The quest for PowerPC Mac - (G3, G4, G5) (1)


Kongtech Wordpress Post Link <--- click here

Just a month ago, I’ve stumbled upon a seller from Carousell for selling 2 units of PowerMac G5. Out of curiosity, I’ve called up the guy (Chris) to pick up the Mac.

PowerMac G5 2.0 PCI <--- click to see details (Specs)











Chris is kind enough to sell me 2 units for RM 450 in total (RM 225 each). The spec is Powermac 7,3 with 2.0 Dual Processor (PowerPC 970fx G5). The rams is a little messy, one came with 2.5Gb and another with 1Gb. GPU is ATI Radeon 9600 AGP.





The design for PowerMac G5 at this period of time seems to have an issue compared to later Mac Pros 2009-2012. The screw for the GPU are not toolless and it’s has no peg to hold it in place while screwing in to casing. There are a few times that the screw has dropped to the rear fan and I have to remove the G5 cover to recover the screw.

I discovered that out of 2 of these PowerMac G5, one of it was actually comes with a couple of issues. The first PowerMac G5 booted right up while the other not. The culprit was actually the faulty graphic card. I took the opportunity to buy a replacement card in Ebay.







The GPU of my choice is a Nvidia 6800 Ultra (AGP). Pop it in to the PowerMac G5 and it runs perfectly. I swapped around my GPU between these 2 PowerMac and also another PowerMac G5 7,2 I bought on another later date. It’s sort of fixed the GPU issue on one of the G5.

The only problem left is that the faulty machine has got missing Audio. I’ve ordered for a replacement speaker and it’s on the way at the moment.

I’ll talk about how do I make use of all of these 14 – 15 years old Mac on future post.

This post has been edited by kfc: Sep 18 2018, 01:29 PM

Since the last purchase for 3 powermac G5, I was stumbled upon some Powermac G4 for sale online.

I was thinking how cool would it be if I collect all of the full range of Powermacs. I can collect Powermac G3 B&W, Powermac Graphite (Sawtooth), Powermac G4 (Quicksilver), Powermac G4 MDD (FW800), Powermac G4 Cube and Powermac G5.

I won’t be collect every single sub version and just focus on one each for each different casing design.

So back to the first Powermac G4 I’ve found online. The seller initially listed for RM 300 (USD70) initially. Then after a couple of days, I saw he dropped the price to RM 30 (USD 7). That’s a massive drop I asked the seller. He told me that he can’t turn the machine on due to faulty PSU (power supply) hence he dropped the price. I paid and collected the Mac in a heartbeat (I won’t elaborate how long the process was that as he is 400KM away from me. Thanks to the help of a friend in Johor Baharu).



My friend Redza who helped me to collect and safe keeping the Powermac G4 until my visit to JB. Bought his a latte and a cake from Starbucks for his help. We are both Volvo V40 enthusiast by the way.





Nothing came with the Mac. I won’t expect much as I’ve paid only peanuts for it. I didn’t turn it on either as I thought it has been faulty from the beginning. The idea of ordering parts and fixing it was always in my to-do list. But finding a compatible PSU at reasonable price has been proved to be challenging. It would have been easier if the PSU is for newer designs (Quicksilver and MDD).

One day on my long holiday. I thought why not just give it a try?

I plug it to the power source. To my surprise, it powered right up.



The system works perfectly except some complains from the digital audio plug. Other than that it’s a beauty.





It’s a Powermac G4 533MHz. Seems like my lucky day. I thought it was just a 400 or 466 MHz processor before I fired it up.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac...mac_g4_533.html



What’s more interesting is that I found this label on top – “MediMac”.

A quick googled shows apparently this is from a secret prototype department in Apple. It could have been a unit shipped to their 3rd party software developers.

http://sonnydickson.com/2013/07/23/the-mys...l-support-team/

So far, I’ve been trying to keep it running Mac OS9 for classic Mac Games.