Machine's we love...and spent too much on

[MatthewLTL]

The most ive spent was $40 on a late model Emac. I feel like i overpaid a bit as it did not come with a keyboard or a mouse. The guy i bought it from was asking $60 but i got him to $40. The problem with the Emac was it wouldnt boot. This model was a 1.42Ghz, 256mb, 80Gb Hard drive, Combo drive, Airport.

The guy was a hoarder and when i tried getting the Emac cheaper he said "He has the files on a flash drive and he was going to fix it and then sell it for $100" When i asked him why it wouldnt boot and maybe the drive is going he replied with "The system must have corrupted somehow, but the hard drive is spinning and working. I used to own a computer shop i know the drive is good"

Ironically after i brought it home upgraded the RAM intalled Leopard, not too long the drive wasnt spinning any longer.

Did i pay too much? this was summer 2014.

I paid $80 for mine and dont regret it one bit

 

[A.Goldberg]

My favorite computer was a 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4 12" SuperDrive (that later got upgraded under warranty to the newer 1.5Ghz).

That cost me $1799 but that was 11+ years ago.
------

Aside from my Rentina MacBook everything else in my current setup I got for free.

- PowerMac G5 - Free
- MacPro - Free
- iPhone 6 - Free (to be fair by trading in my iPhone 5)
- iPad - Free (well, my work owns it technically)

I did just buy a TiBook 1Ghz in good looking shape for $90 including shipping. Should be here by Thursday. Can't wait.

As a relatively frugal person, free is great.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

My favorite computer was a 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4 12" SuperDrive (that later got upgraded under warranty to the newer 1.5Ghz).

That cost me $1799 but that was 11+ years ago.
------

Aside from my Rentina MacBook everything else in my current setup I got for free.

- PowerMac G5 - Free
- MacPro - Free
- iPhone 6 - Free (to be fair by trading in my iPhone 5)
- iPad - Free (well, my work owns it technically)

I did just buy a TiBook 1Ghz in good looking shape for $90 including shipping. Should be here by Thursday. Can't wait.

As a relatively frugal person, free is great.

Who doesn't like free stuff?! A Mac Pro for free?? Lucky! The only freebies in my Mac collection are an extra G4 Cube, which is disassembled because of a fried VRM, and a Core Duo iMac that came from a school (bare bones education model).

All of my other Macs were purchased for very reasonable prices with the exception of the Power Mac G3. I probably have ~$120 into the entire setup, but I wanted a matching display that badly and found one on eBay. It cost $40 but the shipping was super expensive. When you live in rural Kansas, it's not easy to find free Macs.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Who doesn't like free stuff?! A Mac Pro for free?? Lucky! The only freebies in my Mac collection are an extra G4 Cube, which is disassembled because of a fried VRM, and a Core Duo iMac that came from a school (bare bones education model).

All of my other Macs were purchased for very reasonable prices with the exception of the Power Mac G3. I probably have ~$120 into the entire setup, but I wanted a matching display that badly and found one on eBay. It cost $40 but the shipping was super expensive. When you live in rural Kansas, it's not easy to find free Macs.

Well the Mac Pro belonged to my brother, now deceased so I wouldn't consider that one lucky but the rest for sure. The G5 was given to me by a friend who owns a graphic design company and had kept it in a closet for years. A free cube isn't bad at all especially if you have the means to fix it and neither is a C2D even if its the edu model.

Somewhere at my parent's house I have a Newton Message Pad I got for free years ago from my uncle. It was obsolete when I got it probably around 2000-2001. The Newton however, was new in the box and was never actually used.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

Well the Mac Pro belonged to my brother, now deceased so I wouldn't consider that one lucky but the rest for sure. The G5 was given to me by a friend who owns a graphic design company and had kept it in a closet for years. A free cube isn't bad at all especially if you have the means to fix it and neither is a C2D even if its the edu model.

Somewhere at my parent's house I have a Newton Message Pad I got for free years ago from my uncle. It was obsolete when I got it probably around 2000-2001. The Newton however, was new in the box and was never actually used.

Open mouth, insert foot. Sorry man, I didn't know.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Open mouth, insert foot. Sorry man, I didn't know.

No worries. You have no way of knowing that.

