Your PPC Story

[dbdjre0143]

Discussion in the "PPC Popularity" thread got me thinking, there has to be some reason all of us are still using, discussing, and tinkering on machines that are (AT LEAST!) teenagers. I'd like to create this thread to share stories of what got us into using PPCs in the first place and/or why we still are today. I'll go first (largely copied from the aforementioned thread).

My first Mac was a Powerbook G3 Lombard I got back in 2009, like many of you, because I wanted to learn about Macs and that was what I could afford. At the time, I was a freshman in high school and snagged it for $100 on eBay. I added a USB WiFi dongle and used it as I would have any other computer for a couple of years. I didn't feel like it felt at all out of date, and I used it to do all the same things I did on my Windows Vista laptop I had at the same time. In fact, I remember being really surprised at how snappy the 400 MHz (IIRC) CPU felt, and attributed it to the architecture difference, especially compared to sub-GHz Intel boxes I'd used.

Then, about 2 years later, someone my Mom worked with lucked into a 1GHz iBook G4 that she brought home to have me service. That thing felt lightyears ahead of my Powerbook, and she saw how excited I was to play around with it. I did a clean install of Tiger, and sent it back to its owner. But Mom surprised me by buying it from the fellow and giving it to me for my birthday a couple of months later. I used it, like with the G3, as I would have any other computer, for a couple of years. I have a fair amount of patience with older tech, so I never felt limited in any way. It did everything I asked of it, including the (then) "modern" web. When I went off to college, it stayed behind and I committed to using my Windows laptop which by that point had been upgraded and was noticeably more "capable", at least in terms of speed.

Shortly after I graduated in 2016, I renewed my interest in the iBook, but I found that by that point, the web had made using it "normally" a bit more challenging. After I got married and set up my home office that summer, it began a life mostly serving as a Spotify jukebox on my desk while I worked. I tried to bring it up to what I would consider "Daily-Driver" capable performance by maxing out the RAM at 1.5GB, but still found that the 1Ghz CPU was struggling to provide what I would deem as sufficient performance for daily "normal" use. I considered upgrading to an SSD, but after spending time lurking on this forum, I decided my money could be better spent tracking down one of the last-gen DLSD Powerbooks. So, after awhile, I snagged one, maxed out the RAM, slapped a mSATA SSD in a cheap PATA enclosure, and was back to feeling capable.

As for why I'm still using a PPC today, I'd say its primarily because I have a weird love/borderline obsession for keeping technology that others deem as old, obsolete, or obscure useful. I believe that as a global society, we have an obsession for whatever is newest and shiniest, and as such, lose an appreciation for what is already around us. Its probably the same reason my microwave is a chrome Amana Radarange from 1974 (20 years older than me ) and my kitchen table is formica topped.

 

[eyoungren]

I am a convert.

Got my first 286 in 1990 and my last PC in 1997. That PC lasted until 2003. So for 13 years I was a DOS/PC person. I even hated Windows until I eventually realized Microsoft had really abandoned DOS.

But in 2003 I had a large hard drive with an overlay so the full capacity would be seen on the PC. The drive failed at some point and because I could not get the overlay to load I lost all my data. Then my USB 250 Zip drive wiped data on one of my ZIP disks and that was it for me.

From 1999 on, the jobs I held used Macs. I'd put out a number of newspapers and designed ads on deadline when the Mac had issues. I never missed a deadline because even a crippled Mac was able to produce. But the PCs of that era (early 00s) were not capable of being used if crippled. Or at least the ones that didn't cost thousands of dollars.

So, I turned to my TiBook that had sat unused since 2001 when my mom gave it to me for Christmas. And I haven't looked back since.

I do have a Thinkpad now, but it's not really my daily driver.

 

[pl1984]

I'll just summarize my PPC story. I first came to use PPC in the way many Mac users did: As part of the evolution of the Macintosh. My first PPC was a 6100/60 with an 8100/80 soon to follow. From there I've owned a blue and white G3 along with a couple of G4s. These were "hand me downs" from my brother, as he upgraded. The final G4 was a result of my having purchased the brand new, 2.0GHz, dual processor G5 for him. He never had the opportunity to hand that one down to me as it died and he gave it away to someone who needed it as parts.

