What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[Certificate of Excellence]

Well, that's it then. The last PowerMac that was officially dedicated to a purpose is now retired. Pulled the drives and put it out in the garage to await a return to service for some other day.

The PowerPC era for me, in with a 'meh' in 2001 and out with a unceremonious shutdown/removal in 2024. In between I had a lot of great years and great Macs. I still have them, they are just not being put to a purpose requiring them being on all the time now.

Good run…

500mhz AGP PowerMac G4

Given to me by a reddit user. Don't know anything yet other than the label below and that it has two video cards. More to come after lunch.

forums.macrumors.com

Mine dont really play a role nowadays either. 95% is either my Intel macs or my m series. I always have one running but I probably sit down at it once or twice a week if that - mostly to mess with linux. I still really enjoy building up/ kitting out my PMG4s but trying to use them nowadays with the intel and M series stuff I have, is just time I need to reclaim for other things.

 

[m1maverick]

Panther was never flashy like Tiger was, but aside from a few later versions it is one of my favorites simply because it was stable and consistent. When I worked for a newspaper, I got a lot of jobs out on that OS. It even functioned when damaged. In the first year of having a G5 (which came with Panther) a ram stick died. Because there was disk access at the time I guess, the ram stick going out damaged the filesystem 'B' tree. The 'B' tree is the backup to the 'A' tree and both trees tell the OS what files are where. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I could wipe the drive. reinstall apps and move on. But in the meantime, Panther handled everything just fine. I guess it amazed me so much that I am still mentioning it to this day.

The filesystem b-tree is a type of data structure and is not a backup of an a-tree. b-tree stands for "balanced tree" and provides for an efficient way to access data sorted within.

 

[eyoungren]

The filesystem b-tree is a type of data structure and is not a backup of an a-tree. b-tree stands for "balanced tree" and provides for an efficient way to access data sorted within.

Thank you for the correction.

It was however, difficult to work with the B tree being corrupted. There were certain apps that I could not open without crashing the system and other apps that I did not use specific features with because they would also crash the system. At the time, repairing the B tree was not something that my version of DiskWarrior could do and I was forced to reinstall the OS and all my apps.

 

[m1maverick]

Thank you for the correction.

It was however, difficult to work with the B tree being corrupted. There were certain apps that I could not open without crashing the system and other apps that I did not use specific features with because they would also crash the system. At the time, repairing the B tree was not something that my version of DiskWarrior could do and I was forced to reinstall the OS and all my apps.

Very much so as it is a key filesystem structure. I am not surprised that you had trouble with your system once it was corrupted.

 

[davisdelo]

Not sure what spawned my interest, but I decided to jot down some of the performance metrics from Mactracker (Geekbench 2 based). I was curious as to when all of Apple's devices finally reached parity with the Late 2005 G5s. Obviously there is a lot more to performance than the GB2 number, but it's still a telling metric. I think it shows that PowerPC could have been supported a lot longer than it was. The most interesting number to me here is the Late 2010 MacBook Air that had official support through 10.13 I think (getting it's last official update in 11/2020). It's performance score happens to be almost the exact same GB2 score as my dual-core 2.3 G5. I sure would have loved for Apple to support us a bit longer. Anyways, here's a few interesting devices and their scores:

Power Mac G5 (Late 2005): 1818 - 3284
iMac (Late 2006): 2856 - 3048
Mac Mini (Early 2009): 2782 - 3008
Macbook Pro (Mid/Late 2007): 2882 - 3326
Macbook (Mid 2010): 3375
Macbook Air (Late 2010): 2026 - 2280
iPad Air: 2379
iPad Mini 3: 2214
iPhone 5s: 2233

 

[lm2]

Even though PowerPC Macs are useless and you can't use them in 2020 (heh), some of us do anyway, so I figured we should have a thread to post anything we've done with a PPC computer today. Inspired by the various PowerPC Challenge threads, but more for those of us who use them continuously year round, even if not always exclusively.

lot of offline activity/work, such as :
libreoffice
multimedia/vlc
pdf viewing
and that's already a big occupation..

for me those oldies computers are a strong part in sort of "offline" and work-focused activity, where you damn just can't really enjoy "online services", from vod to others javascript-dependent, and goooosh it saves time..


now im trying to get xmpp and sip working, to communicate without browser, even with ssl hanshake failure on adium..

 

[swamprock]

I have a few imacg4s and they all kind of sit around staring back at me like cats on a shelf - as an homage to that gen of Mac just like my g3s do for their generation. My home office is salt and peppered with old macs LOL but remind me of trips to Compusa and other tech retailers of the era where I’d see their displays & wishing I could afford one. The allure was palpable - specifically the Titanium PB … oh boy the first time I saw one of those and I was in love.

FWIW, my iMac g3s run classic macOS 8, Panther and Tiger while my iMac g4s run Tiger and leopard.

I really love the neck. I wish Apple had included a redesign of it in their newest M series release. Maybe in the future

Yeah... sigh. I've got two 1.25ghz 17" iMacs that I'm killing myself trying to find uses for. If only they ran OS 9...

 

[ojfd]

Yeah... sigh. I've got two 1.25ghz 17" iMacs that I'm killing myself trying to find uses for. If only they ran OS 9...

I think there was a solution for these and OS9..

 

[MacPro2006VBox]

Yeah... sigh. I've got two 1.25ghz 17" iMacs that I'm killing myself trying to find uses for. If only they ran OS 9...

You could run Snow Leopard 10A222…

 

[swamprock]

I think there was a solution for these and OS9..

Almost. No graphics acceleration, and other issues. The earlier ones that weren't supported run better, from what I've read on macos9lives.

 

[swamprock]

You could run Snow Leopard 10A222…

I might give that a shot. I pulled one out of storage to clean it up and see what I could do with it.

 

[lm2]

Not too worried about running old software these days.

problem is not "running old software"
problem is people telling you "wow, why do you run old hard/software instead of doing your citizen duty, as using only recent stuff isntead of getting back to the past?"
lot of people, especially internet-data-addicted, reproach to not internet-addicted, to being too much offline or disconnected.

today, "offline" nerds or people are for the "common society" what "unsociable" are for social people.. two kind of people whom cannot understand the opposite side.
im even not laughing..