I Raise a glass to the passing of a reliable old electronic friend

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s been a while coming, I’ve been putting it off as long as possible, but over the past few months, my reliable ol’ workhorse, my 1.25GHz PowerMacG4 Mirror Drive Doors tower has been showing it’s age…

The optical drives were intermittently glitching, the system was randomly locking up (even though Drive Genius, DiskWarrior and a few other utilities gave the OS a clean bill of health), the fans were in constant high-speed mode (even though I keep the insides clean) and it was generating massive amounts of heat, it was both a space heater and a computer.

And the final nail in the coffin, the FireWire port data lines stopped functioning, the FW bus would power a drive, but wouldn’t mount it, and the USB ports were getting tempermental for mounting hard drives

My G4 MDD was born in 2003, and had given me almost 10 years of reliable service, it did what I needed it to, and I had no need to upgrade to a newer Mac, I had it heavily upgraded, 4 internal hard drives (2 of them set to a bootable mirrored RAID), an upgraded copper heat sink on the processor, a USB 2.0 card, a second vidcard for driving a secondary monitor, an ATI Radeon 8500 vidcard, two optical drives, and 1.5 GB of RAM, the primary monitor was a 17" NEC CRT display
(bear in mind, that at the time, those system specs were impressive for 2003-2005)

It had evolved from it’s original 256MB 60 GB HDD nVidia GF4T config slowly over time, eventually ending up in it’s current config, where it ran reliably for an additional 7 years (2 years in it’s stock config, 7 being upgraded).

The old workhorse ran faithfully for 9+ years, and I will be sorry to see him go, he will be missed

His replacement? a 2.5 GHz 21.5" Intel i5 Quadcore iMac, 500GB and 4 GB RAM, with an external 500 GB FireWire drive for media storage, another 500GB external for Time Machine.

I plan to upgrade the ram to at least 8 GB, maybe even 16 GB, maybe build a few more external drives (I have a perfectly good 250 GB IDE drive from the old MDD G4, and it’d be a shame to lose the mirrored RAID drives, no the iMac has nowhere near the internal expandability of the G4 MDD, but to be perfectly honest, I never really used the internal upgradability beyond the RAM and HDD capacity.

I will say this, the new iMac is amazingly quiet, and runs incredibly cool (I actually had to turn up the heat in the computer room) I just hope it too gives me a faithful 9+ years of faithful service.

So long, ol’ workhorse, you will be missed :frowning:

2

10 years!! That’s like 120 in people years!

StG

3

I had the same machine.
It was a great Mac - I upgraded to a G5 6 years ago, but it was still plenty fast at the time.
It would be pretty long in the tooth these days, though.

4

Cheers, mate. It’s been close to 20 years, but I still miss my old HP 41-C calculator.

5

RIP

6

I’ve had too many deaths lately:

Microwave oven
Integrated Stereo Amplifier
PC monitor
Food Processor
Stove burner controller knobs (don’t ask)
Indoor/outdoor weatherstation
Ice maker
Living Room Lamp
light bulbs
etc.
etc.
etc.

I’m just glad to have has enough resources to replace eveything. No complaints here, just content to have what I have.

7

And just to prove things “happen in threes”…

Tonight, mom let me know her iBook G4 just died, hard drive crash, total data loss:( , and no, she never backed up, no matter how often I reminded her to do it…

…and just a few minutes ago, my MacBook 2.2 GHz black case had it’s top case die, only the power button works, no keyboard, no trackpad, the optical drive is dying, and the AirPort card socket is toast :frowning:

So that’s “death” #3, and at the moment I can’t afford to get a new laptop until I pay off the iMac…

Thankfully my iPhone works great, and can handle most of my portable computing needs at the moment, all I need a laptop for is websurfing, watching DVD movies and streaming video, not anything major.

In fact I think I may just get an iPad to replace the MacBook when I can afford to replace it, it’ll be cheaper than a MacBook Pro 13"

Wonder what’s behind my run of bad luck lately…

8

This is why I buy GE stock.

My very, very old computer died recently too, though it was just a PC and therefore much less of a tearjerker story. My new system is an i7 pc laptop! Which caught a virus within ~3 months, requiring a complete system restore.

But now it is back again :eek: Reincarnated like it is, it’s like it’s got Tebow Inside.

9

My Cube has been limping along just fine…

But one of my former Sunday School students (now a geek at Stanford) was telling me how he’s been buying all the pieces to upgrade a G4 Cube, but has had two people back out of selling their Cubes on C’list…

…yeah, I gave him mine.

::sniff:: miss the li’l guy… but he’ll be a dual 1.5 GHz soon!

10

The ol’ girl may still have some life left in her yet…

It does boot and run fine off the internal drives, it just doesn’t see the FireWire ports, and my USB PCI card is a little flaky, otherwise it’s usable, just not optimal

So, I brought it in to work to use as a test-bed for testing and draining UPS battery backups, it can chew through my home 1100 Va APC UPS at home in about a half hour, the test bed we use at work for draining UPS backups can run for 45 minutes plus on a UPS, it’s too power efficient

That very same UPS, plugged into the G4 MDD, lasts about ten minutes!

So the MDD G4 is going to be our UPS-Crusher!

