My menagerie, cleaned up and almost completely dialed into what I've always wanted:
Starting under the black side desk, I have the following:
Gretzky
-G5 Dual 2.0
-5 GB RAM (6x 512, 2x 1GB)
-2x 250 GB, 1x500 GB, 1x 1TB SATA drives. 1 of the 250s and the 1TB are hosted via Sonnet SATA PCI card.
-ATI Radeon 9600 XT with 128 MB (ADC/DVI) driving a 23 inch Apple Cinema HD Display rated at 1920x1200.
-The stock Superdrive works just fine.
-Apple USB Pro Speakers attach to the USB port on the back of the Display.
-An old-school Apple Pro Keyboard and Logitech mouse do the input.
The G5 was bought off Craigslist and came with a 24 inch Dell monitor. I used the Dell for a while before finding the Cinema Display on Craigslist for $50.The 1TB drive was rescued from a portable external USB 3.0 drive that had its wiring go bad. A friend gave it to me as he had no use for it. I opened the enclosure, pulled out the drive, and tested it. The drive itself was fine, but the circuitry inside for the USB went bad. I used a MDD drive cage standing on its end to secure the 2.5 inch drive (supported with a SSD drive sled) with 8 screws. A second 250GB drive is also in the MDD drive cage. Wiring that thing was not easy, but I got it done. I'll post a pic of that later.
This Mac runs 10.4.11 95% of the time. I have a partition for 10.5.8 on the 250GB boot drive for iPhone use.
Next to Gretzky, we have Jeanine:
-G4 400 Mhz
-1.5 GB RAM (3x 512 MB, max)
-1x 80 GB IDE, 1x 250 GB IDE, 3x500 GB IDE, 1x 500 SATA with IDE adapter. 2 of the 500 GB IDE drives and the SATA/IDE drive are hosted via a Sonnet Tempo IDE controller PCI card. The 250 GB drive sits in place of the original ZIP drive.
-A Pioneer DVD+R DVD burner rescued from a FireWire drive gone bad replaces the original CD-RW burner.
-An ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB (ADC/DVI with genuine VGA dongle) drives a HP 19 inch monitor rated at 1440x900. The card was swapped out of the MDD sitting next to it.
-A USB 2.0 PCI card handles most USB things.
-Apple Pro Speakers with a short cord connect to the back of the G4 and sound beautiful.
-An Apple Pro Keyboard and cheapie mouse do the input.
This Mac was given to me by my old boss. He was going to toss it but before doing so, he asked me if I wanted it. I said yes and kept it for several years. In October 2012, my G4 PowerBook 1.67 died in a power surge. The G4 400 served as my main machine for a few months while I scraped together the cash to get something else. This Mac is my main movie storage server.
This Mac runs 10.4.11 and can open 9.2.1 in Classic. I can boot into 9.2.1 but the Mac hangs for some unknown reason. I haven't devoted any time to figuring out why.
Next to Jeanine, we have Ulrich:
-G4 MDD Dual 1.0 Ghz
-1GB RAM (4x 256 MB; I have 4x 512 MB standing by if need be.)
-1x 80, 1x 120 GB IDE hard drives
-An ATI Rage Pro 128 with 16 MB (ADC/VGA) can connect to either the HP described above or a 17 inch Apple Studio Display that I trot out on occasion when doing upgrade or repair work.
-The stock Superdrive is still installed.
-The Apple Pro Keyboard and cheapie mouse used in Jeanine can connect to Ulrich using a genuine Apple Keyboard extension cable.
-I have a set of Pro Speakers (with short cable) somewhere in my stuff that can connect to this Mac, but as of yet, I haven't found them.
I purchased this Mac on Craigslist for $25 on the 4th of July of last year. The seller's children had worked on it until leaving for college. When I got it, one of the drives was bad, it ran 10.5.8 and was password-locked. I cleaned it up and it worked fine for a little while.
