Ok, that's it - no more Macs! Well, certainly no more Mac desktops till I move to a bigger place. 
This was yet another find courtesy of the local classifieds. It's the PowerMac 4,4 1Ghz model with ATI graphics, USB1.1, CDRW, 640MB RAM and a 60GB HDD. I paid £25 GBP for it and the seller very kindly delivered it to me for free. Unusually, the keyboard and mouse were also included - my only other Mac desktop that came with those was my first Sawtooth.
Apple certainly made an extremely tough nut to crack for the educational market! It's built like a tank and seems almost impervious to any damage from accidents or outright sabotage by malicious kids. Taking this into consideration, I think that "T-34" is a pretty apt nickname for this computer - and kudos if you understand the historical reference and joke behind that choice. Although the CRT isn't a Trinitron or a DiamondMax, imho it still displays a pretty decent image with vibrant colours.
The owner had left their iTunes library and a audio sample library on the computer: both of which I've backed up and intend to enjoy. As you can see, their account was not in the best of shape with core software missing from the dock and the Applications folder. In this situation, I would ordinarily reformat and reinstall from scratch but this option wasn't available to me (for reasons I shall elaborate on later.)
An easy solution was to create a new account, sign into that one and then erase the owner's account but it took a bit of effort to uninstall and fully purge the dreaded Norton Anti-Virus from the computer, however with some persistence and research, I succeeded.
Issues: the eMac appears to have been well and truly locked down - I cannot access Open Firmware, FireWire Target Disk Mode or the boot options. From a cold/warm start, the computer ignores all keypresses in this regard. Presumably someone didn't want unauthorised people poking around and altering anything. Is it possible to undo this?
This was yet another find courtesy of the local classifieds. It's the PowerMac 4,4 1Ghz model with ATI graphics, USB1.1, CDRW, 640MB RAM and a 60GB HDD. I paid £25 GBP for it and the seller very kindly delivered it to me for free. Unusually, the keyboard and mouse were also included - my only other Mac desktop that came with those was my first Sawtooth.
Apple certainly made an extremely tough nut to crack for the educational market! It's built like a tank and seems almost impervious to any damage from accidents or outright sabotage by malicious kids. Taking this into consideration, I think that "T-34" is a pretty apt nickname for this computer - and kudos if you understand the historical reference and joke behind that choice.
Although the CRT isn't a Trinitron or a DiamondMax, imho it still displays a pretty decent image with vibrant colours.The owner had left their iTunes library and a audio sample library on the computer: both of which I've backed up and intend to enjoy.
As you can see, their account was not in the best of shape with core software missing from the dock and the Applications folder. In this situation, I would ordinarily reformat and reinstall from scratch but this option wasn't available to me (for reasons I shall elaborate on later.)
An easy solution was to create a new account, sign into that one and then erase the owner's account but it took a bit of effort to uninstall and fully purge the dreaded Norton Anti-Virus from the computer, however with some persistence and research, I succeeded.
Issues: the eMac appears to have been well and truly locked down - I cannot access Open Firmware, FireWire Target Disk Mode or the boot options. From a cold/warm start, the computer ignores all keypresses in this regard. Presumably someone didn't want unauthorised people poking around and altering anything. Is it possible to undo this?
