What are you doing with your PPC boxes?

[eyoungren]

That is one fantastic saga. The amount of time those of us in here are willing to put into these Macs is surprising sometimes...

Out of curiosity, what are you using as your main system now?

My MBP. It's convenient and I can sit on the couch with it. I'd rather have my 'command central' back, but that's not happening right now.

And yeah, even for me, I've spent more time on this Mac than I want to. I'd still love to get it fixed and keep it going, but I'm just tired of the "Works today, in the shop tomorrow" routine. I want to walk over and get on the computer and not have to wonder in the back of my head if I am going to have a problem using it.

I figure an ATX PSU mod would probably fix it, but I'd rather just invest that money into a new G4 or G5 right now.

Love the Mac, hate it's problems.

 

[redheeler]

My MBP. It's convenient and I can sit on the couch with it. I'd rather have my 'command central' back, but that's not happening right now.

And yeah, even for me, I've spent more time on this Mac than I want to. I'd still love to get it fixed and keep it going, but I'm just tired of the "Works today, in the shop tomorrow" routine. I want to walk over and get on the computer and not have to wonder in the back of my head if I am going to have a problem using it.

I figure an ATX PSU mod would probably fix it, but I'd rather just invest that money into a new G4 or G5 right now.

Love the Mac, hate it's problems.

If you want a reliable Mac tower, I recommend the 2006 Mac Pro without a doubt. Going with a G4 MDD or G5, as nice as those Macs are, means committing to fix more potential problems, IMHO.

 

[akator]

All of my PowerPC Macs are used for media and entertainment. A PowerBook G4 15" sits on a living room cabinet as an emulation station, usually with MacMAME running. In the studio a Mini G4 with a HDTV is used for music, video, and occasional gaming. Also in the studio is a G4 iMac, mostly used for music and MacMAME.

Sometime soon I'm going to upgrade the iMac with SSD and maxed RAM. The parts are here, I just need the time to do it all plus a thorough internal cleaning.

I've also got a Core Duo Mini running Linux Mint as our file and media server. It is remarkably reliable. In another room we have a Core 2 Duo Mini with a SSD running Snow Leopard as a HTPC.

 

[128keaton]

If you want a reliable Mac tower, I recommend the 2006 Mac Pro without a doubt. Going with a G4 MDD or G5, as nice as those Macs are, means committing to fix more potential problems, IMHO.

Yeah, just like cars, as time marches on, little bugs and quirks pop up for reasons none other than that they are tired. While the MP1,1 is 10 years old, parts are easier to find, its much easier to troubleshoot and work on, and is exponentially more upgradable than any PowerPC Mac.

 

[redheeler]

Yeah, just like cars, as time marches on, little bugs and quirks pop up for reasons none other than that they are tired. While the MP1,1 is 10 years old, parts are easier to find, its much easier to troubleshoot and work on, and is exponentially more upgradable than any PowerPC Mac.

Agreed on all points. The 2006 Mac Pros were a decent step-up in reliability from the G5s, and they are much less likely to suffer from issues even 10 years later. They don't need thermal calibration, and are not prone to G4 MDD PSU failure or G5 logic board failure (the latter of which I have personally experienced, as well as a couple other issues with MDD systems). With Quad G5s, there's also the possibility of LCS failure, even if the LCS has never leaked (which is certainly the case on my Quad).

Eric, as much as those of us in this forum would like to see you keep using PPC, it's important that you get what works most reliably for your needs.

 

[bunnspecial]

Another understated advantage of the MP 1,1 is the fact that it has two PCIe GPU power ports so you can run two high-end GPUs without having to cobble together power for the additional ones. Also, the bottom(16x) slot is double height so you don't lose a slot when you put in a double height GPU.

These kind of things are important if you're going to run 6 monitors.

I'm in the process of migrating the main duties of my Quicksilver to a dual 2.7 G5. The main thing keeping me on there as opposed to a Quad or Mac Pro is a need for SCSI. It's hard enough to find a G5 compatible PCI SCSI card, much less a PCIe one that doesn't cost a small fortune.

