Your PPC Story

[elf69]

My first mac was a 1.25GHz 14" ibook G4 which I still have.
It was free!
donated to my place of work by a customer.

She dropped it and smashed the screen.
It has a naff under powered generic charger too.

So found a replacement screen on ebay and it was working again.
Had 10.4 and 512mb ram but it all worked.

I liked macs for few years before this but was not able to afford one.
The HDD gave out a few weeks later and i found a new old stock 120GB IDE drive online.
Got our engineer at work to replace the drive as he is competent able stripping laptops.

I upgraded it to 1.5GB ram and 10.5.
It runs much faster on 10.4 though.

For daily use it not suitable now with OSX although linux it would be fine I'd imagine.
I since acquired another ibook G4, 900mhz model 90% complete for £2 plus £3 postage as an ebay auction nobody bid on. I needed a part which oddly in end I did not need as it fixed itself.

But it sits in a box now as it was replaced by, in order:

2007 15" macbook pro (still have)
2008 13.3" macbook (sold)
2007 17" macbook pro (died)
2009 13.3" unibody macbook (sold)
2010 13.3" unibody macbook (died)
2012 11" macbook air (swapped for the pro below)
2012 13.3" macbook pro

 

[macgeek18]

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

I just was given it from my grandfather-in-law. First year production 1982 SN: 3,898. I was as excited as finding an old PPC. And it came with the original box and all the accessories in their boxes.

 

[eyoungren]

I just was given it from my grandfather-in-law. First year production 1982 SN: 3,898. I was as excited as finding an old PPC. And it came with the original box and all the accessories in their boxes.

Very cool! You got a 1541 with it too!

By 1986 I was running a BBS off my C64 using AABBS (All American Bulletin Board System) by Nickolai Smith. I had two 1541 drives and COLOR!!!!

In 1989 I upgraded to a C128 and scored two 1581 drives so I switched to that. BBS'es were what led into internet forums for me and as a teen I loved them because I could talk to other people in other places.

Piece of my childhood right there.

 

[dbdjre0143]

@eyoungren, sounds like I may be hitting you up for some diagnosis advice soon then. I took a gamble on a C64 in-box a few months ago that ended up not working, just a black screen when you turn it on. I haven't had time to do anything in the way of diagnosis yet as to what the cause may be.
On a side note, I also got a Commodore Plus-4 in box at the same time. Had never heard of it, and it was cheap so figured I'd give it a shot. That one ended up working, but from what I've read, the software library for it is pretty slim and lower quality compared to the C64, so I'm probably going to end up selling it soon. Trying to thin the herd a bit to keep the Mrs happy.

 

[eyoungren]

@eyoungren, sounds like I may be hitting you up for some diagnosis advice soon then. I took a gamble on a C64 in-box a few months ago that ended up not working, just a black screen when you turn it on. I haven't had time to do anything in the way of diagnosis yet as to what the cause may be.
On a side note, I also got a Commodore Plus-4 in box at the same time. Had never heard of it, and it was cheap so figured I'd give it a shot. That one ended up working, but from what I've read, the software library for it is pretty slim and lower quality compared to the C64, so I'm probably going to end up selling it soon. Trying to thin the herd a bit to keep the Mrs happy.

Well, to be fair to you, keep in mind that I was 13 when I got my C64 and I never had any issues that were potentially caused by hardware.

We did have a friend we knew install a reset button on the case but I never saw the inside of my computer.

That said, either it's your hookup to monitor/tv, the video output on the board or the board itself.

I think I used a plus 4 once, but can't really recall as I never had one. There was a small moment of time where my mom's computer science lab at school (she was a teacher for over 40 years) had nothing but VIC-20s. That's about as low with Commodore as I got.

 

[covisio]

View attachment 760742
(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

Yes, that was my first too. I'd used Macs in work since 1988 but this was my first home computer. I bought it off a colleague in about '98 or '99, I didn't realise quite how old (and slow) it was when I bought it. However, it did get me online for the first time. IIRC I put a USB card in it and attached a USB dial-up modem.

