Got a mint condition MDD DP 1.25Ghz G4 for ¥500 ( US$ 4.96 )

[MIKX]

I'm a brand new user. I live in Japan.
Last week I came a across a used computer parts shop near my home and spotted a mint condition MDD DP 1.25Ghz FW 400 G4 on a back shelf. I was incredibly surprised ( utter disbelief ) when the proprietor said ¥500 )( US$ 4.96 ) ( AU$6.06 )  !
It was spotless inside and had a 64mb ATI 9000 Pro installed. Also had 4 IDE HD's full of Japanese porn. One HD was 116 Gig the rest around 80Gig.
I managed to get hold of two PC 2700 RAM modules and have upped the memory to 1.5 gig.
I have OS 9.22 and OS X 10.5.8 running on a nice 23" LCD monitor.
I had a spare 4 port USB card so that went in too without issue.
Also added a Bluetooth USB module which works ( in Leopard so far ).

I'm particularly happy because I have an English school here in Japan and make my own textbooks & lessons using a DTP program called "Pagestream " http://www.pagestream.org/. This program started out on the Amiga and moved to Mac & Linux but the author seemed to lose it when is came to print output in OS X  - Pagestream prints perfectly from OS 9.2.2. But I of course moved from G4 Macs to G5 and Intel so it was a nasty surprise to find that in OS X Pagestream just would not print ot any work - in fact it was the ONLY program out of the hundred's on my Mac Pro that wouldn't print - seems the author missed out on the Apple OSX Printing SDK. So for the past 8 or so years I've had to export any lesson work as PDF's and then print.

Having stated the above about Pagestream I will say that it is the most intuitive and easy to use DTP that I have ever come across

Thank God I saved images of my old OS 9.2.2 HDs.

I'm also really happy to have joined macos9 lives, seems there's a wealth of information here.

Cheers

[mrhappy]

I was incredibly surprised ( utter disbelief ) when the proprietor said ¥500 )( US$ 4.96 ) ( AU$6.06 )  !

WOW... you REALLY got ripped off!!!

[MIKX]

. .what goes around .  .comes around . ..  can't believe I'm actually using OS 9.2.2 again. Very nostalgic.

[urdvurk]

And here I went thinking I had gotten a good deal on my dual 1 GHz MDD.

Set me back € 5,- and a couple of beers - and it didn't even have any HDs in it.

 

Congrats, nice find!

[MIKX]

This is really weird . .. when I started up this MDD System Profiler in 10.5.8 showed it as a DUAL 1.25Gz . .. . .  ( wish I'd grabbed the screen ) now it is showing it as a SINGLE .. I removed the heat sink and sure enough. . it's a single. . still .. for ¥500 I can't complain.

Perhaps the previous owner had once install a Sonnet dual processor board and the settings stuck.

[devils_advisor]

This is really weird . .. when I started up this MDD System Profiler in 10.5.8 showed it as a DUAL 1.25Gz . .. . .  ( wish I'd grabbed the screen ) now it is showing it as a SINGLE .. I removed the heat sink and sure enough. . it's a single. . still .. for ¥500 I can't complain.

Perhaps the previous owner had once install a Sonnet dual processor board and the settings stuck.

In case you did had a sonnet in this machine you might have a patched rom and need to reverse that. my manual had something about that.

[MIKX]

Thanks for the info.

I did ..
1. PRAM reset
2. Open Firmware reset
3. Powered off  - disconnected everything and hit the CUDA button ( once ).

. . . then I removed the CPU heatsink and saw that it is indeed a single 1.25Ghz MDD.

It's running OK now and have moved on to installing a LB-LINK WiFi card ( ¥1,100 here in Japan ) with middling success . . the older drivers yielded a crash in Leopard 10.5.8 but have got OS 9.2.2 running on DHCP.

I'm a little crestfallen that it is not a DUAL but anyway getting it for ¥500 was nice.

[Texas_RangerAT]

Nice bargain!
Our first MDD (2003 FW400 Dual 1.25) was free but cost something like €170 in repairs and postage (sending the power supply to Germany and back).