Lets Hear your PPC stories

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Holy balls! I'll read this later when I'm not so tired . However, thanks - in advance - for mentioning my name! I had a great time on this forum and had a blast contributing to threads.

If it weren't for my cheap/free Mac Pro/s, I'd probably still have my DP 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 as my main desktop. I still feel sad that I haven't used PPC Macs in a while, but I sort of had to move on. Sorry to sound like a downer, but had to distance myself. That being said, it's great to come back once in a while and be welcomed back by familiar faces (Avatars[?]). My collecting will come to a close for a while, but it seems like you may have some years to go, depending on your age.

Good luck with your collecting! I've had a blast with it since about 2009 or 2010. Now I gotta see what happens when I move into my own place one day. Better have room for these babies!


A special shout-out to everyone here for keeping this one of the friendliest areas on MacRumors. I've run into some good people in other sectors, but also jerks. So far, no jerks here.
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Feeling old are we?
Join the club, I was born 1937 and out of school on my own and serving in the Canadian navy by 1954.
Point here is there were not a lot of old computer "freebies" around then.
Hell I'm sure I've got skivvies in my closet drawer older then a lot of the members on this forum.

edit: now to get back on track, I started my Apple journey about 2005 with the purchase of a 12" G4 iBook, (still being used by my wife), this is after many years of dabbling with early home computer types, TRS-80, and IBM clones running a multitude of operating systems.
Since then I've surrounded myself with several models that tweaked my curiosity, mainly PB 12" & 15", G4 MDD, G5 quads.
And the beat goes on.....

Wow - I actually have some non-computer-related questions to ask you. You mind if I PM you?

 

[jbarley]

Wow - I actually have some non-computer-related questions to ask you. You mind if I PM you?

It never hurts to ask so give it a shot.

 

[hartleymartin]

I have a 2003 PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz CPUs. Got it for $20 on eBay, listed as "not working." It POSTs properly, but no display. Appears to need new graphics adaptor card. In the meantime, I purchased an OSX 10.4.9 install disc ($20) and a dual-link DVI cable ($8).

It sits under my desk while I wait for parts to arrive to do it up. I acquired a 2008 Mac Pro which has become my main desktop machine and came with an older style Mac keyboard and mouse. I will do my best to get it up and running again, and probably pass it on to another enthusiast who would be interested in having a G5 with classic environment support for retro mac games.

It has made for an interesting diversion into "vintage hardware." The last time I built my own computer, it was a Pentium III in an ATX Mid-Tower case. I have had a fun time going through the G5. If it cannot be made to work, I'll do an ATX or mATX case conversion to it.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Just read it all, man; and I have to say that I'm fairly jealous of all the Mac products you got from your school! I cannot complain, though, because I was able to rescue old Macs from my school as well, but a good few were not handed to me. I sort of had to sneak some stuff. I was able to join the e-waste club (and also, prior to that, mooch off the collection bin), so I was able to snag a Macintosh SE, LC III, and keyboard from a single e-waste drive. Went to an e-waste drive before that (before I was a member of the club) and took home a pristine Classic II with bag, keyboard, mouse, and new-in-box mic. Lastly, I took home two Macintosh Classic IIs, LC, some peripherals, and a basically new-in-box Apple Design keyboard that seemed to have a French-Canadian layout... probably why my school never from my photo teacher. Sadly, these are basically parts machines.

Lastly, I got three iBook G4s from another teacher (two 12" and one 14"). They were all his personal machines, and he was willing to give them up since they were just too old for him. Surprisingly, they were all in nice condition; and, in spite of his beliefs that most of them didn't work, they all ended up working fine and having healthy batteries.


I am also not necessarily scouting for computers, but I do like to make exceptions if I come across something cool. I went off Craigslist for a long time, but then I came back and spotted a few things that I couldn't pass up (like a 20-dollar OG iMac and and 128k with accessories.) But, yeah, my collecting also has to dry up for a reason, and you will likely have the same thing happen. There's not much you can do once you go to college (like I am, this September), and you also have to find a place to store everything while gone! Also, since none of my career interests have anything to do with computers, I sort of had to drop it for some time and try and lose the slight obsession.


Good luck with everything - nice talking again. Just watch out that you don't suddenly obtain nearly 90 machines, like I have xD. Actually, some here have even more.

