Since we're all here for a self-explanatory common interest, and always seem to enjoy sharing stories surrounding said common interest, I figured that you guys might like this one. Pull up a chair, and read at your leisure. 
Last weekend, I finally got the chance to procure a replacement power supply for the Quicksilver I've had inactively waiting since October 2019 for a reasonable price. Because I last used it as an elaborate enclosure for my Raspberry Pi 3, it was at this point just an empty husk with its future in question, G4 internals scattered about. So, after I dusted off and reassembled all the original components I've kept in storage since that point, cleaned the pieces, spliced some wires, screwed the parts, reorganized the cabling, and plugged the connectors, it was physically back to its old self once again.
Unfortunately however, the machine's first indication of life with the new PSU was not a terribly encouraging one. Upon trying to power it on for the first time, the power button just glowed when pressed and went out when released. Having prior experience with my MDD, I already knew that the Power Mac G4s in particular have always been a little twitchy concerning power. So with that in mind, I reset the PMU with the little motherboard button and tried again, this time being met with success, albeit sans chime. Nonetheless, I excitedly finished reassembling everything together (this was before the rebuilding process was finished), attached it to a 20" ADC Cinema Display I had acquired during last December, and booted it up for the very first time.
But the troubles didn't end there; although it did boot to Jaguar (I had already moved a drive over from the MDD containing installs of 9.2 and 10.2), it kept freezing at random intervals, and it only got worse with time, getting faster and faster to freeze after booting. Naturally, I initially thought that this was RAM-related, suspecting that it for whatever reason didn't like my lone low-density 512 MB PC133 stick. So of course, I swap it out with a few other high-density sticks of smaller sizes. No luck. I then proceed on with the standard process of elimination, eventually stripping it down to the bare essentials (including trying a different GPU), which still didn't solve the periodic freezes.
No less than a dozen PRAM and PMU resets later, I was beginning to suspect a broken-off resistor or accidentally severed electrical line somewhere. I started to comb across the motherboard looking for signs of damage, to which I was met with none (in fact, it was actually quite pristine given that I had it sealed in plastic bags for all that time). Distraught and exasperated, I decided to sleep on it in hopes of coming to another solution. Over the course of the next day, it dawned on me that a Dell Dimension E521 I had upgraded the CPU of last year exhibited the same behavior. Although the details were fuzzy, I knew that it was working fine now, so I must have done something to resolve it. Going from vague memory, I deduced that I either swapped out its RAM, or more likely, reseated its CPU. After trying most everything else in the book up to that point, I decided that since I was now out of options, reseating the Quicksilver's dual G4 daughterboard was at least worth a shot as a last ditch effort to get it stable, in the event that even one of its pins might not be making perfect contact with the slot.
So I reseated the daughterboard (several times, as repeated reinsertion is known to "clean" pins and contacts of many different types, before settling on a good-sounding one with a solid 'thud'), repasted the chips, and attached the heatsink once more. And lo and behold, that did it! Much to my delight, this machine is now running smoothly and stably as a Dual 800 MHz G4 workstation, with its 4 MB combined L3 cache fully intact and working wonderfully. What's more, I've had my eye on this thing for quite a while, both in-person and otherwise; so I never thought I'd actually see the day!
Taking something away from the whole ordeal, I suppose it just goes to show how a well-placed piece of insight and intuition can save you (and others) from sticky situations whenever they inevitably arise ...
As for first impressions, I'm already quite fond of this machine. I really like its distinctive 'low hum' sound while on, and I must note that although it at first had a scent of generic aged electronics, which I liked, the new power supply seems to have imprinted on the rest of the structure, and in turn, made its exhaust smell strikingly similar to that of my (also both 'quick' and 'silver') GameCube that I've had for years, which I personally count as a significant plus.