Firmly in the category of first world problems, I've just bought a couple of 30" Cinema displays. I have an X850XT on the way for my dual 2.7, but it only has one DL-DVI port so can only drive one 30". I have to decide if I want to keep the best GPU in it, or if I want to drop back to a 6800 Ultra. The 6800 Ultra is certainly no slouch by any stretch and isn't THAT far behind the X850-the reason for using it would be the dual DL ports. It's hard to pass up having the best PPC GPU in that computer, though.

 

[MattA]

The only PowerPC we still use actively is my wife's iMac G5 (17"/1.8Ghz/2GB/640GB). It's in the kitchen, and she uses it for her music while in there. It still works perfectly after all these years!

I also have a 1.6Ghz Powermac that is in my office, but it's currently not hooked up. We also have an iBook and Powerbook G4, but they haven't been used in ages. I keep them around because they're hella cool.

 

[1042686]

I'm still using my g4 or g5 powermacs every day for all the normal day to day stuff average folks use computers for. Nothing wild but they work just fine for me. Even facebag works ok on the g4 and perfectly fine on the g5 although I try and stay away as they are huge black hole time wasters - suck ya in and never let go lol. The only thing that bugs is that my IPhones don't sync to the old version of itunes so I DO have to use my 08 intel MB for that.

 

[Lil Chillbil]

My MBP. It's convenient and I can sit on the couch with it. I'd rather have my 'command central' back, but that's not happening right now.

And yeah, even for me, I've spent more time on this Mac than I want to. I'd still love to get it fixed and keep it going, but I'm just tired of the "Works today, in the shop tomorrow" routine. I want to walk over and get on the computer and not have to wonder in the back of my head if I am going to have a problem using it.

I figure an ATX PSU mod would probably fix it, but I'd rather just invest that money into a new G4 or G5 right now.

Love the Mac, hate it's problems.

I've been using my Mac Pro as my mission control for a month now, 3 monitors and reliable as all hell. I'll get 10 years out of her.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

If you want a reliable Mac tower, I recommend the 2006 Mac Pro without a doubt. Going with a G4 MDD or G5, as nice as those Macs are, means committing to fix more potential problems, IMHO.

I've considered getting a 2006 Mac Pro myself. Would you recommend Snow Leopard, Lion, or another OS? I worry about the security of running outdated software on an Intel Mac, but is it as big a deal as running XP today?

 

[redheeler]

I've considered getting a 2006 Mac Pro myself. Would you recommend Snow Leopard, Lion, or another OS? I worry about the security of running outdated software on an Intel Mac, but is it as big a deal as running XP today?

The 2006 Mac Pro is actually capable of running up to and including OS X El Capitan with a boot.efi mod, meaning you don't have to deal with outdated software (yet, but it is only a matter of time unfortunately). However, I highly recommend upgrading your GPU first, as well as putting in an SSD, and making sure it has 8 GB or more RAM. You can get surprisingly decent performance on El Capitan with those upgrades, in fact it will feel faster than some brand new Macs where Apple is still failing to include SSDs.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm running Mavericks on my 1,1, although there's no technical reason why I couldn't run El Capitan. Sierra is the end of the line for them-the CPUs don't support the instructions.

In any case, I've made the following upgrades:

1. 1gb 8800GT from MacVidCards. Upgraded video cards are necessary for newer OSs, and in 10.7 and newer you don't need to use a flashed video card. With that said, I opted for a bit of "luxury" to get boot screens

2. Kingston 256gb SSD. I should have spent a bit more on the SSD for a work computer, but this works fine and the SATA bus is slow enough that it won't benefit from a high end SSD(like the 850 EVO in my main MBP). It's quite snappy

3. 16gb of RAM. With 8 RAM slots, this is cheap to do these days and you can put in a LOT more if you want to. The RAM runs VERY hot in these, and it is recommended that you use Mac Pro specific RAM that has very large heatsinks. With 8x2gb sticks with the MP heatsinks, my RAM is usually in the 70-80ºC range. With that said, the RAM is registered DDR-2 which is widely available and inexpensive as servers are its main application. Almost all you will find has some sort of heat spreader, and many folks are running plain registered RAM with the standard heat spreader style.