 

[128keaton]

Just read it all, man; and I have to say that I'm fairly jealous of all the Mac products you got from your school! I cannot complain, though, because I was able to rescue old Macs from my school as well, but a good few were not handed to me. I sort of had to sneak some stuff. I was able to join the e-waste club (and also, prior to that, mooch off the collection bin), so I was able to snag a Macintosh SE, LC III, and keyboard from a single e-waste drive. Went to an e-waste drive before that (before I was a member of the club) and took home a pristine Classic II with bag, keyboard, mouse, and new-in-box mic. Lastly, I took home two Macintosh Classic IIs, LC, some peripherals, and a basically new-in-box Apple Design keyboard that seemed to have a French-Canadian layout... probably why my school never from my photo teacher. Sadly, these are basically parts machines.

Lastly, I got three iBook G4s from another teacher (two 12" and one 14"). They were all his personal machines, and he was willing to give them up since they were just too old for him. Surprisingly, they were all in nice condition; and, in spite of his beliefs that most of them didn't work, they all ended up working fine and having healthy batteries.


I am also not necessarily scouting for computers, but I do like to make exceptions if I come across something cool. I went off Craigslist for a long time, but then I came back and spotted a few things that I couldn't pass up (like a 20-dollar OG iMac and and 128k with accessories.) But, yeah, my collecting also has to dry up for a reason, and you will likely have the same thing happen. There's not much you can do once you go to college (like I am, this September), and you also have to find a place to store everything while gone! Also, since none of my career interests have anything to do with computers, I sort of had to drop it for some time and try and lose the slight obsession.


Good luck with everything - nice talking again. Just watch out that you don't suddenly obtain nearly 90 machines, like I have xD. Actually, some here have even more.

Ugh. My parents are now like "what is the purpose of this machine"

 

[Ih8reno]

My first PPC was an ibook g3 dual usb I got from a friend at work. Added ram from ebay and brought it up to dual boot 9.2.2 and 10.4. Slowly branched out into other machines from Apple. Have had from an Apple iie all the way to Macbook Pro 2011. I collected PPC and Apple in the past few years for fun. I just love how they are upgrade able and have such distinct looks. Collceting has been put on hold recently due to financial restraints.

PPC Machines I have had are numerous. this is what I keep today

- ibook G3 dual usb
- ibook G3 Clamshell graphite
- Powerbook G4 12 inch 1.5GHZ
- Powerbook G4 15 inch 1.67GHZ (non dlsd)
- Powerbook G4 17 inch 1.67GHZ (non dlsd)
- Powerbook G3 266MHZ
- Powerbook G3 400MHZ
- Power Mac MDD dual 1.42MHZ
- Power Mac G3 B&W 400MHZ
- Power Mac G5 Quad
- Emac 1.42GHZ
- iMac G3 500MHZ White
- Imac G3 Blueberry 266MHZ
- Cube 450MHZ
- iMac G4 20' 1.25GHZ

Also have other macs but not sure they count as ppc

 

[Altemose]

Lastly, I got three iBook G4s from another teacher (two 12" and one 14"). They were all his personal machines, and he was willing to give them up since they were just too old for him. Surprisingly, they were all in nice condition; and, in spite of his beliefs that most of them didn't work, they all ended up working fine and having healthy batteries.

Would any of those be for sale by chance? I have been on an iBook hunt for a while.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Would any of those be for sale by chance? I have been on an iBook hunt for a while.

I sent you some good eBay links for 14" iBooks, that last time. They are actually going for cheap nowadays. You'll be sure to find a better 14" model than I have, considering mine has an iBook G3 keyboard on it.
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Ugh. My parents are now like "what is the purpose of this machine"

You referring to your beast of a Mac Pro?
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It never hurts to ask so give it a shot.

By the way, it's good on you that you took advantage of using computer systems early on. Oddly enough, many older adults are still tech-tards, and they always throw around excuses that younger people know more about computers because they grew up with them - and blah blah blah. It's a pretty asinine thing for them to say, considering that such adults could have been computer users for a longer period of time than I've been, since they've literally had about 40 years time to use a personal computer. Also, with the advent of the GUI, most users began to know less and less about their systems, since the GUI does all the hard work for us. A person using a command line generally knows more about his system than the average user using a GUI.

I give people like my grandpa credit for having used computers before I was even born. It's odd thinking that I still haven't been a computer user for as long as my grandpa was, but it should make sense, considering he had since the 1980s to use a GUI, and started in around the 1990s or so.

