Hello everyone! Some of you may know me from System 7 Today forums, and yes, I'm the same woman who has that Power Macintosh 6400 with a G3 card. That machine, while quite a hassle to get working, is very nice! However, I knew something was missing. While I had a few machines that could reliably run OS 9 (one of which was even faster than the one I ended up using), they always had some form of issue. Either they couldn't dualboot easily, they wouldn't work with some of my peripherals, or the hardware itself had some very confusing issues. One machine I had issues with was unfortunately my dual 1GHz QuickSilver PowerMac G4. The CPU card, while mostly functional, has issues when you try to completely load Mac OS. At some point OS 9 was telling me that the cache had an issue, which explained why my L3 cache was not showing up. While I was bummed about that having issues, I had another machine that I actually just got which would make an incredible Mac OS 9 system even if it only had a dual 500MHz G4 card.
To make a long story short... a guy in my city had a bunch of old Apple computers for sale. They were NOT well stored, but thankfully I managed to fix what I got, except for a second ADC CRT monitor which needs a new analog board and neck board. The computers were a 600MHz graphite iMac G3, a blue and white PowerMac G3, and a Gigabit Ethernet PowerMac G4 the guy threw into the stuff I bought because the power supply was dead. I also got a couple of Apple Studio Display CRTs that use ADC, and while they're not in good shape... only one works. Again, the second one needs a new analog board and neck board/video can. Also got an iBook G4 for parts thats the 2003 model, so I could probably use my early 2004 board and run OS 9 on that (though I won't get AirPort, unfortunately.)
The gigabit G4 had a dual 450MHz card which I happily overclocked to 500MHz, because why not? The opportunity was right there. I had to "borrow" the power supply from my already-unstable QS to get this working, though I had to poke out the pin on the main "ATX" connector that had a purple wire going to it, and tape that off. The computer also came with a DVD writer that even has disc burning support, and a Radeon 9000 Pro card! I wish I still had a working GeForce4 Ti 4600 but this is good enough, though I would be interested if someone is willing to sell me one for a reasonable price, and a working dual 1GHz G4 card if possible for my QS.
I gave the case plastics a good bath with dish soap and hot water, and they turned out nicely. Granted, they're rather scratched up from its previous life. And while completely unnecessary, I went ahead and recapped the whole motherboard. I know these use capacitors that aren't known to leak, but I thought I'd do it anyway to keep this thing running smoothly, even though these desktops are literally the Toyota Camrys of apple computers. I swear, the sawtooth and gigabit G4s just NEVER die!
I already had OS 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 installed on a hard drive I had sitting around, which were still plenty fresh. This computer with the dual CPUs (which OS 9 won't take much advantage of, I know) and Radeon 9000 Pro, paired with the ADC CRT Studio Display... makes for one lovely setup.
• Note: Attached image slightly downsized and mode changed, for file size reduction / display. -aBc
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Topic: Katheryn's Power Mac G4 DP500 "Mystic" (Read 1570 times)