Was out walking earlier when I passed by a local institute of higher learning. They put all their electronics recycling outside in marked bins (behind their walls, but there's no gate, you can walk right so I'm not sure it's technically trespassing). I've gotten good stuff from there in the past, but it's been years since I looked since generally I feel like I have enough old junk. I don't know why I looked tonight, but I did. There were two things in there that looked like PCs. First one had a Windows sticker, so I didn't pay anymore attention to it, the other one looked weird around the back. I initially thought it was some kind of server, but then when I looked on the front it had a Motorola logo. That's strange, I didn't know they'd made PCs... or could it be?
And yes, it could. One absolutely pristine, well-running Motorola StarMax 4000 tower. 32 megs of RAM, the original 2.5 gig IDE drive. It's got System 7.6 in German on there, with more than one screenwidth of extensions, takes ages to boot to some launcher as well Norton something or other "checking my files", and something autolaunched called "PowerMac Debug Services" that I can only assume is some sort of vintage virus. Judging by some of the files in here, it was in service until 2005!
I've peaked inside as well (a little bit of dust but otherwise clean as a whistle), and there's something in the "cache dimm" slot with a big heatsink on it. The Apple System Profiler and TechTool both say it has a 40 MHz 740 processor - I wonder if that means some sort of G3 upgrade?
The interesting thing about this is of course that it's got all the PC ports. So you can use PS/2 keyboards, IDE drives, and the video port is VGA. I don't technically need this, so I might be willing to let it go at some point soon, but part of me is also thinking it'd be interesting to upgrade it - since everything's standard it'd be easy to put in a new quiet PSU and case fan and a CF card reader. Should be able to make it silent without any destructive upgrades. It's got two PCI slot more than my G4, but I'm not sure what I'd put in there. All my ProTools stuff is NuBus... unless I go on eBay... aaargh!
And yes, it could. One absolutely pristine, well-running Motorola StarMax 4000 tower. 32 megs of RAM, the original 2.5 gig IDE drive. It's got System 7.6 in German on there, with more than one screenwidth of extensions, takes ages to boot to some launcher as well Norton something or other "checking my files", and something autolaunched called "PowerMac Debug Services" that I can only assume is some sort of vintage virus. Judging by some of the files in here, it was in service until 2005!
I've peaked inside as well (a little bit of dust but otherwise clean as a whistle), and there's something in the "cache dimm" slot with a big heatsink on it. The Apple System Profiler and TechTool both say it has a 40 MHz 740 processor - I wonder if that means some sort of G3 upgrade?
The interesting thing about this is of course that it's got all the PC ports. So you can use PS/2 keyboards, IDE drives, and the video port is VGA. I don't technically need this, so I might be willing to let it go at some point soon, but part of me is also thinking it'd be interesting to upgrade it - since everything's standard it'd be easy to put in a new quiet PSU and case fan and a CF card reader. Should be able to make it silent without any destructive upgrades. It's got two PCI slot more than my G4, but I'm not sure what I'd put in there. All my ProTools stuff is NuBus... unless I go on eBay... aaargh!
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