 

[Gamer9430]

By the way, it's good on you that you took advantage of using computer systems early on. Oddly enough, many older adults are still tech-tards, and they always throw around excuses that younger people know more about computers because they grew up with them - and blah blah blah. It's a pretty asinine thing for them to say, considering that such adults could have been computer users for a longer period of time than I've been, since they've literally had about 40 years time to use a personal computer. Also, with the advent of the GUI, most users began to know less and less about their systems, since the GUI does all the hard work for us. A person using a command line generally knows more about his system than the average user using a GUI.

I give people like my grandpa credit for having used computers before I was even born. It's odd thinking that I still haven't been a computer user for as long as my grandpa was, but it should make sense, considering he had since the 1980s to use a GUI, and started in around the 1990s or so.

My two grandfathers are the exact opposite of each other when it comes to tech. They both have iMacs and iPads, but one also has an iPhone 6. Lets call him Grandpa A. The other, we'll call Grandpa B. So Grandpa A has been in tech for most of his life. He was part of the original team to put hard drives on Wallstreet. He has also worked for several tech companies including Kodak, Oce, Canon. He has always been on the cutting edge when it comes to technology. When HD TVs came out, he bought 2, replacing his old tube TVs. Then when LED TVs came out, he replaced the older of the two HD TVs (rear-Projector based), and eventually replaced the other with a newer Smart TV as well. He has always had newish laptops through work, and when he retired, he went out and bought himself a brand new iMac and an iPhone 5S. Then when the 6 came out, he gave the 5S to my grandmother and got himself the 6. He also loves photography, so he was constantly getting new cameras. He knows and understands tech very well even though most of his generation (including my grandmother) does not.

My other grandfather, Grandpa B, has spent his entire life working on and repairing cars. He has owned several garages over his lifetime, with his most recent being the most popular one on Staten Island. He always wanted to be on the cutting edge of tech, but couldn't afford new tech back in the 70s and 80s. Now a days, the only reason he has an iMac (2011) and an iPad 2 is because we gifted my grandparents with them. They both feel that because they are old, they cant learn anything new, which is sad. However, he does love to see all the advancements in technology and is amazed by it. Recently, he won a laptop at a casino and is amazed by the fact that Wifi would allow him to use the laptop anywhere in his house, but because its Windows 10 (last version of Windows he used was XP), he doesnt want to relearn Windows all over again, so the laptop is now going to sit in the top of a closet. Both my grandfather and grandmother have flip phones, but never turn them on since they dont know how to use them. We tried explaining to them that an iPhone would be easier to use since, for example, to call a contact, all you have to do is click on icon, find the person's name, and hit call. Meanwhile on a flip-phone, you need to go through 10 different menus to find the person you want to call, which can be easily confusing. Every time I see them, I update their iMac and iPad, update Java, flash, etc so that it doesnt pop up, making them confused as to what to do. I've also tried explaining to them to send me a message if something pops up, that way i could remote into their computer and take care of it. Of course, that hasn't happened yet.

Both my grandparents have tech in their lives, but really only Grandpa A takes advantage of it. Grandpa B, as well as Grandma A and B both don't really understand it and more the less choose not to understand it. Grandma B is actually a bit more open to learning than Grandpa B, but at the same time, she can easily be turned off by it. Sorry to go on and on again, I was just relating to what you were saying, @PowerMac G4 MDD.

 

[grahamperrin]

I feel like the PPC era was the golden age of having fun with computers. The mix of small upgrade making big differences, and the PPC hardware being not as ubiquitous as the x86 hardware. It was a lot of fun.

For me, that was the first of two golden ages of Macintosh and Mac use.

From this time last year: Original iBooks

Around the same time, I found it difficult (but necessary) to request write off, at work, of the Power Macintosh 9600/200MP that I had stopped using more than a decade earlier. Logically it had become a waste of space, but sentimentally I enjoyed recalling the experimentation and uniqueness.

 

[jbarley]

I feel like the PPC era was the golden age of having fun with computers. The mix of small upgrade making big differences, and the PPC hardware being not as ubiquitous as the x86 hardware. It was a lot of fun.

