Going back

[YaBe]

I am going back to a PPC setup, after years of wanting and "must have" the latest tech I finally sold my Touchbar 15 inches MBP and bought an iPad Pro 12.9 keyboard and pencil, but for my main computer needs, I am going back to PPC.

Currently using a G4 iMac 700 Mhz 15 inches, I recentrly acquired a G4 MDD!!!


Any suggestions????

 

[weckart]

I recentrly acquired a G4 MDD!!!
Any suggestions????

I have just swapped the noisy PSU fans for the oft suggested Everflow ones. I am not sure it is any quieter at idle or under moderate load. The fans still whine annoyingly. I am leaving the big Delta fan in situ. Replacements for that all have the same dBA readings.

 

[YaBe]

Well oddly enought I quite like the "sound / noise" those old Mac do .

Wondering if SSD is a good idea or not for the MDD and what OS / App combo would best perform on such machine.. def looking at Adobe CC1 and possibly 10.4.9

 

[MagicBoy]

Why not 10.4.11?

 

[YaBe]

Why not 10.4.11?

Yeah sorry ment .11 the latest one ... it is the one currently installed on my iMac G4 (i think 1,5 might be too slow)

 

[MagicBoy]

With a graphics card that supports Core Image then I'd go 10.5 Leopard on an MDD. It'll also run later versions of Creative Suite. CS4 says G5 on the requirements, but runs fine on a fast G4 in my experience.

SSD will make the machine feel more responsive, but large transfers speeds are limited by the transfer rates on the IDE bus. A decent mSATA SSD in an adapter is probably the way forward as most native IDE SSDs are expensive ... and rubbish.

 

[YaBe]

With a graphics card that supports Core Image then I'd go 10.5 Leopard on an MDD. It'll also run later versions of Creative Suite. CS4 says G5 on the requirements, but runs fine on a fast G4 in my experience.

SSD will make the machine feel more responsive, but large transfers speeds are limited by the transfer rates on the IDE bus. A decent mSATA SSD in an adapter is probably the way forward as most native IDE SSDs are expensive ... and rubbish.

Cool, thanks I am not into moving files that much rather in making the system more zippy (it is what my G4 iMac lacks, it does the job but always waiting for the HD to catch up).

Any idea on a good adapter for the ssd?

 

[weckart]

Cool, thanks I am not into moving files that much rather in making the system more zippy (it is what my G4 iMac lacks, it does the job but always waiting for the HD to catch up).

Any idea on a good adapter for the ssd?

Why not get a SATA PCI card and go native?That should make things even peppier. There is a thread here about flashing generic cards and I think these work fine in all G4 Macs except Quicksilvers.

 

[YaBe]

Why not get a SATA PCI card and go native?That should make things even peppier. There is a thread here about flashing generic cards and I think these work fine in all G4 Macs except Quicksilvers.

I would have to look at that, since I know nothing about flashing... thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Dronecatcher]

def looking at Adobe CC1 and possibly 10.4.9

Adobe Creative Cloud is way beyond your machine - you need an Intel Mac running 10.7 and higher.
CS3 or CS4 are a good fit though.
What spec machine do you have?

 

[YaBe]

Adobe Creative Cloud is way beyond your machine - you need an Intel Mac running 10.7 and higher.
CS3 or CS4 are a good fit though.
What spec machine do you have?

Yes you are right, I ment CS not CC (currently running that on the g4 iMac )

 

[eyoungren]

I would suggest TenFourFox as your browser. I have some optimizations for it that you can find in my signature.

If Mozilla is not your style and you are more of a Safari/Webkit type person then you may have some issues if you want to stay with Tiger.

There are devleopment kits for Webkit that modernize those browsers but Tiger Webkit as far as I know is dead and Leopard Webkit may be too. LWK though had it's last release in May 2017 so it's going to be far more up to date.

Keep in mind that websites are constantly changing. With the advent of Firefox 56 I am finding that the regular websites I've had no issue accessing with T4Fx are now requiring me to login with a useragent change to FF56 if I want to see any content at all. Otherwise it's just a blank page.

Turning to other matters, the usual. Max the ram and run the biggest/fastes HD you can afford. SSDs, as you brought up are a good option.