 

[gooser]

i'm going with about a spotty memory but in 2002 i bought a new imac g4 with applecare. i think i spent around $2,000 total on it. a few months later i bought an imac g3 that i think i spent around $900 on. i still have both but the g4 needs some repairs done to it which i'm about halfway through. i'm typing this from an ibook g4 that i paid $65 for. i really don't need any more ppc macs (i have eight) so my collection is complete. i will have to spend money to maintain them however.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

i'm going with about a spotty memory but in 2002 i bought a new imac g4 with applecare. i think i spent around $2,000 total on it. a few months later i bought an imac g3 that i think i spent around $900 on. i still have both but the g4 needs some repairs done to it which i'm about halfway through. i'm typing this from an ibook g4 that i paid $65 for. i really don't need any more ppc macs (i have eight) so my collection is complete. i will have to spend money to maintain them however.

I think it's cool that you held onto both machines for this long. Do you ever use the G3? I have a 2001 Graphite (600 MHz) that sits under my desk. It dual boots Tiger and OS 9, but I seldom ever power it up. I took it apart a few months ago to clean the CDRW eject roller and belt so discs would stop getting stuck inside of it. It's definitely one of my favorite Macs in my collection.

 

[Orizence]

I paid pretty decent prices for both my Macs, but I had to pay way too much for shipping...

For my Powerbook G4, I bought the machine for $50 but paid another $55 for shipping, all I needed was a charger which cost me $10 and $5 in shipping (that wasn't too bad because it was located in Canada). I ended up needing a new logic board which cost me 30$ but the shipping was only $10 so I was pretty happy about that So in total I paid around $160

My PowerMac G5 is another story though... I paid $30 for the machine itself, and paid $50 for shipping from FedEx (which is actually really good...) I ended up having to buy some ram and a logic board (A.K.A the new logic board which I bought didn't end up needing <.< ) so I paid $60 dollars for the ram and logic board but had to pay $70 for the shipping, but then I found out I needed to pay $18 for brokerage fees... But then I paid $40 for my x1900xt with free shipping. So in total I paid around $268

Although I paid quite a bit for both machines I cant really complain, both these machines are equally as fun to play with, and also they are both my main machines now

 

[MacCubed]

*quick note* I buy all of my PPC Macs on ebay "for parts or repair".

The first PPC Macs that I purchased were a set of PowerBook G3's for 50$ plus 30$ shipping and a cheap 5$ charger I still have them but recently I bent one of the pins on the daughter card connector on the logic board. Then I got a Ti-Book which was 30$ plus 15$ shipping and before I ordered the charger I decided to take it completely apart and in hindsight, that wasn't too good of an idea because it was in good condition and was in only missing RAM. The next machine was a PoweBook G4 DLSD which I paid way too much for 60$ + 30$ shipping. The description said no sound so I thought "its just a speaker or software issue" turns out the sound board was dead which cost 60$. So I just basically didn't use it with sound. A week after I got it, the hard drive crashes and I have to use an old 30gb drive. This laptop had so many problems here's a short list: scratched (lid, bottom, palmrest), dead battery, some sort of liquid residue behind the screen, sound board issue, bad dvd drive and HDD. The latest buy was a PowerMac G5 the seller had no idea what they were talking about so I got it cheap 60$ plus 40$ shipping it had no HDD so I ordered a 1tb HDD off amazon for 50$ and a wireless antenna for 30$ then the computer got here and I realized that there wasn't an airport cards installed so I ordered one for 10$ now its 100% working and I use it as my secondary machine. So in total I've spent around 280$ on PPC Macs which in hindsight, is a lot

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Today was a surprising day for me, spent $180 in total and received 2 500MHz cubes with power adapters and two keyboards, and then a early 2.3 G5, a 2.0 dual core, the power cords to both, apple keyboard/mouse and a boxed copy of Leopard. I spend way too much money on these things!

 

[bunnspecial]

All of my other Macs were purchased for very reasonable prices with the exception of the Power Mac G3. I probably have ~$120 into the entire setup, but I wanted a matching display that badly and found one on eBay. It cost $40 but the shipping was super expensive. When you live in rural Kansas, it's not easy to find free Macs.

I have exactly one CRT monitor still in use, it's the matching display that came with my first B&W.

Mine was given to me by one of my favorite professors at school(not the reason why she's my favorite, although it certainly helped ), but after I saw it I probably would had gladly paid that much to have it. IMO, it's one of the best looking Apple tower and monitor combinations made.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Today was a surprising day for me, spent $180 in total and received 2 500MHz cubes with power adapters and two keyboards, and then a early 2.3 G5, a 2.0 dual core, the power cords to both, apple keyboard/mouse and a boxed copy of Leopard. I spend way too much money on these things!