Performance-wise, it feels comparable to the MDD w/ a single 1.25 GHz G4 + 1 MB L3 cache, if perhaps a little slower. But of course, the fact that the MDD has 2 GB memory to play with while this thing currently has only 512 MB is likely a large contributor, so I will still need to procure an additional 2 sticks of 512 MB PC133, hopefully along with a replacement speaker as the original has unfortunately torn on all sides and does not produce any output. But that aside, I feel rather lucky as most everything else concerning this box is pristine. I've also added in the MDD's Radeon 9000 Pro and a spare USB 2.0 PCI card for better graphics and I/O performance, respectively.
As I think Jaguar will be the primary OS of choice for this Quicksilver (at least for the time being), Internet options are limited ... or perhaps more accurately, curated. That said, I've increasingly found The Old Net to be an invaluable resource for not only reading anything on Wikipedia thanks to their on-site proxy, but from their Wayback Machine backend, also as an accessible time machine for seamlessly experiencing the World Wide Web when both said Quicksilver and Mac OS X v10.2 were king of the world.
Speaking of though, I've actually found that there's little I cannot personally accomplish on Jaguar, sans the fact that it cannot access YouTube or other contemporary websites (often filled with countless reminders of the horrors of the modern day), which I am increasingly coming to find is actually a positive for both play and productivity. Jaguar, alongside Panther and non-TFF Tiger, is old enough to be entirely cut off from Web 3.0, but still capable enough to visit Cornica, Macintosh Garden, and the vast majority of the Internet in 2002, 2004, and 2006, respectively, courtesy of The Wayback Machine. - Which just so happens to house the very 'net that these machines were made for in the first place, meaning they effectively remain in their element when used in this way.
That aside, there are still older versions of Office, Creative Suite, iTunes, iLife, games, etc. to be had that remain every bit as useful now as they were back in the day. Sure, I still have to move a chunk of text from a .doc or .rtf generated by Word X or TextEdit to an .odt with modern LibreOffice, but the majority of the work was regardless done on Jaguar. And the same case for when I might configure a network server or sync an iPod with iTunes 6.
But ultimately of course, I suppose it comes down to how creative one is willing to be to fulfill any given task, while at the same time managing to have a little fun with it all, if that is their prerogative.
Safe to say though, I think he looks like a happy Mac too.
Last weekend, I finally got the chance to procure a replacement power supply for the Quicksilver I've had inactively waiting since October 2019 for a reasonable price. Because I last used it as an elaborate enclosure for my Raspberry Pi 3, it was at this point just an empty husk with its future in question, G4 internals scattered about. So, after I dusted off and reassembled all the original components I've kept in storage since that point, cleaned the pieces, spliced some wires, screwed the parts, reorganized the cabling, and plugged the connectors, it was physically back to its old self once again.
Unfortunately however, the machine's first indication of life with the new PSU was not a terribly encouraging one. Upon trying to power it on for the first time, the power button just glowed when pressed and went out when released. Having prior experience with my MDD, I already knew that the Power Mac G4s in particular have always been a little twitchy concerning power. So with that in mind, I reset the PMU with the little motherboard button and tried again, this time being met with success, albeit sans chime. Nonetheless, I excitedly finished reassembling everything together (this was before the rebuilding process was finished), attached it to a 20" ADC Cinema Display I had acquired during last December, and booted it up for the very first time.
But the troubles didn't end there; although it did boot to Jaguar (I had already moved a drive over from the MDD containing installs of 9.2 and 10.2), it kept freezing at random intervals, and it only got worse with time, getting faster and faster to freeze after booting. Naturally, I initially thought that this was RAM-related, suspecting that it for whatever reason didn't like my lone low-density 512 MB PC133 stick. So of course, I swap it out with a few other high-density sticks of smaller sizes. No luck. I then proceed on with the standard process of elimination, eventually stripping it down to the bare essentials (including trying a different GPU), which still didn't solve the periodic freezes.