4. Upgraded to dual x5355 CPUs to get 8 physical cores. This requires flashing the firmware to MP 2,1(there's a utility to do this). Truthfully, there's not much advantage in doing this for most purposes, but this is an inexpensive upgrade($30-40 for a matched pair on Ebay). This really is a lateral move from the stock x5150s as the clock speed and cache amount is the same. x5365s bump you to 3.0ghz which cost a lot more.

One of these days, I'm going to put in a RAID card and run some of the 15K SAS drives I have. This is really not a practical upgrade-I'm mostly doing it because I have the drives-but will be interesting. I actually bought a RAID card but unfortunately it was for a Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1.

Oh, by the way, I can't forget the dual aluminum 23"s, Magic Mouse, and Unicomp Spacesaver M. I feel like I'm in my "command center" when I'm at that computer. I'm just glad I have an office to myself with that keyboard

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

I'm running Mavericks on my 1,1, although there's no technical reason why I couldn't run El Capitan. Sierra is the end of the line for them-the CPUs don't support the instructions.

In any case, I've made the following upgrades:

1. 1gb 8800GT from MacVidCards. Upgraded video cards are necessary for newer OSs, and in 10.7 and newer you don't need to use a flashed video card. With that said, I opted for a bit of "luxury" to get boot screens

2. Kingston 256gb SSD. I should have spent a bit more on the SSD for a work computer, but this works fine and the SATA bus is slow enough that it won't benefit from a high end SSD(like the 850 EVO in my main MBP). It's quite snappy

3. 16gb of RAM. With 8 RAM slots, this is cheap to do these days and you can put in a LOT more if you want to. The RAM runs VERY hot in these, and it is recommended that you use Mac Pro specific RAM that has very large heatsinks. With 8x2gb sticks with the MP heatsinks, my RAM is usually in the 70-80ºC range. With that said, the RAM is registered DDR-2 which is widely available and inexpensive as servers are its main application. Almost all you will find has some sort of heat spreader, and many folks are running plain registered RAM with the standard heat spreader style.

4. Upgraded to dual x5355 CPUs to get 8 physical cores. This requires flashing the firmware to MP 2,1(there's a utility to do this). Truthfully, there's not much advantage in doing this for most purposes, but this is an inexpensive upgrade($30-40 for a matched pair on Ebay). This really is a lateral move from the stock x5150s as the clock speed and cache amount is the same. x5365s bump you to 3.0ghz which cost a lot more.

One of these days, I'm going to put in a RAID card and run some of the 15K SAS drives I have. This is really not a practical upgrade-I'm mostly doing it because I have the drives-but will be interesting. I actually bought a RAID card but unfortunately it was for a Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1.

Oh, by the way, I can't forget the dual aluminum 23"s, Magic Mouse, and Unicomp Spacesaver M. I feel like I'm in my "command center" when I'm at that computer. I'm just glad I have an office to myself with that keyboard

If Sierra is the end of the line for the early Mac Pro's, what then? Linux? BSD? Seems like a lot of work and a lot of cash to upgrade a computer that can no longer be hacked to run the newest Apple OS. I was contemplating the purchase of a 2008 Mac Pro, but doesn't that generation also have the same fate?

 

[redheeler]

If Sierra is the end of the line for the early Mac Pro's, what then? Linux? BSD? Seems like a lot of work and a lot of cash to upgrade a computer that can no longer be hacked to run the newest Apple OS. I was contemplating the purchase of a 2008 Mac Pro, but doesn't that generation also have the same fate?

The 2008 Mac Pro can run Sierra using the method detailed in the MacOS Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread. But for maximum longevity I recommend going with a 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro. Both are fully supported by Sierra (although the 2009 requires a simple firmware upgrade), and of course have the most power/upgrade potential. It's unlikely that support will be dropped for a couple MacOS versions yet, because dropping the 2010 Mac Pro will also mean dropping the newer (but completely identical aside from stock CPU options) model introduced in June 2012.

