What's the last thing you bought for your PowerPC Macs?

[IIO]

the lie already begins with the idea that more power consumption would be something good, because a good quality loudspeaker is distinguished by a high efficiency. (naively put: pressure per watts @ frequency range of n to m)

i guess it is the same for vacuum cleaners, but there it is only interesting in order to save energy.

the average earth inhabitant probably still thinks that electric machines would produce power. "that speaker makes 1000 watts!" no bud, it eats them up. often for nothing.

this small $350 set "has" 1000 watts, if you believe their advertising.
i can assure you that you can destroy it by feedign it more than 250 watts after only 10 minutes.

this bigger set of stereo speakers, which were around $3500, is the one i use in my living room. they are roughly around 300 watts per speaker, and at full power they literally blow your mind in a small room... between 10 and 30,000 Hz, btw., while that "hi fi" kind of "cinema" nonsense kind of only gives you mids.

and this is not even professional high end gear - not at all. (unfortunately they are very noisy, whatever the good power2pressure ratio they might have.)

if my non-musican friends ask me if they should buy some super hifi nonsense from braun or rather from teufel, for listeing in the same sitting position, i point them to a pair of yamaha NS-10 from 1980, which cost 50 euros and are at least as good.

[IIO]

btw, i have recently destroyed the speaker of my quicksilver for the second time.

they seem to be quite sensitive when it comes to DC offset or high gain in general.

while i have external speakers for the mac, too, i hesitate to use them because of the requried external PSU.

does nobody offer replacements for the internal system?

[Protools5LEGuy]

if my non-musican friends ask me if they should buy some super hifi nonsense from braun or rather from teufel, for listeing in the same sitting position, i point them to a pair of yamaha NS-10 from 1980, which cost 50 euros and are at least as good.

I´ll send you 100 Euros for a pair of NS-10... 

More likely they cost 500 Euros, but give me a tip if a NS-10 single unit shows at less than 100.

They cost more today than 20 years ago. Not less.

https://www.thomann.de/es/avantone_cla_10a.htm

[Protools5LEGuy]

btw, i have recently destroyed the speaker of my quicksilver for the second time.

Check volts on PSU.

while i have external speakers for the mac, too, i hesitate to use them because of the requried external PSU.

does nobody offer replacements for the internal system?

I have seen listening to mixes thru a PM G4 to see how it translates to small speakers. That is not the listening environment any more. Or you try classics Auratones

https://www.thomann.de/es/auratone_5c_super_sound_cube_classic.htm

Or you use a Smartphone as the worst playing stage.

Probably today worth buying an iMac M1 as another listening environment to test mixes.

I see at 2nd hand shop unopened 5.1 setups at 20 €... It do not worth replacing the internal just to hear the bong... IMHO

And if you want to hear with detail you avoid using shity speakers.

[DieHard]

Probably today worth buying an iMac M1 as another listening environment to test mixes.

Yeah, the only problem is Apple is up to the same old bullshit, the stock iMac has 8GB Unified RAM and a stock 256GB SSD, and of course the RAM is NOT Upgrade-able after purchase... so add 8GB more... ? sure, price at time of purchase $200 (Give me a fuci*ng break, probable costs them $10) get at least a 1 TB SSD, sure
... add $400 (WFT!!!!)... so $400 for 3/4 of a TB more than the stock 256GB.

Now the price $2099 for iMac M1 with... 24" Flat LED, 16GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD... Don't get me wrong, I really would love to get an M1, for audio the tests on youtube (even in Rosetta 2) are off the hook, and Waves is finally M1 native; so it really seems tempting; but for now... I still recommend...

Twelve Core Mac Pro w/32 GB... $600 to $700
https://www.ebay.com/itm/353472116743?hash=item524c947807:g:nWgAAOSw20xghvdR

1 TB NVMe M.2 (2400Mb/s Read/write) $99
PCIe card $25

Dual 24 Inch Business LCDs, about $250

So for about $1000 you get a monster and can still burn DVDs

[IIO]

Or you try classics Auratones
https://www.thomann.de/es/auratone_5c_super_sound_cube_classic.htm

i dont think those would fit into a quicksilver.

