Month: August 2016

Interview with Cameron Kaiser

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I happened to be in the Bay area just as Cameron (of TenFour Firefox fame) announced his presence at the Vintage Computer Festival West. Why not stop by and get a few minutes with a guy that is a hero to us PowerPC users?

Check the video below, which should be low enough in quality (360p) to be viewable on most of our machines. If you can’t view it, let me know and I will generate a downloadable version too.

If you can’t get Youtube to work, download a MP4 version by clicking here.

Thanks to Cameron for his work and taking a couple of minutes to chat. Cool stuff!

— Nathan

Check Your RAM

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Checking in briefly with a fun story…

Got an email from a loyal reader who had a lead on a ~$40 (canadian) quad G5 which would boot with fans at full speed and then shut down.

The seller was somewhat certain it was related to the cooling system in the G5. But remember – if a computer overheats, it’s not typically in the first few minutes after boot. This G5 was shutting down minutes after being turned on.

In the end, it was (partially the RAM. The G5 had an odd number of RAM. Take out the extra stick, and wallah, the system booted, looking for a startup disk. Keep this in mind as you dig around and check out used systems out and about. The fix may be simpler than you think.

Stay tuned for a special update and potential interview later this week.

Update: Liam wrote back with some success after popping out the extra stick of RAM, but the G5 continued to have issues, especially when CPU was set to anything but “reduced” mode. He flushed the quad cooling system, and things seem to be better. So, keep in mind, it could be more than one thing going on. See the comments for a picture of the beauty.

— Nathan