just got a free powermac and need advice on buying another

[student_trap]

Hello all,

Firstly, thought id say that i was given a free powermac 466/128 ram/20GB HD that seems to be working pretty well. However, revisiting the old mac design classics has led me to look into getting another model for basic internet/email/itunes in another room in my house.

Someone locally is offering their G4 933/1.25 GB Ram/ 240 GB HD model (im guessing from 2002), alongside their 17" apple display for a total between £220-250.

Is this worth it? are there any problems that i should look out for.

Also, where is the best place to get more ram for the 466, crucial is very expensive?

 

[McDughf]

You would be surprised how much life is still left in the old G4's - my parents still use my first dual 800 Quicksilver for daily tasks such as eMail, internet, iPhoto and all the rest of them with no problems, apart from maybe a few stuttering videos on youtube because of those stupid ads.

I would say £200 - £250 is a moderate to reasonable price for that kit, considering it includes a screen and the spec.

According To MacTracker, It Still Uses Classic Airport Technology, So Expect slow wireless if you decide to get the optional airport card. it also only sports USB 1 technology, which is VERY slow, and if you were thinking of syncing your iPhone or iPods it will take forever. You can buy USB 2 upgrade cards, but if you do, spend the extra on a Belkin one, which is guaranteed to work on os X, as the cheaper Maplin types ones don't ( Even if they say they do on the box...... Experience talking )

Also to note these only support the older PATA ( or ATA drives as we knew them as ) so if you are looking to get a SATA drive, you will need to shell out the extra for something like a Sonnet SATA adaptor ( Which I did for my G4, and it Cost in the region of about £250 ).

So, with all these things to consider, is it *REALLY* worth it?
Well, as I said before, for daily tasks, the original config is still FANtastic, and I can forsee my Parents G4 going strong for some years to come.

Barney

 

[ftored]

Well as for the usb 2.0 i am using a cheap 6-7 pound pci card i got from eBay with no problems. For bluetooth the same too. I believe there are a ton of usb wireless dongles to work for them

For the hard drives you have right though. I am stuck with some pata drives from the past for now. For the sata card i am thinking of buying a cheap sata pci card and i hope it will work as usb 2.0 did. If it doesnt.. I ll put it in a pc then .

Only thing i can fault my dual 450 is the graphics card. It is a buit laggy in tiger and i think the videos will be very slow in youtube. That's why i bought a 9500 from ebay for 5 quid and i ll try flashing that to mac specs.:$. I just like to mess around with them.

Btw for the money you say it will cost you can get an iumac g4 with the 17 inch screen and 1.25ghz. I know that a MP is better but that looks very nice. And it is a classic piece of a machine

 

[AlexMaximus]

G4

Hello all,

Firstly, thought id say that i was given a free powermac 466/128 ram/20GB HD that seems to be working pretty well. However, revisiting the old mac design classics has led me to look into getting another model for basic internet/email/itunes in another room in my house.

Someone locally is offering their G4 933/1.25 GB Ram/ 240 GB HD model (im guessing from 2002), alongside their 17" apple display for a total between £220-250.

Is this worth it? are there any problems that i should look out for.

Also, where is the best place to get more ram for the 466, crucial is very expensive?

Sounds like an "ok" deal. However I personally would try to get a Mac with a DUAL CPU. For that money you may even get a decent G4 MDD 867MHz dual, a separate apple display AND have enough $$$ left for maxing out the Ram.

Regarding "Life left in a G4" - I have a G4 1,42 Dual with a "mutant" Nvidia 7800 GS card in it and a Raptor SATA 10K drive as a startup drive.
Leopard runs super fast like a dream on it and Quake 4 is really fun on that machine.

 

[zombitronic]

Three of my four main Macs are Power Mac G4s. Two Mirrored Drive Doors (Dual 1.8 GHz Sonnet CPU / 2GB RAM and a Single 1.2 GHz CPU / 1.5 GB RAM) and one Power Book G4 (500 MHz CPU and 768MB RAM). All smoothly running Leopard.

I use the 1.2 GHz MDD as an iTunes server and backup this and all my other Macs via Time Machine to 2TB of external RAID 0 FW400 drives plugged into this Mac. Gigabit network, of course.

My 1.8 GHz is used for GarageBand and organizing my iTunes Library.

My Power Book, even though it's well below Apples minimum requirements for Leopard, still runs it like a charm. (See Target Disk Mode for installing Leopard on an unsupported Mac). I did the upgrade mainly for the built in screen sharing and the nice networking features in the Finder. And Time Machine, but I did the initial backup wired.

My newest Mac is a new Mini used as a media center to watch all those videos on my 1.2 GHz MDD iTunes server. And to record Lost with my HDHomeRun and EyeTV and watch the newest South Park episodes online in HD.

Anyway, the point is that you can have a very functional Mac network using lots of old Macs. It really depends on what you want to do with each one. Your freebie might be okay as a file server running Tiger. If you go for a newer one, though, I'd make sure it can meet the minimum specs of Leopard (867 GHz CPU and 512 MB RAM). The difference between Tiger and Leopard is great, in my opinion. Remember, if you want to install Leopard on an unsupported Mac, you have to do it from a Mac that meets the minimum requirements. Good luck!

 

[zmttoxics]

Thats too much IMHO. I got a 1.25 eMac for free, another 1.25 eMac for 50 buc. They tend to go for 200$ CDN around here.

 

[student_trap]

Hello guys,

firstly, thanks for all of the replies, they have been very helpful indeed.

The latest info is that I have asked the guy and he is willing to lower the price a little. The specs are as follows

933mhz G4
1.25 GB RAM
240 GB Hard Drive
Apple LCD monitor (the plastic ones)
Original keyboard (and non original mouse)

for around £125 (around $185)

However, it comes without any install discs which is a little problematic.

Is this now a good deal?