quesiont about apple

[docknload]

Hey everyone, I'm thinking about gettting a cheap Mac to play around with. Do I need to buy a monitor if I already have one for my PC? What else do I need to consider? I've obviously never bought a mac and I'm not looking to spend a lot, probably buy one used off ebay or something.

I appreciate the help, Thanks
Kevin

 

[Workin']

You don't need to buy a monitor but you will need to buy a PC->Mac converter, a little dongle-like thing that will convert a "PC" monitor to work with a Mac. Should be about $20 or less. Which ironically is more than some old Macs sell for.

Check out lowendmac.com for the scoop on which low-price Mac could be a good deal for you. There are about 100 different models, some are good choices and some are a total waste of time and money.

What do you plan to do with it? If you want to be able to mess around with OS X then it is a different story than if you want to play with OS 9 or lower or a PPC linux distribution.

 

[docknload]

Yeah, I would like to able to play with OS X, and lower I suppose. What does that mean for minimum requirements (for good operation, not neccessarily posted specs)? Thanks for the help.

Kevin

 

[xype]

for OSX you have to be careful, because from what I know it doesn't support a bunch of ATI graphics cards (I think the Rage128 line)and they say a G4 with 256mb or more ram
is needed to run nicely (however a old 350mhz G3 will do as well). my suggestion would be to look for any B&W G3 tower that comes cheap, since it would have firewire/usb too
and could be useful for "managing" a iPod later on

 

[BDawg]

You must have at least a G3 to run OSX (without hacking it ). I agree on the B&W G3, they're good machines. If you go that route, you don't need any sort of monitor converter. The B&W G3s introduced VGA ports (most of them have ADC too though).

 

[MazerRackham]

<< You don't need to buy a monitor but you will need to buy a PC->Mac converter, a little dongle-like thing that will convert a "PC" monitor to work with a Mac. Should be about $20 or less. Which ironically is more than some old Macs sell for. >>



This is not true depending on what Mac you buy. For the last 3-4 years Macs have been shipping with VGA monitor outs, and more recently with both their proprietary ADC and a VGA out. You should get an early model G4 tower, as that should ensure you having compatibility with OS X. You can use PC keyboards and mice as long as they are USB. Get M$ stuff, since they have drivers for Mac OS you can download.

 

[Workin']

The problem is "cheap Mac" does not equal anything with a G3 or G4 CPU. I've been looking around, and it seems like even "beige" G3's are at least $200, especially if they come with any useful amount of RAM or any other goodies. A B&W G3 is considerably more expensive. That must be because any G3 or (especially) G4 is a modern, perfectly useable computer - and that doesn't usually come cheap.

So I guess if you want to play with OS X that is not a cheap proposition, at least not by my definition of cheap. And OS X doesn't work with any "G3 upgraded" Power Macs, at least acording to Apple's web site.

If you want to play with linux on a Mac, just about anything with a PowerPC CPU will work OK. Stay away from "NuBus" machines, they will work with linux but it is a royal pain compared to PCI Macs.

I have 2 early (NuBus) Performas - 1 is a 60MHz PPC 601 with 72MB RAM and a 2GB HD, I was running MkLinux with no problem but right now I'm trying to get YellowDog Linux or Debian working on it with some success, too. The 2nd Performa has a 240MHz G3 upgrade card, an Apple HPV graphics card, 136MB RAM, and a 2GB HD, it runs OS 9 quite well. Too bad linux doesn't see the G3 card and OS X doesn't work on G3 upgraded machines or NuBus. But it's still a lot of fun, especially since I've invested about $40 into the whole mess.