After this I bought a Summer 2000 iMac G3 350, then followed this in 2003 with a 15" PowerBook G4 1.0 GHz Aluminium. I still have this, though it's a bit beat up and currently running MorphOS as an experiment.

My last PowerPC Mac in productive use was a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3 which I was still using for work in 2012-ish, this is now languishing in our warehouse. I put a new PRAM battery in it last year and cleaned up the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro SE 256mb Graphics Card (took off the heat sink/fan, cleaned it all up and re-applied the thermal paste). Still works perfectly. It's got a full suite of Adobe CS3 on it, I've got all the original software disks and manuals, plus a nice Wacom A5 tablet and pen.

As well as those mentioned above I used a fair few other PowerPC Macs in my work, from 8600 and 9600 towers, a Blue and White PowerMac G3 (my favourite) and a couple of Blue and Silver PowerMac G4s.

 

[dbdjre0143]

I still have this, though it's a bit beat up and currently running MorphOS as an experiment.

What are your thoughts on MorphOS as a general purpose OS for your PB, as compared to OSX and Linux? I've not yet tried it myself, but the others I've read talking about it here haven't given me much hope for it being something I'd ever be able to use to replace OSX.

 

[covisio]

What are your thoughts on MorphOS as a general purpose OS for your PB, as compared to OSX and Linux? I've not yet tried it myself, but the others I've read talking about it here haven't given me much hope for it being something I'd ever be able to use to replace OSX.

I've not played with it that much but my general feeling is that, while it may be of interest to hobbyists and/or people who had a history with Amiga OS, if you're a long time Mac man like myself and all you want to do is fire up an old PowerPC Mac (especially a 1.0GHz G4 like mine), play with some applications and do a bit of light web browsing, you're probably better off with an appropriate version of OS X and TenFourFox.
I would go so far as to say that I've given up trying to browse the web with a PowerPC Mac, I know TFF is out there and the later G5 PowerMacs can still just about play YouTube vids, etc., but really, is it worth the hassle and frustration? Best to keep our PPC Macs for running the old apps they were designed for and can still do quite well, i.m.h.o.
That said, I'm nostalgically fond about PPC rather than being super geeky about it.

 

[Jack Neill]

My first PPC was an iBook G4 that had no screen and was a mess. It was a literal pile of parts I hooked up to a monitor and it ran great on 10.4.11 I was really into Hackintosh at that point and that G4 was my first "real" Mac. I moved on to other fully assembled PowerBooks, Intel MacBooks and Hackintoshes I built. But that first G4 was a favorite.

 

[Amethyst1]

Here's the story how PPC and me eventually 'found each other'. It's a story of a dream having come true and a new approach to computers having been found.

It started in 1999. I played with a Cube and Studio Display in an electronics shop, loved the design of the machine but knew nothing about Macs and their OS (I was just starting to really get to grips with PCs at the time). Looked at the price, gulped and "moved on". Then, in 2001, I saw screenshots of Cheetah in a PC magazine and was hooked. The UI looked so beautiful to me (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I know) and I wanted it but soon learned I couldn't run Mac OS X on my PC. So, the wish of getting a Mac was born and I followed the OS progress through Puma and Jaguar.

In 2002, my father replaced his old laptop and, in order to acquaint himself and me with something new, choose an iBook G3 running Jaguar. I finally had access to a machine running Mac OS X pretty much whenever I wanted (granted my dad didn't want to use his laptop at the same time ) and played around with it. The combination of beautiful Aqua and robust Unix underpinnings seemed like the perfect blend to me and the Windows and Linux desktops I had on my PC were suddenly dull and boring (I tried to spruce them up with OS X-like themes but never got something convincing enough). Later that same year, I bought a second-generation iPod. Since the Windows port of iTunes had not been released at that point, I had to use another software that was very cumbersome – a good reason to use my father's iBook to fill up the iPod instead.