No less than a dozen PRAM and PMU resets later, I was beginning to suspect a broken-off resistor or accidentally severed electrical line somewhere. I started to comb across the motherboard looking for signs of damage, to which I was met with none (in fact, it was actually quite pristine given that I had it sealed in plastic bags for all that time). Distraught and exasperated, I decided to sleep on it in hopes of coming to another solution. Over the course of the next day, it dawned on me that a Dell Dimension E521 I had upgraded the CPU of last year exhibited the same behavior. Although the details were fuzzy, I knew that it was working fine now, so I must have done something to resolve it. Going from vague memory, I deduced that I either swapped out its RAM, or more likely, reseated its CPU. After trying most everything else in the book up to that point, I decided that since I was now out of options, reseating the Quicksilver's dual G4 daughterboard was at least worth a shot as a last ditch effort to get it stable, in the event that even one of its pins might not be making perfect contact with the slot.
So I reseated the daughterboard (several times, as repeated reinsertion is known to "clean" pins and contacts of many different types, before settling on a good-sounding one with a solid 'thud'), repasted the chips, and attached the heatsink once more. And lo and behold, that did it! Much to my delight, this machine is now running smoothly and stably as a Dual 800 MHz G4 workstation, with its 4 MB combined L3 cache fully intact and working wonderfully. What's more, I've had my eye on this thing for quite a while, both in-person and otherwise; so I never thought I'd actually see the day!
Taking something away from the whole ordeal, I suppose it just goes to show how a well-placed piece of insight and intuition can save you (and others) from sticky situations whenever they inevitably arise ...
As for first impressions, I'm already quite fond of this machine. I really like its distinctive 'low hum' sound while on, and I must note that although it at first had a scent of generic aged electronics, which I liked, the new power supply seems to have imprinted on the rest of the structure, and in turn, made its exhaust smell strikingly similar to that of my (also both 'quick' and 'silver') GameCube that I've had for years, which I personally count as a significant plus.
Performance-wise, it feels comparable to the MDD w/ a single 1.25 GHz G4 + 1 MB L3 cache, if perhaps a little slower. But of course, the fact that the MDD has 2 GB memory to play with while this thing currently has only 512 MB is likely a large contributor, so I will still need to procure an additional 2 sticks of 512 MB PC133, hopefully along with a replacement speaker as the original has unfortunately torn on all sides and does not produce any output. But that aside, I feel rather lucky as most everything else concerning this box is pristine. I've also added in the MDD's Radeon 9000 Pro and a spare USB 2.0 PCI card for better graphics and I/O performance, respectively.
As I think Jaguar will be the primary OS of choice for this Quicksilver (at least for the time being), Internet options are limited ... or perhaps more accurately, curated. That said, I've increasingly found The Old Net to be an invaluable resource for not only reading anything on Wikipedia thanks to their on-site proxy, but from their Wayback Machine backend, also as an accessible time machine for seamlessly experiencing the World Wide Web when both said Quicksilver and Mac OS X v10.2 were king of the world.
Speaking of though, I've actually found that there's little I cannot personally accomplish on Jaguar, sans the fact that it cannot access YouTube or other contemporary websites (often filled with countless reminders of the horrors of the modern day), which I am increasingly coming to find is actually a positive for both play and productivity. Jaguar, alongside Panther and non-TFF Tiger, is old enough to be entirely cut off from Web 3.0, but still capable enough to visit Cornica, Macintosh Garden, and the vast majority of the Internet in 2002, 2004, and 2006, respectively, courtesy of The Wayback Machine. - Which just so happens to house the very 'net that these machines were made for in the first place, meaning they effectively remain in their element when used in this way.
That aside, there are still older versions of Office, Creative Suite, iTunes, iLife, games, etc. to be had that remain every bit as useful now as they were back in the day. Sure, I still have to move a chunk of text from a .doc or .rtf generated by Word X or TextEdit to an .odt with modern LibreOffice, but the majority of the work was regardless done on Jaguar. And the same case for when I might configure a network server or sync an iPod with iTunes 6.
But ultimately of course, I suppose it comes down to how creative one is willing to be to fulfill any given task, while at the same time managing to have a little fun with it all, if that is their prerogative.
Safe to say though, I think he looks like a happy Mac too.
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