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Author Topic: What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?  (Read 4648 times)

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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« on: Tue, 17 May 2011, 22:19:11 »
Okay, so I got a power mac G4 tower (graphite version). It has a gig of RAM, 80GB HDD, and 500Mhz PPC.

Any good ideas as to what I could use it for? I was thinking of just slapping on OSX Tiger, but if anyone can suggest something else, I'm open ears. It has a nice SCSI card.

As for my iMac G3, I just upgraded it to 128 MB of RAM. I think it's either 300 or 400 Mhz. Suppose the only thing it's good for is OS 9 (but that's alright, I'll use it to play caesar 3 I guess -- CD drive is a little too noisy for my taste to play warcraft 2).
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Offline ricercar

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 17 May 2011, 22:55:30 »
If you edit audio, a G4 with Peak is the best 2-channel hard disk recorder out there. I keep my G4 around for audio work, using ancient 5V PCI IO cards that won't work in any modern Mac or PC. MAudio Delta line is the best audio IO HW you can buy, and they work on any x86 or PowerPC box.

A G3 with 128M makes a decent DVD player; my kids each have a G3 laptop for that purpose. However you really need a G4 to surf today's web: watching Youtube or playing Flash games. The G4 has marginally faster performance on MacOS 9 but the functionality of OS X far outweighs the speed hit.
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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 17 May 2011, 23:08:52 »
Quote from: ricercar;347830
If you edit audio, a G4 with Peak is the best 2-channel hard disk recorder out there. I keep my G4 around for audio work, using ancient 5V PCI IO cards that won't work in any modern Mac or PC. MAudio Delta line is the best audio IO HW you can buy, and they work on any x86 or PowerPC box.

A G3 with 128M makes a decent DVD player; my kids each have a G3 laptop for that purpose. However you really need a G4 to surf today's web: watching Youtube or playing Flash games. The G4 has marginally faster performance on MacOS 9 but the functionality of OS X far outweighs the speed hit.

Okay you have me interested in regards to the audio editing on the G4. I do have an audiophile 2496 in an intellistation (as discussed a long time ago)... but if what you're describing is better, I'll gladly take the plunge.

I'm not sure which delta card you're referring to, the latest one I believe is the delta 44.

I can surf the web fine on a pentium 1 (200/233) -- youtube runs adequately fast as well: the only issue is windows 98, the old flash drivers don't like the new opera versions, so I'm sure if you pulled a few strings, you could do the same on an iMac G3 as well.
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Offline mr_a500

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #3 on: Wed, 18 May 2011, 14:13:32 »
If the G4 has an ATI graphics card, you could try MorphOS. (and dual boot with OSX)
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Offline cbf123

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #4 on: Wed, 18 May 2011, 18:34:29 »
Something to consider, that G4 is going to use a fair bit of power.  Around here 1W of constant power usage costs about a buck a year.  At 200W for a typical tower, it's going to set you back a bit to keep it running.
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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #5 on: Wed, 18 May 2011, 21:43:08 »
Quote from: cbf123;348209
Something to consider, that G4 is going to use a fair bit of power.  Around here 1W of constant power usage costs about a buck a year.  At 200W for a typical tower, it's going to set you back a bit to keep it running.
I have two computers which are 400W each....
Heck! My pentium 1 runs at 175W.
I don't leave my computers on 24/7, I always turn them off. It's a habit I've always had.
 
Quote from: mr_a500;348090
If the G4 has an ATI graphics card, you could try MorphOS. (and dual boot with OSX)

Yes it has an ATI card. I have a lot of ATI AGP cards though. And some Nvidia ones... I like ATI better than Nvidia. Sue me.
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Offline datamonger128

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #6 on: Thu, 19 May 2011, 01:09:16 »
Chances are, none of those AGP cards you have will work on the G4.  Macs need Mac-specific graphics cards as the video BIOS on the card is written specifically for the Mac.  There are ways to get PC AGP cards to work on the Mac, but you need to flash them to the Mac BIOS.  You also have to make sure that the graphics card itself was available on both Mac and PC.
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Offline ricercar

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #7 on: Thu, 19 May 2011, 01:47:55 »
Quote from: EverythingIBM;347836
Okay you have me interested in regards to the audio editing on the G4. I do have an audiophile 2496 in an intellistation (as discussed a long time ago)... but if what you're describing is better, I'll gladly take the plunge.

I'm not sure which delta card you're referring to, the latest one I believe is the delta 44.