In 2003, I bought a 20-inch acrylic Cinema Display and Pro Keyboard to use with my PC. I was gradually working towards getting an all-Apple setup but missed the crucial ingredient: the Mac itself. I couldn't afford a Power Mac G5 or PowerBook G4 (the iBook and iMac were out due to the lack of DVI). I considered buying a second-hand Mac or even going down the PowerPC Hackintosh route with a Pegasos but discarded the ideas: using a second-hand machine as main machine seemed too risky and the Pegasos was quite expensive as well, especially the 1 GHz G4 version. Therefore, using Mac OS X as my main OS remained what it had been: a dream.

In April 2004, the unthinkable happened: PearPC 0.1 was released and allowed running Mac OS X on a PC. Needless to say I couldn't get my hands on it quickly enough and while it was 'awesome beyond words', it was way too slow to make using it as my primary environment feasible.

When the Mac mini was announced in January 2005, I knew this was the ticket I had been waiting for. I ordered the most basic version, got it in February 2005 (knowing that I'd have to purchase Tiger just a couple of weeks later but I didn't care), upgrading to 1 GB RAM and a 60 GB 7,200-RPM hard drive myself. I loved that machine for its small size, low-noise acoustics and, of course, the OS; it remained my main machine for four and a half years and was eventually replaced by a 2009 Mac mini.

So, four years after first seeing Mac OS X, the mission was accomplished.

What do I mean by 'a new approach to computers'? The PC I had prior to getting the Mac mini was an overclocked rig with lots of illuminated fans and four 10,000-RPM hard drives. It was FAST (much faster than what I actually needed...) yes, but also LOUD. The mini was significantly slower (I didn't mind, because most of the time, its performance was sufficient for my needs, and tasks like gaming and virtualisation were handled by what remained of my PC after getting the Mac mini) but very quiet in comparison. This helped me realise I didn't need an overclocked CPU and lots of noisy and illuminated fans or four high-speed hard drives to get most of my daily work done.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[eyoungren]

Since this thread cropped up again, I'll just mention some things that happened yesterday which have driven me back to my 1Ghz 17" Powerbook.

Normally, that PB is what I take outside the house and the 17" MBP I have is for using on the couch. But, Mozilla has a bad habit of not allowing unsigned extensions to exist past a certain version. TenFourFox does not, so my extension works.

Apparently, at some point my copy of Firefox updated (again) knocking out one of my extensions. I rolled back to earlier versions but the version I rolled back to disabled ALL the extensions. I suspect what happened (automatic updates on in a profile I rarely use, but did use recently) but I'm unwilling to mess with it (again) right now.

Additionally, Chrome is out of date and more and more websites (my bank in particular) are cutting me off. So I just decided to nuke the whole damn browser situation. Out went Firefox and Chrome.

I'm in the middle of updating Windows 7 running on Parallels 6 on this Mac so I may just use that from now on. But in the meantime, my 17" PB is back doing the browsing on the couch job.

My only irritation is Google, which recently cut off web access to Newsstand. It redirects to Google News, which after the recent redesign is just horrible CPU wise on PowerMacs. There is a work around where you search for your subject and then click on the News tab and you'll get the old News layout. No idea how long that will continue to work.

Anyway, tried Bing News things morning. I'm really not big on Microsoft, but this news site is so far comparable to Google News and easy on CPU.

In any case, my PowerBook is back to being used at home and out.

I find it interesting that it's now my MBP that is being marginalized while my PowerBook is capable of performing.

