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Help David get a PPC!

D

davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,973
476
Alice, TX
I've started a few threads on here about purchasing a PPC and have decided to just put everything in one thread.

My need. Nothing. This is just going to be something to play around with. I may do some iMovie stuff on there since I don't think much has changed between the current version and the last version for PPC. I'm also not sure how much more efficient it will be compared to my MBP. I also want to use it to play some games of yesterday. Maybe use it as a media storage area, but I don't have much media.

I kind of just want to experience PPC. I'll probably sell it off after a while, unless I fall madly in love with it.

Now my want. I want something that exemplifies Apple's desires during the PPC era. I'm kind of leaning towards the PMG4. Beautiful design, ADC and Pro Audio for one cable connection. The Cube is nice but I'm guessing under powered.

Right now on CL there's a Dual 800 and Dual 1.0. D800 comes with 22" Cinema Display for $150, Dual 1.0 is just the G4 and only $50, but has someone ahead of me. There's also a 20" Cinema Display for $50. I'd prefer the 1.0 since I can use large hard drives in it, but I really don't see myself purchasing lots of HDD space for it.

I would also need to purchase a keyboard and mouse for both of those.

Or I could just save my money.

Or purchase a display and keyboard for my MBP and stay in the year 2013.

Thoughts?

:apple:
 
I can only really comment on the keyboard and mouse. That era of PowerPC was sort of jumped over for me. I had a 2001 TiBook from 2002 to late 2009 and the work Macs I had were a PowerMac G5 and two low-end G4s (350/400mhz).

So, essentially I skipped the entire run of the G4s and the rest of the G5 line, which is why I can't really speak to your potential purchase.

However, I know that the aluminum keyboards work with PowerPC Macs. My coworker has the G4/450 and she has the aluminum keyboard.

RedCroissant uses a MagicMouse via Bluetooth with his iBook G4 so there is that option. The Mighty Mouse works too. I imagine the aluminum BT keyboards would work as well. You may not get the complete functionality because of the lower versions of OS X. But you should be close.
 
I use the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that came with my 2012 iMac with my Powerbook but you have to download some Apple software.
 
I don't think the PowerMacs have Bluetooth but I think I can get a USB BT adaptor. It'd be good to be able to use on both Macs.
 
First you need to decide:
1 - What you want
2 - What you need/are you going to do with it
3 - what is your budget

Then we can help you.
Suggest you to read the sticky faq here too =)
 
skinniezinho said:
First you need to decide:
1 - What you want
2 - What you need/are you going to do with it
3 - what is your budget

Then we can help you.
Suggest you to read the sticky faq here too =)
Click to expand...

I thought I've kind of answered those, but...
1. PowerPC Mac. Preferably a PowerMac G4. I'd like to run OS 9 and OS X Leopard.
2. Play with it, maybe get some games, maybe some video editing but my MBP might be better suited for that. Live the PowerPC experience.
3. To purchase I'd say definitely no more than $200 tops. Including everything I need and it be running great.

And I done read that. Interesting first few posts then everyone started talking about websites and stuff.
 
The number of macs that can run both os 9 and leopard is a bit limited. Basically you need to find something that can boot os 9 but has an 867mhz or faster processor. It is also helpful to have a supported video card. For laptops the answer is easy, only a titanium PowerBook with the 1ghz processor can do it. For desktops, anything that will meet the requirements above will suffice. Your best bet is a MDD that does not have FireWire 800 ports. I'm not sure on the model number but it was the last computer apple made which could boot os 9.

Edit: there are some tricks get leopard running on lower spec hardware but it probably won't run that well.
 
crewkid89 said:
Edit: there are some tricks get leopard running on lower spec hardware but it probably won't run that well.
Click to expand...

Leopard runs just fine on my 800 MHz iMac G4. About the same as on my 867 MHz PowerBook G4. (The iMac has a slightly faster hard drive and slightly more RAM, but an equivalent video card.)

