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What to do with a Power Mac G5?
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gobabushka
Well-known member
Donate it to me 
uniserver
Well-known member
you can try installing a new hard drive, what are your speeds, because SATA1 pretty much the best you are going to get is around 65 Megabytes/sec.
you should be getting Atleast 50 mb/sec, there should be a seagate hard drive in there, usually those are pretty fast. also make sure its not the network cable from the the Compute to the router, and make sure its Cat5e, i've had crap cables slow my 1000 m/bit speeds down greatly!
you should be getting Atleast 50 mb/sec, there should be a seagate hard drive in there, usually those are pretty fast. also make sure its not the network cable from the the Compute to the router, and make sure its Cat5e, i've had crap cables slow my 1000 m/bit speeds down greatly!
beachycove
Well-known member
I think that if I had one of the single processor G5 machines with case parts in good condition, I'd look for suitably bashed higher-end model (for no more than a small sum, mind you) and proceed to swap some parts to make one really good machine out of the two. The case itself disassembles so that even the grill front and back/ top and bottom part can be swapped between machines.
Now, I will admit that I am a luddite, and that the Intel machines have advantages for the web and certain media applications etc., but for almost all of my everyday uses, a G5 has plenty of power and performs with dollops of panache. My own favourite is the dual 2.3GHz, early 2005 model — the pick of the G5 litter.
Now, I will admit that I am a luddite, and that the Intel machines have advantages for the web and certain media applications etc., but for almost all of my everyday uses, a G5 has plenty of power and performs with dollops of panache. My own favourite is the dual 2.3GHz, early 2005 model — the pick of the G5 litter.
dudejediknight
Well-known member
That was my first thought as well.Donate it to me
Probably the first thing would be to add more RAM if it's not maxed out already. Then maybe a faster HD like the others have said.
Not familiar with the G5s per se, but getting a faster single-core processor or even a mulit-core setup would probably give it gobs of raw horsepower if you wanted to do more heavy-duty things with it. Swapping in a faster processor would that probably be the most expensive option, but it would probably net the biggest boost. Though it would probably be overkill for a light duty daily-use machine, since any sort of G5 wouldn't be a painfully slow and obsolete machine to start with.
I'd certainly be more than happy to have such a huge step up from what passes as usable around here. My parents are still making good use of a 1.25Ghz G4 iMac for daily use for email, light browsing, and occasionally watching some YouTube videos, and it'd certainly be a big improvement over my workhorse 450mhz G3 Blue & White that does just about everything I've ever asked of it. Unless there's something that makes you absolutely need an MacIntel with the most recent version of OSX, a G5 would certainly be a reasonable machine to have and to put to use.
G5s (and most G4s) are in a really interesting place. They're not really "retro" -- they're definitely somewhat proprietary, and compared to the Macs we've got today, they're odd, finnicky old beasts with limited hardware support, etc. I would be zero surprised in a few years to find that people are comparing the likes of PowerMac and iMac G5s to SiliconGraphics and Sun MIPS/SPARC workstations. Useful in their day, but didn't keep very well and had a fairly limited shelf life after their vendors stopped actively supporting them. (Maybe HP/HPPA or DecPaq/Alpha is a better example than Sun here, because I hear one or more of the BSDs has very active sun/sparc support.)
All of that having been said, if I had a G5, I'd probably use it for much of what I would have done the day it was new in 2003 -- as little Internet as possible, minus maybe an IRC client or an ssh/telnet session, and period-appropriate productivity and graphics or media apps.
At this point, programming for those older versions of 10.x would only really be useful as an exercise in patience, and if you're really intent on porting. (ClassicHasClass may be the best resource for what to do to get started with programming for old versions of Mac OS X. I know that 10.3/10.4 had xcode in the box, starting with 10.5 it may or may not have been on the install CD, but I'm also sure xcode is available on Apple's web site.)
Other than that, I would keep it around. If it's not broken now, it won't be any time soon. The bad caps issue really affected the eMac and one or two models of the iMac G5 the most significantly, so a G5 would be worth cracking open every few years to check on, but probably won't be wildly leaky.
The unfortunate thing is that unless you're running a pretty specific floating-point heavy workload, a G4 or almost any modern Intel computer (Prescott Pentium 4 and newer, Atom, maybe even Pentium M) will outrun it, numbers-wise, and finding updated software for Mac OS X 10.6/10.7 on Intel and Windows/Linux on x86 is way more easy than it is on Mac OS X/PPC. Additionally, a machine with an atom in it will take a tenth (probably less) the electricity that a G5 does, while still being faster and having more/faster interconnects. (There are atom boards available with six SATA-3G/6G ports, and multiple PCI/PCIe ports for additional HBAs, if you're really interested in having a server with any big amount of storage capacity.)