I have to disagree with you here, only because you insist "was" which is past tense.
I still use and enjoy my PPC systems, in fact having fun and occupying my time is the very reason I fire them up and try to get them do things they were never designed to do.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

I can relate. Sadly, I no longer have my grandpas around, but, luckily, I have my maternal and paternal grandmas. Grandma A is surprisingly open to learning how to use new technologies, even if she still has to ask for help with certain things. She uses her iPad and iPhone (Facebook, iMessage, etc.) all by herself and actually learned pretty quickly. Prior to that, she used a flip phone just fine. Granted, she doesn't know how to use a full desktop computer or laptop, so it seems to be the tablet and phone that really allowed her to use modern tech. Back when my dad wanted to do CS in college, she was actually slightly opposed to it all, not knowing exactly what computers did. When my dad would explain what he could do with a computer, she said she could do all that on paper. My dad mentioned that, someday, computers will do a lot more, and that's definitely true now.

Grandma B is very old-fashioned, especially when you consider that Grandma A is old-fashioned in a lot of other ways. Grandma B didn't seem to have even touched a computer until around 2012, when she tried out my then deceased Grandpa's computer - and when we later got her a new iMac. I told her recently that DVDs are old technology, and she had no idea. She still takes pictures on a digital camera (in fact, she is fresh off film cameras), and then gets them developed at the pharmacy. She has a flip phone, but she only calls on it because doing everything else on a flip phone is too difficult. As for the iMac, even that is a bit antiquated. My mom ended up getting it for her, but my dad was trying to explain that desktops are antiquated devices that are more suited for professionals. As you know, most people these days use a laptop or even a tablet. Heck, some people do all their computing on a phone, and are starting to treat full-on desktops as home appliances or business/work machines again, like they used to be treated. Now, we keep saying that she would be better off with a tablet and iPhone. She has the willingness to learn, but she's just SO unfamiliar to computers that it's insane. She couldn't even use a mouse naturally. I patiently taught her everything, but it's just not intuitive enough for her, I guess. Now I know where my mom gets this from.

She still writes things down on paper that she could use the computer for, and she types e-mails - as letters - in Word and then pastes them into Mail. I had to explain that you can type right into Mail and send it off. Also, since she doesn't use Messages/iMessage, we cannot communicate speedily, so we either have to call by phone or connect to her machine remotely and fix whatever random thing happened. Sadly, I think an iPad would still be a stretch, but it would be much easier than a full desktop system. If she's going to learn to use an iMac, I feel as though I should just start her off with the basics: System 1 on an original Macintosh. If I go from System 1, to system 7, to OS 9, to Tiger, and then to El Capitan, I'm sure I can make some progress!




I think the biggest problem with older people (who shy away from tech) is that they make themselves think that they cannot learn how to use it, and they also do not assume that a modern machine with a GUI is SUPPOSED to be intuitive. A lot of them don't know that the GUI was put in place to make computing easy. My mom has similar issues. I tell her to use Google Drive or Dropbox instead of sending her friends pictures on a flash drive, and then she tell me that she doesn't know how to make an account and use it. The whole process is designed for anyone to be able to do it; one must just apply logic and reasoning and use their intuition. The other issue is their not understanding what computers are and what they do. Grandma B didn't know what the internet was... no joke. She asked me what it was because she didn't understand what it did and what it was used for. Seems to be pure neglect, as she could have used the Web before I was even alive, seeing as though the Web started becoming somewhat mainstream around 1995-1997.

 

[Altemose]

I sent you some good eBay links for 14" iBooks, that last time. They are actually going for cheap nowadays. You'll be sure to find a better 14" model than I have, considering mine has an iBook G3 keyboard on it.

I will be looking for the right one thanks!

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

I will be looking for the right one thanks!

Yeah, NP. Hopefully those are still available. Honestly, they are no longer $100+ like they were a short time ago in 2012 or so. You could pick up a nice 14" model for around $50, if you look around eBay. Admittedly, I'm actually too attached to most of mine, and my 14" model isn't too fit for sale anyway

Good luck with finding the iBooks of your dreams!

 

[Altemose]

Yeah, NP. Hopefully those are still available. Honestly, they are no longer $100+ like they were a short time ago in 2012 or so. You could pick up a nice 14" model for around $50, if you look around eBay. Admittedly, I'm actually too attached to most of mine, and my 14" model isn't too fit for sale anyway

Good luck with finding the iBooks of your dreams!

One day I will find it. Actually, I have found it but need to convince the owner to sell it...