My current PPC's consist of two G5s and two iBooks (a G3 and G4 version). I keep the G5s around because they still provide acceptable performance for some things I do plus I like the idea of using a different processor architecture system (which I do not think needs explained to many here). I don't really do much with them but I have no reason to get rid of them. The iBook G3 I picked up because it runs Mac OS 9 natively whereas the iBook G4 I got as a bundle with other systems. It's in such great shape I've decided to hold on to it (since it doesn't consume a lot of space).

I recently picked up a couple of 12" PowerBooks and a 17" PowerBook but ended up giving them away a couple of weeks ago. I got them for bargain basement prices, played with them, but did not see myself doing anything more with them. Thought it better to find a home for them so someone else could benefit from them.

Today my PPCs are more hobbyist in nature with none of them doing anything really productive.

 

[swamprock]

I was a PPC user back in the early days of Steve's return, starting with a Wallstreet Powerbook that I snagged for $400 off eBay. I later traded it for a 450 mhz Rev 2 B&W G3, which I sold to an artist a few years later for that same $400. I traded an old eMachines PC for a Bondi Blue iMac (one of many that I've owned) and messed with that for a while. From there, I used a DP500 Mystic G4 that I later upgraded with one of the holy grail of Sonnet processors, a 1.8 ghz. I used this machine until 2009, then bought a Macbook Pro of the same vintage, which is still in use today. I started actually collecting PPC machines in 2005, when I got another DP500 Mystic G4, A 466mhz DA G4, another Wallstreet, a large number of Pismos that I repurposed and sold off (keeping two, one for my better half and one for me), and a few iBook G3s that were all repurposed and sold off except for one for me. I had various other machines in that time as well- a Beige G3 with a G4 upgrade (never did find out who made it), a Performa 6400, an LC, a 512k Fat Mac, an SE converted to an SE/30, two Cubes, a couple more Wallstreets, another B&W G3, A DP 2.0 G5 (that I still have) and others that I can't think of right now. Nowadays, I stick mostly to Powerbooks and iBooks, but have a Sawtooth 450, a newly-acquired 17" iMac G4 1.25, a Bondi Blue iMac that's about to get the G4 upgrade treatment, and the aforementioned G5. I've delved into Intel machines as of late, and have a few Macbooks that I play around with. My daily home driver is an upgraded Mac Pro 2,1, and my mobile is a 12" Powerbook G4 1.5ghz. The bedside machine is the Macbook Pro I mentioned earlier, and a 2017 iPad. She uses a 2017 13" Macbook Pro i5 machine for school.

My current project is a 1.5 ghz 15" Powerbook G4, that is getting a new logic board and screen assembly.

I'm sure I've forgotten the many PPC machines that I've owned over the years. For a pictorial of some of them, hit http://atari.vg-network.com/macs

 

[dbdjre0143]

I'm sure I've forgotten the many PPC machines that I've owned over the years. For a pictorial of some of them, hit http://atari.vg-network.com/macs

Those are some sweet photos @swamprock! I'm certainly jealous of the 1.8 GHz Sonnet G4 coming through your hands! I'd love to own something like that one day, but probably never will thanks to the horrible combination of being a cheapskate and them being expensive.
[doublepost=1525294384][/doublepost]

So, I turned to my TiBook that had sat unused since 2001 when my mom gave it to me for Christmas. And I haven't looked back since.

Amazing that that TiBook new in the box for two years before using it! I've never been one to be able to leave a new tech-toy alone for long.

 

[swamprock]

Those are some sweet photos @swamprock! I'm certainly jealous of the 1.8 GHz Sonnet G4 coming through your hands! I'd love to own something like that one day, but probably never will thanks to the horrible combination of being a cheapskate and them being expensive.

One thing that's refreshing is that at least it'll be cheaper than what *I* paid for it all of those years ago. I haven't seen them hit anywhere close to the $450 I paid.

The G4 that's sitting under the desk in those pics; the one with the MDD side panels and handles, is the one that had the Sonnet in it. I forgot about the MDD that I briefly had until I roasted it.

 

[eyoungren]

Amazing that that TiBook new in the box for two years before using it! I've never been one to be able to leave a new tech-toy alone for long.

No, not exactly…

My sister had a boyfriend at the time and he bought it in January 2001. For whatever reason he didn't keep it and so my mom bought it from him. She gave it to me for Christmas 2001.