That having been said. The G5 is fairly recent and because it's a Mac, a whole bunch of commercial software was available for it in its day. What can't you do with a G5? Technically, a G5 could do everything I do on my current computer. It would be slower and I would arguably be wasting electricity, but it could be fun, and ram/disks are so cheap, if you're running less than 4 or so gigs of ram and there's any indication your disks might not be performing well, the cost of more ram and new disks would make it worthwhile. (I suspect with 4 gigs of ram, and a new disk or two, 10.4 or 10.5 would run pretty well on a G5, and may even be useful, but it depends on your workload and patience.)
Another thought: Is there anything you want to do with a G5? There are a few of us around who might remember what app people would've grabbed back when G5s were new to accomplish that task.
All of that having been said, if I had a G5, I'd probably use it for much of what I would have done the day it was new in 2003 -- as little Internet as possible, minus maybe an IRC client or an ssh/telnet session, and period-appropriate productivity and graphics or media apps.
At this point, programming for those older versions of 10.x would only really be useful as an exercise in patience, and if you're really intent on porting. (ClassicHasClass may be the best resource for what to do to get started with programming for old versions of Mac OS X. I know that 10.3/10.4 had xcode in the box, starting with 10.5 it may or may not have been on the install CD, but I'm also sure xcode is available on Apple's web site.)
Other than that, I would keep it around. If it's not broken now, it won't be any time soon. The bad caps issue really affected the eMac and one or two models of the iMac G5 the most significantly, so a G5 would be worth cracking open every few years to check on, but probably won't be wildly leaky.
The unfortunate thing is that unless you're running a pretty specific floating-point heavy workload, a G4 or almost any modern Intel computer (Prescott Pentium 4 and newer, Atom, maybe even Pentium M) will outrun it, numbers-wise, and finding updated software for Mac OS X 10.6/10.7 on Intel and Windows/Linux on x86 is way more easy than it is on Mac OS X/PPC. Additionally, a machine with an atom in it will take a tenth (probably less) the electricity that a G5 does, while still being faster and having more/faster interconnects. (There are atom boards available with six SATA-3G/6G ports, and multiple PCI/PCIe ports for additional HBAs, if you're really interested in having a server with any big amount of storage capacity.)
That having been said. The G5 is fairly recent and because it's a Mac, a whole bunch of commercial software was available for it in its day. What can't you do with a G5? Technically, a G5 could do everything I do on my current computer. It would be slower and I would arguably be wasting electricity, but it could be fun, and ram/disks are so cheap, if you're running less than 4 or so gigs of ram and there's any indication your disks might not be performing well, the cost of more ram and new disks would make it worthwhile. (I suspect with 4 gigs of ram, and a new disk or two, 10.4 or 10.5 would run pretty well on a G5, and may even be useful, but it depends on your workload and patience.)
Another thought: Is there anything you want to do with a G5? There are a few of us around who might remember what app people would've grabbed back when G5s were new to accomplish that task.
uniserver
Well-known member
wow 29 bucks! free shipping,
http://www.ascendtech.us/foxconn-45ctp-intel-atom-single-core-230_i_mb4fox45ctp330s.aspx
all that ATOM talk, and a google search...
these will run up to snow leopard and are 100% supported,
even the GMA 950 it's fully CI AND QE supported!
http://www.ascendtech.us/foxconn-45ctp-intel-atom-single-core-230_i_mb4fox45ctp330s.aspx
all that ATOM talk, and a google search...
these will run up to snow leopard and are 100% supported,
even the GMA 950 it's fully CI AND QE supported!
ClassicHasClass
Well-known member
A 1.6GHz isn't going to be much faster than a top-end MDD and has much less hardware and OS support, unfortunately.
I use a G5 as my daily driver and main development workstation, but I have a quad 2.5GHz and even by today's standards is still no slouch. Either the quad or the fastest air-cooled (I think that's beachycove's) would be my recommendation; the quad is the only liquid cooled G5 that's worth the headache. I would have trouble thinking of stuff to do with a 1.6GHz too, unfortunately. It's not a terrible Mac, just sort of an odd duck in that it was not significantly faster than the machines it replaced and had more drawbacks.
For programming, Xcode came with 10.4 and you can get 2.5 easily enough (I don't think Apple has expunged it from their servers yet like they did MPW). I build TenFourFox with Xcode 2.5 and the Xcode 3 linker which one of our contributors ported to 10.4.