This Mac has been downgraded to hibernation status. With the G4 MDD under the table doing most of my iTunes and archiving work, this Mac was deemed "surplus" and has been stripped of two hard drives, the drive cage, and its DVD drive. If I find a good deal on IDE drives, I may resurrect this Mac for use as a storage server.
Ulrich runs 10.4.11 and 9.2.2. I can boot from 9.2.2 without any problems. 10.5.8 is horribly slow (even with 2GB RAM and the original ATI Radeon 9000 that currently sits in Jeanine) and I was very disappointed with that. I also use this Mac as a system test bed, determining concepts and trying various storage strategies. One of those strategies bore fruit on the last Mac sitting under the table.
That Mac is Elizabeth, or Liz for short.
-G4 MDD Dual 1.25 Ghz.
-2 GB RAM (4x 512 MB)
-1x 250 GB, 2x 120 GB, and 3x 500GB IDE drives. The two 120 GB drives are bolted into the MDD drive cage taken out of Ulrich and set in place of the stock SuperDrive and cage. They are connected via the ATA-33 interface and work just fine.
-An ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB (ADC/DVI) drives an Apple 23 inch Cinema Display rated at 1600x1024.
-A USB 2.0 PCI card connects to an Iomega DVD+R burner.
-Apple Pro Speakers with long cable connect to Liz and play wonderfully.
-An Apple Pro Keyboard and Logitech mouse do the input.
I bought this Mac almost fully loaded from a hoarder for $25 off Craigslist. It was filled with dust and had a hard time working, but after cleanup, I found that there was a good Mac inside. The stock SuperDrive worked for a while before I removed it. The Apple Cinema Display was also purchased off Craigslist, but I was very disappointed at the time to find its max resolution being 1600x1024. I've made my peace with it, but if I find another ADC-style HD Display, I'll replace it. For now, it does fine in this setup.
A D-Link 4 port switch handles the network traffic and I have everything connected via Apple File Protocol. I'm very happy and proud to have made these Macs the way they are.
Starting under the black side desk, I have the following:
Gretzky
-G5 Dual 2.0
-5 GB RAM (6x 512, 2x 1GB)
-2x 250 GB, 1x500 GB, 1x 1TB SATA drives. 1 of the 250s and the 1TB are hosted via Sonnet SATA PCI card.
-ATI Radeon 9600 XT with 128 MB (ADC/DVI) driving a 23 inch Apple Cinema HD Display rated at 1920x1200.
-The stock Superdrive works just fine.
-Apple USB Pro Speakers attach to the USB port on the back of the Display.
-An old-school Apple Pro Keyboard and Logitech mouse do the input.
The G5 was bought off Craigslist and came with a 24 inch Dell monitor. I used the Dell for a while before finding the Cinema Display on Craigslist for $50.The 1TB drive was rescued from a portable external USB 3.0 drive that had its wiring go bad. A friend gave it to me as he had no use for it. I opened the enclosure, pulled out the drive, and tested it. The drive itself was fine, but the circuitry inside for the USB went bad. I used a MDD drive cage standing on its end to secure the 2.5 inch drive (supported with a SSD drive sled) with 8 screws. A second 250GB drive is also in the MDD drive cage. Wiring that thing was not easy, but I got it done. I'll post a pic of that later.
This Mac runs 10.4.11 95% of the time. I have a partition for 10.5.8 on the 250GB boot drive for iPhone use.
Next to Gretzky, we have Jeanine:
-G4 400 Mhz
-1.5 GB RAM (3x 512 MB, max)
-1x 80 GB IDE, 1x 250 GB IDE, 3x500 GB IDE, 1x 500 SATA with IDE adapter. 2 of the 500 GB IDE drives and the SATA/IDE drive are hosted via a Sonnet Tempo IDE controller PCI card. The 250 GB drive sits in place of the original ZIP drive.
-A Pioneer DVD+R DVD burner rescued from a FireWire drive gone bad replaces the original CD-RW burner.