 

[jbdean]

Well, I got my first PPC in, I believe, 1994 or 1995 at my job with Disney. I was a graphics designer and we all got Macs. It was a very PC-looking beige (I hated how it looked). I think it was a G3. Then, I got my own personal G4 (the space age looking grey) which I adored! When my job upgraded us with G4s, I got to take home the G3 so I had two. I loved both, though as I look back now they must have been slow! LOL On the G4 I ran Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver Acrobat and some PC design programs via a virtual desktop (I was into designing stuff for the SIMS back then). I designed websites by then and my Mac was the best! I remember I got it from eBay for about $999 and that included a big honker of a monitor. LOL

I've been on Macs since 1988 and am a diehard! Sadly, in 2005 my G4 gave up the ghost and the Apple Store told me it was the motherboard. I then got a mac mini (which I still have but she's starting to give out LOL) and I bought a secondhand iMac 2005 for $25 and it runs like a champ. Whenever I tell these stories to my PC friends, they always think I'm lying. But we know the life expectancy of a Mac is pure magic!

 

[1042686]

By the way, it's good on you that you took advantage of using computer systems early on. Oddly enough, many older adults are still tech-tards, and they always throw around excuses that younger people know more about computers because they grew up with them - and blah blah blah. It's a pretty asinine thing for them to say, considering that such adults could have been computer users for a longer period of time than I've been, since they've literally had about 40 years time to use a personal computer. Also, with the advent of the GUI, most users began to know less and less about their systems, since the GUI does all the hard work for us. A person using a command line generally knows more about his system than the average user using a GUI. I give people like my grandpa credit for having used computers before I was even born. It's odd thinking that I still haven't been a computer user for as long as my grandpa was, but it should make sense, considering he had since the 1980s to use a GUI, and started in around the 1990s or so.

I dont think so. computers were expensive, far and few between, not standardized and support was often a mail order catalog. Simply put, not everyone had a computer science mind and these folks grew up in an analog world full of real life distractions, not a sanitized digital one. I watch my folks and they struggle along as best they can but try to stay relevant technologically speaking. The best my grandfather could do was read our email and open videos/content on his old toshiba laptop and for a guy who was an Navyman/electrician/tradesman born in 1922, that was fine. We always got hand written letters back, but again, an analog mind in a digital age. Im not going to hold him up to a standard that we who did (for the most part lol) grow up in a digital age create to judge those who did not by.

Anyhow, for the first 20 something years of my life, I made fun of apple users. I thought they paid too much for their boxes, frankly - because, yanno y'all want to "think different" . My first PC was a commodore 64 in the 80s, I built with my dad our 2nd family pc - a 386 in 1991 and later a 486 in iirc 1994 (I think?) running win95 as a Xmas gift, and from there, a series of AMD & Intel gaming boxes to serve my lan gaming needs up to my current X99 w10 box. Around 1999-2000, I was playing in a few bands and doing some light studio work and I noticed all the studio engineers used mac OS - some using 9 and others OSX. Being stubborn, I dismissed the over priced hardware but I admit to enjoying the (to me at the time) innovative gui functionality like the dock, and widgets and weird quirks like in/uninstalling software. I also like how stuff just worked. You plug it in and bam - no driver installation, tweaking stuff etc. It just worked. I had started to admire the design and detail of Apple computers both hardware and software - going to different computer stores that offered their product. The first machine I thought I would really like to own were the 2006 all-in-one white imacs but jesus they were still alot of $$$. Fast forward to 2007ish and I scored my first used mac - a white intel core2duo 24" imac for 5 large on craigslist. It was running 10.4.11. I was a little confused by how stuff worked (like ejecting a CD for example) but after learning the ins and outs, decided OSX was a more intuitive & innovative in a well crafted box - I was hooked. The only reason I have PPC's is because I found a free one next to someones garbage getting rained on. I hate to see things go to waste and I thought about all of the parts I had in my bin so I took it home too see if I could fix it. I did and found this place and these guys and it was such a fun and positive experience that I've stayed and now enjoy collecting PPC's as I find them cheap or free.

QSG4 - Free garbage find.
PMG5 - 20 bucks on CL.
MDDG4 - Free find from a studio engineer friend.