 

[weckart]

My first Mac was Basilisk II running MacOS 8.0. I graduated to a used PDQ 300MHz with loose hinges and followed that with PB 1.5GHz 15", an iBook A1133, which was my first purchase from the newly opened Apple Store in Regent St, a Mac Mini G4 1.42 with BT and WiFi followed by a MBP 2.16GHz with the ATI X1600. I hated that MBP and should have returned it. Anyway, I was burgled and the thief made off with all my Macs save the Mac Mini. He took a cheap mobile phone and seemingly nothing else. I grieved for all my PPCs but not so much for the MBP, although that was barely a year old.

I just carried on buying more Macs from then on. My Mac Mini became a real workhorse for me despite its modest specs. I lost the love for the Mini after the Alu redesign, which looked like crap to me. Too thin and wide.

 

[jbarley]

My PPC romance came to a screeching halt one morning some time ago now, when I fired up my G5 quad only to find I could no longer access my email.
Seems in their ultimate wisdom Apple feels after all these years I suddenly need to get involved with some new super-duper 2-factor ring around the rosy authentication system. Not gonna happen, this ole dog is just too old to start learning new tricks so I'll just have to keep myself amused with making my old classic MacPros do things Apple says they can't.
Now what to do with the 6 or 7 PPC macs I've got sitting here collecting dust?

 

[Tugb0at]

My ppc experience started in 2005 after my brother got his imac g5. I managed to get my hands on a imac g3 with os 9 on it, ran linux for a while (which was a huge mistake) put os 9 on it, 10.0.1 (even bigger mistake), back to os 9 and then 10.3.

2007 came along and i bought a core duo macbook, it was great but i personally like desktops better so not long after i purchased a 1ghz Emac that had ddr memory.

2008 came along and i was okay with what i had and was poor, as i was in highschool, however this was the year i made my first macrumors account (RIP) and i managed to get a free 733mhz quick silver, had some good specs, but i didnt really need it, so i ended up selling the g4 tower and my emac. and late in the year i got rid of my macbook and aquired my brothers imac g5.

2009 happened still had the imac g5, and sometime in spring i picked up a 12" powerbook g4 and just used for a year and got rid of it

And that was the end of my ppc obsession, i just built my own pc's aside from getting a dell netbook running snow leopard and building one hackintosh that ran leopard. Thats until now, everything thats in my signature was bought last month haha. Also keep in mind thats how i think my timeline went i cant remember every detail as its been 10 years+

 

[swamprock]

Very cool! You got a 1541 with it too!

By 1986 I was running a BBS off my C64 using AABBS (All American Bulletin Board System) by Nickolai Smith. I had two 1541 drives and COLOR!!!!

In 1989 I upgraded to a C128 and scored two 1581 drives so I switched to that. BBS'es were what led into internet forums for me and as a teen I loved them because I could talk to other people in other places.

Piece of my childhood right there.

I did some naughty things with my C64 back in those days. I won't go into details, but let's just say that the sector redirection and spiral sector read routines built into those early floppies weren't very good protection against copying and uploading to BBS's. The Iceman put his name and greetz on a few of those uploads

 

[eyoungren]

I did some naughty things with my C64 back in those days. I won't go into details, but let's just say that the sector redirection and spiral sector read routines built into those early floppies weren't very good protection against copying and uploading to BBS's. The Iceman put his name and greetz on a few of those uploads

The Keeper had a few things going back then too. I 'acquired' a lot of stuff…

 

[bobesch]

My PPC romance came to a screeching halt one morning some time ago now, when I fired up my G5 quad only to find I could no longer access my email.
Seems in their ultimate wisdom Apple feels after all these years I suddenly need to get involved with some new super-duper 2-factor ring around the rosy authentication system. Not gonna happen, this ole dog is just too old to start learning new tricks so I'll just have to keep myself amused with making my old classic MacPros do things Apple says they can't.
Now what to do with the 6 or 7 PPC macs I've got sitting here collecting dust?

Oh, sorry about that disappointing moment with mail.
But it's no rocket-science to make email with two-factor authentification work again.
It should be no problem using your MacPro for getting access to iTunes to create a special p/w-key for your PPC-macs.