I would note though that the G5 has SATA native. You are not going to get full on SATA speeds on your MDD with a SATA card, but it will be faster than internal IDE. Even the G5s though are limited to SATA I.

 

[YaBe]

Thanks to everyone, I can’t wait for the MDD to arrive! I am trying to rebuy all the Macs I have owned and stupidly sold....now to find an iBook 466 SE graphite in good condition!

 

[AphoticD]

Thanks to everyone, I can’t wait for the MDD to arrive! I am trying to rebuy all the Macs I have owned and stupidly sold....now to find an iBook 466 SE graphite in good condition!

Sounds like you have been (re)bitten by the PowerPC bug! It's satisfying to run these older Macs and make them chug along in their most efficient state, even knowing that they have only a fraction of the processing power of current Macs.

I just picked up a very affordable iMac10,1 (21.5" Late 2009, C2D 3.06Ghz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 9400M) and installed a 256GB mSATA SSD in it. This is my first ever iMac. It runs High Sierra nicely and it is pretty to look at, but I still find myself gravitating toward the G5s and G4s.

I was hopeful there might be a hack to get Target Display Mode working for this model so that I can use the iMac as a display for my DC G5, but haven't found anything yet.

 

[YaBe]

Sounds like you have been (re)bitten by the PowerPC bug! It's satisfying to run these older Macs and make them chug along in their most efficient state, even knowing that they have only a fraction of the processing power of current Macs.

I just picked up a very affordable iMac10,1 (21.5" Late 2009, C2D 3.06Ghz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 9400M) and installed a 256GB mSATA SSD in it. This is my first ever iMac. It runs High Sierra nicely and it is pretty to look at, but I still find myself gravitating toward the G5s and G4s.

I was hopeful there might be a hack to get Target Display Mode working for this model so that I can use the iMac as a display for my DC G5, but haven't found anything yet.

Well I have been bitten more by nostalgia, I really miss the day when those machine were "exciting", It might be that I am getting older, but as much as I love the news stuff, computer had a different "taste" back then, and by using Power PC again and those beautiful machines I hope to put the fun back into computers.

 

[CooperBox]

Well I have been bitter more by nostalgia, I really miss the day when those machine were "exciting", It might be that I am getting older, but as much as I love the news stuff, computer had a different "taste" back then, and by using Power PC again and those beautiful machines I hope to put the fun back into computers.

Not so much getting older, more a case of getting more sensible - especially ditching theTouchbar 15 inches MBP...... I too have 'seen the light' and have my RetMBP 15" up for sale.

 

[YaBe]

Not so much getting older, more a case of getting more sensible - especially ditching theTouchbar 15 inches MBP...... I too have 'seen the light' and have my RetMBP 15" up for sale.

It might have been Steve's aura, or again age.. but back then you felt excited, opening those cubical boxes, the smell of the inside.... the plastic wrapping the keyboard the spinning whine of the HD.

It could have been the idea of owning a "supercomputer" or the magic of iMovie (we take if for granted now but back then was WOW)... the sound of the pro speaker was amazing (and still is better than anything coming out of a Mac nowadays).

You really felt that you bought an expensive machine, but that it was made with passion, today you get a great machine, you spend a lot of money and you end up with a GREAT commercial product but not one that was made with passion.

 

[jst333]

I totally agree "nostalgia"... Yes, I miss the feeling of being the underdog, and shunned by others for be a Mac User. Now I just feel like one of the unemotional drones from the 1984 mac commercial.

 

[YaBe]

Yep, we were "cool" because we thought different, and we are not doing it anymore.
I remember people calling me Mac Evangelist, and people were like..."a Mac can do that?" We had a different architecture, we barely even wanted to hear "Running Windows on a Mac", I mean it was cool with Virtual PC but it was more to say I can do it rather than I need to do it, today people use Parallels and VMware a lot, and seems like moving away from Intel (to ARM) is a bad choice because you lose Windows compatibility....like we wanted / needed back then.

I dunno you felt kind of part of an elite, of people who really knew how to run a computer.... the same feeling I have today running a PowerPC, people around me are like "can you really do that with an old computer?"

 

[bunnspecial]

It's interesting to me to think that-from my vantage point-Macs are more popular than ever.

