tviolation
Active member
Hi all,
I'm a frequent lurker/reader, but it's been a long time since I have posted anything as I haven't had much time to tinker with my old Macs in the last few years. Although I'm theoretically trying to reduce my collection down to a few favorites right now, I ended up picking up my first conquest in quite a while yesterday. I found it on Facebook Marketplace a little over an hour from home, and it caught my attention because the seller mentioned that the G4 had it's processor upgraded "to the max" although he didn't have the details. I asked for a picture of the inside and sure enough, purple heatsink, so I made arrangements to go pick up the lot for $140.
I was hoping for a rare dual processor upgrade, but upon inspection it turned out to be an Encore ST 1.2GHz single processor. Still happy with that find, but it's slower than the one I have in my own G4 already, so it'll probably end up being re-homed. The Mac itself was originally a 400MHz Sawtooth and still has its original video card, so nothing special there, but it also came with a Sonnet Tempo SATA card in it, which is something I've been looking for to put in one of my other Macs for a bit now. It booted up right away into Leopard and seems to be working fine, but I haven't had a chance to do anything else with it yet.
Upon inspection, the G5s included two 1.6GHz single processor (first gen) models, a late 2004 1.8GHz single processor (the "price point" model with the slow system bus), a first gen dual 1.8GHz, and an early 2005 dual 2.0GHz. None have hard drives and they came with a box of RAM. I put RAM into each one and they all at least boot. The seller said one was "security locked" which turned out to be a firmware password on the dual 1.8, so a quick PRAM reset later and it also boots fine. I'll probably hang onto one of the dual processor units and re-home the rest. I had a G5 at home when they first came out, but other than that they never interested me too much as I generally want to be able to boot classic Mac OS on my PowerPC Macs and find that 10.4/10.5 run much better on early Intel hardware these days.
The dual 2.0GHz unit was partially stripped and, although the fans came along loose in the box of RAM, it's missing the plastic housings for the fans and the metal shelf above the logic board is mangled up a bit. The power supply is also not screwed in and I'm sure there's more that I haven't found yet.
Everything is pretty dirty, but it should be fun cleaning them up and getting them back into fully working order. I haven't had a chance to do extensive testing yet other than plugging them in to see if they boot, but here's a quick picture of it all. Pardon the messy basement. So much for thinning the herd!
I'm a frequent lurker/reader, but it's been a long time since I have posted anything as I haven't had much time to tinker with my old Macs in the last few years. Although I'm theoretically trying to reduce my collection down to a few favorites right now, I ended up picking up my first conquest in quite a while yesterday. I found it on Facebook Marketplace a little over an hour from home, and it caught my attention because the seller mentioned that the G4 had it's processor upgraded "to the max" although he didn't have the details. I asked for a picture of the inside and sure enough, purple heatsink, so I made arrangements to go pick up the lot for $140.
I was hoping for a rare dual processor upgrade, but upon inspection it turned out to be an Encore ST 1.2GHz single processor. Still happy with that find, but it's slower than the one I have in my own G4 already, so it'll probably end up being re-homed. The Mac itself was originally a 400MHz Sawtooth and still has its original video card, so nothing special there, but it also came with a Sonnet Tempo SATA card in it, which is something I've been looking for to put in one of my other Macs for a bit now. It booted up right away into Leopard and seems to be working fine, but I haven't had a chance to do anything else with it yet.
Upon inspection, the G5s included two 1.6GHz single processor (first gen) models, a late 2004 1.8GHz single processor (the "price point" model with the slow system bus), a first gen dual 1.8GHz, and an early 2005 dual 2.0GHz. None have hard drives and they came with a box of RAM. I put RAM into each one and they all at least boot. The seller said one was "security locked" which turned out to be a firmware password on the dual 1.8, so a quick PRAM reset later and it also boots fine. I'll probably hang onto one of the dual processor units and re-home the rest. I had a G5 at home when they first came out, but other than that they never interested me too much as I generally want to be able to boot classic Mac OS on my PowerPC Macs and find that 10.4/10.5 run much better on early Intel hardware these days.
The dual 2.0GHz unit was partially stripped and, although the fans came along loose in the box of RAM, it's missing the plastic housings for the fans and the metal shelf above the logic board is mangled up a bit. The power supply is also not screwed in and I'm sure there's more that I haven't found yet.
Everything is pretty dirty, but it should be fun cleaning them up and getting them back into fully working order. I haven't had a chance to do extensive testing yet other than plugging them in to see if they boot, but here's a quick picture of it all. Pardon the messy basement. So much for thinning the herd!