I think you got a pretty good deal if you spent $180 on all of that. That's probably a lot more than you probably have a use for though.

 

[bunnspecial]

Today was a surprising day for me, spent $180 in total and received 2 500MHz cubes with power adapters and two keyboards, and then a early 2.3 G5, a 2.0 dual core, the power cords to both, apple keyboard/mouse and a boxed copy of Leopard. I spend way too much money on these things!

Great find!

There's someone around here who's bought a few G4 computers from the past-including a Cube-and would probably buy a 500mhz for the right price...you know who it is and who to contact if you decide to part with one

 

[gooser]

I think it's cool that you held onto both machines for this long. Do you ever use the G3? I have a 2001 Graphite (600 MHz) that sits under my desk. It dual boots Tiger and OS 9, but I seldom ever power it up. I took it apart a few months ago to clean the CDRW eject roller and belt so discs would stop getting stuck inside of it. It's definitely one of my favorite Macs in my collection.

yes i use it a couple of times a week. it has 10.2.8 and os 9 on it but i only use 9. i do not have internet hooked up to it. i mostly use appleworks and itunes for my upstairs jukebox. also a couple of os 9 games and a couple of old accounting programs one of which i still use. data kept on a firewire hard drive. it's the only computer i have a printer hooked up to. don't print much these days though. thought about upgrading the 10.2 but what's the point? i have more modern and more powerful computers to use osx with. mine's also a 600mhz, snow though. when playing music i'm glad that the machine is completely quiet. i'll keep using it until it dies and then i'll replace it with another machine i have that's capable of booting into 9. fun to use a crt every once in a while.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Great find!

There's someone around here who's bought a few G4 computers from the past-including a Cube-and would probably buy a 500mhz for the right price...you know who it is and who to contact if you decide to part with one

You sir are a macaholic. I am currently cubeless and would be very much interested too.

Ugh, this PPC thing may turn into an unhealthy obsession. No more macs Ari, nor more.

 

[mikiotty]

The only PPC Mac I've spent too much on is my (dead) PowerMac G5. I bought it for parts or repair in July 2013 for 140€. It came with a suspected broken PSU and another refurbished PSU to replace the "broken" one. Turned out the replacement one was broken and the original one was good. The G5 actually had a broken CPU, which led to a complete death about a year later. Wasted money, even though I loved that machine.

Other than that:
- PowerMac G4 MDD Dual 1.25GHz: 40€ shipped, broken PSU, fitted an ATX PSU in the original MDD PSU case and rewired it. Works perfectly
- PowerMac G4 QuickSilver 733MHz: free
- Dual 800MHz CPU upgrade for the QuickSilver: 32€
- PowerBook G4 1.5GHz: free
- iMac G5 1.9GHz iSight: free
- ATI Radeon 9600 G5: 15€ (then sold for 27€)
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro: 18€
- Sil3112 SATA PCI Card: 13€

So I spent about 100€ on good PPC Macs. Not that much

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Great find!

There's someone around here who's bought a few G4 computers from the past-including a Cube-and would probably buy a 500mhz for the right price...you know who it is and who to contact if you decide to part with one

I shall jump on it

 

[Altemose]

The most I ever spent on a PowerPC Mac was my PowerMac G5 for $265.99 in 2011. Thinking about it now, in 2011 and 2012 PowerMacs were routinely going for $150 to $200 on eBay and locally but parental restrictions made me order it from a regular vendor like Newegg or Amazon. I ended up getting it off of Newegg and my mother bought an extended warranty (which worked out later on).

It turned out to be a dual 1.8 GHz model with 2 GB of RAM and a squealing 250 GB HD. I threw in 2* 1TB drives (one boot, one storage), upped the RAM to 3.5 GB out of spare RAM here, and loaded Leopard. I never realized just how bad the Nvidia 5200 (AGP) is until I ran dual displays off it.

That machine died and the warranty bought the machine back for original purchase price. We only lost the $45-$55 that my mother paid for the warranty itself. They didn't even want the machine back and with a failing PSU and BGA on the logic board neither did I. I removed my RAM, video card (to keep as a spare), hard drives, optical drive, heatsink covers (as a keepsake of that machine), acrylic side panel, and side door as well as the optical drive door.