By the time I got it, it had OS X 10.1.5 on it and was set up to his personal taste. At the time I had no experience with user accounts as the OS I dealt with on a daily basis was either Windows 98 or OS9. Both those systems have the ability to use user accounts but you have to turn it on.

The fact that I was being asked for a username and password back then alienated me because the concept was foreign to me then. So, the Mac sat unused while I used my PC. I wasn't carrying around a laptop at the time.

Eventually OS X grew on me once we got to 10.2. Jaguar actually made OS X usable at work. Once I became familiar with it and once my PC bombed on me then I just started using the TiBook.

But no, it wasn't like I was handed a NIB Macintosh with no mileage on it.

 

[bobesch]

I'm a convert too ...
It's nearly 10y ago I switched from Windows (XP) to my first Mac (13"c2d MBP) and it was real fun!
Before I "enjoyed" DOS, Win3.1 (on an ultraportable HP Omnibook 430, which I still keep as a hidden precious - first space-walks with Trumpet-Winsock, CompuServe, FidoNet etc via 14.4 Modem connection), and Win98SE (one of those grey bread-bins, but enhanced with a FAST DVD-Master-Card for MPEG1/2 editing, video-capturing etc. - leaving some shoe-boxes with now nearly unusable SVCD-footage...).
After the Omnibook became obsolete, we had only that Win98 and a WinXP bread-bin at home and mobility was a matter of using Palm-devices (PalmIIIxe, TRGpro, Handera330, TX, Centro).
Then in 2003 I had to run a WinServer/Clint-environment in my Office. Got a sturdy Acer Travelmate800 with WinXP at the same time, which is still working bravely.
When in 2009 synchronization with my then new PalmPro-Smartphone (WinMobile) really was a hassle (even with the appropriate Outlook-version) and Palm started to go down the hill, I got my first Mac (that 13" 2009 MacBookPro/Leopard) and later the iPhone 3GS (which proofed to be the final nail in the coffin of the Palm Pre with webOS 1.x)
I really tried to find the zen of mac: only one device and a bunch of backups...
Didn't last very long - at least until 2014 ...
Then I've got a 11"MacBookAir at the end of our once and only family-trip to SF/CA ... and that little guy got stolen a few month later out of my bag in my office ...
That was the moment I started to fancy PPC/old Macs. Also to catch up with the Mac-history I didn't have.
First I got two 12"Books (iBookG4/PBG4) as Beamer-companions for meetings. Then a 15" PB-DLSD.
Then out of curiosity: a Cube G4, a Gooseneck, Clamshell(s), one and another iMacG3 ... etc
It's great, those devices are still capable to fit in a working environment: File/ScreenSharing, webDAV, eMail, Browsing, Office, Fax, Fat-Clients for RDP etc. Some of them are in real use in my office and people happen to ask about the all-new equipment (aka Cube and white iMacs).
It's just a matter of creativity how to bring them back to work - and they are real eye-candy!
My daily driver but became an intel c2d late 2008 15" MBP (with a 1TB SSD, USB3-ExpressCard, 6GB RAM) - "the one to store them all" and a couple of backup-drives... back to the Zen.
The rest is kind of happy playground - but most of the stuff still fits in for casual all-purpose usage...
My current project is "pure iMacG3 1999 lab.": only existing installations-disks of Jaguar/Panther/os9/programs to start with. The rest only via Classilla etc. without any help of other devices.

Looking back I had been always fond of Apple computers: remember those curious looks at a Macintosh sitting in a store window on my daily bicycle ride to university ...
And the Clamshells (while still happy using the Omnibook). The colored iMacs ...
(Funny: but I can't remember the "Mac-years" from 2003 to 2009 - had been too much engaged in daily work etc. - except of the cute white iBook, somebody brought to a meeting sometime ... I was really jealous to have one of that kind)

 

[AL1630]

I'm probably a bit younger than most here, and wasn't even around to experience PPC's heyday, but I remembered my aunt having a Blueberry iMac G3 when I was a pretty little kid. I always thought it was cool and I wanted one, but IIRC something eventually died and it got sent to the recycling center. A few years later (Summer 2015) I got my first Mac, a Grape Tray loading G3 for $20 on Craigslist. I thought it was cool, and wanted more. Ever since then I've been checking Craigslist and gradually accumulated all the stuff in my signature (Except the MacBook, my Windows laptop broke and I wanted the cheapest modern-ish computer I could get).

