found 2x PowerMac G4 by the garbage bin

[petalino]

My building houses a few design, film and architecture companies.
Some of these businesses are constantly upgrading their equipment and are getting rid or old stuff.

A few days ago I found 2 Macs sitting by the trash bin:
both are PowerMac G4 with the model number M8493

Are these Macs still useable?

If yes, can I use them for today's web browsers, photo editing and general computing?
I have not yet switched them on, so i don't know if they are functional.


Thanks in advance for any replies I will receive here.

 

[rabidz7]

You have a quick silver made in 2001 or 2002
Yes, I'd say they are usable on the web with RAM maxed, and tenfourfox.

 

[Intell]

Those are Quicksilvers. They're still usable, but like all G4's they are limited in terms of speed. With a newer operating system like Leopard and plenty of memory, they can still be used for light computing.

 

[brand]

Power Mac ≠ Mac Pro

PPC ≠ Intel

 

[Tesselator]

Photo editing might be a little tricky. You'll need to hunt down an older version of whatever app you like to use. I guess anything that says UB (Universal Binary) will work OK.

If nothing else you can customize the interior and turn into a drive enclosure for RAID, JBOD or whatever.

 

[flyguy451]

My recommendation would be to consider them as a computing appliance - load up a bunch of light-weight educational and drawing software and donate them to a not-for-profit that deals with kids and families. There is no need for every computer to be connected to the internet. I still have an operable G3 running OS 8.6. It's not connected to the internet but it still does everything it did on the day I bought it.

 

[Shaggymax]

I too have a Quicksilver 867 that I can't even give away. It was my wife's 1st workstation out of college. Might relegate to garage work bench / mp3 machine...or like someone suggested donate to a local preschool.

 

[Kissaragi]

Good find! Even if you cant use them I bet they would make a bit on ebay for parts.

 

[Omnius]

You can buy lots of 10 of them for like 150 dollars in New York. Honestly, those have seen their last days. The cases, if in excellent shape are sometimes used by case modders.

 

[ActionableMango]

Are these Macs still useable?

If yes, can I use them for today's web browsers, photo editing and general computing?

These are severely outdated. Yes, they can act as a web browser and whatnot, but it's probably not worth your time, money, physical space, or even the cost of electricity to run them just for that purpose.

Unless of course you are a hobbyist in which case accomplishing a computer rehab is a reward in itself.

 

[kingtj]

I remember these .....

I "hot rodded" one of them about 4 years ago with a processor upgrade from OWC, a PCI card that added some more USB ports, another card to support ATA133 EIDE hard drive speeds, and maxxed out the RAM.

Wound up selling it for a small profit to a guy I met in town who was designing vinyl decals, wraps and signs for automotive use. He wanted a machine that still ran classic MacOS 9 as well as possible, so it was just what he was after.

But yeah, unless you have a niche use for one like a need for MacOS 9.1? I don't see why they're worth the hassle to work on and upgrade today.

 

[666sheep]

You can identify them precisely looking on labels on the back:

You can also decode their serial numbers here:
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html

Dual processor models are still worth few bucks, single ones not so much.