I have used Leopard on a system as slow as 450 MHz. It wasn't significantly less useful than Tiger on such a system. (Both were slow enough to be painful.)
 
crewkid89 said:
Edit: there are some tricks get leopard running on lower spec hardware but it probably won't run that well.
Click to expand...
:D

We have a PowerMac G4/450 AGP at work. She's got 1GB of ram, a 100GB HD and she's running Leopard 10.5.8. I work for a newspaper so this Mac is running Adobe Creative Suite 4 (InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator), QuarkXPress 8.5, Office 2008, Suitcase Fusion 3 and Acrobat Pro 9.

She's a bit slower. But she keeps up and she produces. Ads, layout, legals and classifieds.

Oh…and she's running dual monitors.
 
Goftrey said:
The '03 model was a single.

If you're in the market for a PMG4 I'd also consider a dualie Quicksilver as well as an MDD.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm looking for. It's just hard to get them on CL. Plus I chicken out since I really don't need one.
 
davidg4781 said:
I thought I've kind of answered those, but...
1. PowerPC Mac. Preferably a PowerMac G4. I'd like to run OS 9 and OS X Leopard.
2. Play with it, maybe get some games, maybe some video editing but my MBP might be better suited for that. Live the PowerPC experience.
3. To purchase I'd say definitely no more than $200 tops. Including everything I need and it be running great.
Click to expand...

I think the latest OS that supports Classic mode is Tiger (unless I misunderstood you and you meant booting in each OS from separate HDDs), however if you don't just have to have Classic mode then IMO Leopard is better than Tiger (I use Leopard at home and until earlier this year I had used Tiger at work for some time).

Video editing is quite possible. I use an upgraded Digital Audio G4 that I have done some editing on in FCE. Slow renders, yes, but very capable.
 
macuser453787 said:
I think the latest OS that supports Classic mode is Tiger (unless I misunderstood you and you meant booting in each OS from separate HDDs), however if you don't just have to have Classic mode then IMO Leopard is better than Tiger (I use Leopard at home and until earlier this year I had used Tiger at work for some time).

Video editing is quite possible. I use an upgraded Digital Audio G4 that I have done some editing on in FCE. Slow renders, yes, but very capable.
Click to expand...

Dual boot would be great, I was thinking I could have two partitions on one HDD to solve this, but will I need two HDDs?

And for video editing it's mainly converting VHS tapes to DV, and I may want to convert cassette tapes to ACCs. There's no real special effects or anything for the video, just cutting and putting in the title or something like that, then putting it together in iDVD. It's mainly old home movies.

I tried doing this a few years back on my CD MacBook and it was painful. I haven't tried on my MBP since I don't think I have the originals anymore.

I just thought I should make sure the hardware I want to purchase for this is Universal. I'll probably go with El Gato but I remember another brand was out there.
 
davidg4781 said:
Dual boot would be great, I was thinking I could have two partitions on one HDD to solve this, but will I need two HDDs?

And for video editing it's mainly converting VHS tapes to DV, and I may want to convert cassette tapes to ACCs. There's no real special effects or anything for the video, just cutting and putting in the title or something like that, then putting it together in iDVD. It's mainly old home movies.

I tried doing this a few years back on my CD MacBook and it was painful. I haven't tried on my MBP since I don't think I have the originals anymore.

I just thought I should make sure the hardware I want to purchase for this is Universal. I'll probably go with El Gato but I remember another brand was out there.
Click to expand...

Well, I haven't had any experience with El Gato or similar, as the only editing I've done is with clips that are already digital. But, I'd say that certainly more speed and RAM is obviously better than less. :) I should add that my G4 has a processor upgrade to dual 1.8 gHz, and my HDs are running off a PCI SATA card instead of the stock ATA connector. FWIW, I also noticed a speed bump (believe it or not) after installing 3 sticks of OWC's high performance RAM (CAS latency 2):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/133SD5123282/

And a SSD for boot (and another for scratch, if applicable in iDVD) can't hurt either. Though I will add that that the editing I did was before I even owned SSDs.

As for partitions vs. different drives, my personal preference would be for separate drives, but as far as I know a partition would work too. My advice: don't put your working files on the boot drive, and don't designate the boot drive as a scratch disk. And if you partition, the other partition should not be designated as the scratch disk either. The scratch should be a dedicated drive, and your working files should ideally be on yet another disk. :)
 
Don't waste your time with the desktops. Otherwise you're just experiencing the older OS. You want either an iMac G4 or 5, or one of the G4 laptops.

