Intel Deferred Yet Again

[Dronecatcher]

Again, I'd been considering a Mac update recently, looking at Intel machines - 1st gen Mac Pros, iMacs & Macbooks...but again I've chosen PPC.
It's all about prices. I've just bought a near mint Quad for £70 and a 15" 1.67 DLSD Powerbook for £51. The Powerbook has the bonus of already having 2Gb RAM and a 100Gb 7200RPM drive and the Quad has 7GB and a Geforce 6600 plus it's the quietest Powermac I've owned - even under stress it just hums along - even when playing Youtube Flash at 1080 full screen.
Of course, I may regret getting the Quad when the electricity bill rolls in......

 

[MysticCow]

Winter is coming, so the quad will work out nicely as a heater.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Winter is coming, so the quad will work out nicely as a heater.

Yeah, my last Quad was under the desk and positioned to keep my feet warm

 

[cw48494]

Nice finds. I find if I'm patient, deals fall into my lap. I bought my quad for $60, 1.67ghz dlsd for $40, Mac Pro 1,1 for $100 and got my G4 towers for free. Though I'm jealous of your quad, my lcs needs work.

 

[jbarley]

I agree about the quad being quiet.
Mine sits right up on my desk, very close to my right elbow, and I've never given a second thought to any noise issues.
When it first starts or wakes from sleep it sorta takes a big breath, then quickly resumes a very quiet mode.

 

[QSDP-User]

Dronecatcher, you're a graphic designer (and a composer), right?

So like eyoungren, I'm assuming you can actually earn some bread with your PPCs?
Which is kinda like icing on the cake.

 

[eyoungren]

Dronecatcher, you're a graphic designer (and a composer), right?

So like eyoungren, I'm assuming you can actually earn some bread with your PPCs?
Which is kinda like icing on the cake.

Done on a G4 Quicksilver.

 

[flyrod]

What software do you use to make stuff like that? It turned out nice!

 

[eyoungren]

What software do you use to make stuff like that? It turned out nice!

I found the images online. Our church uses a digital projector and MBPs so I have the size templated in InDesign. That's where I do the layout.

I cut out the backgrounds on Vader and R2 using Photoshop and imported PSDs. The fonts are Star Jedi (for the main font) and ITC Serif Gothic which I also found online.

After assembly in ID, I exported a PDF:X/3 (which is for RGB work) PDF. But the person who works the projector needs a PNG so I have to open the PDF in Acrobat and save out a PNG file. I then double check the size in Photoshop.

I could export a JPG directly from ID and convert to PNG in Photoshop, but I'd rather Acrobat do the vector/raster conversion directly from a PDF and not use Photoshop to convert a JPG. Not strictly necessary, but the prepress person in me demands it.

The size by the way is 16 inches by 9 inches at 300dpi. I had to size this pic down considerably to post it here.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Dronecatcher, you're a graphic designer (and a composer), right?

So like eyoungren, I'm assuming you can actually earn some bread with your PPCs?
Which is kinda like icing on the cake.

I only design for fun now but yes, it was my business in the past and PPC machines did ok for me - I always used Adobe CS3 across various Macs and it was always particularly gratifying when a happy client had their big glossy catalogue in hand, produced on my 'redundant' G4 or G5
As for music - Macs have always ruled

 

[Dronecatcher]

I agree about the quad being quiet.
Mine sits right up on my desk, very close to my right elbow, and I've never given a second thought to any noise issues.
When it first starts or wakes from sleep it sorta takes a big breath, then quickly resumes a very quiet mode.

I think maybe not all Quads are made equal - my first was particularly noisy under stress and the dual machines I've had are very loud.

 

[eyoungren]

…it was always particularly gratifying when a happy client had their big glossy catalogue in hand, produced on my 'redundant' G4 or G5

I know that feeling. Anytime I look through one of our papers each week I see the physical evidence of my work.

Some editions are more work than others.