I too also like the design changes through this era and the ability to upgrade, improve them and their over-all tinker-er-ability. I also like the challenge of making the aging boxes still relevant as daily drivers. I agree that this forum in particular is a friendly one full of folks who help each other vs de facto culo-ness, tearing folks down. It's a good place. For the record, I did read Nick's book

 

[kge420]

I dual booted my original ps3 using Yellow Dog linux. That led me to a couple of ibooks. Finally found that iMac g4s were my favorite. Still to this day I have one in my work space at home. Most recent one is my favorite. 20" ,2gb ram , bluetooth module from an iMac g5 and a 320gb sata drive. This is right up there with my thinkpad T40p as my all time favorites. I bought the iMac along with an Apple mouse and an Apple bluetooth keyboard for $40. Use it primarily for reading repair guides and music.

 

[63dot]

604e PPC Mac Clone. A then very speedy 185 MHz. My first computer with my wife. That thing was wonderful and about the same time I got a 150 MHz Pentium 1 tower. They were so much fun and the PPC was definitely faster.

Then came the G3 equipped Blueberry iBook which I boosted to 160 megs of RAM. Wow. Fast and lightweight for the time and we ran Photoshop and Illustrator quite nicely on this one.

Now I have a G4 Mac Mini, stuffed with an impossible 2 gigs of RAM and the last generation PPC G4 chip before moved to Intel Core Solo and Core Duos and the Mini is used as a backup and still OK.

Before the Mac Mini, I had a pair of silver Apple G4 towers. For its time, PPC was better than Intel and AMD.

 

[eyoungren]

I feel like the PPC threads have been a little sparse lately. I want to hear some fun stories about what antics were had in the hay-day of PPC!

I'm going to choose to interpret 'antics' a little differently than most in this thread.

Back in 1999 my first job in the newspaper industry was for the Desert Sun. After about six months there I got the chance to transfer to the Indio pod. Indio was a small satellite office and had two positions. Since they were offering it to me I got to choose which station I wanted.

As luck would have it, the station I chose was the 'Graphic Designer's station. The G4 Mac here had OS 9 and was the more powerful of the two. The other G4 was only running OS 8.6.

I considered this to be vindication for everyone else being upgraded back in Palm Springs to the B&W G3's while I was poking along on some beige tower.

Now, in Palm Springs, downstairs was the Automotive section. So called because that department focused on nothing but automotive ads. The nature of that job necessitated a $10,000 full color laser printer with toner cartridges that weighed in at around $500 a pop. The printer was networked.

My shift was noon to 9pm. Everyone else went home at 5pm except some of the late compositors upstairs. With everyone networked, no matter the distance and location it was an easy matter to send whatever I liked to that $10,000 color laser printer before leaving Indio. By the time I stopped in Palm Springs the printer was done spitting out four color prints of whatever I'd sent to it. All on glossy stock.

 

[mhunt407]

My first PPC Mac was a 1.42GHz Mac Mini - used it mostly for studying/making custom iPod Wizard themes (throwback!). I remember reading Macrumors (long time lurker) at the time and hoping they'd send me the silent upgrade 1.5Ghz model but they didn't. I upgraded the RAM on it and using a paint spreader to crack it open. It never did sit back together properly after like most of those Mini's.

Few years ago I bought a Lime iBook G3 - think this was after seeing one in a movie. Threw in an AirPort card and upgraded it to Tiger - runs fine for word processing but mostly sits on my shelf now.

Recently got my hands on a 15" and 17" iMac G4 though and it's re-sparked my interest in PPC Macs. Next up hopefully a G4 Cube!

 

[okawa]

I just managed to get a really decent condition A1139 off eBay. So glad to finally get it.

 

[Dicere]

It's lovely to be in a forum with such discerning folk

I started out with a Commodore 64, learning BASIC programming at 12 years old and sticking in the floppy with Quantum in it and dreaming of a connected world. (Back country Australia, yeah, that really wasn't going to happen; when I think about it now, my parents were amazingly technologically advanced for our little country town!) But my Mac experience started as an undergraduate at university, where all the studies in the Humanities department had Mac Classic II computers that only the postgraduates were supposed to touch. The computer labs had big CRT screens, and I remember them as being without a GUI; wonder if my memory is correct. I do remember having to count characters on the email program, because if you didn't line break before you hit a certain number of characters, your email would just ignore characters typed after that limit was hit. Those postgraduate-only Mac Classic II computers in the Humanities department just looked so incredibly beautiful compared to the computer labs... I promise, no postgraduates were adversely affected by my inability to avoid temptation.

