I am super into collecting computers. Not any random box I find, but one that I think stands out as a landmark, or at least is a representative of a group. I have a group of laptops, desktops, and a few servers and they all get used pretty often.
Lately I have been collecting PowerPC macs and in fact I have a powerbook G4 5,7 with 1 gig of ram and an ibook G4 6,4 with 1.25 gb ram. These were both creme del la creme of their line's (aside from the powerbook being in the series of PB's that had muffed up screens) and they run phenomenally. However I have been Interested in getting a G5 powermac. Both of the laptops I happened to find at the perfect time when I needed a laptop and a some-what editing capable machine. The PB did the editing and the IB did the rest. While editing was slow, it taught me a lot throughout the process. At this point I am just curious and having both of the machines still will keep me curious. I want to know what to look for in a G5. What should I be keen on looking for in a model? Dual processor VS solo? Is there a quad version? How much ram?
I really know nothing on the G5's and finding information or even software for them is sparse and I have even made a google plus page to save links to for not only my use, but anyone else's future use as these are actually really nice machines and the few developers for software on these things make solid software so seeing what each of these boxes can do is really cool to me. Any info is appreciated and any help in my search would be neat.
Thanks in advance.
Edit: Not having much luck finding anything local so wondering if there is anyone in michigan who has a mac G5 they would like to sell / ditch :3
I am certainly no expert on this sort of thing or this computer specifically, but since you are collecting I'd make physical condition a top priority, then get the best specs you can for the price. There are a few websites around that let you sift through Apple specs. Another thought might be to use http://archive.org and see what Apple was selling at the time to get an idea of what was popular and what to look for. Like I said, not an expert, but maybe that will help.
The last series of G5's to be produced were probably the best as they had dual core and quad core (2 x dual core CPU's) models plus PCI-E rather than the PCIX and AGP of earlier models. I believe that the quad core machines had inbuilt water cooling which could be prone to leaks so check carefully if you look at one of those.
If you are not really going to use it I suppose just finding any model G5 that has been looked after well would be good. The case is really well designed and lovely to look at - it was hard to part with mine a few years back.
If you do seriously plan to use it to work/email/browsing from then I strongly advise you to create a lbuntu partition and use that rather than OSX leopard which was the last version to support PowerPC - and a security risk (apple stopped supporting it a while back). http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/trusty/release/ but be warned a fully loaded G5 will noticably use more power than a modern machine.
Where in Michigan are you? There is a computer recycling / reseller in Grand Rapids near me that has a couple of powermac G5 Xserves if you are interested. not selling mine unfortunately :p I believe they were asking 20$ a piece IIRC, the store is called Comprenew and they are on 28th street east of US-131. As far as software for these go, I follow this forum;
They post interesting stuff from time to time, some of it has been pretty useful. There are a few other forums as well, in addition to some people who have dumped OS X altogether since it only runs 10.5 max
Do yourself a favor an buy the first Mac Pro 1,1 (or later if you want to avoid the 32 bit EFI annoyance) instead of the Powermac G5 just to avoid teh headaches of PowerPC. I use mine (2x2.66ghz quad core Xeons, 16GB ram, 2x8800GT SLI, 4x2TB WD Blacks) for virtualization using Xen and for file storage. They are still pretty fast for their age and if your using them as a secondary machine for Linux or Photoshop/Premier in OSX they rock.
This is true, and if they leak, they leak onto the PSU which is right underneath the processor(s), and replacing that is a lengthy process. (if you can find a new PSU) Basically you have to remove everything in the case to get to it.