That died around December 2012 and I still wanted another G5. In March 2013, my mother ordered a new G5 for me from Mac of All Trades for my birthday. This one cost $99 + shipping, so $140 or so. It is a June 2004 dual 1.8 model with an ATI 9600 XT and 2GB of RAM. I installed my hard drives, RAM, optical drive, and the optical drive door onto this one (existing door was bent slightly). It now has the dual 1 TB drives, the ATI 9600 XT, 4GB RAM, and soon to be an SSD. I am running it to this day and typing the response on this one.

Were these machines too expensive? Maybe but I love them to death.

 

[catzilla]

You sir are a macaholic. I am currently cubeless and would be very much interested too.

Ugh, this PPC thing may turn into an unhealthy obsession. No more macs Ari, nor more.

http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/sys/4886967627.html

He wants too much IMHO, and it has been listed for awhile...

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/sys/4886967627.html

He wants too much IMHO, and it has been listed for awhile...

I wonder if it comes with any restore discs. If so, I don't think his price is too far out of the ballpark. Since it's a complete setup, and in really good shape, I would offer the guy between $200-$250.

 

[bunnspecial]

I wonder if it comes with any restore discs. If so, I don't think his price is too far out of the ballpark. Since it's a complete setup, and in really good shape, I would offer the guy between $200-$250.

I agree with this, if it's truly the machine pictured.

$125-150 isn't too out of line for a good working 450mhz cube+PSU. The The speakers are worth an extra $50 easily(try to find a set if you don't have them!). I can't tell what the display is, but the position of the power button tells me it's either a 20" or 23" Cinema(this also suggests to me that the video card has been upgraded, as Apple has said that only the 22" Cinema will work with the stock Rage 128). I'd guess it's a 20", but even so it's a good $50 by itself. If it's a 23", make that $75-100.

Considering that you wouldn't have to have it shipped(a cube+PSU alone will run $30-40-add in the display and it gets a LOT more expensive).

$285 is probably on the upper end of price and I'd want to look at it in person, but I don't think it's terribly either considering the whole package.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

I have exactly one CRT monitor still in use, it's the matching display that came with my first B&W.

Mine was given to me by one of my favorite professors at school(not the reason why she's my favorite, although it certainly helped ), but after I saw it I probably would had gladly paid that much to have it. IMO, it's one of the best looking Apple tower and monitor combinations made.

I love the look of these B&W G3s. Do you have all original boxes or just the one for the accessories? I sourced eBay for my complete setup. I was even able to find the restore CD for OS 8.6.1. I look at my B&W and others in my collection (Gigabit, Quicksilver, MDD/FW800, PMG5) and I can see how much Apple product design has really matured over the last 17 years. The Macs from the late '90s/early '00s broke the beige box mould, were stylish and playful. Then you look at the G4 Macs and they begin to morph into more professional/modern designs. To me, the Power Mac G5 and previous generations of Mac Pros look so modern, professional, like they were engineered to be beautiful workhorse machines; not playful anymore. I have always been amazed at Apple's attention to detail. Phil Schiller made a joke during Macworld (or WWDC?) that the back of Apple computers looked better than the front of competitors. I have yet to see a PC designed and produced by any other manufacturer look as good on the inside as a Mac.

 

[redheeler]

You sir are a macaholic. I am currently cubeless and would be very much interested too.

Ugh, this PPC thing may turn into an unhealthy obsession. No more macs Ari, nor more.

An obsession? Nah, I'm only 18 Macs into it. Good luck getting a Cube!

 

[bunnspecial]

I love the look of these B&W G3s. Do you have all original boxes or just the one for the accessories? I sourced eBay for my complete setup. I was even able to find the restore CD for OS 8.6.1. I look at my B&W and others in my collection (Gigabit, Quicksilver, MDD/FW800, PMG5) and I can see how much Apple product design has really matured over the last 17 years. The Macs from the late '90s/early '00s broke the beige box mould, were stylish and playful. Then you look at the G4 Macs and they begin to morph into more professional/modern designs. To me, the Power Mac G5 and previous generations of Mac Pros look so modern, professional, like they were engineered to be beautiful workhorse machines; not playful anymore. I have always been amazed at Apple's attention to detail. Phil Schiller made a joke during Macworld (or WWDC?) that the back of Apple computers looked better than the front of competitors. I have yet to see a PC designed and produced by any other manufacturer look as good on the inside as a Mac.

Unfortunately, I only have the accessory box. It has everything in it, though-including the restore disks and the stickers that were peeled off the front of the computer when it was new.

As for the "beige boxes"-I have to give Apple credit that they did even manage to make their "beige boxes" look good. Here's a late 90s full-size ATX Tower sandwiched between an 8500 and a Quadra 700.