Patience?

[oneninjamonkey]

So I'm just going to lay it all out here.
I have zero mac experience and not much info to give here.

I have recently gotten a hold of a mac server g3 and a mac server g4. A business was closing down and pretty much just getting rid of everything.

The status on the G3- the green power button comes on but it shows nothing on the monitor that i grabbed with the computers. I kind of figured if i can get the g4 to work then why bother with this one.

The status on the G4- This one actually gets up and running to the main screen. Problem is I cant get much further because I don't have a mac keyboard/mouse. Do you have to buy specific hardware for macs, and what would be some cheap options in that department? Also, when I turn it on it starts making this really loud noise that sounds like something is stuck in the fan its like a metallic rattling. I honestly don't even know how to get one of these things open. I consider myself moderately tech savvy but would I be better of taking this thing to the mac store and seeing what they could do? Or is it even worth it to be messing with these at all? How well do they work?

Anyhow, I know I'm not giving much right now but any assistance with this little project would be greatly appreciated and I will try to answer any questions i can.

Thanks!

 

[mkrishnan]

I would generally be of the "it's not worth it" camp, but... you should be able to use pretty much any USB mouse and keyboard on any Mac with USB....

 

[oneninjamonkey]

so is this pretty much an outdated computer?

 

[motulist]

Any ol' usb keyboard and mouse will work. The only hardware I can think of that isn't cross compatible with pre-Intel Macs is the motherboard and videocards and maybe some wifi cards. Other than that, any PC component will work with your Mac. (as long as it has the correct port or whatever). And in the newer Intel Macs, even some motherboards are cross compatible.

 

[mkrishnan]

so is this pretty much an outdated computer?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, they can do all kinds of interesting things, but they're quite outdated. This is 6-8 year old technology... and unlike Windows, OS X has gone through numerous updates in that time. In terms of speed, think of the G4 as being somewhere in the PIII / very low end P4 era and the G3 to be somewhat equivalent to the faster Pentium II's or maybe the slowest Pentium III's.

I would personally not bother with them unless...

- You are extremely poor and absolutely need a computer on which you spend little or no money

- You are a Mac collector and you really enjoy doing it.

But your mileage may vary.