It’s fun to be here and scope out some old Macs and other cool stuff.
News
I’ll be at Vintage Computer Festival SOCAL.
Happy Friday!
Tomorrow, I’ll head up the road and check out Vintage Computer Festival SOCAL. I’ll plan on posting a few photos from intriguing things at the event. I’ve noticed a guy with a multi-colored variety of the classic hinged iBooks will be on hand to show them off. I can’t wait.
I’m also going to be glimpsing any Apple IIGS related gear as well as options to continue to tweak my Mac SE/30, inherited from my dad.
Are you going to be around? Maybe we could grab lunch and chat G5s or old Macs?
Stay tuned.
— Nathan
This site is frozen.
Hey fellow G5ers.
This point of this post is that I don’t foresee many updates to the website moving forward.
While my PowerMac G5 traveled with me from the east coast to west coast during a recent move, I have yet to fire it up and decide how to proceed. Some of the information on the pages has begun to become out of date. In some ways, our G5s are less viable as ever as a daily computing platform, but with a Mac Mini M1/M2 under $500, we are really in a golden age of affordable, super fast computing.
I love PowerPCs. This G5 is a beautiful machine. It has served me well.
But times change. Technologies march on.
We’ll see what lies ahead, but for now, this website is “frozen”.
Peace, Nathan.
Sorbet Leopard
One of the fascinating little projects bubbling about on the MacRumors PPC forum has been an optimization of Leopard for PowerPC Macs called Sorbet Leopard.
I’m going to be clear – I’ve been following the thread, and some of it seems a little goofy. I am certain there are legit opportunities to optimize such an old OS, but your mileage is likely going to vary. The author/instigator/coder also did some work with a preference file intended to optimize TenFourFox, but I found that the optimizations made no different on my G5. Again, your mileage may vary.
Still, it’s fun to see such enthusiasm for our ancient PowerPC Macs.
Give Sorbet Leopard a shot. I’ll be taking a peek at it this weekend and seeing if it truly lives up to the hype as a fabled 10.5.9 update to our beloved Macs.
Here’s the link: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/sorbet-leopard
Potential Cheap Video Card Upgrade
I’m popping back up to update the site and point to this interesting thread on the MacRumors forum about an option for an improved video card on the cheap for our G5s.
The Radeon X1900 Mac Edition was an expensive aftermarket card in its day and is near the top of the performance level for Power Mac G5s. The FX4500 is probably slightly better as a workstation card, but the X1900 holds its own against the 7800GT. If the method below works for you, it will save you a bundle of cash and give you another option for your aging PowerPC machine.
Let me know if you have any luck.
— Nathan