My first Mac for "free" ....

[hostage46]

It began with the iPod, then the Shuffle, next came the iPhones. Then last week it happened ....I picked up a G5 that was literally headed for the dumpster as part of an office move. Checked her on as luggage and brought her home.

Simple upgrade with the Mac Box Set and this life long MSFT guys is happy as a clam!

My question is what upgrades should I consider. This machine will be for developing and maintaining my website via iWeb (the deal closer for me looking into Mac). Music, photos usual stuff. I'd like to add a CAD program and will also install Office/Entourage.

So what upgrades do you folks recommend? Off the top of my head I'm thinking....
More Hard Drive
More RAM
WiFi card

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Power Mac G5
Model Identifier: PowerMac7,2
Processor Name: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.5f2

Having a hell of a time getting the thing to print to my D-Link wireless print server, but that's another post ...

I'm completely clueless and having a blast, especially with Office and Entourage, the entire household will be converting to Mac this year!

 

[nick9191]

Bare in mind that the specific model you have will be 6 years old in June, so don't expect any substantial performance from it, ie. in the way of cad.

How does iMovie 09 run by the way? Because Apple lists the minimum requirements as a 2.0ghz G5, but you appear to have no problems.

You say your into CAD, you might take a look at Blender which is a free 3D app. Pretty powerful but the UI is a pain.

Hardware wise, Leopard will run fine on 1gb of RAM, but 2gb is recommended. Old DDR RAM is pretty expensive mind. I wouldn't bother chucking in more than 2gb on such an old system, it's very easy to get into the whole upgrade mentality, and before you know it you've blown hundreds on an old system.

You might want to upgrade the hard drive if it's still using the original hard drive shipped with it, perhaps even a small inexpensive SSD drive just for the boot drive and apps, which should really speed up the machine.

 

[NoNameBrand]

If it's still got the original disk from 5.5-6 years ago, think about getting a new one. Any single (or pair) of SATA disks will do.

See how much RAM you're using, and how often you run out. If needed, buy a pair of 1GB of sticks to replace the pair of 128MB that are probably in it (along with a pair of 512MB). Be aware that your G5 is picky about RAM, and likely won't work with generic PC3200 DDR RAM (but might be- I have some OCZ sticks in mine that wasn't advertised as G5 compatible, but is)

How does iMovie 09 run by the way? Because Apple lists the minimum requirements as a 2.0ghz G5, but you appear to have no problems.

It was unusable on my dual 1.8.

You say your into CAD, you might take a look at Blender which is a free 3D app. Pretty powerful but the UI is a pain.

Wings has a much more intuitive UI, though doesn't scale as well.

 

[hostage46]

fair enough ...

This thing works so well, I'll likely not do much more then add more HD space.

How about suggestions on a specs for a good monitor, I'm finding lots of site offering refurb 22" LCD's , what specs should I be looking at?

 

[NoNameBrand]

This thing works so well, I'll likely not do much more then add more HD space.

My suggestion for a new disk was due to the age of the existing one, rather than capacity.

You may also want to set something up for Time Machine, though it'll make that computer pretty sluggish when it's running (less than a few minutes every hour, typically).

How about suggestions on a specs for a good monitor, I'm finding lots of site offering refurb 22" LCD's , what specs should I be looking at?

If it's just for web stuff, practically anything will do. If you're doing photography, you'd probably want at least an MVA/PVA panel if not an IPS.

 

[Frozengeek]

1.6

So what upgrades do you folks recommend? Off the top of my head I'm thinking....
More Hard Drive
More RAM
WiFi card

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Power Mac G5
Model Identifier: PowerMac7,2
Processor Name: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.5f2

I got a free one as well (they look pretty, they're just slow and not much use). I upgraded the RAM and set it up as a fileserver. It's now sharing a 6gb RAID5 for all the computers in the office. Does fine with built-in filesharing in OS 10.5. Samba server tops out around 30-40mb/sec which is fine as a basic file backup system. I wouldn't hit it with any computationally intense tasks, though. You'll be disappointed.