Deccman Conquests

[Deccman]

Picked up all these PowerMacs on the weekend for AU$100 the lot:

https://imgur.com/Tmedfvw

The G3 B&W is faulty, powers up but has no display. Someone must have thrown the money at this when it was originally sold as it has SCSI HDDs in it as well as second SCSI card for I guess a flatbed scanner or something like that. This one I am not too worried about as I already have a B&W G3 that has a G4 CPU upgrade for it. One of my friends needs to repair his B&W so it'll go to him.

The Sawtooth G4 powers up for a second or two then switches off. Either a faulty PSU or a device on it that has a short. Bottom of the priority list as it is a slow G4.

The Quicksilver boots up and loads OSX 10.2.8(!) but the fans in it are dying. I'll look at replacing the fans in it, give it a clean up and flip it to cover the costs of the parts needed for this and the MDD.

The MDD boots up fine, fans seem good and loads 10.2.8 (what is it with this old version). I had completely forgot that 10.2 didn't have stuff like Spotlight, was hammering the keyboard shortcut for it with no response. This is a dual 1.25GHz CPUs/Firewire 400 model. This PowerMac I want to hold onto and will look at doing stuff like re-capping the PSU, putting in new fans and installing stuff like USB 2.0 PCI card, SSD and an USB Bluetooth dongle.

 

[joshc]

Good deal. They are all great machines. My personal favourite is the Sawtooth and it's the only G4 in my collection now, mine has a 1.8GHz Sonnet upgrade.

 

[olePigeon]

I always liked the B&W G3 because it still had that 1 ADB port.

 

[joshc]

I always liked the B&W G3 because it still had that 1 ADB port.

I used to own one and until recently had no idea they even put an ADB port on those! A pretty neat feature.

 

[Deccman]

I got my original B&W for free as a co-worker was retiring and had a heap of OS 9 era hardware. Got a lot of CDs as well, including the original install media for the B&W

 

[Phipli]

Nice to see all the boiled sweets in a row

I have dead psu examples of the QS and MDD but G4 is a little newer than I usually mess with. I was considering getting a digital audio, but then the QS and MDD turned up and so I stopped looking.

Really should sort replacement PSUs

 

[CC_333]

Good deal. They are all great machines. My personal favourite is the Sawtooth and it's the only G4 in my collection now, mine has a 1.8GHz Sonnet upgrade.

I also have a Sawtooth that happens to have a 1.8GHz Sonnet in it, and it made an already quite decent G4 very nice. In fact, with all other things the same (RAM and disk), the Sonnet actually makes Mac OS 9 disk access feel noticeably faster.

I don't have enough RAM to try at the moment, but I'm sure it would run Mac OS X quite well. Multitasking and overall performance would probably be a bit smoother with even a slow DP card, but the extra speed of the Sonnet likely makes up for that.

c

 

[joshc]

I also have a Sawtooth that happens to have a 1.8GHz Sonnet in it, and it made an already quite decent G4 very nice. In fact, with all other things the same (RAM and disk), the Sonnet actually makes Mac OS 9 disk access feel noticeably faster.

I don't have enough RAM to try at the moment, but I'm sure it would run Mac OS X quite well. Multitasking and overall performance would probably be a bit smoother with even a slow DP card, but the extra speed of the Sonnet likely makes up for that.

c

Yeah, they are really capable OS 9 machines and I feel that’s where they perform best. I’ve never been that interested in running OS X on anything PPC since the Intel stuff came out. I also put quieter fans in my Sawtooth and a SATA card though I have yet to actually put any SATA drives or SSDs in there. it’s still running on a very old IDE drive at the moment.