 

[namethisfile]

Hi,

I just discovered this sub-forum after posting this post (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/are-there-still-any-powermac-g5-owners-out-there.2125970/) about a Powermac G5 that I found abandoned in my local recycling center...

My first computer was actually a Mac, a 12" Powerbook G4 that I bought in 2003 under the Apple Installment Plan... which, took me forever to repay and ended costing twice the cost of the computer. LOL! Learned my lesson, though, and when I bought my next Mac, I bought it all in cash, which was a mid-2007 20" iMac.

I guess my PPC story ties in with the advent of miniDV, Final Cut Pro and sexy metal, portable, computers that Apple started to make around 2001.... Just in time when I also graduated from college and looking forward to my own future in the film and video world. At the time, it seemed that Apple really spoke our lingo as aspiring filmmakers. In my mind, there was no doubt that I had to own a Mac. Even, if it meant going through the Apple Installment Plan. The Mac was just so sexy! It was so desirable! It was the future! Not just "the future," but my future! Apple seemingly paved a road for us young, would-be aspiring filmmakers to follow. They even built stores all around the city for us to visit their new shiny toys to drool over. And, drool and dream I did. I guess my infatuation at the time with a computer was similar to a teen with fast cars and girls. It was that strong. I don't know why. I guess I really wanted to become a Final Cut Professional. But, that dream never panned out. Bad luck and my specific circumstance probably played a part. But, so did the PPC dream. Apple also abandoned PPC and have never went back. But, I am rooting they go back since I am also rooting for myself, to have my dream back even though I am no longer the same age as then.

 

[AphoticD]

Hi,

I just discovered this sub-forum after posting this post (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/are-there-still-any-powermac-g5-owners-out-there.2125970/) about a Powermac G5 that I found abandoned in my local recycling center...

My first computer was actually a Mac, a 12" Powerbook G4 that I bought in 2003 under the Apple Installment Plan... which, took me forever to repay and ended costing twice the cost of the computer. LOL! Learned my lesson, though, and when I bought my next Mac, I bought it all in cash, which was a mid-2007 20" iMac.

I guess my PPC story ties in with the advent of miniDV, Final Cut Pro and sexy metal, portable, computers that Apple started to make around 2001.... Just in time when I also graduated from college and looking forward to my own future in the film and video world. At the time, it seemed that Apple really spoke our lingo as aspiring filmmakers. In my mind, there was no doubt that I had to own a Mac. Even, if it meant going through the Apple Installment Plan. The Mac was just so sexy! It was so desirable! It was the future! Not just "the future," but my future! Apple seemingly paved a road for us young, would-be aspiring filmmakers to follow. They even built stores all around the city for us to visit their new shiny toys to drool over. And, drool and dream I did. I guess my infatuation at the time with a computer was similar to a teen and cars and girls. It was that strong. I don't know why. I guess I really wanted to become a Final Cut Professional. But, that dream never panned out. Bad luck and my specific circumstance probably played a part. But, so did the PPC dream. Apple also abandoned PPC and have never went back. But, I am rooting they go back since I am also rooting for myself, to have my dream back even though I am no longer the same age as then.

Welcome to the Retro Mac Rebellion brother! We hope you can put your 12” PowerBook back into regular use. It deserves the attention.

I use my PBG4 12” 1.5Ghz (1.25GB RAM and a 64GB mSATA SSD) on most days for coding in Xcode v2.5 in Tiger.

My workflow mixes mostly Tiger and El Capitan (cMP3,1 w/ Xcode 8.2.1) with some Leopard and High Sierra (iMac10,1) for testing.

My Dual Core G5 (2.3Ghz with 16GB RAM and 1TB HDD) is setup with all of my music production software for when I want to work on music ideas.

Final Cut Studio 2 runs perfectly on the G5 in Leopard. I tend to run Adobe CS3 on the Leopard G5s and the old Photoshop 7 on the G3s and G4s for simple design / UI mockups.

