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Is this a good idea? Buying a Power Mac G5 to browse the internet with TenFourFox

Trying to use a G5 in 2017 on the web was a dead end....it's basically unusable today and will only get worse. This is like throwing money on a fire. I totally understand the draw, but these G5 machines are useless today unless you are running specific applications to get work done (like Adobe CS, Shake or Final Cut with legacy workflows). On the web, modern software, no. Don't waste your time, you will be disappointed with this. As dope as these were in their day, that day is long long long gone. They are door stops. I have a dual 1.8 in my collection that I use specifically for CineWave. It's not going to be what you think. Get something Intel that can at the very least run Big Sir. I have a 2008 MacPro that is holding on for dear life and does surprisingly well after some upgrades. That is a much better choice than a G5.
 
BellSystem said:
Trying to use a G5 in 2017 on the web was a dead end....it's basically unusable today and will only get worse.
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As the OP also has a Macbook Pro I think we can assume they wouldn't be buying a PowerPC as a daily driver - although given their distinct reticence in interacting with any of the advice given on this thread and the others - who knows?

My DD is an i5 Mac mini and I derive no pleasure from browsing with it whatsoever.

Conversely, everytime any of my PowerPCs go online I get a buzz as they represent achievement despite the odds - and their limitations remind me that most of the sites they can't handle are distracting garbage anyway.

Personally, I love the idea of a simpler online experience - text, images, sound and video presented without tracking and distractions and for that, PowerPCs are still capable.
 
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@2aw
if you REALLY want to try Powerpc - let´s try it.

But if I want to start with powerpc, I will go for last Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz, Powermac G4 2x 1.42 GHz or Powermac G5 dual/quad core ( not dual CPU ). iMac G5 is a little bit slow-responding in some cases ( it can be only my experience of course ), but it is compact all-in-one and somebody like it.

Anyway, it is upto you, but have in mind that these old Powerpc generations is a HOBBY. So expect joy, love, stress, but not daily hardwork. And of course, do not use internet banking there. ;-)
 
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KingofGotham1 said:
I cant wait for PART THREE...with a slightly revised question
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Dronecatcher said:
for people who've no direct experience of something vintage to explore and gravitate towards it - as they will have no bad memories
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Oh noes, are you telling me that PowerPCs were not the golden age of Apple computers and in reality they were not as good as everyone says they were back then?

(I am just being a bit sarcastic)
 
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2aw said:
Oh noes, are you telling me that PowerPCs were not the golden age of Apple computers and in reality they were not as good as everyone says they were back then?

(I am just being a bit sarcastic)
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Well having been there, I can tell you:

Available software and peripherals were a nightmare for years.

Apple benchmarks were cherry picked - in real life PCs of similar spec were sometimes faster.

Being Apple often meant you were weird rather than cool pre-iOS.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Conversely, everytime any of my PowerPCs go online I get a buzz as they represent achievement despite the odds - and their limitations remind me that most of the sites they can't handle are distracting garbage anyway.
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There’s also something tangible to having grown alongside these Macs as past daily drivers in our own lives and knowing how capable they were in their day. And with that, having a more grounded sense in (and appreciation for) the practical limits of what these Macs could do — such as your being able to watch YT clips on your iBook G4 or my getting a build of Snow Leopard to run on a PowerBook G4.

In that sense, knowing what these Macs were and weren’t lend to the magic — or buzz — of knowing all the things they could do, even if at the time one wasn’t able to try everything out.

Dronecatcher said:
Personally, I love the idea of a simpler online experience - text, images, video presented without tracking and distractions and for that, PowerPCs are still capable.
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If I go onto eBay, how much do you reckon buying a used internet from, say, 2005 might set one back… 🤔
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Personally, I love the idea of a simpler online experience - text, images, sound and video presented without tracking and distractions and for that, PowerPCs are still capable.
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If you want to visit a certain collection of sites, sure. But if the OP wants to visit a modern site that has prerequisites that the PPC Mac just can’t do….they are SOL. I would rather the web be more like it was in the early days, but today even the simplest websites can be a dumpster fire lol. The web went off the rails a long time ago.
 
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KingofGotham1 said:
I cant wait for PART THREE...with a slightly revised question
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2aw said:
No, I am very much human.

You guys have managed to convince me to give up my dream of getting a Power Mac G5 (it does seem like overkill to get one just for browsing the internet), so I thought about moving onto the next best PowerPC computer for that... and here we are in this new thread.
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It's overkill to get any PowerPC Mac to browse the web. I do appreciate the point that @Dronecatcher made about being able to use a pared down, simpler web but you have to think about whether that's really your goal or you're just trying to use an obscure machine to do something that you could easily do with much more modern equipment.

If you really want something older that has actual utility, try a newer Intel Mac mini or iMac, even up to 2011-12. They can run PowerPC software for the most part, and are much more viable. Depending on your needs these can be a solid second computer that will give you good performance for a while longer.

As others have noted as well, these G5 systems are also not very reliable. Given that the oldest Power Mac G5 models will be 20 years old in a few months, they are getting to the point where either they will have hardware issues or already have had hardware issues. Same with the iMacs, and even some later G4 towers. You have to go into these machines knowing that you will need the time, patience, and skill to maintain the hardware as it ages. In my opinion, for your uses, there is no PowerPC Mac computer that will be of utility for what you're trying to accomplish.
 
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B S Magnet said:
Here’s one. On the company’s compatibility chart, this card explicitly states “PM G5 bootable”.

And we also have the resident expert on this era of FirmTek cards, @Ataman Honcho Honchev, who’d be best qualified to speak definitively on this.
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IIRC those are esata - what I was inferring (poorly I admit) was a pcie card with inward facing sata ports. Similar to the PCI sonnet, acard or flashed 3112, 3512 etc. cards we use for older PCI macs so sata cabling can be routed internally. That is cool regardless though.
 
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From your message history, it's clear that you've been shopping for a PowerPC Mac to use for web tasks for a bit now. It's time to stop. There are people who make it work, but then they have to do such massive workarounds to get some sites to work, or just write off others that I can't imagine buying any one of these machines specifically to run a web browser.

That's actually been the hard problem killing a lot of the usefulness of these Macs to the general public, ever since Chromium and Firefox started using Rust. You revived a thread about using a Raspberry Pi as a proxy to have working web browsing, which is fine and all, but when you don't already have the old Mac, you might as well buy a Pi specifically to browse the web. At that point, why not get the Pi to browse the internet? It'd run better and faster. You wouldn't need workarounds to check your email, for example. Yes, in 2023, even email is a struggle for these old machines, as protocols and webmail clients have passed them on.

There is no G5 able to do what you want. If you get one for this particular task, you will be disappointed. You are asking for a challenge, and one that even, if you do everything, you will need to shape your web usage around the hardware you buy, which defeats the purpose of a machine specifically for internet use.

That said, I personally love having a G4 MDD for retro gaming. I'm also really lucky it came with a rebuilt power supply, because that is the pain point on those. That's the other side of why people are telling you no. You are asking about hardware with almost no support that is dying of old age.

2aw said:
What can be improved on this idea?
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Honestly? Stop having it. I'm not kidding. If internet is what you want a PowerMac for, just, please stop. Don't let there be a part 3.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
Good point, but it still doesn’t make sense to buy a machine just for that.
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It does if you also want to own a piece of Apple history and have a retro Mac and have something to spend money on upgrades that will never make it any more useful and have something to post on Instagram and Reddit and Youtube and...and....you get the drift. But as the OP isn't talking we're taking guesses.
 
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