[GaryN]

this bigger set of stereo speakers, which were around $3500, is the one i use in my living room. they are roughly around 300 watts per speaker, and at full power they literally blow your mind in a small room... between 10 and 30,000 Hz, btw., while that "hi fi" kind of "cinema" nonsense kind of only gives you mids.

and this is not even professional high end gear - not at all. (unfortunately they are very noisy, whatever the good power2pressure ratio they might have.)

From the original TOA 380SE brochure:

"The TOA 380-SE is a 3-way loudspeaker system specifically developed for the reproduction of electronic music. Analog and digital keyboard synthesizers, drum machines, and guitar synths require a speaker system with a wide frequency response, high power capacity and the ability to handle the extreme dynamic range these instruments produce."

I have owned those 2 separate times for SR use. It is very true that although intended for that purpose, the damn things are surprisingly accurate if properly adjusted, will literally put a live rock concert in your living room when supplied with sufficient (300w/ch min.) power but sound like a good pair of studio monitors at reasonable levels. They were clearly competing with TAD.

I bought my first pair in the late 80's as mains for a sequencer / live band we had then. With a sub, they handled every club we played with ease. This was very radical then… the DX7 was the new hot thing and hardly anyone even knew what MIDI was yet, let alone a sequencer. One of the times in my life I was a legit pioneer at something…

I wish I still had a pair although I downsized and I still do have a pair of 300SD's, a tricky design to get a lot of output from a smaller box.
I will now go and hook them up to my MDD and yank this thread back from the ozone. 

[IIO]

i never understood this SD design. are they smaller or of the same size? oh nevermind, you already answered that.^^

the general problem with the SE is that when used as monitors, living room studios are simply not big enough to place them, the hotspot is somewhere around 3 meters. frequency good, stereo bad.

[GaryN]

i never understood this SD design.

Nor does anyone else…
I suspect the idea was to load both sides of the driver with the slot thereby creating a quasi-bandpass box but still open enough to get up to the low mids… I can testify that they do work fairly well…especially after I replaced the woofer with an EVM-12L.

the general problem with the SE is that when used as monitors, living room studios are simply not big enough to place them, the hotspot is somewhere around 3 meters. frequency good, stereo bad.

True… but you gotta admit the red racing stripes make up for that. 

CORRECTION: After looking closely at the pic, I realized mine are model 30-SD. Same concept but with a protruding mid horn.

[IIO]

it´s not wrong to put the high in the middle, but i am a studio guy and if i see a speaker which is not symetric i am already like "wtf".
plus is somehow looks funny that the bass speaker is mostly covered with something. sure, for 30 Hz that is not an issue, but for 300?

[GaryN]

I'm a studio guy too but these are for sound reinforcement. As I said, they wanted to make the box as small as possible - symmetry be damned.
The woofer is essentially an acoustic low-pass filter. Crossovers are at 1k and 10k. Having owned both, I can say the SD-30's are not as accurate as the 380SE's but they do a great job onstage in a club and will fit in a car.

[OS923]

WD My Book Elite 2 TB. Brush to clean my keyboard. Square power strip for 4 adapters.

[OS923]

Glyph GT 050Q.
Pioneer network receiver X-HM71-S.

[rvense]

Waiting for a PCI SampleCell in the post. The guy posted it locally for 200 EUR six or nine months months ago, claiming that they sell on eBay for 350 (LOL), and has marked it down a few times since. My only  connected PCI Mac, a Sawtooth, is currently USB'd to an Akai S6000, so it's not like I need a hardware sampler... but when he finally dropped the price to fifteen euros I couldn't resist.

Might have to get a Mix Core to go with it, though I'm actually quite happy with the RME that's in the G4.

[IIO]

got another of these HD cases. i cant help, i am addicted to this stuff.

but this time it is a brand new one^^

[IIO]

...

[mopar300m]

I bought a pair of the proprietary Apple Pro speakers (M6531) with grilles and the matching Harman/Kardon iSub 2000.  I got them back in December but I'm just now getting around to extending the speaker cables and recapping the subwoofer.

I also bought a barely used 640 GB Western Digital hard drive for my Quicksilver for next to nothing.

[teroyk]

damn, the floppy drive does not support external power, so i cant use it in OS9.

