Oldest Mac still in ( realistic ) use

[maxvamp]

All,

I was curious what the oldest Mac is out there ( or a close running ) still doing daily work.

This came about when I realized that my PowerMac Blue&White G3 is soon to be 9 Years old. Currently, it is my iTunes CD Importer / server, Subversion server, and general file server. It was my print server up until about a year ago when I gave up on crappy HP printers, and bought a Brother with built in print server.

The current ( and probably last ) configuration for this server is:

- OS X.3.9
- HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A
- 3 disk ( Three 320 WD RE2s ) RAID5
- Atto IDE Controller
- WD 120 GB Caviar
- Pioneer DVR-105 DVD Burner
- ATI Radeon 7200 PCI
- 756 MB memory
- PowerLogix 900 MHz G3.

This has been a very reliable server, and with the exception of replacing disks every now and then, I presume it still will be for some time to come.

My second oldest machine in use is a G4 Digital Audio 733 upgraded to a Dual 1.4 and a ATI 9800 . I will probably at some time get another Highpoint card and make a redundant RAID system with it.

Anyone with a working system older than the Blue and White still doing daily work?

Max.

 

[63dot]

i use a relatively old mac daily, or almost daily

powermac G4 from 2001, jaguar, 3 x 36 gig scsi hard drives, 15" apple lcd, 1 gig of ram, and 16 megabyte video card

sometimes i use an older machine, from 1999:

G3 ibook
os 9.0
3 gigabyte hard drive
160 megabytes of ram
4 megabyte ati mobile video card
1 usb 1.0 port
cd drive
audio out
modem
ethernet
airport card compatible
12.1" inch active matrix lcd

 

[DISCOMUNICATION]

the classics

My roommate freshman year of art school (1999-2000) had an old classic mac he used for writing and some midi.

I have a 450MHz G3 iMac running Jaguar in addition to my Intel iMac. It's mainly used for web browsing and I was surprised it runs iTunes 7 fairly well.

 

[mariahlullaby]

I have a 2.16 ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro that's still chugging along. Had it for 4 days...may be time to upgrade.

 

[JurgenWigg]

I've got an old Macintosh LC, 16 mhz, running OS 7.5.5! I've got it hooked up to an electric piano so I can record stuff very simply. We got the program awhile ago and so it's just used to get music to electronic form and go from there. The notes that it records are usually right, but the rhythms are incredibly horribly wrong, but the sound is good so it's tough to complain. I don't use it daily, persay, but i do use it weekly!

15 years and still goin' strong!

 

[RacerX]

Anyone with a working system older than the Blue and White still doing daily work?

I still use my Quadra 950 (from 1992) pretty regularly, but not quite daily...

I use my PowerBook Duo 2300c (from 1995) semi often also. I just got a Mini Dock for it this last month and set it up with a second display.

My main work system is a Beige G3 Mini Tower (from 1997). I do a lot of work on a Power Mac 8600/300 (from 1997) with Rhapsody (including building most of my personal sites on that system) and another 8600/300 has replaced my Power Mac 8100 (from 1994) as my main Mac OS 8.6 desktop system. Plus I was just given an original PowerMac G4 (from 1999) last week, though it hasn't been worked into my set of systems yet.

Just about every post I've made in this forum has been made from this PowerBook (PowerBook G3 Wallstreet from 1998) and I use a PowerBook G3 Lombard (from 1999) as my main school system (running stuff like Mathematica).

In the last few weeks I've been learning how to build 3D models using my PowerBook 3400c/200 (from 1997). It has been quite fun working on it (daily) for this project. Examples of some of the stuff it has produced can be found in this thread. And I made this short animation on that 3400c a couple days ago...

click to play clip
Duration: 4 sec.​

I don't know about anyone else, but I sure don't have too much of a problem being productive on older systems.

Do these examples qualify as "realistic" enough?

 

[DISCOMUNICATION]

wow

Can the pre-plastic age G3's run OS X? Any processor upgrades? Your main OS is 8.6 are you going to give OS X a shot on your new G4?

