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Forced back to PowerPC as my main *Ranty*

WalnutSpice

WalnutSpice

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 21, 2015
456
92
Canton, Oh
Well, I was plugging in my new computer monitor to my PC and accidently dropped my old one. It was not plugged into anything when it fell. My lights dimed and flickered on and off and everything else turned off. Everything turned back on, my audio setup, clock radio, TV. What didn't? My PC. It refuses to turn back on. I have no idea what happened. I'm going to go to my friends tomorrow and test the PSU. How did my monitor falling trip my electricity? Literal hell if I know. But it did. So now here I am, back on my 12 year old Mac because a PC can't handle a simple power flicker. My G5 is fast, but the lack of support is terrible now. Goodbye gameplay recording, twitch viewing, Rooster Teeth's website, 720p YouTube. This thing is powerful enough to do anything I need it to but Apple and software developers just think "Ah, that garbage". I love PowerPC Macs but god damn it's sad that a Pentium 4 with windows XP and can do so much more than them even though they are not powerful at any degree.
 
Mm. I guess I can relate a bit, but I always have my ThinkPad X240 close by so maybe not. For YouTube I end up just keepvidding everything, the PowerBook can't handle 720p but any G5 can probably chew through the downloaded mp4 files pretty well I'd imagine.

Anyways, yeah support has worn real thin. On the plus side, even if a lot of stuff doesn't get updated the stuff that did exist still does and works fine. Used Evernote on the PBG4 in school yesterday and all was well.
 
I have no problems getting anything done on my PowerMac and PowerBook.

But then I've been on 68K/PowerPC (in one form or another) since 1992. Intel is only a recent addition and it's not my main Mac either – although I can use it to run Windows 10.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but for some people out there (such as myself) PowerPC is not a hobby but an actual choice.
 
Sorry to hear your PC called it quits. Personally, I can go with my Dual 2.3GHz as a daily driver with ease. Dual monitors, 480p YouTube with ease, childhood favorite RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 for one of many games I could play, iWork 09 for homework, iLife 09 for video editing and photo storage, Erik-certified TenFourFox for a silky smooth browsing experience... I really could use my G5 for all of my usual tasks if my two other main computers (late 2011 MBP and AMD-FX6300 custom build) fail. Frankly, when my HP Pavilion 500-c60 was having issues, I used my G5 in place of it over my MBP.

Of course, I have 40 other machines and 27 other macs I could use incase my main desktop failed, several of them are newer than a G5 (like my 09 MacBook, MBP, ThinkPad T61, or Dell E6410), so i wouldn't really be locked into using a G5. However, I'd likely use my G5 along side a laptop of some sort. My G5 is the 3rd best tower machine I own (AMD, HP, then G5), lol.
Alright enough rambling... TL;DR: if need be, I could use my G5 as a daily machine with ease
 
eyoungren said:
I have no problems getting anything done on my PowerMac and PowerBook.

But then I've been on 68K/PowerPC (in one form or another) since 1992. Intel is only a recent addition and it's not my main Mac either – although I can use it to run Windows 10.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but for some people out there (such as myself) PowerPC is not a hobby but an actual choice.
Click to expand...
The only thing that makes me not want to use it as my main is a lack of support that has went downhill for me personally starting around 2013. All offline things are no issue, but most online websites I use just don't work anymore. Sometimes it's Javascript errors, Flash 10 not working anymore or it even says "Your OS is no longer supported" and even sometimes websites are told not to work based off the version number of the browser even though it is capable of using the site. My biggest issue is watching Rooster Teeth content which I do a lot. They updated their entire website and it now requires flash 18 to play video and Twitch.TV doesn't even work at all.
I know you and a lot of others have no issue, it just comes down to what I want to do online. It just annoys me that it's not my PowerMac that can't run it, it's other people deciding it can't.
 
You could try tricking websites into thinking Flash is the latest version. Someone recently posted a thread about that on here, so it's worth a shot. Also, what browser are you using?
 
Gamer9430 said:
You could try tricking websites into thinking Flash is the latest version. Someone recently posted a thread about that on here, so it's worth a shot. Also, what browser are you using?
Click to expand...
I use Safari, Tenfour fox 17 and the latest Tenfour fox depending on what I need to do. And yeah I know. I have Flash spoofed to 20.x and Safari spoofed to 7.1.6. Some websites still don't work even with that.
Rooster Teeth's website gives me a "Inspect Element" error in place of videos
 
WalnutSpice said:
I use Safari, Tenfour fox 17 and the latest Tenfour fox depending on what I need to do. And yeah I know. I have Flash spoofed to 20.x and Safari spoofed to 7.1.6. Some websites still don't work even with that.
Rooster Teeth's website gives me a "Inspect Element" error in place of videos
Click to expand...
Ah I see. You could try using WebKit over Safari.
And darn, I thought it might work... Any other machines you could use?
 
Heres a fun update, I plugged my hard drive from my PC into my PowerMac to get my data and it was all still there, moved over everything just fine. Except I noticed, my Windows folder and Program Files folders are wiped clean. Windows either deleted itself or my PowerMac can't read a Windows folder. I hope thats the case, it is NTFS and I know Mac's only support reading from them. Hopefully that has something to do with it but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Windows just deleted itself.
[doublepost=1460864746][/doublepost]
Gamer9430 said:
Ah I see. You could try using WebKit over Safari.
And darn, I thought it might work... Any other machines you could use?
Click to expand...
I do use Webkit, I still just call it Safari whoops. But I also have a PowerBook G4 and a 2009 White MacBook but I can't use that as my main unless I get an adaptor to plug it into my monitor. The display on those white MacBooks are atrocious.
 