 

[Altemose]

I'm actually pretty grateful they were still selling G3s into late 2003. I don't doubt for a minute that is the only reason why Tiger and maybe even Panther support the G3 chip. The G3 was also a great mobile chip, so it made a lot of sense in an inexpensive consumer portable because of how cool it ran and even the clock speeds being fairly comparable to what was in the G4 PowerBooks at the time.

The part that gets me is that they ran the G3 up to clock speeds of 900 MHz, then introduced the G4 at slower clock speeds in the iBook G4. All in all, with the little differences between the iBook G3 and G4, there is no excuse in my eyes as to why we had the G3 serving as the consumer portable. I would understand a select model being made with a G3 into 2003 for educational markets and what not where affordability and native OS 9 were critical. Ideally, Apple should of came out with the lower clock speed G4s in the iBooks a bit sooner, and kept the faster G4s in the PowerBooks to keep enough of a differentiation between the pro and consumer line. Just my thoughts, but either way I am happy to own iBooks as I love them.

Without the G5 available for Laptops, I suppose that they had to keep the G4 as the "premium option" and the G3 as the base-model.

The one option that Apple could of done was to keep a lower clock speed G4 in the iBook and faster G4s in the PowerBook.

TenFourFox is going to hit the same dead end after ESR 45 unfortunately. The future of web browsing on both early Intel and PowerPC Macs (running MacOS, not Linux) is going to start looking uncertain soon.

Hopefully we will be able to get another usable two years or so out of TenFourFox after ESR 45...

At this point, I pretty much consider my test pancake (which this was) to be burnt and I'm looking to swap in either an MDD or a G5. We will see what comes first in the new year. Certain parts will go from this Mac to the next one and I'll probably get to use my Fire GL that's been sitting around as well (can't use it in my QS).

I have a really decent Dual 800 MHz QS if you need a new template to start with. It was my first Mac, and I would love to see it go to use in a project like yours.

 

[eyoungren]

I have a really decent Dual 800 MHz QS if you need a new template to start with. It was my first Mac, and I would love to see it go to use in a project like yours.

I PMed you.

 

[Hrududu]

The part that gets me is that they ran the G3 up to clock speeds of 900 MHz, then introduced the G4 at slower clock speeds in the iBook G4. All in all, with the little differences between the iBook G3 and G4, there is no excuse in my eyes as to why we had the G3 serving as the consumer portable. I would understand a select model being made with a G3 into 2003 for educational markets and what not where affordability and native OS 9 were critical. Ideally, Apple should of came out with the lower clock speed G4s in the iBooks a bit sooner, and kept the faster G4s in the PowerBooks to keep enough of a differentiation between the pro and consumer line. Just my thoughts, but either way I am happy to own iBooks as I love them.

I guess at that time Apple really wanted to differentiate the PowerBook and iBook lines as much as possible prior to the Aluminum PowerBook era (I realize the iBook G3 and AlBooks did coesist for a while). The only place I disagree is saying the iBook G3 and G4s had little difference. They were totally different animals. Sure they looked similar, but the G4s brought in USB 2.0, Bluetooth, better GPUs, higher capacity DDR RAM, and of course Airport Extreme. I think they really wanted a stronger & more diverse PowerBook lineup before swaying pro customers to a lower priced iBook.

 

[Altemose]

The only place I disagree is saying the iBook G3 and G4s had little difference. They were totally different animals. Sure they looked similar, but the G4s brought in USB 2.0, Bluetooth, better GPUs, higher capacity DDR RAM, and of course Airport Extreme.

I was mainly referencing the case design primarily. Under the hood, those technologies were already in the higher end PowerBooks, so Apple could have specc'd the iBook down and still produced a G4. The G3 chip was great, but what is despicable is how the last iBook rolled off the shelves in 2003, and by 2007 they were eliminated from the last PowerPC compatible OS. Granted, the same could be said for the higher end pro G5s, which last were sold in 2006 and were effectively obsolete by 2009.

 

[Hrududu]

I was mainly referencing the case design primarily. Under the hood, those technologies were already in the higher end PowerBooks, so Apple could have specc'd the iBook down and still produced a G4. The G3 chip was great, but what is despicable is how the last iBook rolled off the shelves in 2003, and by 2007 they were eliminated from the last PowerPC compatible OS. Granted, the same could be said for the higher end pro G5s, which last were sold in 2006 and were effectively obsolete by 2009.

