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A simple Mac question from a Wintel / LinMD user

P

ProviaFan

Lifer
This evening as I was in Bloomington, IN, I saw some Powermac G3s (the translucent blue and white kind with the "handles" on the four corners of the case), complete with 17 inch color-matched monitors, keyboards, and mice for around $350 USD; they had 128MB of RAM and a hard disk that was at least 6GB. IIRC, the processor was something in the range of 350MHz. Instead of bothering you guys with a bunch of questions (is it a good deal? will it run OSX? is the performace ok? can I overclock it?), I'd rather just read a FAQ. The xlr8yourmac site which I found by searching on google has many answers, but most of them make great thunderous noises as they fly at the speed of sound right over my head. 😉

So can anyone recommend a good site or two to keep me busy? Any help would be appreciated. 🙂

Edit for a bit more detail.
 
Not a bad deal... Consider that the 17" displays (are they apple?) are worth about $100 and those systems were about $2000 brand new.

Considering that OSX demands fast G4 processors... like 600+ Mhz It will most likely feel sluggish. Look at apples latest power towers. Dual 800mhz cpus (to get the aka 1600mhz class system) going for about $1500.

If you need OS9 and not the LATEST of everything - thats a good little system there.
 
Originally posted by: npcom
Not a bad deal... Consider that the 17" displays (are they apple?) are worth about $100 and those systems were about $2000 brand new.

Considering that OSX demands fast G4 processors... like 600+ Mhz It will most likely feel sluggish. Look at apples latest power towers. Dual 800mhz cpus (to get the aka 1600mhz class system) going for about $1500.

If you need OS9 and not the LATEST of everything - thats a good little system there.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the prompt reply! The displays appear to be Apple branded displays, though I didn't look closely. They were color-coordinated with the Powermacs, so I guessed they were.

My aunt, who has a professional printing business and uses an almost exlcusively Mac network, seems to get as much stability out of OS9 as I used to get out of Windows 98. Maybe it's just her, but I seemed to get a general impression that OS9 and previous weren't all that stable or secure. Being used to Windows NT / 2000 and Linux, I thought OSX would suit me better, but anyway, I digress.

As to me "needing" OS9 or OSX - well, I don't need either. I just wanted to get a cheap but useful Mac system to learn on, since I've never had one before.
 
Well, as he said, that system isn't going to cut it for OS X. It'll be great for OS 9, but I personally hate OS 9. It doesn't multitask well, and it's not too stable. Plus, it's almost like a lost cause to learn OS 9... as of January 2003 no Mac will be shipped with OS 9.

But you could go to the MacNN.com forums and check out the one about older Macs. The people there can give a better idea about all this stuff. It's sort of like AnandTech for Mac geeks. 😉
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. I think I'm going to go ahead and get one eventually, and if OS 9 is too bad I might try Linux/PPC. 🙂
 
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