g5

VCF SoCal 2026: Strolling Among the Ancients

by

Vintage Computer Festival SoCal is a highlight every year, with the bonus that it is all of 15 minutes from my house. This year, the exhibit hall and vendor booths were expanded. Consignment spread across a couple of rooms. The only downside was the limited space in the speaker’s hall. I popped in for what I could, including a little rundown of the various adventure game engines used to create Sierra Online and Lucas Arts classics.

But the fun of the experience is getting to take a look at classic machines, well-loved and honored, as well as some hilarious experiments that make you giggle. Case in point, a beautiful TRS-80 Model 4P, taking me back to my father’s numerous hours spent writing on his upgraded unit, pictured below. Also, pictured below – a husk of an Apple Lisa that someone popped a Mac Mini G4 board in. Cute!

Among the other highlights, a fine fellow had a PowerPC network running, powered by a G4 XServe and a G5 Xserve (even though it had issues). He had picked up most of the equipment from a video production business that gave him an ultimatum to get rid of it. Alongside it, a bevvy of PowerPC (and one Xeon) Mac that pulled applications and data from the central raid. You could even join the local WiFi network and read fun little webpages about the period-correct setup.

I grabbed a quick PDF of the base html page with a little bit of background info. Just fun stuff.

G5 NetworkDownload

Overall, it’s good to hear updates on great projects like FujiNet that help vintage computers access the internet and serve up new purposes. And it’s fun to see intriguing projects, nostalgia, and an appreciation for computing history mixed into one. I highly recommend.

I’m already thinking about presenting a talk on the state of PowerMac G5s as a viable machine next year.

— Nathan

Lubuntu-Remix

by

If you are looking to extend the life of your G4 or G5 PowerPC machine, open source software is a valuable tool for interesting software packages that can provide better security and breath some life into our aging computers.

One of the Linux variants that is available for PowerPC Macs is Lubuntu-Remix.

You won’t find this one on the official Lubuntu pages, because it is maintained by “wicknix” over on the MacRumors forum. He provides a few different versions, including one that is based off of Ubuntu 16 and works better on G5s. The one I have been utilizing to test some things out is MacBuntu, based off of Ubuntu 12 but with some newer software packages and more modern web browser options. Oh, and a shiny little bit of Mac friendliness like a faux Dock.

As you can see from the screenshot, MacBuntu is functional and provides some nice software options right out of the box (including ArcticFox pictured above). You will need to pay attention to your boot options, as Linux on PowerPC machines often requires making some adjustments to the boot string to make the GPUs function correctly. Without doing so, the system will likely lock up. There are helpful guides in the thread, and wicknix does a great job answering questions from newbies.

In the screenshot above, I am running MacBuntu on an old Mac mini G4. It doesn’t take too long to boot into the desktop, and it is decently responsive. You can browse the web, although webpages are fairly slow to load. Using terminal is of course nice. I also enable a vnc server, so I can remotely log in and tinker with it a bit. Ultimately, it works, and it’s something nice to mess with on a machine that is old and is limited to 1GB of RAM. Keep all that in mind as you tinker with it.

The other challenge is figuring out ways to load the OS in the first place since using a CD/DVD is likely the friendliest solution, but in my case and many others, the old slot loading CD/DVD drives in these PowerPC machines have reached the end of their life. I ended up just pulling mine out, so I was able to get the G4 to boot off a flash drive. It took some trial and error though.

I won’t say that it is as pleasant to use or speedy as a Leopard or Tiger install. It certainly isn’t as fast as OS 9 (which you can install on these old G4s). But since some of the software is newer, it is a nice alternative to throw in the mix and tinker with.

Disappearing RAM

by

Back when I gave the Snow Leopard development build a test run, I noticed something weird that I chocked up to running beta software.

My G5’s RAM was wrong, listing as 6GB when it is actually 10GB.

I didn’t think much of it and went on working on other projects.

Booting back into Leopard, I wasn’t happy to see the RAM size remained incorrect. On top of it, I ordered a cheap 2x2GB set of sticks to further boost my G5. It was time to figure out what was going on, keeping in mind that I had not messed with my RAM at all. The only thing I had done was replace the thermal paste on the CPU.

Here’s my troubleshooting process:

1 – Open up the G5 and reseat the RAM. No fix on the first go.

2 – Reset the NVRAM. No fix either.

3 – Use a tiny bit of thermal surface cleaning solution that I use on CPUs when I put fresh thermal paste on to gently clean the edges of the sticks. Again, no fix.

4 – Spray a little canned air at the empty RAM slots. Again, no fix.

4 – In frustration, I reseated the RAM with a little more firmness. All is well. For now.

My Power Mac is showing 12GB of RAM now (which is what I have in it). Another 4GB is on the way, so I will max this ancient machine out shortly. The answer is… there is no answer. Maybe this G5 is old and near death. We’ll see.

— Nathan

Mission Accomplished: New Thermal Paste on G5

by

Today, I launched the boring and meticulous process to put new thermal paste on my dual core G5.

I was going to take a step by step photo process, but it was enough for me just to focus on cataloguing each screw and keeping things tidy. I dusted out the machine while I was at it, although it wasn’t in a bad state after the most recent cleaning. The hardest part is that little rubber/plastic screw on the “G5” aluminum shield. Removing it is a pain and it will ruin your warranty.

Of course, if you still have a warranty on your machine, I’d love to hear that story.

Every time I tinker with my G5, I appreciate Apple’s design. It’s beautiful, expertly put together, built like a tank. Things are held together by more than just a couple of dinky screws or rubber grommets (from my Dell experiences). To get access to the CPU, you easily have to unscrew 25-ish screws, which is insane but also kind of awesome.

After the new thermal paste, I booted it up to make sure I didn’t screw in something wrong and weird.

All is well.

My next project will be to replace 2-3 fans that are particularly noisy with aftermarket quiet options. I saw this idea on Facebook and assumed that the G5 used proprietary fans. While aftermarket fans will blow at full RPM, they will run quieter, which would be… again… awesome.

Following that, I’m going to try two Samsung 840 EVOs in RAID0 just for giggles.

— Nathan

Fast/Slow

by

Well, hello, and Happy New Year!

I’ve been absent from the blog and site for a bit, as I have been absolutely swamped with a trip overseas, classwork, and life. My G5 has been plugged in but neglected. (I’ve heard that’s not kind on the electric bills.) In the midst of some reorganization of the workshop and other projects, I finally reconnected the G5 to a monitor and fired it up to load the latest TenFourFox beta.

Look for more content, and thank you for the comments, especially those I’ve missed lately.

Here’s a quick fun tidbit:

Fast and Slow is free utility for your PPC Mac.

Fast and Slow is a helpful little Mac utility to give just a bit of oomph when you need it.

What does it do? There is no magic code or gimmicky trick in this. Rather, Fast and Slow uses the built in Energy Saver options on your G5. One option is to lower your CPU speed to save power. The other option is to crank the CPU up full blast. The little utility makes it quicker and simpler to switch between the two modes on the fly as you edit your latest album in Garageband and then work on an html document in TextEdit or something.

My download link stopped working recently, but it’s now been fixed.

Is there a downside to always running your Mac in the “fast” mode? I don’t think so. I suppose power usage would be higher if you are running your G5 24/7.

I do remember a similar but slightly different utility for the Mac which uses the underlying UNIX based functions of Mac OS X to force your Mac to focus on a chosen app, ignoring or pausing all other background tasks. If I find it, I’ll pass it on as another way to squeeze a little juice out of your Mac if you are doing heavy processing tasks.

See you soon.

— Nathan