 

[DearthnVader]

I started on Mac's in 1979 with an Apple IIe plus that my stepdad fixed at work. As part of his pay, he could take home anything the costumer didn't pickup and pay for, tho he didn't get payed for working on the machine.

I used it until 1985 when my school got a new Mac donated by Apple. I was the only one that ever used it, so at the end of the year they gave it to me.

I used it until 1995, fresh off my first divorce, my first ex thought she cleaned me out. She got the house, and even got a mint 1986 Pontiac Grand National I had been driving since I was 16. Sweet car, with around 25k on it, her next ex wrecked it.

Anyway, the only thing I wanted in the divorce was my baseball card collection, she always hated those and asked me when I was going to grow up, so she didn't really fight me over those old cards.

In 1995 I sold them and bought a 4 bedroom brick house, and a PowerMac 6100/66 PC with the Dos card.

Guess I grew up.

That was my first PPC Mac, and even tho I'd been using computers for over 15 years, I'd never figured a way to make any real money off them. That all changed with this Mac, it had the power to do things, things that I knew I could do, if only computers were faster. That Mac payed for itself 100 times over, at least.

Later that year I bought a 5300c, my first Laptop, with some of the profits I made with my 6100.

In 1999 I bought a G4 AGP Sawtooth to replace the 6100, and in 2000 I bought a Pismo to replace the 5300c.

In 2004 I bought a G5 to replace the G4 Sawtooth.

I've owned a lot of other PPC's over the years, those are the one's I bought new, and made a good deal of money with each of them, and got a good bit for each one when I sold them, except the G5 I gave to my step dad in 2008, because he payed for my first computer.

I only own 13 PPC's now.

 

[1042686]

I found my first PPC mac in the garbage and the rest is history.

 

[eddjedi]

I first used Macs in 1998 while at college. They were a combination of the 'new' G3 iMacs, and older beige desktop Macs, I don't recall which models. I was using Photoshop and Quark on them. At home we had a family Compaq PC, so the Mac was new to me and I liked it.

I got my first personal Mac in 2002 which was a 15" 700MHz G4 iMac. I ran OS 9 on it for the first year, and moved over to OS X and Classic in 2003. I loved the aesthetics of this Mac, but it was very unreliable. In the 3 years I used it, it had two hard drive replacements under warranty.

In 2005 I got my final "current" PPC Mac which was a 14" G4 iBook, 1GHz from memory. This was a brilliant laptop, completely reliable and I used it happily for a couple of years.

I moved to the darkside of Intel Macs in 2007 with a Macbook Pro, but this wasn't the end of my love for PPC. I bought a G4 Cube recently for a bit of nostalgia running OS 9 again.

 

[dbdjre0143]

I found my first PPC mac in the garbage and the rest is history.

Wow now that is some luck! What model was it, and was it working when you found it?

 

[eyoungren]

Wow now that is some luck! What model was it, and was it working when you found it?

It was a Quicksilver and yes it was working after he cleaned it up. That QS is the reason he found these forums and PowerPC is the reason he stayed. He caught the disease like all of us have.

 

[dbdjre0143]

It was a Quicksilver and yes it was working after he cleaned it up. That QS is the reason he found these forums and PowerPC is the reason he stayed. He caught the disease like all of us have.

Daggone! What a cool machine to find in the TRASH! That does remind me, I have a couple beige PPC's in storage that I need to dig out. Won them years ago in an auction for $20 with a bunch of other computer "junk". I don't even remember what models they are.

 

[AphoticD]

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

My first PowerPC experience and also my first Mac at home, was the awesome Power Macintosh 7100/66 with a PPC601 CPU, 20MB of RAM, 1MB VRAM, 640x480 fixed resolution 14” Apple CRT with Millions of colours, a massive 1GB HDD and 2x CD-ROM optical.

My mother bought this machine second hand for about AU$2K in 1997 (These Macs were selling for more than AU$4K in 1994). I would have been about 13 years old and I had quietly made myself copies of Adobe Photoshop 3, QuarkXPress, Macromedia Director and Illustrator during my covert visits to the local university’s graphic design labs (I learned all about how to use StuffIt to split archives across multiple floppies).