Sure wish I had a quad at work though! I hate this MP and I hate Yosemite. The type of work I do though a quad would tear right through it with no effort. Even my coworker's G5 doesn't have issues and it's only a single 1.8.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Sure wish I had a quad at work though! I hate this MP and I hate Yosemite. The type of work I do though a quad would tear right through it with no effort. Even my coworker's G5 doesn't have issues and it's only a single 1.8.

What is it you dislike about the MP - or is it just the combination with the OS?
I've designed on 1st gen Intels - my gripe there was the shared graphics and I was convinced the whole experience was more PC like - more crashes, freeze ups, more updates etc.

 

[jbarley]

I think maybe not all Quads are made equal - my first was particularly noisy under stress and the dual machines I've had are very loud.

I've heard this of some quads, also heard of others with near silent quads, don't know why mine is so quite, but I'm just glad it is.
The only time I've heard just how ugly it can get is when I ran a thermal calibration and also when running Appleajack in single user mode.

 

[eyoungren]

What is it you dislike about the MP - or is it just the combination with the OS?
I've designed on 1st gen Intels - my gripe there was the shared graphics and I was convinced the whole experience was more PC like - more crashes, freeze ups, more updates etc.

I don't care for the combination of Mac/OS. I work in a mixed environment and all of my work is done over the network to our Win 2012 Server. Finder can be slow some times and the fact that labels were killed is really crimping my workflow. I also am forced to use an Applescript to size down windows because the default size is too large.

And of course, I have to use one of the G4s as a print server in order to print.

The only good thing about Yosemite is that it fixed the Mavericks SMB2 bug. That was seriously killing production when every time you tried to save InDesign would force quit on you because Finder had dropped the network connection to the server.

Very, frustrating!

At least I solved my reboot issue. Parallels was preventing the Mac from restarting. I always had to shut it down by holding the power button in, then restarting.

 

[rawweb]

I started feeling bizarrely nostalgic lately...so I picked up a L'05 quad (absolute mint condition, original box) for about $50 USD. I got lucky and it had the 512mb Quadro FX 4500. I had to flush/partially rebuild the LCS system...my CPU1 was overheating big time...I was probably only about 20 or 30 bucks into that on miscellaneous parts.

On the flip, I threw in an old 128gb SSD I had lying around and a 3TB Western Digital green HDD. Enough to play with and get dangerous. I found 16gb of ram on eBay for under $20 bucks so I couldn't resist. All and all, I'm only about 100 bucks into this thing and just so happen to have an old 30" ACD to team this bad boy up with.

In 1999 I had the fortune of winning a local state association of broadcasters award so got treated to NAB. This is where I met my first love, Final Cut Pro. I worked a lot of hours at the grocery store that summer, eventually saving enough money to go down to the reseller and pick up my very first Mac, then much later, I gathered enough pennies to get FCP. I was pretty devastated in 2011 when my beloved left me for a bunch of young cheap skateboarders...I digress. I was cleaning out my desk a few months ago and came across my old FCP Studio 3 install discs. I always kicked myself for selling my 2003 G5 back in 09 for that shiny big iMac. So anyway, I'm hilariously as we speak exporting a feature film I'm working on out of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and transferring it over to the G5 just to play around with. I don't know what's gotten into me.

Congrats on that quad! Make sure you get iStat Pro (or something similar). Watch those temperatures like a hawk. You should probably be playing in the 30-55 degrees celsius range on both CPU's. These LCS systems, given their age, need to be watched very closely. No different than one would care for a classic car (truth be, the damned thing is basically built just like a car radiator, delphi parts to boot!).

 

[Dronecatcher]

On the flip, I threw in an old 128gb SSD I had lying around and a 3TB Western Digital green HDD. Enough to play with and get dangerous. I found 16gb of ram on eBay for under $20 bucks so I couldn't resist. All and all, I'm only about 100 bucks into this thing and just so happen to have an old 30" ACD to team this bad boy up with.

That's one helluva set up
Regarding temp monitoring and similar problems, my attitude is at the low purchase price I almost expect a disaster at some point, If I can't fix it for free I'll just break for parts and get another.