 

[Sweetfeld28]

Can the pre-plastic age G3's run OS X? Any processor upgrades? Your main OS is 8.6 are you going to give OS X a shot on your new G4?

Yes the Beige G3 PowerMac's can run OS X. I ran 10.2 on mine. There is also a program called XpostFacto that you can install, which will let you run 10.3 [maybe even 10.4] on those old G3's.

 

[gkarris]

ME: A 600MHz G3 iBook 12" - man, I love this form factor! Using also a 14" iBook G4, but the 12" is awesome! Hopefully, Apple brings back the 12" notebook! (That's what I'm really waiting for).

A FRIEND: 400MHz G3 Blue/White Tower, OS 10.2, still works on it everyday.

In the last few weeks I've been learning how to build 3D models using my PowerBook 3400c/200 (from 1997). It has been quite fun working on it (daily) for this project. Examples of some of the stuff it has produced can be found in this thread. And I made this short animation on that 3400c a couple days ago...

click to play clip
Duration: 4 sec.​

I don't know about anyone else, but I sure don't have too much of a problem being productive on older systems.

Do these examples qualify as "realistic" enough?

COOL!

 

[RacerX]

Can the pre-plastic age G3's run OS X? Any processor upgrades? Your main OS is 8.6 are you going to give OS X a shot on your new G4?

I didn't say 8.6 was my main operating system. Actually I doubt any one here has been using Mac OS X as long as me considering that I've been using it since before Apple named it Mac OS X.

Complete run down on all my main systems (in order of how much I use them):

PowerBook G3 Wallstreet:

• Mac OS X v10.2.8
• G4 at 500 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 512 MB of memory
• 40 GB main drive plus a 20 GB expansion bay drive
• CDRW (second expansion bay)
• USB 2.0 PC card

Beige G3 Mini Tower:

• Mac OS X v10.3.9
• G4 at 533 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 640 MB of memory
• 80 GB hard drive
• UltraATA66 PCI card (used for hard drive)
• CD-ROM & DVD-ROM drives
• ATI Radeon 7000 with 32 MB of VRAM
• USB PCI card

Power Macintosh 8600/300:

• Mac OS X Server 1.2 (Rhapsody 5.6)
• PowerPC 604ev at 300 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 416 MB of memory
• 9.1 GB hard drive
• ATI Rage 128 with 16 MB of VRAM running main display
• 4 MB of onboard VRAM for second display

PowerBook G3 Lombard:

• Mac OS X v10.3.9
• G3 at 400 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 512 MB of memory
• 11 GB hard drive

iMac G3 (soon to be retired):

• Mac OS X v10.2.8
• G3 at 350 MHz with 512k of L2 cache
• 512 MB of memory
• 30 GB hard drive
• DVD-ROM drive

PowerBook 3400c/200:

• Mac OS 8.6
• PowerPC 603e at 200 MHz with 256k of L2 cache
• 80 MB of memory
• 10 GB hard drive

Power Macintosh 8600/300:

• Mac OS 8.6
• G3 at 450 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 256 MB of memory
• 9.1 GB hard drive
• ixMicro Ultimate Rez (TwinTurbo 128M-3D) with 8 MB VRAM running main display
• ixMicro Pro Rez (TwinTurbo 128M-3D) with 8 MB VRAM running second display
• 4 MB of onboard VRAM for video capture from VCR/DVD player

SGI Indy Workstation:

• IRIX 6.2
• MIPS R4400SC at 175 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 256 MB of memory
• 9.1 GB hard drive
• Indy Video card (three composite and two s-video ports) connected to a VCR/DVD player
• Cosmo Compression card (video capture at full frame rate and full frame size)

IBM ThinkPad 760ED:

• Rhapsody Developer Preview 2 (Rhapsody 5.1)
• Pentium at 133 MHz with 256k of L2 cache
• 80 MB of memory
• 6 GB hard drive

Sun SPARCstation 10:

• OPENSTEP 4.2
• SuperSPARC at 50 MHz
• 128 MB of memory
• 2 GB hard drive

Quadra 950:

• Mac OS 8.1
• PowerPC 601 at 66 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 136 MB of memory
• 500 MB and 9.1 GB hard drives
• two Radius display cards and 2 MB of onboard VRAM (running three 21" displays)

Power Macintosh 8100av (being retired):

• Mac OS 8.6
• G3 at 500 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache
• 208 MB of memory
• 2 GB hard drive
• Apple AV video card with 2 MB of VRAM

PowerBook Duo 2300c:

• Mac OS 8.6
• PowerPC 603e at 100 MHz
• 56 MB of memory
• 1.2 GB hard drive

Recent additions...

