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upgrading from g5 ppc... questions

M

McDLT

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 11, 2006
148
158
I am finally upgrading to the 6 core. I'm planning on recycling the g5, but is there anything I should pull out of it? The superdrive as a 2nd one for the mac pro, or have they changed significantly?

Also, I am planning on buying some 3rd party RAM, either 2x4GB or 2x8GB. I see that I am starting from 3x1GB. What do I do with those 3 1GB sticks, just ditch them?
 
McDLT said:
I am finally upgrading to the 6 core. I'm planning on recycling the g5, but is there anything I should pull out of it? The superdrive as a 2nd one for the mac pro, or have they changed significantly?

Also, I am planning on buying some 3rd party RAM, either 2x4GB or 2x8GB. I see that I am starting from 3x1GB. What do I do with those 3 1GB sticks, just ditch them?
Click to expand...

why not sell it?
 
Some would say if you have AppleCare, just stick them in the package the other memory came in and put them in the box with the rest of the System Restore stuff.

That way you can stick the factory memory in when/if you send it in for repair.

This will prevent you from getting charged for a factory downgrade and losing your upgrade.

---

Same with the original HD if you ever take it out. For those that worry about security or losing data in a repair wipe/reload.
 
Sell the G5. You'll still get a good sum of cash for it. Don't bother pulling the drive, G5's used IDE optical drives and the Mac Pro went all SATA.
 
Sun Baked said:
Some would say if you have AppleCare, just stick them in the package the other memory came in and put them in the box with the rest of the System Restore stuff.

That way you can stick the factory memory in when/if you send it in for repair.

This will prevent you from getting charged for a factory downgrade and losing your upgrade.

---

Same with the original HD if you ever take it out. For those that worry about security or losing data in a repair wipe/reload.
Click to expand...

This. I always keep the stock parts it came with for these exact reasons. I don't want some stupid tech to erase any data. I've never heard of them downgrading the RAM, but, they could tell you that any issue you might be experiencing to be part of the problem since it's not "official" Apple RAM.
 
Hrududu said:
Sell the G5. You'll still get a good sum of cash for it. Don't bother pulling the drive, G5's used IDE optical drives and the Mac Pro went all SATA.
Click to expand...

No, all Powermac G5's uses SATA. It was the first Mac to use SATA drives.

Edit. Optical is indeed ATA, but hard drives are SATA on the G5.
 
I plan to pull one disk from the g5 and stick it in the pro - hopefully it will fit, haven't check yet, probably should.

I plan to use it to migrate user accounts. It is tempting to start fresh, but I don't think I will. I'll do a fresh install of applications, but it will be nice to have
the old setups available should I need/want them. I'll keep the G5 alive with its other disk to make sure I can deauthorize software as needed. I'll probably keep the old g5 in the basement as a "just in case machine". Eventually I'll try to find somebody to give it too - do they really have much resale value?

edit: on the memory. my g5 has 8gb -usually with 1-2 GB available. So I decided to go with more than 8GB on the mac pro. My understand is the current mac pro like to see memory in banks of three (as opposed to banks of 2 like the old g5). I went with 3x4gb for the pro. I'll keep the stock apple 3gb in a box - just in case.

edit2: check out freecycle.org. somebody might want your old computer - reuse, then recycle
 
dknightd said:
I plan to pull one disk from the g5 and stick it in the pro - hopefully it will fit, haven't check yet, probably should.

I plan to use it to migrate user accounts. It is tempting to start fresh, but I don't think I will. I'll do a fresh install of applications, but it will be nice to have
the old setups available should I need/want them. I'll keep the G5 alive with its other disk to make sure I can deauthorize software as needed. I'll probably keep the old g5 in the basement as a "just in case machine". Eventually I'll try to find somebody to give it too - do they really have much resale value?

edit: on the memory. my g5 has 8gb -usually with 1-2 GB available. So I decided to go with more than 8GB on the mac pro. My understand is the current mac pro like to see memory in banks of three (as opposed to banks of 2 like the old g5). I went with 3x4gb for the pro. I'll keep the stock apple 3gb in a box - just in case.

edit2: check out freecycle.org. somebody might want your old computer - reuse, then recycle
Click to expand...

The hard disk will work, we had a Dual 2.5 GHz G5 and we took out a Hitachi 500 GB disk and stuck it in the 2009 Mac Pro Quad, works just the same as ever. We almost sold the G5 Last year, but dicided to use it in our office, at that time it was going for just over 1,000 dollars here in Japan, I'm sure your G5 is not much different. Do not know what prices of old Macs are in the states, but I'm sure they have a better resale value than PC's. You're going to love the new Mac Pros, they are at least 3 times faster than that old G5.
 
I'm keeping my G5 and using it for network storage, media streaming, an open box to the internet, etc. For a six year old computer, it's held up pretty well. While it may not be running Snow Leopard or running through parallels like a champ, it's still got a fair amount of punch. Having some extra computing power around to handle menial tasks while I keep all six cores chugging away on image editing has it's uses.
 
Thanks for the replies. I guess I will look into selling the g5.

As for the RAM, if I am only upgrading 2 slots, should I keep 2 of the 1GB sticks in there, e.g. 2x4GB + 2x1GB?
 
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