I have external floppydrive without external power and it works.

[IIO]

dont break your mac.

[teroyk]

dont break your mac.

Do you think it takes too much current? Should I use powered USB-hub between Mac and USB-floppydrive?

[IIO]

according to the specs it takesagbout 5-8 times more than USB 1.1. offers (though part of the USB specs is that you may exceed that limit for like 100% for 3 seconds or something like that - plus you can count on apple or dell to offer even more headroom in their machines.

but when i connected small harddrives or a floppy drive to my quicksilver, it mostly doesnt work and the mac starts beeping. and you should really listen to her when she tells you that.

SSD is no problem, 2 controllers via keybord is no problem, a huge midi interface via the keyboard cen get already difficult.

a powerd hub should always work in the sense that you wont break the computer (unless you forget to turn its PSU on), however i am not sure myself if it always offers USB 2.0 current on all ports(?)

[FBz]

There were several aftermarket USB floppy drives offered
for G3’s & the original iMacs.



There’s a VST here that works quite well without a hub.
(Even with G4’s - when it’s rarely ever used.)
But never have had any ill-effects from using it.

*Connected and working with a 2011 iMac right now.
Had connected / working with a G3 iBook (OS 9.2) just before.
It doesn’t like 800k discs - but 1.44 mb discs… all day long. 

[smilesdavis]

does anyone know if this would run somehow on a G5 quad?

[keithiepoo]

I just got two packages delivered today. One had an Apple branded GeForce 4 Ti (4600) 128mb with ADC and the other a Sonnet Encore/MDX Duet 1.6ghz! Which means I have a great weekend ahed of me 

Hmm... that was back around 2009 or so. 2010 I bought an i7-based MacBook Pro. Sooo...

I think I had Maya 6.5 installed on a Mac Mini -- believe it or not. I think it was a G4-based machine. It powered a Dell LCD that I had for years afterwards for my MacBook Pro. If memory serves, I also had Illustrator and Photoshop installed. I still use those licenses on systems running older OSes.

So hard to remember. That was around 15 years ago.

[smilesdavis]

Marathon Powerrack G4 3,3 with sonnet upgrade coming this week wooohoo
was looking for one for ages

powerrack 9600 still looking for if anyone knows

edit: shes here 😍
https://web.archive.org/web/20011218003520/http://www.marathoncomputer.com/prgseries.html

[smilesdavis]

- Apple Power Macintosh G4 400 (AGP) w/Giga Designs G-Celerator G4/1.467 AGP/133 (5-1214Q)
- Marathon G-rack with G4 500 (AGP) Sonnet Encore 1.8Ghz
- 2x Power Macintosh G4 933 (QS2002)
- 3x Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 (MDD 2003)
- 1x Apple PowerBook G4 500 (Original - Ti)
- 2x Apple Mac mini G4/1.42
- 1x Apple Mac mini G4/1.5

[IIO]

maybe it is time for a roundup.

list of things i have bought for my OS9 PPCs since 1993:

 - software for over 20k euro/dollars (and that is only the legit stuff...)

 - 19 external HD enclosures with 31 HDs (25 still in use)

 - 9 internal HDs and 4 internal SSDs (only main G4, not counting stuff for the various incidental computers, currently only 2+2 in use)

 - 14 audio interfaces (8 are still in use, among them 7 motu mkII)

 - 8 Monitors (4 still work, 3 of them are in use)

 - 2x powercore pci, 1x UAD-1 and 1x UAD-2

 - about 50 cables, half of them of them are bad buys

 - about 50 adapters, half of them of them are bad buys

 - various routers and managed switches

 - 4 extra GPUs

 - 2 USB switches (in use) and 8 USB hubs (1 sometimes in use)

 - 2 firewire hubs

 - 5 midi interfaces (1-2 still in use)

 - at least 10 mice (i break them regulary)

 - 2 doepfer poecket control and 2 drumpad controllers (i see them as extension to the mac - and they are actually used not only for music apps), 2 wacom tablets, 2 scanners, 2 printers,

 - 2 SATA cards and 2 IDE card

 - 1 processor upgrade

 - 15 DVD drives, a BD burner (yes sure, not in OS9), 4 or 5 exernal optical cases, a floppy drive, an SD card reader, a bluetooth USB stick, about 10 data USB sticks, a WLAN antenna USB stick, 15 SATA adapters, various RAM sticks