WalnutSpice said:
Heres a fun update, I plugged my hard drive from my PC into my PowerMac to get my data and it was all still there, moved over everything just fine. Except I noticed, my Windows folder and Program Files folders are wiped clean. Windows either deleted itself or my PowerMac can't read a Windows folder. I hope thats the case, it is NTFS and I know Mac's only support reading from them. Hopefully that has something to do with it but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Windows just deleted itself.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's very interesting. It may be possible that it can't read it or is having difficulty in reading it, but I highly doubt a power failure would cause those two specific folders to be emptied. I've had a lot of power failures over the years with several machines and never lost data with any of them. Not saying it's not possible, but I just think it's highly unlikely.
 
Gamer9430 said:
Hmm, that's very interesting. It may be possible that it can't read it or is having difficulty in reading it, but I highly doubt a power failure would cause those two specific folders to be emptied. I've had a lot of power failures over the years with several machines and never lost data with any of them. Not saying it's not possible, but I just think it's highly unlikely.
Click to expand...
I do too. I remember backing up data from a PC hard drive before for a friend and the Windows folder and etc were all still there. Hopefully it is just having difficulties reading it
 
WalnutSpice said:
[doublepost=1460864746][/doublepost]
I do use Webkit, I still just call it Safari whoops. But I also have a PowerBook G4 and a 2009 White MacBook but I can't use that as my main unless I get an adaptor to plug it into my monitor. The display on those white MacBooks are atrocious.
Click to expand...

I don't find the MB displays TOO bad. They are alright, I've used worse. I just rolled back to Mavericks on mine today after being on El Cap and it's soooo much nicer now. The fans don't run 24/7, it's smooth, fast, looks nice. Very happy I did that. Anyway, I need one of those adapters too. A lot of my machines use that, so it would be good to have.
 
WalnutSpice said:
I do too. I remember backing up data from a PC hard drive before for a friend and the Windows folder and etc were all still there. Hopefully it is just having difficulties reading it
Click to expand...
I've backed up stuff from a Windows HDD to my G5 and it definitely was missing stuff that was there when it was in the Windows PC.
 
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Btw, on a side note, now that you are on PPC again, great time to use IRC with my Slack chat (sorry, don't mean to sidetrack the thread, we've just been itching to hear from you!)
 
Gamer9430 said:
Btw, on a side note, now that you are on PPC again, great time to use IRC with my Slack chat (sorry, don't mean to sidetrack the thread, we've just been itching to hear from you!)
Click to expand...
Oh man, sorry. I forgot about that. I think I joined but I'll definitely bookmark it and jump on. I'm gonna head to bed soon, 12AM EST so I'll head on tomorrow.
**Update on the PC**
Plugged in my friends old Dell's PSU and it does all still work. Just can't use my GPU with this PSU of course.
 
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WalnutSpice said:
The only thing that makes me not want to use it as my main is a lack of support that has went downhill for me personally starting around 2013. All offline things are no issue, but most online websites I use just don't work anymore. Sometimes it's Javascript errors, Flash 10 not working anymore or it even says "Your OS is no longer supported" and even sometimes websites are told not to work based off the version number of the browser even though it is capable of using the site. My biggest issue is watching Rooster Teeth content which I do a lot. They updated their entire website and it now requires flash 18 to play video and Twitch.TV doesn't even work at all.
I know you and a lot of others have no issue, it just comes down to what I want to do online. It just annoys me that it's not my PowerMac that can't run it, it's other people deciding it can't.
Click to expand...
I have a modern mac pro and no flash is installed at all. I can still view their videos (on rooster teeth), requires html5 and it runs pretty good.
 
WalnutSpice said:
I do too. I remember backing up data from a PC hard drive before for a friend and the Windows folder and etc were all still there. Hopefully it is just having difficulties reading it
Click to expand...
There's a clever Backup-software/freeware for Windows, coming from a chap a my hometowns university...
http://personal-backup.rathlev-home.de/index-e.html
It's a real life saver and backups are lightning fast.
Together with "IrfanView", "FinePrint", "PrintToPDF" it's the first software I always install on any Windows PC.
(PS: about IrfanView - a picture viewer with editing function: I once had to "recover" a lot of faded paper photos. I first tried with iPhoto and had to make a lot of manual settings. Then I found out an "automatic" function at IrfanView and the Photos got even better... even without processing them through iPhoto before. That's a prog I won't ever miss in my life...)
 
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WalnutSpice said:
It was not plugged into anything when it fell. My lights dimed and flickered on and off and everything else turned off. Everything turned back on, my audio setup, clock radio, TV. What didn't? My PC. It refuses to turn back on. I have no idea what happened.
Click to expand...

Could be the PSU had an internal short(brittle RoHS solder) from power cycling and the vibration was enough to rattle it, a few years back I had to replace a family members' Dell PSU as it slowly halted at boot(not enough power to drive the HDD) after a rare northeast earthquake... I thought the HDD was toast from the shake but a spare PSU worked so a new one needed to be ordered.
 
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Just an FYI, my TFF install is pretty plain outside of BH Firewall and I'm not getting it to play on my PBG4 either. Says no playable sources found.
 
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