I use a G5 as my daily driver and main development workstation, but I have a quad 2.5GHz and even by today's standards is still no slouch. Either the quad or the fastest air-cooled (I think that's beachycove's) would be my recommendation; the quad is the only liquid cooled G5 that's worth the headache. I would have trouble thinking of stuff to do with a 1.6GHz too, unfortunately. It's not a terrible Mac, just sort of an odd duck in that it was not significantly faster than the machines it replaced and had more drawbacks.
For programming, Xcode came with 10.4 and you can get 2.5 easily enough (I don't think Apple has expunged it from their servers yet like they did MPW). I build TenFourFox with Xcode 2.5 and the Xcode 3 linker which one of our contributors ported to 10.4.
Unknown_K
Well-known member
Honestly if you can't think of anything you need to do with it then you have two choices, sell it for what you can get (very little) or shelve it for a couple years until you get the urge to revisit it.
In the 90's I kept a few of my old 486/Pentium 1 boards (since they were not worth anything) on a shelf incase I ever wanted to use them for something. It took a decade or so but I eventually wanted to go back to that era and the parts came in handy. With all hardware the value of the stuff drops down to nothing but after a while they do get harder and more expensive to replace. In a few year anything non x86 is going to be hard to find with all the recycling going on. If you happen to be one of those people who likes revisiting old computers then keeping a G5 around might be a good idea.
In the 90's I kept a few of my old 486/Pentium 1 boards (since they were not worth anything) on a shelf incase I ever wanted to use them for something. It took a decade or so but I eventually wanted to go back to that era and the parts came in handy. With all hardware the value of the stuff drops down to nothing but after a while they do get harder and more expensive to replace. In a few year anything non x86 is going to be hard to find with all the recycling going on. If you happen to be one of those people who likes revisiting old computers then keeping a G5 around might be a good idea.
In terms of G5s, classichasclass is pretty much correct. the 1.6GHz G5 isn't going to be very fast. The main reasons to use one are "I'm testing it" or "it was free and I had it hanging around."
Atoms aren't that great for Mac OS X, if you want to build a new Mac using non-Apple parts, it's my "you didn't hear it here" reccomendation that you get something with a Core2 processor and a 965 or 3-series chipset. Any Core2 will make the G5 cry for its mother, and if you're going OS X, it's a reasonable presumption that you're wanting something at least semi-modern anyway.
An Atom will be suitable if you're looking only for low power consumption or you're looking for linux/bsd, or a toy OS like reactos or haiku.
I would agree with Unknown_K's assessment that when you've got a system in the "zone of uninteresting" the best strategies are either to sell it for what you can get (maybe to somebody who still really relies on that particular hardware for whatever reason, and is willing to pay for even the slowest machine) or shelve it until it's more interesting from an actual historic standpoint.
Atoms aren't that great for Mac OS X, if you want to build a new Mac using non-Apple parts, it's my "you didn't hear it here" reccomendation that you get something with a Core2 processor and a 965 or 3-series chipset. Any Core2 will make the G5 cry for its mother, and if you're going OS X, it's a reasonable presumption that you're wanting something at least semi-modern anyway.
An Atom will be suitable if you're looking only for low power consumption or you're looking for linux/bsd, or a toy OS like reactos or haiku.
It was removed due to pretty extreme abuse. We tried asking, we tried asking again, we tried asking again, ad nauseum, until it was easier to make one of the tools away. Sad but true.
I would agree with Unknown_K's assessment that when you've got a system in the "zone of uninteresting" the best strategies are either to sell it for what you can get (maybe to somebody who still really relies on that particular hardware for whatever reason, and is willing to pay for even the slowest machine) or shelve it until it's more interesting from an actual historic standpoint.
waynestewart
Well-known member
I've got the same problem with a dual 2.5. It was given to me because it was overheating and Apple couldn't solve the problem. Sat there for about a year before I looked at it. Blew out a lot of dust and it was no longer overheating even when rendering video. But what to do with it now? It's too noisy to run videos on my TV. I now have 3 Macbook Pros and a Macbook as well as a couple of overclocked 1.42 MDDs and a dual 1.8ghz DA. I just can't think of anything that I couldn't do as well or better on one of these.
The case for keeping such a machine around definitely diminishes when you've got a bunch of faster MacBook/Pros around and you have no specific need for a G5 or for an older version of the OS.
A dual 2.5 G5 is probably faster than most of the G4s, and will hold more ram, but there's a good possibility that most software that'll run in 10.4/10.5 won't take advantage of the G5's specific type of extra horsepower, without being faster still on an Intel computer.
A dual 2.5 G5 is probably faster than most of the G4s, and will hold more ram, but there's a good possibility that most software that'll run in 10.4/10.5 won't take advantage of the G5's specific type of extra horsepower, without being faster still on an Intel computer.
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