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need help finding the _F_U_N_N_E_S_S_ in G5 Macs

T

tipc

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I brought 3 of these home from a hamshow, 5$ per. Sat there for a long time. I decided it was time to ask someone what type of memory they took, being they were stripped of all memory and drives (ah but for 1 hard disk they missed). Then all of a sudden I felt daring and started plugging in sticks I had laying around. At first I actually got some *reaction*, but no characteristic chime or anything. Then I realized 1 stick was mismatched, so I replaced it and Voila! the thing started up. Got as far as the Apple open boot prompt (I think that's what it said, reminiscent of the Sun open boot thing maybe).
That was 1 of the 3. I imagine the other 2 may exhibit similar results.
But I need a reason to hang onto 1 or more of these things. If I'm going to go to the trouble of finding drives and stuff, I first need to know how much PHUN is wrapped up in these machines.
I guess I should determine what chips/speed I have. Next post.

***I messed up. These aren't G5s but G4s. Blue and silver. Whoops***
 
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Blue and White are G3's, the silver ones are G4. Depending on the models you need PC100 or PC133 SDRAM, low density. The last G4 towers made used DDR1 but you won't find them for $5 just yet.

As far as fun goes, it depends on the person. I have a few G4's that I use to support my large Apple collection and some I have for running video editing hardware (Matrox RTMAC in a G4 equipped B&W for instance). Since they use IDE drives and standard SDRAM its pretty easy and cheap to upgrade them if you stumble over old PCs. You will need Apple branded video cards. Personally I love the 68K macs and the early Nubus PPC machines but I also have PCI models that are interesting to work with. Without a bunch of old apps and equipment (Photoshop with old quality SCSI flatbed scanners are fun) they are not much use.
 
Blue and White are G3's, the silver ones are G4.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's not a stretch to call the earlier G4's "blue and silver" though... the front panel and Apple logo on 'em do look blue in certain kinds of light.
 
Old Thrashbarg said:
I'd say it's not a stretch to call the earlier G4's "blue and silver" though... the front panel and Apple logo on 'em do look blue in certain kinds of light.
Click to expand...

The original "Sawtooth" G4s without AGP are the previous blue & white G3s with a different case and a G4 chip factory installed.
 
njroadfan said:
The original "Sawtooth" G4s without AGP are the previous blue & white G3s with a different case and a G4 chip factory installed.
Click to expand...

The Yikes model was a B&W G3 board with PCI video in a grey case with a G4 ZIF, the Sawtooth was the first AGP machine.

It wasn't untill the Quicksiklver came out that the front of the case got rid of that dark grey and went silver. Still if you ever see a b&W case it does look much different in color then any of the G4 models.
 
I have a pair of B&W G3 450MHzs a beige G3 300MHz and a G4 MDD dual 833MHz. The fun is that they run both the older Mac software and the newer stuff as well. They're great for a game network for the early network games (Doom, Quake, Quake II, Warcraft II, you get the idea ) as well as solo games from that general time frame (Lemmings, etc.--I'm tired & the titles aren't coming to me.) They're web-capable so downloads are easy for patches or games from e.g. Home of the Underdogs.

They run OS X and OS8/9. I run 10.4 on my G4 and the B&Ws. The G4 runs "Classic", which gives me OS9 inside OS X. The B&Ws dual boot Tiger and OS9.0. I tried 9.1 which is supposed to be "more OS X compatible", but it only gave me trouble so I went back to OS 9.0.

My beige G3 runs OS 8.5 and OS9. It's also my "bridge system" between my older 68K Macs (stretching from a 512Ke to a Quadra 5400) and newer PPC/Intel Macs--read and write floppies, CDs, SCSI, etc.

What else? They're also good retro development systems, still have a full app suite with the OS install disk for the system (unlike the pared down jokes for software they ship now), and if you like they can be upgraded to run Leopard (though even with a processor u/g I'd rather run Tiger--Leopard/Snow Leopard is vastly over-rated IMO.) They'll run Tiger fine. The biggest problem I had getting Tiger on them is that I only had CD-Rs in the B&Ws when I installed it, Tiger was on DVD. I swiped the SuperDrive out of the G4 to install it (both have since been upgraded to DVD-Rs, so this isn't a problem now.)

The G4 is also my MAME machine.
 
these are G4s. Maybe I didn't describe them in proper Apple-talk (they are blue and silver, literally, or perhaps more accurate to say blue and gray).

Didn't know MAME was available for Macs. Beggorah.

Also, the opening screen doesn't say "OpenBoot", but "OpenFirmware". My bad. Again.
 
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I have a 450mhz Blue and white I use for Mac OS 9.2.2 software, then I have an unusually redundant Sawtooth which does the same albeit with a dual 500mhz processor card. Both have a gig of ram and a 60gb hard drive with a SCSI card on the side. I'm not sure waht to really install on the sawtooth that would really be happy with dual G4's. OSX is out of the question these days unless I want some ancient version and I'm not sure if any of my 9.2.2 assumes dual 604's and does not utilize anything better.
 
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