I've probably spent enough(total) on PPC Macs to buy a new Mac Pro, although admittedly it was all in small installments. At the same time, though, I've been able to scavenge a lot in the way of hard drives, optical drives, and memory-I can often avoid buying those. Since I started on this crazy hobby, I've bought exactly two IDE drives, and bought those not so much out of need but for the fact that they were available and I thought relatively inexpensive. I do have to buy SCSI drives on occasion.
Probably the best "money pit" example is my Quicksilver, which has actually involved complete replacement of the computer. In my journey with that, I've gone through:
1. The first computer, which was $40 plus the $30 in gas is cost me to drive up and get it(and $.50 worth of superglue to fix the main case fan). I upgraded the CD-RW to a Superdrive "from inventory" at no cost.
2. A Motorola WPCI810G Wireless card for $10
3. A USB 2.0/Firewire 400 card for $10
4. A revolving door of video cards. The first was a GEForce 4MX for about $15, although I won't count that one as it's since been repurposed. I upgraded to a GEForce 4Ti, which was bought in a lot with another card(Radeon 8500) and a couple of programs. I'd put my cost on that card at about $20-it died. The machine also ate a Radeon 9600XT($25) before I replaced the power supply(long story, but I'll count the PSU as free). The second Radeon 9600XT cost me about the same and has since been moved to another machine. I'm currently using a Radeon 9600 Pro that cost me about $15. Adding up the dead cards and the current one, and not including the ones that are still in use elsewhere, I'm at about $60 on video cards.
5. The dual 1ghz processor and heatsink cost me $60
6. I went through a series of hard drives-most freebies. I currently have a 500gb WD Caviar Blue in it that was free, and a refurbished 160gb WD that cost me $14
7. Finally, I bought a real, honest to goodness dual 1ghz Quicksilver, that cost me $160 including shipping
8. The main display is a 23" High Definition Cinema display that cost me $100 including shipping and the ADC-DVI converter box. The secondary display is a 17" Studio, which I'll count as free as it came with a G5. I'm also powering it with an A1006, which cost me $30
I spent about $350 on Cubes a few months back, and have paid what were probably unreasonably high prices for computers I really wanted. My DLSD Powerbook cost me $150, and I spent another $50 putting an SSD in it. I spent $150 on a 12" Powerbook with an SSD already installed.
I really don't want to sit down and add up my total cost in my PPC collection. The above is just a sampling of what I have. I've had a lot of freebies(all my beige Powermacintoshes, my iMac G3s and G4, and a couple of others I'm forgetting) and computers that were so cheap they were almost free(like the 15 G3 and G4 towers I paid $40 total for), and probably overpaid for some others. Despite having a couple, I've also never paid for a 68K Mac.