For my 21st birthday, my parents gave me $1000. I purchased a university throwaway Mac Classic, and it was my saving grace through my undergraduate years. But then I discovered Windows and overclocking (and f-disking my computer with the only copy of my Master's thesis on it... don't do that) and I stayed in the Windows world until a workmate swapped me a fridge for her eMac 1 ghz. I loaded it up with maximum ram, loaded Tiger onto it, and fell in love.

One quickly became, um, more; I also had a Macbook 2007, and now also have a 2011 i7 MacMini and two 2010 2.4ghz white unibody Macbooks (one used as a server) all of which have 16 gb of ram and all have ssds (the MacMini I fusioned) which are great and I work on them a lot, but the PowerPC Macs have my heart.

I started to find them at Cash Converters (pawn shop) and then on eBay for around $90AUD for a 1.33 and 1.42 ghz iBook G4 (around four years ago, when I was really hunting them). I'd spec them up with as much RAM as they would take, put in a new 250 gb harddrive (iFixit have the world's best manuals) and then spruce them up with every bit of software I could find. Then I'd polish the top with car repair stuff, sew them a cover in kimono silk and persuade friends and family to give them a home. It wasn't a cheap hobby, but enormously satisfying.

These are beautiful machines. Something about the 12 inch iBook makes it utterly perfect for sitting it on your lap with your legs outstretched and just typing away - like I'm doing with the 1.07ghz iBook G4 right now. It balances better than my Macbook and my hands rest more comfortably on it. The G3 iBook (Opaque) 800mhz 14 inch I used to use as my main writing machine (Tiger as the OS, Scrivener as the writing software) was the most beautiful laptop I've ever seen. It looked like something out of a Disney movie. I stopped using it only because the small harddrive was driving me nuts, and I didn't dare open it up and swap in a new one because I'd killed two adorable 12 inch G3 iBooks trying just that. (The solder on the graphics card in that model was notoriously frangible. Opening up the back - especially a decade later - was enough to kill it.) I have eleven or twelve computers around me today, and only three are intel.

Three years ago I used this computer in a caravan for a year as my main machine when the MacBook 2007 developed the LCD cable problem. Absolute champ. For surfing, ebook reading, typing, mail and music it was perfect. (I wouldn't try photo editing large RAW files, movie editing, or web design on it. There are limits. But it will decode a DVD movie through Ripit and Handbrake, so long as you don't mind it taking all night.) Survived 40 degree heat without blinking. Belting up and down in a caravan cupboard moving several thousand kilometers through Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania didn't phase it in the slightest. Clearly it's still working today.

I'm halfway through a second Master's right now, and last weekend I happened to be browsing eBay and a local(ish) seller was selling an iMac G5 1.8ghz ALS model. Starting bid was $50. Of course I bid, and I was the only bidder. When I got it home I opened it up to check the capacitors, and I've never seen the inside of a computer which is so clearly a work of art. I'm pulling out the Canon to take a proper picture when the ram arrives, and I will probably print and frame it. I'm putting Leopard and Pages on it with Leopard Webkit running the web based version of Zotero and Calibre to store my ebooks and I have the perfect machine to enjoy doing assignments on.

Just in terms of aesthetic design (and though I don't understand computer design to this level, I think RISC is supposed to be a more elegant instruction set than CISC?) these machines kick the dickens out of anything else I've seen. They are modern works of art and putting them with great furniture design (which you can find in the weirdest places - Kmart is selling knock off Eames plastic chairs for $40, for goodness sakes!), you have a place where you want to spend time, work, get into flow. So I love them.

Eyes tired yet? Thanks for reading!
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I just managed to get a really decent condition A1139 off eBay. So glad to finally get it.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/specs/powerbook_g4_1.67_17_hr.html
Many congrats. It's a beautiful machine. What are you going to load on it?

 

[eyoungren]

I just managed to get a really decent condition A1139 off eBay. So glad to finally get it.

Post some pics in here! <-- Link

 

[okawa]

Many congrats. It's a beautiful machine. What are you going to load on it?

I'm not sure yet. I think my first video to watch after getting it will be one from the YouTube channel "The PowerPC Hub".

Post some pics in here! <-- Link

I totally will. I'm going to post it right next to my 2015 15" for comparison. It arrives soon. This is the one of the few places on the net where we can all appreciate our PowerBooks.