-An ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB (ADC/DVI with genuine VGA dongle) drives a HP 19 inch monitor rated at 1440x900. The card was swapped out of the MDD sitting next to it.
-A USB 2.0 PCI card handles most USB things.
-Apple Pro Speakers with a short cord connect to the back of the G4 and sound beautiful.
-An Apple Pro Keyboard and cheapie mouse do the input.
This Mac was given to me by my old boss. He was going to toss it but before doing so, he asked me if I wanted it. I said yes and kept it for several years. In October 2012, my G4 PowerBook 1.67 died in a power surge. The G4 400 served as my main machine for a few months while I scraped together the cash to get something else. This Mac is my main movie storage server.
This Mac runs 10.4.11 and can open 9.2.1 in Classic. I can boot into 9.2.1 but the Mac hangs for some unknown reason. I haven't devoted any time to figuring out why.
Next to Jeanine, we have Ulrich:
-G4 MDD Dual 1.0 Ghz
-1GB RAM (4x 256 MB; I have 4x 512 MB standing by if need be.)
-1x 80, 1x 120 GB IDE hard drives
-An ATI Rage Pro 128 with 16 MB (ADC/VGA) can connect to either the HP described above or a 17 inch Apple Studio Display that I trot out on occasion when doing upgrade or repair work.
-The stock Superdrive is still installed.
-The Apple Pro Keyboard and cheapie mouse used in Jeanine can connect to Ulrich using a genuine Apple Keyboard extension cable.
-I have a set of Pro Speakers (with short cable) somewhere in my stuff that can connect to this Mac, but as of yet, I haven't found them.
I purchased this Mac on Craigslist for $25 on the 4th of July of last year. The seller's children had worked on it until leaving for college. When I got it, one of the drives was bad, it ran 10.5.8 and was password-locked. I cleaned it up and it worked fine for a little while.
This Mac has been downgraded to hibernation status. With the G4 MDD under the table doing most of my iTunes and archiving work, this Mac was deemed "surplus" and has been stripped of two hard drives, the drive cage, and its DVD drive. If I find a good deal on IDE drives, I may resurrect this Mac for use as a storage server.
Ulrich runs 10.4.11 and 9.2.2. I can boot from 9.2.2 without any problems. 10.5.8 is horribly slow (even with 2GB RAM and the original ATI Radeon 9000 that currently sits in Jeanine) and I was very disappointed with that. I also use this Mac as a system test bed, determining concepts and trying various storage strategies. One of those strategies bore fruit on the last Mac sitting under the table.
That Mac is Elizabeth, or Liz for short.
-G4 MDD Dual 1.25 Ghz.
-2 GB RAM (4x 512 MB)
-1x 250 GB, 2x 120 GB, and 3x 500GB IDE drives. The two 120 GB drives are bolted into the MDD drive cage taken out of Ulrich and set in place of the stock SuperDrive and cage. They are connected via the ATA-33 interface and work just fine.
-An ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB (ADC/DVI) drives an Apple 23 inch Cinema Display rated at 1600x1024.
-A USB 2.0 PCI card connects to an Iomega DVD+R burner.
-Apple Pro Speakers with long cable connect to Liz and play wonderfully.
-An Apple Pro Keyboard and Logitech mouse do the input.
I bought this Mac almost fully loaded from a hoarder for $25 off Craigslist. It was filled with dust and had a hard time working, but after cleanup, I found that there was a good Mac inside. The stock SuperDrive worked for a while before I removed it. The Apple Cinema Display was also purchased off Craigslist, but I was very disappointed at the time to find its max resolution being 1600x1024. I've made my peace with it, but if I find another ADC-style HD Display, I'll replace it. For now, it does fine in this setup.
A D-Link 4 port switch handles the network traffic and I have everything connected via Apple File Protocol. I'm very happy and proud to have made these Macs the way they are.
I crack myself up. 
