issue. I thought it was a G4 like I wanted. It was in fact a core duo.
So, one power cord ordered later, I get an email from eBay saying I have a $5 off $5 coupon. I just so happened to find the core 2 duo upgrade for, you guessed it, $5.
Total cost: $15.
Not sure if it was a victory because I have no real use for a early intel Mac mini, or a defeat, but it’s something.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
I could find a use for it…if you're willing to pay to ship it to me? 🙂
1042686
Cancelled
Towers & AIOs are big and take up precious bench space. Old mac minis are the perfect garage mac. Mount a lcd monitor to your wall and use a cheap wireless KBM you dont care about (yanno so you dont get oil n garage gunk on your good KBMs) and you're good to go. Music streaming/jukebox, schematics, ifixits, etc. - whatever's clever yanno? You certainly could use an ipad for that if you have one but my old ipads are currently foam laden toddler edutainment devices & refrigerator door recipe finder/organizers, so if I need a portable for carwork etc. I'm using my iphone.
I also have a core2duo mini connected to my 50" flatscreen and it has been absolutely great that way but have the luxury to easily and seamlessly connect via HDMI. An earlier white mini probably would be kind of a PITA to connect between DVI/HDMI adapters and analog RCA sound cabling ... and then you'd want a wireless KB/trackpad solution which is certainly ideal when surfing the couch. Still, for $15 bones, you can affordably make that happen. Nice score 🙂
I also have a core2duo mini connected to my 50" flatscreen and it has been absolutely great that way but have the luxury to easily and seamlessly connect via HDMI. An earlier white mini probably would be kind of a PITA to connect between DVI/HDMI adapters and analog RCA sound cabling ... and then you'd want a wireless KB/trackpad solution which is certainly ideal when surfing the couch. Still, for $15 bones, you can affordably make that happen. Nice score 🙂
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Project Alice
macrumors 68020
I use a 2009 C2D Mini as an HTPC too, hooked up to my 50". DVI and HDMI (v1.0/1.1) are actually the same technology just with a different port. So all that's needed is a passive adapter. They're cheap. I've also stumbled across a cables that are HDMI on one end, and DVI on the other. The only problem is that the audio HDMI carries doesn't work on macs. While DVI is totally capable of carrying audio, it's patented with HDMI so nothing "supports" audio over DVI aside from certain displays and Nvidia GPUs (on windows of course). I just use an audio cable over to my stereo system, which since I only ever use that when I'm watching something on the mini it isn't a hassle for me.
I already have an early 2005 PowerBook, not the DLSD model though. Sadly none of the aluminum PowerBooks can run OS 9 native.
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I'm looking at an Intel Mac Mini for doing some basic tasks since they aren't too expensive. iPads sadly just cannot do the work that I want them to, at least not yet. Maybe if iOS 13 adds a more macOS style I can. I have no problem with the space aspect, my two offices are quite spacious. I have a picture from about 16 years ago of a ton of "micro" towers in a rack in my main office.
bobesch
macrumors 68020
Maybe there's a cheap (<50bucks or even dumped) iMacG3 with CRT next by.
The slot-loaders/400MHz offer the option to hook up an additional screen, but only for mirroring.
Equipped with an SSD and with maxed out RAM (1GB) they are great for your purpose of running os9 and OSX 10.1/2 (even Tiger) Server. Broken speakers can be fixed easily.
They're pretty nice and sturdy companions and not as heavy as a PowerMac with a 21" CRT-Monitor ...
I just like them !!! 🙂
(but a PM-G4 could be another cheap option with but better specs compared to a G3-machine...)
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Dronecatcher
macrumors 603
The first 12" and 17" can with the modified OS9 Lives install disk.
Sadly in my area the prices for G3s has gone up into the hundreds. eBay and CL aren't much better.
bobesch
macrumors 68020
Oh, sorry!
Here reasonable prices vary from 40 to 80 bucks.
(But I was lucky to combine some mandatory long-distance trips with the delight to pick up an occasional Mac on my way...)
Funny story: two weeks ago I've got an iMac-G3 FlowerPower in excellent condition an with maxed out RAM (except the speakers need to be replaced). After I've sent positive reviews about the seller, he contacted me and told me about this iMac's secret: he picked it up from "Sperrmüll" (stuff dumped onto the pavement for the garbage-collection next day). He told me, that he often stumbled about such gems without any intention. We had a real nice conversation ...
Well, it's just a matter of patience and time to get hands on a cheap iMac G3, hold on!
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I've been looking at getting one for a while, just waiting for a deal to come up. Nice score on the Flowerpower. Good luck with the speaker replacement, I've heard they are a bit to tinker with.
bunnspecial
macrumors G3
Just thought I'd mention something on this.
I maintain a PowerMac G4 a work that operates a home-built NMR spectrometer. It needs a PCI slot for the interface card(fortunately a somewhat generic National Instruments brand card with a 60 pin ribbon connector on it-they show up on Ebay enough that we have a stockpile of him) and AGP graphics are desirable to make it easy to run a 1920x1080 monitor(not a requirement, and we could do it with a Radeon 9200, but I'd rather not part with one). It doesn't NEED a G4, but the newest hardware within reason is desirable(it was running on a B&W for a long, long time). Also, the guy who designed it said 9.1 as a maximum, but we haven't had any issues on 9.2.2.
In any case, a while back we switched over to a 466mhz DA, and it more or less worked alright. The PSU died in the DA, and as a quick fix I grabbed a 733mhz QS that was sitting in the room. Interestingly enough, it quit working. We could hook up a scope and see the spectrometer generating a signal(called a "pulse") when the computer told it to. We could also see the returned signal from the probe(called an FID-free induction decay) but the computer wouldn't see it. Putting the 466mhz card fro the DA got it working again-my working theory is that at too high of a clock speed, the software "times out" on looking for a signal before it's actually had time to get back to the computer.
In any case, the Quicksilver PSU died, and I ended up bringing in a Sawtooth. Surprisingly enough, it actually cleared up some software glitches that they had been working around(and I wasn't aware of) but that hadn't been present when using the B&W. Since we've already made an(IMO) reasonable inference that the software is fairly dependent on clock speed, I also suspect that the 133mhz FSB of the DA/QS might have also been causing issues that were resolved by going back to 100mhz.
In any case, it's now been ticking away without a hiccup for a year or better on the Sawtooth...and if we have another PSU failure it's reasonably simple to fit an ATX PSU to a Sawtooth(at least as compared to the later computers).