I had also been preemptively buying and reading MacFormat (UK) and MacAddict (US) magazines in the years leading up to this point, so I had a massive library of cover floppy disks and CDs with gigabytes of software to learn all about. Needless to say, I spent hundreds of hours over the next year or so, learning about all the great software this Power Mac could make use of. This kickstarted my love of graphic design, music production, 3D animation and software design. I went on to learn how to build my own software with RealBasic and also began building a few game ideas in Director and Chipmunk Basic.

I had my pre-order in for Mac OS 8 (released July 1997) not long after getting the Mac and progressed through to 8.1, 8.5 and eventually 8.6, along with a very expensive RAM upgrade which brought it up to 48MB.

This Mac served me incredibly well and I had put thousands of hours of use into it by the time I eventually purchased my second PowerPC at the age of 17. I then got bitten by the bug to keep getting more old beige Macs until I had built up a collection and consequently sold it all off again. I continued with a non-collecting mindset up until early last year when I got re-inspired by the PowerPC platform again and finally had a chance to acquire all those machines I couldn’t afford back when they were brand new.

 

[1042686]

Indeed. Someone had it on the curb with their trash, so I scooped it and haven't looked back.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hi-everybody-g4-rebuild-fun.1991463/

 

[TC_GoldRush]

Honestly... I saw them online and was like "Hey... I want one of those.." and the collection begun.

I purchased my first iBook G4 (Mid 2005 1.33ghz) around August of 2015, it worked well.. Even ran youtube. I started searching more thoroughly online and decided I wanted to start a collection (love older Apple products, they look so much more intuitive and 'sexy' compared to the ones today. Around June of 2016 I bought a broken iBook G3 Clamshell for cheap off of eBay, it came with all instruction manuals and original booklets (and CDs!!), so I fixed it following the instructions from the manual. I was using my iBook G4 at my school one day, and another Student came up to me, offering to sell both his PowerBook G4 and iBook g4, I said sure and he showed them to me. The PowerBook worked, but was 100% ransacked, dents, stains, poor quality HDD, etc*... However the iBook G4 worked fine, except for a crooked hinge... I bought that off of him for $15.
Although recently I've extended my collection to Windows machines, and now own a (formerly) fully working IBM ThinkPad.
---

 

[mmphosis]

For work in 1994, but I can't honestly remember which model. I was still maintaining some 680x0 assembly code, and maybe still thinking about keeping things 32-bit clean. The PowerPC 7100/66 in Aphodic's photo might have been one of the models that came across my desk back then, although the iivi and iivx looked similar. I read MacTech magazine, and was subscribed to APDA (the CD-ROMs), and AppleLink (online.) At different company from 1995 to 1999, I was porting from the Mac to Windows and used various models of PowerPC Macs at that time. There were still lot of 680x0 Macs around like Duo Docks! Code Warrior figured prominently for some Mac development. From an offshore dotcom startup in 2000, I could only dream about the TiBook that had come out as I had switched mostly to Linux and BSD -- there were no Macs. Missing the Mac, in 2001 I bought the dual-USB iBook that I still have today. I've acquired a few more used PowerPC Macs along the way. The "newer" 2006-2007 MacBooks with Intel chips that I have no longer work, but all of my older PowerPC Macs work just fine.

 

[Macbookprodude]