That's just my opinion though. You'll still want a 100GB or more hard drive since you're dealing with media. If not, just remember that the best thing you can do is getting rid of the hard drive that has probably been in there since the day it shipped. It will make a HUGE performance difference, especially since read/write speeds are much better today.
 
Go for the dual 1.0. It will be pretty fast and it can run Leopard smoothly. Because it comes with the cinema display, it's already pretty good deal, but the seller might give it to you for $120-$130. Modern keyboards and mice work with the PPC Macs, but they're expensive. You can probably get a decent Apple keyboard and mouse combo on eBay for $15. As Jessica Lares said, the first thing you should do is replace the hard drive for a big increase in performance.
 
Jessica Lares said:
Don't waste your time with the desktops. Otherwise you're just experiencing the older OS. You want...one of the G4 laptops.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I agree with this, depending on the OP's usage. If he needs to be mobile with his video work then I guess a laptop makes sense, but if that's not necessary then a desktop would be a better way to go IMO because either way the computer will be crunching large amounts of data with video work, which means potential heat issues in a laptop. Also G4 desktops don't necessarily equate to older OS compatibility. I run Leopard on a Digital Audio (in my case am able to due to processor upgrade), but of course there are plenty of G4 towers out there that meet Leopard's install requirements.
 
philz4life said:
Go for the dual 1.0. It will be pretty fast and it can run Leopard smoothly. Because it comes with the cinema display, it's already pretty good deal, but the seller might give it to you for $120-$130. Modern keyboards and mice work with the PPC Macs, but they're expensive. You can probably get a decent Apple keyboard and mouse combo on eBay for $15. As Jessica Lares said, the first thing you should do is replace the hard drive for a big increase in performance.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking. I guess I have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to see if he's sold it.

I also won some new in box Apple Pro Speakers. I bid on them a while back, max bid of $30, just to see what would happen. Ended up winning them today for like $25 or something, free shipping. I'm guessing that's a good deal. I thought I remember seeing them go for more.

I might just end up buying all this stuff over time. I really want an external for my MBP. If I do that I can use it with the Power Mac, but eventually I want to get an acrylic Cinema Display, for cosmetics reason.
 
I ran my G4 DP 450 with both 9.2.2 and 10.4 and it worked flawlessly til the power supply got smoked. If you install each OS on a different drive you get fewer issues. I ran iLife09 on the G4 and it worked well with 10.4 You should be able to setup the same thing on anything faster then 500mhz though the dual 1.25 a friend had was very nice.
 
davidg4781 said:
I thought the e in eMac meant it's an educational model?
Click to expand...

Originally, all eMacs were for education only. But the public liked them so much, Apple released the for general sale. I think this happened around the 1Ghz model time. There were a few models that were limited to being sold only to education though. One of the 1Ghz models is of that type. They're generally slower, with a simple CD-ROM or no optical drive at all, and a smaller hard drive. Apple still sells some education only desktops. Currently there's an education only iMac that is much less powerful that the least powerful public one. I don't even think it has Thunderbolt.
 
Intell said:
Originally, all eMacs were for education only. But the public liked them so much, Apple released the for general sale. I think this happened around the 1Ghz model time. There were a few models that were limited to being sold only to education though. One of the 1Ghz models is of that type. They're generally slower, with a simple CD-ROM or no optical drive at all, and a smaller hard drive. Apple still sells some education only desktops. Currently there's an education only iMac that is much less powerful that the least powerful public one. I don't even think it has Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...

If that is the case, maybe the last eMac to boot OS9 is an educational model. According to everymac (I know), there was one 1GHz model to boot OS9 (the one with the combo drive). The rest didn't.

I will have to try booting OS9 on my 1GHz eMac. I know it has a SuperDrive and isn't an educational model.
 
There are two very different 1Ghz eMac models. The PC-133Mhz and the DDR model. The PC-133Mhz model can boot OS 9, even with a SuperDrive. It just has to somehow be put on the internal drive. The DDR model cannot boot OS 9. All DDR equipped Macs cannot boot OS 9, except for the MDD G4s. That seems to be Apple cut off along with USB 2.
 
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