PowerMac G4:

• -n/a- (will be running Mac OS X 10.3.9)
• G4 at 400 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache (to be replaced with a G4 at 1.2 GHz)
• 512 MB of memory (to be upgraded to 1 GB)
• ATI Rage 128 with 16 MB of VRAM

SGI Indigo2 IMPACT Workstation:

• -n/a- (will be running IRIX 6.2)
• MIPS R10000 at 175 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache (twice the speed of my Indy's R4400sc)
• 128 MB of memory (to be upgraded to 512 MB)
• SolidIMPACT video graphics

In the end, with such a wide arrangement of systems, there is very little I can't do with computers... and in most cases I can do far more than people who own a single top of the line Mac.

 

[spork183]

In the end, with such a wide arrangement of systems, there is very little I can't do with computers... and in most cases I can do far more than people who own a single top of the line Mac.

Of course the warehouse does get drafty at times and the utility bill rivals the GDP of many small countries...

Just having fun RacerX, I feel you. The software upgrade so often obsoletes a machine that would be fine if not upgraded.

 

[RacerX]

Of course the warehouse does get drafty at times and the utility bill rivals the GDP of many small countries...

Actually, you'd be surprised... all of my running systems take less energy than our refrigerator (we found this out when our refrigerator was down for about 6 months). The biggest users of power tends to be CRT monitors, which is why I keep all displays off unless I'm actually sitting in front of a system.

On the plus side, we rarely use the heat in the winter... which is pretty amazing considering that I live in Minnesota!

As for the space issue... It isn't as bad as you might think. Here is a general layout of (what used to be our livingroom) my computer area. And this is what the systems generally look like now...

click to enlarge​

But yeah, it is a vicious cycle to make people believe that they need new software (and then new hardware) in order to do certain tasks.

While I think this type of thing is awful in how it forces people to pay massive amounts of money based on a perception of needing the newest stuff to do certain things, I can't complain too much as it gives me tons of resources that I would otherwise not be able to afford.

 

[SkyBell]

I use my Apple IIc Daily for writing in my diary...

 

[aquajet]

But yeah, it is a vicious cycle to make people believe that they need new software (and then new hardware) in order to do certain tasks.

While I think this type of thing is awful in how it forces people to pay massive amounts of money based on a perception of needing the newest stuff to do certain things, I can't complain too much as it gives me tons of resources that I would otherwise not be able to afford.

Good point. So much bad advice on these boards, IMO.

"If you want to edit <whatever> for the next three years, you should buy the MBP."

Why on earth somebody would make such a statement is beyond me. Of course there are exceptions but I believe in the real world, for the most part, this isn't the way things work.

Of course, for the past few years I've upgraded more than I really need. But since I've bought my MBP, spending more than I've ever spent on a computer, I will be keeping it quite a bit longer than I have in recent years.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Beige G3 Minitower. Probably 1997

Just got a Sonnet upgrade and a 120 Gb HD, have to reinstall 9.1 and all the stuff though... it got too squirrelly with the original OS.

 

[aquajet]

I plan to use my 9600/350 with OS X Server 1.0 for file serving duties just as soon as I can buy a large HD. The stock 4 gig is only good enough as a boot drive.

I use my Atari 800 to play games every now and then.

I can thank Racer X for my interest in Server 1.0.

 

[SuperCompu2]

it may not be that old, but I use my G4 tower daily. Dual 500MHz G4's still put up a good fight against the P4HT in my Basement. I only wish it had better graphics than the Rage 128.

Oh well, not gonna stop me from using it everyday. Might take it to college with me just to run 9.2 in peoples' faces. Haha