I was a PPC user back in the early days of Steve's return, starting with a Wallstreet Powerbook that I snagged for $400 off eBay. I later traded it for a 450 mhz Rev 2 B&W G3, which I sold to an artist a few years later for that same $400. I traded an old eMachines PC for a Bondi Blue iMac (one of many that I've owned) and messed with that for a while. From there, I used a DP500 Mystic G4 that I later upgraded with one of the holy grail of Sonnet processors, a 1.8 ghz. I used this machine until 2009, then bought a Macbook Pro of the same vintage, which is still in use today. I started actually collecting PPC machines in 2005, when I got another DP500 Mystic G4, A 466mhz DA G4, another Wallstreet, a large number of Pismos that I repurposed and sold off (keeping two, one for my better half and one for me), and a few iBook G3s that were all repurposed and sold off except for one for me. I had various other machines in that time as well- a Beige G3 with a G4 upgrade (never did find out who made it), a Performa 6400, an LC, a 512k Fat Mac, an SE converted to an SE/30, two Cubes, a couple more Wallstreets, another B&W G3, A DP 2.0 G5 (that I still have) and others that I can't think of right now. Nowadays, I stick mostly to Powerbooks and iBooks, but have a Sawtooth 450, a newly-acquired 17" iMac G4 1.25, a Bondi Blue iMac that's about to get the G4 upgrade treatment, and the aforementioned G5. I've delved into Intel machines as of late, and have a few Macbooks that I play around with. My daily home driver is an upgraded Mac Pro 2,1, and my mobile is a 12" Powerbook G4 1.5ghz. The bedside machine is the Macbook Pro I mentioned earlier, and a 2017 iPad. She uses a 2017 13" Macbook Pro i5 machine for school.

My current project is a 1.5 ghz 15" Powerbook G4, that is getting a new logic board and screen assembly.

I'm sure I've forgotten the many PPC machines that I've owned over the years. For a pictorial of some of them, hit http://atari.vg-network.com/macs

Impressive ! I noticed your MacBook Pro is a 2012 model.. Question, is there a dock that I can get to allow USB-C if i wanted to ? I have also a 2012 MacBook Pro 15 inch. I have also a PM G5 Quad which i an not using at the moment, a PowerBook G4 Pismo(Was a G3 500) until i put in a G4 processor upgrade for it. I also have a DLSD G4 Powerbook.

 

[CooperBox]

My PPC love affair started with a 667Mz 'Gigabit Ethernet' Titanium Powerbook, previously documented back in 2016. Link HERE.
After the loss/reuniting and refurbishment of that TiPowerBook a few years later, I had a craving for what I still consider one of the ultimate PPC's, a G4 'Sunflower' iMac. I wanted one so badly, and when I saw a local ad for a 15" in perfect condition in the original box, I pulled the trigger. At a price nudging 200euros, many would say I paid far too much, but no regrets whatever as I've since learnt that these in almost new condition and boxed are few and far between. It still gets regular use.
That purchase was hurriedly followed up with a G3 'Clamshell' iBook. All the other clamshell 'flavours' including KeyLime were eventually added to my collection.
And then still very much in awe at the G4 iMac, I started searching for and found the very illusive 20" version, which with USB2, 2Gb memory and 1.25GHz is altogether a different beast from the earlier USB1 versions. It now even has an SSD installed.
Still smitten by the iMacs, a 17" 1.25GHz model followed, which imho is the perfect 'sweet-spot', and the model I would advise for any prospective purchaser. Running OS X Leopard, sporting the latest TFFox FPR6.1 and tweaked to the maximum, these PPC Macs are still a delight to use today in 2018. And of course the addition of an SSD would be icing-on-the-cake.
Those were the groundwork for my collection, which has since grown in magnitude - much to the chagrin of 'the little lady at home'. Bless her!

 

[macgeek18]

My first "personal computer" was in 2008 and it is my beloved PM G4 Quicksilver. I grew up around Windows but I never got into computers till the PowerMac. It started a new world for me and a decade later I work in IT. I'm of the tech generation but it wasn't really prevalent in my home. Heck, I had a flip phone in the smartphone age. This forum is what got me into computers, I learned a lot from all the great PPC people here and it started my love for Macs and computers in general. My love has shifted to linux and my PPC Macs are all collecting dust at my desk and are rarely used anymore but I can't get rid of them. It's a little reminder of what can be accomplished in a short amount of time.

 

[macgeek18]

Throw back time. Then and now.

Current PPC corner is a disaster right now. I need to do some Spring cleaning.

 

[eyoungren]

Throw back time. Then and now.

Current PPC corner is a disaster right now. I need to do some Spring cleaning.

Love the Commodore 64 in there. That was my first serious computer. Entertained me for an entire summer when I got one in 1984.

 

[dbdjre0143]

My love has shifted to linux and my PPC Macs are all collecting dust at my desk and are rarely used anymore but I can't get rid of them. It's a little reminder of what can be accomplished in a short amount of time.

Linux is getting all the love now huh...sounds like it's time to throw some Linux love at one of those awesome PPC's then.