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A curbed computer gem!

G

G4foreva

6502
Hey all! This is my first post but I figured it'll be appropriate to do it in here since my conquest was what lead me to this forum.

About a month ago I noticed that someone had set a MDD on the curb outside of my apartment. Now, I live in a college town and am a woman of principles so I did not "appropriate" it immediately since someone could've been moving. Flash forward three hours later I poke my head out of the front door and the computer is still sitting there with a bag of trash placed on top of it! Score! I scurried forward and lugged the beast into the apartment all eager to set it up and then realized I don't have a DVI monitor. A couple of more weeks passed with the MDD making an attractive footstool under my desk, I finally get a DVI-VGA adapter. I plug everything in and turn it on, and wait with bated breath to hear that beautiful BONG. Oh joy! It works! Alas, someone had password protected it. After a few days of combing the intertubez I find a way to delete the root account from terminal mode. I typed in all the commands and sacrificed a few small animals to the computer gods, and it worked! The computer restarted and I got the little intro video and set up my account. Yay! |)

Turns out it is MDD dual 1.0ghz model running 10.4.11. I think it actually is the server version because it has a stock 120gig hard drive in it, and the only one I can find on LowEndMac with my machines specs is the dual 1.0ghz server. Great! I'm a nursing student and computer dabbler so I have no need for a server, but it's a nice machine to have. It also has a crap ton of software on it including a bunch of OS9 apps that I haven't gotten around to playing with yet.

My only gripe with this machine is the PSU! It has the 400watt supply and I'm very thankful for that. There was a storm and I wasn't home to turn off the machine and the power went out. I came home to a dead MDD. After a few weeks of searching for the problem and even considering to replace the PSU, I find a very simple solution to quickly press that little button on the logic board. I pressed the button and let it sit for awhile and when I started it, it worked! yay! :D

I'm a very casual computer user with absolutely no experience with macs beside a macbook I had for three months before the logic board bit the dust, so I'm very pleased with myself for fixing the beastie. I'm happy with it! Can't complain for a free mac. I just wish I can find a version of iTunes 9 so I can use my iPod. iTunes 10 won't work on Tiger. :-/

 
grats, sounds like a nice machine to have around (and yea that pram zapping will become a first instinct for all sorts of mac ailments)

 
Nice catch. I got a free MDD a little while back too, but it's still dead as a dodo.

A tip to avoid an untimely PSU death is to make sure you don't leave it plugged in when turned off. The standby draws a lot of power from the PSU and with the fan off it cooks over time.

 
does that apply with non apple stuff plugged into it? I was under the impression that the board only uses a tiny voltage and current, whereas having a apple monitor jacked in and ect would

course its a good idea either way if your not going to use it daily as the "phantoms" are just driving up your power bill nickels and dimes at a time

 
You can go here for the older version of iTunes 9 for OX Tiger:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1056
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Thank you!! I'm not sure how I missed this first time around.

Nice catch. I got a free MDD a little while back too, but it's still dead as a dodo.
A tip to avoid an untimely PSU death is to make sure you don't leave it plugged in when turned off. The standby draws a lot of power from the PSU and with the fan off it cooks over time.
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Oh yeah, the Apple Daiquiri (the MDD's name now :o) ) gets unplugged when it gets turned off. I learned my lesson the first time around. I thought it truly was dead and gone.

I can't wait to get a truly classic mac! I just don't have a lot of space so I think I'm going to get a compact. Maybe. I'm having fun making Apple Daiquiri a fully functional machine to augment my netbook (a HP 1100 that really does work quite well). I need to get a USB 2.0 card and maybe a bigger hard drive. It's ram is maxed at 2 gigs already. When I have the extra cash I want to get an Apple studio display for it so I can have my TV back. Maybe even shell out for a pair of the ball speakers and an right era keyboard and mouse. It really is a lovely computer and I want to display it proudly.

 
Congratulations! I'm a fan of that machine, I think it's quite handsome but the machine has it's quirks. Watch out for the PSU, hopefully you picked up a MDD with newer PSU, apple replaced the original PSUs for excessive fan noise. Also keep an eye on the CPU temperature, I've seen 2 MDDs with burnt out processors and others on this board have come across them as well. It might be worth it to clean off the old thermal paste and apply some new stuff. I'm not doing this to scare you but I just hate seeing Mac hardware die before it's time. Then somebody will come along see it won't boot and throw the whole thing out, it's a crime really.

Again, congratulations, it's a sexy computer.

 
does that apply with non apple stuff plugged into it? I was under the impression that the board only uses a tiny voltage and current, whereas having a apple monitor jacked in and ect would
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This I'm not sure about. I imagine it would definitely count if you had an ADC monitor attached. My understanding is that the logic board still pulls from the +28v when the machine is off. Whether it still does this without an ADC monitor or firewire device attached, I don't know. In any case it seems like good practice not to leave it plugged in when off.

I need to get a USB 2.0 card and maybe a bigger hard drive.
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I think the general rule with USB2 cards it to avoid VIA chips. Cards with the NEC chipset are more likely to work without any hassle. I put a VIA-based one in a G4 some time ago and it was practically useless.

 
I think the general rule with USB2 cards it to avoid VIA chips. Cards with the NEC chipset are more likely to work without any hassle. I put a VIA-based one in a G4 some time ago and it was practically useless.
Click to expand...
Ali-based cards also work well in them. I have a USB2/FW400 combo card with USB headers on the card.

 
MDDs are pretty awesome. You can upgrade them to be pretty respectable and have loads of expansion. I just built up my MDD. I got a dual 1.42ghz CPU (and overclocked to 1.58ghz on stock voltage) with copper heatsink from work (for free) and I had a FW800 logic board I threw in a while ago. Popped in an Airport Extreme and bluetooth card, DL Super Drive, 2GB RAM, ATi 9800 Pro 128MB video card, 2 USB 2.0 cards, FW400 and FW800 cards and 4 hard drives. You can put in a SATA card and theoretically put 12TB worth of storage (2x 2TB drives in each hard drive bay and two more in the optical bays with mounts) and it'll make a pretty nasty file server.

 
Holy cow. I can't imagine someone just throwing away an MDD. I have a QS G4, but it's intermittent. It freezes during boot. I took it apart, applied some new thermal paste, and it worked for several months. I moved the machine to the other side of my room and it freezes again. :(

Works fine in Target Disk Mode, though.

 
If your machine is freezing, I would try an OS reload. Maybe you have a corrupt KEXT file somewhere. Also run a memory test to insure that you have no bad sticks of ram. Following that pull everything from the system that is not required to do a bare bones boot up and then re-install hardware 1 piece at a time until you find the culprit.

 
It's running Classic. I think it's a hardware issue because if I swap out my DP CPU with the single 733 CPU, it works fine.

 
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