If you can designate a special use for an older Mac then you’ll be less likely to get the fomo / disappointment.

 

[namethisfile]

Welcome to the Retro Mac Rebellion brother! We hope you can put your 12” PowerBook back into regular use. It deserves the attention.

I use my PBG4 12” 1.5Ghz (1.25GB RAM and a 64GB mSATA SSD) on most days for coding in Xcode v2.5 in Tiger.

My workflow mixes mostly Tiger and El Capitan (cMP3,1 w/ Xcode 8.2.1) with some Leopard and High Sierra (iMac10,1) for testing.

My Dual Core G5 (2.3Ghz with 16GB RAM and 1TB HDD) is setup with all of my music production software for when I want to work on music ideas.

Final Cut Studio 2 runs perfectly on the G5 in Leopard. I tend to run Adobe CS3 on the Leopard G5s and the old Photoshop 7 on the G3s and G4s for simple design / UI mockups.

If you can designate a special use for an older Mac then you’ll be less likely to get the fomo / disappointment.

Yeah, thanks! I actually would love to make use of the PB G4 more. But, it will not be for browsing the web for sure. But, it is fine using offline apps, such as, Word X, Photoshop 7.0, Dreamweaver MX, Final Cut Express 3.5 HD all run as fast as they did before. No degradation of performance like browsing the internet.

Maybe, if the Powermac G5 that I found in the recycling dump works, I can look into trying to find a use copy of Final Cut Studio 2. I was never able to afford it back in the day, but, seems like there are legit copies of it on ebay for around $80... But, that is still $80 I don't need to spend. So, we'll see...

 

[AphoticD]

Yeah, thanks! I actually would love to make use of the PB G4 more. But, it will not be for browsing the web for sure. But, it is fine using offline apps, such as, Word X, Photoshop 7.0, Dreamweaver MX, Final Cut Express 3.5 HD all run as fast as they did before. No degradation of performance like browsing the internet.

Maybe, if the Powermac G5 that I found in the recycling dump works, I can look into trying to find a use copy of Final Cut Studio 2. I was never able to afford it back in the day, but, seems like there are legit copies of it on ebay for around $80... But, that is still $80 I don't need to spend. So, we'll see...

That’s about right. I paid AUD$80 on eBay last year for the Final Cut Studio 2 box with it’s many tomes of user manuals. Having had no prior FCP experience, I really appreciate the in-depth documentation. And Motion and Soundtrack Pro are fun to mess around with.

Stick around and peruse these PowerPC threads. There is plenty of useful information to get you re-inspired in the big-endian POWER

You mentioned on the MP forum that you want to get Linux/PPC going on the G5. I would recommend Ubuntu MATE or Lubuntu. I run MATE 16.04 LTS on my DC G5 in a triple boot setup (Tiger, Leopard and Linux). It has the Quadro FX4500 GPU, but I’m pretty sure the 6600 is fully supported. There are a few quirks to get it all up and running, but once you’ve got it, the experience is as solid as any x86 variant.

 

[Adamscomputerrepair]

I was a convert as well.

My very first computer was a wayy too old NEC that shouldn't have ran Windows 98, yet even at the age of 8, I made it work. My mom needed a computer for college and I built one out of parts.

That story would continue for about 8 more years. We needed a laptop or desktop, I'd buy a broken one on eBay and make it work. So, I started doing how to guides in 2013. My cameraman at the time, Matt, said "Hey Adam. I love to use Final Cut Pro in our schools studio, let's get a Mac." I looked around on eBay, and realized that was way out of our budget.... Until he found an iMac G4 and I found an eMac G4. He gave up with his iMac and sold it to me almost immediately. I downloaded an older version of FCP, had the hacked iMovie 09 running in leopard, and the rest as they say, is history.