I don't teach a subject or in a manner that's conducive to taking notes on a computer, but none the less I can look out a lecture hall and half or better of the computers I see are Macs.

Next year's freshman class will be mostly people who were born in a year that starts with "20", and in the context of Macs that means that most have not been a world where the Sawtooth G4 was "the first home Supercomputer" or where WiFi was just a novel new idea.

Even though I wasn't a Mac user back in those days, I still followed their development. I used iMac G3s in high school, although I developed a hatred for them. I now realize that it was probably because the administrator didn't know anything about Macs and the OS installs(I couldn't tell you, but I'd guess that most were running 8.5, the shipping OS for the "5 flavors" tray loaders) had a lot of baggage that students had likely installed.

I DO remember when the G5 Quad came out, and spending a while playing with one connected to a 30" Cinema at Best Buy(I don't think there was an Apple store in the state at the time). Everything about it blew me away, but I was a senior in high school at it was incomprehensibly expensive. Heck, 12 years later that set up still would have been incomprehensibly expensive new(I have enough equipment to duplicate it a couple of times over now, although I paid used prices ).

 

[AphoticD]

Funny considering we are antipodeans, but my high school also had a Mac lab filled with bright Tangerine tray-load iMacs running Nanosaur, Bugdom, Dirt Bike, Snood and AppleWorks, just to name a few class favourites... We must be of similar vintage.

Can't say I liked the iMac much even back then though... I was a believer in the expandable beige Power Mac, but I drooled over the Blue & White G3 and Graphite G4, Altivec powered "Super Computer".

 

[eyoungren]

Man, I'm old.

Time was my mom taught computer science (she is/was a teacher) and the labs at the schools she taught at were at various points, Radio Shack MC-10s, Apple IIs and TRS-80s.

 

[bobesch]

(…) I just picked up a very affordable iMac10,1 (21.5" Late 2009, C2D 3.06Ghz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 9400M) and installed a 256GB mSATA SSD in it.
(…) I was hopeful there might be a hack to get Target Display Mode working for this model so that I can use the iMac as a display for my DC G5, but haven't found anything yet.

You may try and fiddle with different settings of the combination of
- ScreenSharing/VNC or Avatron AirDisplay to share/control the screen
- Teleport or Synergy to control remote mouse/keyboard
- Rogue Amoeba "Airfoil" to share Audio wireless or "LineIn" App to share Audio via cable and AudioOut/AudioIn

Works nicely for me with a combination of 12" PBG4 and a white 24" intel c2duo iMac.
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/teleport-jpg.669382/
Maybe you'll have to use the wayback-machine to find the old versions (or send me a PN, if you cannot find the appropriate version …)

 

[AphoticD]

You may try and fiddle with different settings of the combination of
- ScreenSharing/VNC or Avatron AirDisplay to share/control the screen
- Teleport or Synergy to control remote mouse/keyboard
- Rogue Amoeba "Airfoil" to share Audio wireless or "LineIn" App to share Audio via cable and AudioOut/AudioIn

Works nicely for me with a combination of 12" PBG4 and a white 24" intel c2duo iMac.
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/teleport-jpg.669382/
Maybe you'll have to use the wayback-machine to find the old versions (or send me a PN, if you cannot find the appropriate version …)

Good point. Synergy is working well. The Target Display Mode feature is (yet another) one of those bells and whistles that you only really care about once you know you can't have it.

I didn't even think about it last week.

 

[bobesch]

Good point. Synergy is working well. The Target Display Mode feature is (yet another) one of those bells and whistles that you only really care about once you know you can't have it.

I didn't even think about it last week.

Oh, the target-display-mode is really limited to the later intel macs
...
Install "ScreenSharingMenulet" on your intel-mac/PPC. Connect full-screen via "ScreenSharing" from the intel-mac to your PPC. So your PPC is full-screen visible on your intel iMac.
Control mouse and keyboard from your PPC-Mac to the intel mac with teleport/synergy.
All things you do on your PPC can be seen on the big iMac's display then.
Or make your iMac another or mirrored display via Avatron AirDisplay.
Everything's good fun.
Especially when combined with music-sharing to the subwooferd iMac ...