Yeah, Apple's product lifespan is a total crapshoot sometimes. When you consider how long products like the B&W G3, early G4 systems, Late 2007 Intel Macs, and iPhone 3GS got support, its crazy to think how quickly Apple killed the last 68k machines, G5's, Core Duo and early Core 2 Macs, and the original iPhone and iPads. The trend is to find that lucky spot where you don't get the 1st generation, but don't buy too close to the end either.

 

[hartleymartin]

In reality, when you buy any personal computer, you know that you're going to have to replace it in 3-5 years. The fact that you can generally get a 5-8 years useful working life out of most Macs is pretty good. As you can see from my signature, my main machine is a 2008 Mac Pro and my main laptop is a 2011 MacBook Pro. The only reason I don't move to Sierra is that there are no Sierra-Compatible drivers for my printer/scanner at the moment.

I'll be looking into replacing the laptop in the next 12 months primarily because it is now close to 1,000 battery cycles and I want something with USB 3.0 - I'm primarily looking into the "legacy" MacBook Pro which was only discontinued this year, despite not being revised since 2012. I have 16GB of compatible RAM and a couple of SSDs for upgrades.

 

[pochopsp]

In reality, when you buy any personal computer, you know that you're going to have to replace it in 3-5 years

I do not agree with you. I have an Asus A4000 laptop from 2005 and it is still working like a charm, same for my windows desktop PC bought in 2008, same for my other windows PC from 2003, and obviously same for my MDD from 2002. The only computer which died in my house is my Acer aspire one D250 but this is another thing because Acer netbooks, and netbooks in general, have overheating problems.

 

[akator]

^ Somewhat agreed. These days computer hardware can remain useful far longer than it used to.

Macs used to stay relevant longer back in the day, somewhat justifying their increased initial cost. Today that doesn't apply. Hell, current versions of both Windows and Linux run on many Intel Macs that Apple abandoned years ago.

For basic productivity, computer hardware that is several years old can still handle the web, video, word processing, and tons of other stuff. But I wouldn't have said that 15 years ago or more

 

[Altemose]

Hell, current versions of both Windows and Linux run on many Intel Macs that Apple abandoned years ago.

However, good luck getting them to run right as Apple abandoned the Boot Camp drivers for them. It is no excuse as to why Apple cannot support Boot Camp for Windows 10 on a 2011 MacBook Pro, which is nearly identical to the 2012 models with the exception of Ivy Bridge. Furthermore, as exposed by a number of Mac enthusiasts, it is merely a software installer issue as the drivers for the most part are all included.

 

[AmazingHenry]

Updated uses + new Macs!

Power Mac G5 - My daily driver . I use this Mac for just about everything I use a computer for.

iBook G4 - Main laptop. Used for just about everything I need a laptop for.

Mac mini G4 - My mini dual-boots between Tiger and Leopard. I mainly use it for testing stuff, and whenever I make a .dmg file with an OS that already had updates and software, I'll use the mini to make it. Also a backup Mac in case my G5 breaks or needs to have the OS reinstalled or something.

iMac G4 - This used to be my backup/testing Mac, but the mini took it's place! However, I still use it for testing things every once in a while, and in the near future I'd like to install some Leopard betas on it to play around with.

iBook G3 "Snow" - Main reason I bought this was because it completes my iBook collection, I now have all 3! Fun to run old versions of OS X though, and it's also used whenever I need to test something on a G3.

iBook G3 "Clamshell" - Cool design, and sometimes I use it to type simple papers. Really fun to use, and the keyboard is one of my all-time favorites.

 

[KawaiiAurora]

I don't have too many but these are mine!

Power Mac G4 (Sawtooth) - No specific uses. Sometimes I mess around on OS X or OS 9; picked up a 40GB HDD that was outside which surprisingly works! 40 is better than 10 in my books

PowerBook G4 Al 17" - I practically use it as my main computer; watching anime, reading manga, writing articles via WordPress on a homebrew site and every other odd thing really.