From there on I've owned several mac's. Unfortunately the eMac and iMac crapped out on me. Same thing with an ibook G4 that I paid $5 for at a yard sale. Currently, I have a powerbook G4, an iMac G3 indigo that I paid $10 for at a yardsale, and an ibook G3 blueberry that is in parts. It came to me in parts and honestly may cost more to fix than it's worth. Anyway, that's my PPC story.

 

[seveej]

My first computer was a spectrum XZ. From that I went through the normal, 80s and 90s routine (C64, Amiga, 386, 486, etc.), until (in 1997) I ended up working with a multimedia agency which used only Macs.

I was seriously impressed by how well the Mac "ecosystem" worked. After that, it took me almost 10 years before I could afford my first own mac. Since then, I've owned dozens of Macs - both PPC and Intel.

 

[Dronecatcher]

But, I am rooting they go back since I am also rooting for myself, to have my dream back even though I am no longer the same age as then.

It's never too late to get your dream back...but at your own pace. Using this retro gear allows you to sidestep the techno race, the fear of not being able to be productive because you don't have the latest/fastest/fully featured...

Use these Macs with period software - the only limiting factor will be your own creativity

 

[Raging Dufus]

I bought my first ever computer, an old IBM PC, at a garage sale in 1997. It was probably at least 10 years old by that time. I forget the model, but its on-board storage was only large enough to accommodate the OS (Windows 3.1), and you had to load the old 5¼-inch floppies to run any programs. I picked it up complete with monitor, dot-matrix printer, and a bunch of program floppies for $25. I toyed around with the machine a bit, but never could really find much use for it, apart from a couple of games.

In 2001, the company I worked for began a discounted computer purchase program, contracting with an outfit called PeoplePC. I got the cheapest HP system they offered, with 533 MHz Intel Celeron, 64MB RAM, Windows 98SE and dial-up Internet access. It was great!…for a while. But that system almost soured me on the whole idea of having a computer, as I spent, over the next 2 years, probably close to a week of my life (altogether) on the phone with tech support. Sometimes they would reach the end of their ability to diagnose the problem, and they’d send a tech out to pick up my tower and replace it with an identical one. This happened no less than 3 times.

I’d had my fill of this nonsense, and began looking for a better way. In 2003, I picked up a second hand Sawtooth Power Mac G4 from eBay and learned how to use Mac OS 9. I quickly followed this purchase with a PowerBook 1400. I tinkered around with these for a year or so, while continuing to use the HP PC (by this time I’d upgraded the RAM and installed Windows XP, a night-and-day improvement over 98; but I’d been bitten by that point). When Tiger came out, I jumped into OS X on the Sawtooth and haven’t looked back.

I was mortified when Apple decided to go all Intel. In retrospect, it was certainly an understandable business decision; but at the time, I’d been drinking so much of the PowerPC Kool-Aid that I just refused to let go. I’d only just found my way to the Mac, and now they expected me to embrace the enemy? No way. So, as the years went by and better, more powerful PPC Macs came into my sphere of affordability; and as my knowledge of computing and ability to maintain/repair old hardware grew; I picked up more and more PowerPC sweetness. Eventually, I’ve come to own – and take apart/put back together – some of the very machines I drooled over when they came out, like the Dual 1.42 GHz MDD/FW800, and the 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 DLSD. They weren’t just show pieces either – each of the Macs I’ve listed (except the 1400), as well as many others, has been a daily driver of mine for a significant period during the last 15 years, and to this very day.

But alas, I’m typing this on my first Intel Mac notebook, a 2007 15-inch 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. I’ve had to acquire this machine for its ability to run El Capitan, which is the minimum allowable OS to run certain software required in a new educational venture of mine. It pains me, in a way, to have to move beyond my PowerPC roots, especially after the years now of stubbornly persisting there with the help of you MacRumors folks and others dedicated to the cause. But I’m not really leaving, I’m just expanding my horizons.

Besides, I like my Power Macs better