G5 Power Mac

I have a last generation G5 Power Mac (no stock Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). Yes it’s old but it’s still a brute of a computer in its own right. I could sell it and maybe get $200 if I’m lucky but I don’t want to go that route and would rather find a good secondary use it for it but I’m not sure what exactly. Because it’s so modular I would be willing to throw a limited amount of $ at it and upgrade/add some things to make it more modern but I don’t know what’s worth upgrading and what’s not.

So, I’m open to any suggestions for realistic uses considering its outdated hardware/software: development server, music server etc. Also, what would be the most useful or necessary upgrades without breaking the bank, in your opinion?

Todd
http://xiiro.com


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If you wanted to put it in your basement and run it as a headless server, then a copy of Mac OS X Server (of appropriate vintage) would be a good value. You can always find those on eBay.

The box holds four 3.5" drives, so get some big ones, and see what you could do to stripe them together. I don’t think the RAID 5 card that Apple bundled with Server will work on that machine, but I could be wrong. Another good eBay find, but be careful of precisely which version you get. You could always have a single boot volume of 250GB or so, and stripe three remaining drives together in software and use that as your data volume. You can’t boot from a soft RAID.

Server is not a pig for RAM, but more is always better.

Other than that, I don’t know what I would do with that Mac. You could use it for elderly software that you don’t want to upgrade, or to drive a scanner. But seriously, you could also heat your house with it in the winter – they draw a fair number of watts.

Walter

On Aug 27, 2013, at 3:08 PM, Todd wrote:

I have a last generation G5 Power Mac (no stock Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). Yes it’s old but it’s still a brute of a computer in its own right. I could sell it and maybe get $200 if I’m lucky but I don’t want to go that route and would rather find a good secondary use it for it but I’m not sure what exactly. Because it’s so modular I would be willing to throw a limited amount of $ at it and upgrade/add some things to make it more modern but I don’t know what’s worth upgrading and what’s not.

So, I’m open to any suggestions for realistic uses considering its outdated hardware/software: development server, music server etc. Also, what would be the most useful or necessary upgrades without breaking the bank, in your opinion?

Todd
http://xiiro.com


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Thanks. Out of curiosity do you know if these things can be rebuilt with an Intel processor?

Todd
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No, the G5 motherboard is completely different from an Intel machine’s. The G5 was as much as they could pull out of a Power (RISC) processor at the time, and it was extremely powerful, but the Intel juggernaut caught up to them on the power/performance curve, and even though RISC is a much more powerful technology than CISC (Reduced vs. Complex Instruction Set Computing), without a good power story they were never going to get to the MacBook Air. Ironically, the processors in all iDevices are RISC, based on the ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) architecture. Apple was an early investor in ARM.

Walter

On Aug 27, 2013, at 4:01 PM, Todd wrote:

Thanks. Out of curiosity do you know if these things can be rebuilt with an Intel processor?

Todd
http://xiiro.com


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Thanks. Out of curiosity do you know if these things can be rebuilt with
an Intel processor?

Only if you start practically from scratch:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/powermac-g5/78172-my-powermac-g5-hackintosh-build.html

Roger


Roger Houghton
22 New King Street
Bath, Somerset, BA1 2BL
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[Laughs] Wow, a G5 version of Frankenstein’s Monster. Sheesh.

Todd

Only if you start practically from scratch


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Some interesting possibilities:

bbq
http://www.dailybri.com/wp-content/uploads/mac-g5-grill.jpg

clock
http://www.macking.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/o/power-mac-g5-clock.jpg

table
http://www.bttradespace.com/image/getImage/A14FBC9C2C237932E040BB0A462B0ABD-c1.jpg

Basketball Plate

Fish Tank


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At 15:15 -0400 27/8/13, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

The box holds four 3.5" drives, so get some big ones, and see what
you could do to stripe them together. I don’t think the RAID 5 card
that Apple bundled with Server will work on that machine, but I
could be wrong. Another good eBay find, but be careful of precisely
which version you get. You could always have a single boot volume of
250GB or so, and stripe three remaining drives together in software
and use that as your data volume. You can’t boot from a soft RAID.

But you can from a soft RAID1 (mirror) - or at least you could with a
G4 (max = Tiger).

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
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I’m really diggin’ the fish tank and clock. Thanks.

Todd
http://xiiro.com


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