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Is $50 worth it for an old PowerMac G4?

R

Rockinacoustic

Platinum Member
I cam across a seller on craigslist selling a G4 Quicksilver with dual 733's, 256mb of RAM, and a 40GB HDD for $50. The only shortcoming is that he gets no video signal which he says is likely a faulty GPU. It comes installed with OS 9.2.

Assuming I replace the video card, would this be worth it to mess around with? My only experience with macs has been with graphic design during school, but none of tinkering I do with Windows PC's.

Thanks in advance!
 
For $50 it's not terrible. But you'll want to put some RAM in there if you want to actually use it. Also understand you won't be able to install Snow Leopard since it is Intel only. If you really want to play with a Mac, I would recommend saving a little cash and maybe trying to get an older Intel Mac Mini. You'll have a much better experience with it.
 
If it has a faulty GPU, forget about it.

Replacing GPU's on a laptop is near impossible. On a mac? Probably impossible.
 
Originally posted by: MrX8503
If it has a faulty GPU, forget about it.

Replacing GPU's on a laptop is near impossible. On a mac? Probably impossible.
Click to expand...

The PowerMac was not a laptop. it was a desktop tower that used an AGP GPU. Replacing it should be quite easy. I would be more concerned that something else is causing the problem. Also, that's an older machine. It won't even run Leopard. Sure, you can hack a Leopard installation onto it, but it's going to be very slow.
 
Originally posted by: MrX8503
If it has a faulty GPU, forget about it.

Replacing GPU's on a laptop is near impossible. On a mac? Probably impossible.
Click to expand...

And, even if it was a laptop, which Tyranicus is right, it isn't, then it wouldn't be any harder to replace the GPU than 90% of the laptops out there, which is to say, nigh impossible (so you were right there) since they are all built into the mainboard. Very few laptops have stand alone GPUs.
 
It might have some use with Tiger on it, which is the maximum OS it will take. It uses a Geforce 2 MX according to Apple-History.com. There's still quite a few of those floating around on eBay. I'm not sure what you intend to use the system for. Even as a web surfing box, it will be pretty limited considering how old it is. Forget flash video.
 
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