That was the first G4 tower you could not directly boot OS 9.x on so you are stuck with OSX (10.4.11 is probably a good choice for it). The power supplies are known to go bad.

I have 3 of those machines but with the earlier FW400 revisions so I use them for OSX and OS 9 apps (I collect Mac anyway).

Just don't trash it as they are getting harder to find and people are very slowly getting into PPC era Macs just for messing around with ect. Musicians still buy them and put them to good use.

The fact that the CPU modules like to drop dead in the MDD's and the whole generation has awful power supplies scares me away from the things. I tend to either upgrade G3 machines to G4 or completely bypass G4 and go G5.

CelGen wrote:

The fact that the CPU modules like to drop dead in the MDD's and the whole generation has awful power supplies scares me away from the things. I tend to either upgrade G3 machines to G4 or completely bypass G4 and go G5.

G4 powerbooks are Nice machines if you ever feel like collecting one before prices go insane.

There have recently been discovered ways to run OS9 on the FW800 PowerMac actually. I think there are actually two ways; one is to downgrade the firmware to fool it into thinking it is a FW400; I believe there is a newer solution that just allows it to work natively, as well. Just wanted to put that out there.

I have a Mac G4 (Sawtooth) and a G5 (dual 1.8, 2003). Beside the obvious (OS9 on the G4 and OSX on the G5) I have installed Gentoo Linux on both. They make decent home servers in Linux. The prices are insanely low, I paid less than $100 combined for both (Including shipping for the G4, but the G5 was a local pickup 'cause it's a heavy beast).

these g4-pm are very loud 🙁

nforce4max wrote:

CelGen wrote:

The fact that the CPU modules like to drop dead in the MDD's and the whole generation has awful power supplies scares me away from the things. I tend to either upgrade G3 machines to G4 or completely bypass G4 and go G5.

G4 powerbooks are Nice machines if you ever feel like collecting one before prices go insane.

That I will agree with. the G4 powerbooks were great. I personally own a 1ghz TiBook.

Another thing not mentioned but in the same CPU Family is the iMac G4. They have almost no internal expansion but so long as you give them a good dusting from time to time they're quite reliable and are visually quite pretty.

You have several options.

Keep it as a curiosity
Mod the case and use it as a wicked cool hackintosh
Use OSX and sort of limp along with new powerpc programs
Use PPC Linux (MintPPC comes to mind)
Check out Morph OS, only caveat is that it is essentially a timed demo until you fork over some cash, I have it on my Mac Mini, it works pretty well, but my DVI-HDMI adapter broke the video connector ... 🙁

Just don't trash it.

Hmmm... G4's 😀
Well. I had one last year, wich I sold to a collector of old systems.
In those month's that I had it running, and I had a lot of differtent software software running on it.

My first installation was OsX Tiger (really bad on a 400mhz or was it 350?)
The second installation was Os9, wich ran good. I had Quake running in OpenGL, wich was nice.
The last thing I used it for, was a server setup.

I installed Ubuntu Server for PowerPC, and installed Samba server in a way that it was like a NAS.
You know... Setting it up in a way, that the user name and password was the same as on Windows.
This way, I could access it without additional logins. Worked like a charm.
Then I installed a minecraft server on it, wich had some barriers that I needed to cross.
Finding the right java version was kind of like hard. Had to search for a couple of days.
As a minecraft server, sub-500mhz machine are probably too slow. (Mine was)
Though it was indeed fun to build my own, connected to my own network. 😁

My take... When the PPC machine is fast enough, it will do so nice as a Linux box.
Whatever it is as a client or as a server. (Give Morph-OS a go too)

I still see G4s in use in music studios all the time. One of the best things you can get for them are a series of *very* nice multichannel MOTU recording interfaces with PCI interface cards for dirt cheap - like $50-$100. If you want to run the same interface on a G5 you need a PCI-x or PCIe card for it which costs hundreds. And a dual-1.4 is just about the best there is.

I know your specific model won't boot OS9 natively but http://www.macos9lives.com/ is still a great site for info & software (mostly music production related) on the G4s. You can always run the 'Classic Environment' on OSX.

For myself I'm after a 17" 1.67 GHz Powerbook or a G4 Cube if I see one for the right price. But my G5s can do all the same things in a much-less-portable manner. 😀

xjas wrote:

I still see G4s in use in music studios all the time. One of the best things you can get for them are a series of *very* nice multichannel MOTU recording interfaces with PCI interface cards for dirt cheap - like $50-$100. If you want to run the same interface on a G5 you need a PCI-x or PCIe card for it which costs hundreds. And a dual-1.4 is just about the best there is.

Not just the interface, there's a ton of professional audio software which doesn't play nice with Classic mode on OSX and the G5 cannot normally boot directly to OS 9.

I have a G4 powermac but I've never really used it for anything. It came with a Geforce2 MX card, not sure if it works on a PC (non-Apple). I think I stole the hard drive a couple years ago. I think it's something like 400MHz or so, don't remember exactly.
The case feels cheaper than it looks from a distance. I like the way it folds open though, it's convenient.

I was never a Mac user so I have no software I care to run on it. The only good use I've thought of is to run memtest on batches of SDRAM modules (which I have an excessive number of). As I recall it holds 4 at a time, same compatibility rules as a 440BX (I think), and the easy opening case would be handy.

I didn't know the power supplies were problematic. I guess I should recap mine.

The feel to this computer is amazing. It is definitely something else when it comes to build quality, massive (ai like 🤣).
I have an old RME Digi 96/8 PST (Steinberg ST24/96) that has OSX drivers and i am generally interested into this computers audio capabilities (Both software and hardware). I might use it as an word processor/multimedia computer.

I am yet to experience any form of interaction wtih an Mac OS, so far I like and have read about PowerPC platform. If I like this one I might even get an OS9 compatible one.

Seems that different and more professional (exotic) hardware always attracts people more 😁