I have an MAudio Delta DIO 2496 (discontinued, replaced by the mostly-worthy Audiophile 2496) for 2-channel audio work, SP/DIF, coax digital, and analog. Combined with BIAS Peak software, there's no easier/faster/better way to work stereo audio. For 8-channel audio I use a MAudio Delta 1010, which has an external 1RU rack mount expansion for all the IO ports. Pro Tools is definitely worthy software, but too pricey IMHO. I'm a die hard BIAS Deck fan for 8-channel work.

Both my Delta cards work x86 and PowerPC Macintosh, but I've never found a Windows or Linux software package to rival Deck or Peak.

Did you have any specific questions about G4 and audio work that I could address? I've done semi-pro recording and mastering on a G3/G4/G5 since 1996.
« Last Edit: Thu, 19 May 2011, 02:00:27 by ricercar »
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Offline ch_123

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #8 on: Fri, 20 May 2011, 17:45:34 »
How much RAM is in the G4? You'd want at least 256MB, more like 512MB to run OS X decently.
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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #9 on: Fri, 20 May 2011, 21:34:51 »
Quote from: ch_123;349180
How much RAM is in the G4? You'd want at least 256MB, more like 512MB to run OS X decently.
It has 1 GB of RAM (I guess writing "a gig" is a little bit too colloquial). Nothing too shabby. It's a decent computer, actually. It was the first time I saw PCI-X, so that was a good quick learning experience (can't believe I never saw it before!). It also has a crystal audio chip... that took me by surprise.

I should explain about what I did regarding the RAM. Originally it had 2x 512MB PC133 SDRAM sticks (it did ship with 256, but someone upgraded it).. I popped those in my 300GL since it only has two RAM slots. I then put 4x 256 PC133 SDRAM sticks in the G4. They work fine.
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Offline ch_123

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #10 on: Sat, 21 May 2011, 04:20:27 »
I had a G4 Power Mac with a blue-ish casing, it was one of the earlier models. It was picky about what RAM it could take. In the end I passed it onto someone else because I got a Mac Mini that was much smaller AND more powerful thanthe Power Mac.
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Offline ricercar

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #11 on: Sat, 21 May 2011, 15:47:33 »
Thanks to this thread I set up my G4 tower as a Youtube/IMDB/PBSkids machine for my kids. Motivational.
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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #12 on: Sat, 21 May 2011, 21:05:02 »
Quote from: ricercar;349560
Thanks to this thread I set up my G4 tower as a Youtube/IMDB/PBSkids machine for my kids. Motivational.

 
I just remembered: the iMac G3s have dual headphone ports... so if you needed something that requires two headphones, they would be good for that.
I'm guessing because it was meant for school use or something. Usually we did have two kids per iMac back in grade 2. Gosh I'm old :p
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Offline ficklampa

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #13 on: Fri, 27 May 2011, 02:47:55 »
Just remember that hardly no updated apps are written for the PowerPC processors any more, so you will have to go with old versions for most. I am still running a g4 mac mini as a web server but neither apache or mysql is updated for ppc any more. But if you'r only going for audio editing then it should be fine.. :)
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Offline EverythingIBM

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #14 on: Sat, 28 May 2011, 01:47:25 »
Quote from: ficklampa;351967
Just remember that hardly no updated apps are written for the PowerPC processors any more, so you will have to go with old versions for most. I am still running a g4 mac mini as a web server but neither apache or mysql is updated for ppc any more. But if you'r only going for audio editing then it should be fine.. :)

 
Most EVERYTHING I use has zero updates. So that's not a problem.
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Offline The Solutor

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #15 on: Sat, 28 May 2011, 04:40:15 »
A g4, if used with linux is still a productive machine.

I use one of it as a secondary machine.
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Offline microsoft windows

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #16 on: Sat, 28 May 2011, 09:27:42 »
I have a 466Mhz Power Mac G4 that I use with Mac OS X Tiger. I don't do too much with it though.
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Offline The Solutor

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #17 on: Sat, 28 May 2011, 09:34:43 »
Quote from: microsoft windows;352411
I don't do too much with it though.

 
It's because the apple OS not because the 466Mhz CPU :happy:

(mine is 466 MHz too)
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Offline ficklampa

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #18 on: Mon, 30 May 2011, 02:13:34 »
I saw an amiga OS image for the g4 mac mini, could be fun :D
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Offline vils

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #19 on: Mon, 30 May 2011, 05:39:52 »
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Offline ficklampa

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What to do with a G4 tower and iMac G3?
« Reply #20 on: Wed, 01 June 2011, 05:18:39 »
Quote from: vils;353086
Show Image

 
A fellow Swede? :)
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