…maybe
When I brought it in, one of my co workers asked me “how much you want for that machine?” he wants a better machine than he currently has

I told him all the problems with it, and how they could be fixed, and he still is seriously thinking about buying it…

After work, I’ll go over it with him and if he still wants it, even in it’s compromised state, I’ll figure out a fair price for it

Depending on config/coindition. MDD G4’s range in price from around $200 to $850-ish…

Looks like I might have my iMac paid off sooner than I planned…

11

My first-generation Macbook has finally given up (most of) the ghost, as of about a month ago. I’m still in mourning. Bought her in the summer of 2006 as my law school laptop, then smashed her screen in my third year. Everything else still worked, so I upgraded her HD and RAM and transitioned her to desktop duty. Alas, the video card seems to have finally flaked out.

All is not quite lost, though; I may be setting up the old girl for productive retirement as a server.

12

Another update, a second co-worker has expressed interest in the old G4 tower, I’ve given the right of first refusal to the first guy, and he’s passed on it, the second co-worker, who was kept fully informed of the machine’s current issues, does want my old machine, and the price is fair

So, looks like the old MDD G4 will be living on at a new home, enjoyed by a new owner, it’s not dead yet, it’s just resting…

…to be perfectly honest, I was looking for a reason to get a newer Mac anyway, and this FireWire issue was the perfect rationalization to get a newer machine, as I DO use the FireWire ports, plus, I needed an Intel based Mac running the current OS anyway, the G4 had hit the limit with 10.5.8 and could not go any further

The new iMac still impresses me, I find it hard to believe that I’ve got a machine on my desktop that’s lighter, more power efficient, quieter, more powerful and has a much better screen than the old G4, the only thing I miss is the internal expandability, but since all I did with that is stuff the G4 full of hard drives and RAM anyway, I really didn’t use it to it’s potential in the first place, I have more raw storage space inside the iMac alone (500 GB SATA HDD) than inside the G4 tower (160GB mirrored RAID, 250GB media drive) and that hasn’t even taken into account the externals I have connected to the iMac (500GB and 320GB externals)

I thought I was going to hate the Wireless keyboard, and it’s “Chicklet” keys, but it’s not all that bad actually, considering I’m used to typing on my old MacBook which has a nearly identical keyboard, that said, I still have the old Apple Extended USB keyboard connected as well, and my Kensington Expert Mouse Pro

If I REALLY wanted to go truly Old-School, I could grab my old Belkin USB to ADB adapter box and plug in my old Apple Extended Keyboard II (“Nimitz”) with the old style buckling-spring “Clickety-Clack” ALPS keys (It’s very similar to the old IBM “Model M” keyboard), I have two of these beasts left, and I can’t kill them, they’re the true meaning of “indestructible”

One really cool feature of the Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard (2AA model) is that I can unpair it from the iMac, and then pair it with my iPhone (or my iPad when I eventually get that…), yes, that’s right, I can use the Wireless Keyboard with my iPhone, pretty darned cool

as far as the Magic Mouse goes, MEH!, I HATED the thing, too low profile, too lightweight (heft it without batteries installed, it weighs practically nothing), and the limited gestures feature was laughable, it was put into my “Box O’ Sucky Mice” for backup purposes

I replaced it with the Magic Trackpad, and let me just say, the MT is a BRILLIANT input device, huge tracking area, the entire pad is the button (actually the two back feet push on a single click button near the bottom center of the trackpad), and you can also set it to accept tap-to-click input, but the best part is the gestures…

It really redefines the way you can interact with a desktop computer, using gestures on a trackpad, and I’m not talking the mundane, predictable ones, like two-finger 360 degree scrolling (that captures finger motion and velocity and recreates that on screen), pinch and zoom, taken from iOS, rotate, and then there are the more unique gestures…

two finger swipe right and left will page you through e-books and webpages
three finger click and drag, put the pointer in the menu bar, place three fingers on the trackpad and drag the window/object around
four-finger swipe up activates Mission Control/Exposé
four finger swipe to the left opens up the Dashboard
four finger swipe to the right accesses more virtual desktops (if you have them open in Spaces)
and my favorite, the five finger pinch (or as I call it, the Vulcan Neck Pinch), you have a lot of windows and apps cluttering your desktop, you need to get back to your clean desktop temporarily, place all five fingers on the pad, spread your thumb and fingers in opposite directions, like you’re opening them up, all your windows fly to the edges of the screen, leaving an uncluttered desktop, when done, simply reverse the motion to return to where you left off

the MT is light-years better than the insipid Magic Mouse, and for general computer use, may actually finally dethrone the Kensington EMP, but the EMP is still superior for first-person shooters and the like, a trackpad is less than optimal as you need to constantly reposition your hand on the tracking surface, wheras with a trackball, you are manipulating a ball with no real “borders” like a trackpad has

13

I have a beige Tiny computer whose hard drive gave up last year after about ten years of admittedly light use. I recently found a cheap replacement / upgrade for that part, and now the only truly original non-case part is the floppy drive. The motherboard isn’t far behind, having been replaced with an identical or similar model in maybe 2003, and once that goes I’ll think about building something with a little more punch. It’s a really old board.