 - tools, a soldering kit, screws, replacement fans, paste, rubber feet, mini speakers (1 euro)

 - 3 replacement PSUs for the quicksilver

 - not sure if it counts: 2x capybara-320

 - 8 carton boxes for all the unused and reserve crap

 - about 100 floppies, 2000 CD-R, 300 DVD-R, 80 BD-R, 5 DVD-RAM

[Oni]

list of things i have bought for my OS9 PPCs since 1993

That's going to take me a while to compile, but it will definitely be fun to do.

Most recent purchase was a couple of plain FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cables. Glad I could get 'em.

[smilesdavis]

this week

8100/80 w/pt iii nubus expansion chassis 3x io 9x dspfarm, newer g3 300mhz pds
8100/80av w/pt project nubus, digi expansion chassis w 3 io, 4x scii, 8-26 gc gfx
7100/66av
about 20 ext scsi chassis d2 lacie etc

[DieHard]

this week

8100/80 w/pt iii nubus expansion chassis 3x io 9x dspfarm, newer g3 300mhz pds
8100/80av w/pt project nubus, digi expansion chassis w 3 io, 4x scii, 8-26 gc gfx
7100/66av
about 20 ext scsi chassis d2 lacie etc

These are the types of setups that we have to document here for historical reference

So please post some detailed stuff about it's setup as you get it going.

Syntho's famous 9600 Guide (has over 59 Thousand Views):
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2656.msg43554.html#msg43554

I think he is responsible for making the 9600 go up in price on eBay 

[smilesdavis]

the only way id mess with a 96 is if i find a marathon 9600 chassis, its the last one i wasnt able to track down yet

[FBz]

As if I needed yet another Firewire drive. 

Simply could not pass up this retro-kewl era OWC FW 400 enclosure.
(The old style, winged OWC Mercury FW logo… was simply irresistible.)


Another forum member here (a secret) may be offering others, for sale here soon.

[IIO]

ha! that one was the first fw case i ever bought.

[DieHard]

I am assuming you bought one from here (if not, that is an amazing coincidence)

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6861.msg52552/topicseen.html#new

[FBz]

Yes DH, I got mine from mustagcoupe about a week or so ago.
(One of the very first ones that he had cleaned and prepped.)
And I can personally vouch both for him and the enclosures.

I had wanted to post about it last week but he asked that I wait
until they were all ready… I didn’t know that he was posting today.

He and I often share ideas & info back and forth about G3 B&Ws
as well as possible (other) mod-i-fi-ca-tions. Recently we’ve discussed
building “alternative” cases for some loose B&W mobos.

Some here might also be interested in his “Plywood G5 Build”.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/plywood-g5-build.2333413/

I’ve a couple of G5 Cheese Graters that were bounced around too
much & have always considered building different cases for them.
Lately, with a score of some white, eighth-inch thick Corian® here
(similar to plexiglas)… who knows where this all might eventually lead?

But yes, if anyone’s interested in the OWC Firewire retro enclosures…
do contact mustagcoupe ASAP.



http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6861.msg52552.html#msg52552

[IIO]

mine looked like the yellow one and was labelled icybox. if it wouldnt have that annoying 120 gb limit i would probably still use it. you can easily pile a dozen of them to a platci tower, it is a really good case.

[DieHard]

From FBz

Some here might also be interested in his “Plywood G5 Build”.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/plywood-g5-build.2333413/

In the spirit on going off-topic (pretty much every post, lol) I would just add...

This only makes sense, we are now going full circle

1) Make furniture out of G5 cases

2) Make G5s out of furiture

[Protools5LEGuy]

Just recieved 2 Y cables for my MIX CORE TDM rig

[rvense]

I bought an old USB Wacom tablet last year for my G4, size full A4 because I thought it would be nice to have a large one (I don't know a lot about them). Turns out, it's not. This smaller, almost-appropriately-coloured one has been up for sale locally for a bit and in the end I couldn't resist.

[robespierre]

The Graphire are not just smaller, but also less capable when used in paint or CAD applications. They were made for a more casual sketch market.