Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New life for a G4 cube?

B

bluedogz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2010
29
0
Havre de Grace, MD
One of my happiest roadside Mac discoveries was finding a complete G4 cube system for... get this... $25!

So, now it sits sadly in the spare room used by the occasional houseguest for checking email. I want to continue using this super-cool little gadget, but for something more... productive. Also, I found out well after buying it for a song that it was owned by one of the young sailors who Al Quaeda took from the USS Cole in 2000, so I'd like to not kick it to the curb too fast.

What are some ideas? I thought of maybe a media server?
 
Old G4 Cubes don't have a bright future. Being a PPC Mac, they are limited to Leopard and most modern software won't work on them. Four very good upgrades are maxing out the RAM at 1.5Gb, upgrading its CPU to a 1.5Ghz or better, putting in a much better video card, and upgrading its hard drive. With those things upgraded, they run Leopard very nicely for a 11 year old machine.

I've done all the above upgrades to my Cube, and I feel as if its allowed me o get at least five more years worth of light use out of it.
 
My cube has been replaced by the mini. I had a MacBook in the middle, but went back to the desktop this time. It still lives on in the other office.
 
Check cubeowner.com for hardware upgrade tips and ideas. Not sure what you mean by "productivity", though.
 
Intell said:
Old G4 Cubes don't have a bright future. Being a PPC Mac, they are limited to Leopard and most modern software won't work on them.

I've done all the above upgrades to my Cube, and I feel as if its allowed me o get at least five more years worth of light use out of it.
Click to expand...




Why light use? I have an iMac G3 and run DAW apps on it. What do you think oasis recorded their albums on? A mac pro? Back when oasis did their first album a cube would of been super fast! Just use it heavy with older software. Should last you 10 years before the computer dies. My main computer for logic and sibelius etc...
 
MacintoshMaster said:
Why light use? I have an iMac G3 and run DAW apps on it. What do you think oasis recorded their albums on? A mac pro? Back when oasis did their first album a cube would of been super fast! Just use it heavy with older software. Should last you 10 years before the computer dies. My main computer for logic and sibelius etc...
Click to expand...

Light use of the internet. I use it for SD media playback and it works pretty well for that.
 
If you're worried about internet performance, take a look at TenFourFox. It's pretty dramatically faster than Firefox (which it basically is a modified version of), and it's optimized in different versions for the G3, G4 (PowerPC 7400 AND the 7450 separately), and the G5. YouTube videos are actually watchable on my Beige G3 w/1GHz upgrade at 360p (they used to be unusable at 240p). It takes advantage of AltiVec... which was never really given the chance it deserved.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37761/tenfourfox
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back