What to do with Power Mac G4 Sawtooth

I was thinking of turning it into a BIG back up hard drive - or a server....?

Either would work, but not much HD space for backup per noise/power consumption.

I hate to see my old friend go - sell her off on Craigs List for $50....

Yeah, I'd hate that too, I'd rather find somebody that could really use it as a step up & give it to them. 🙂

Might I suggest that you KEEP it in case you ever have the nostalgic feelings of running PowerPC again.. I did just that and now I own a Powerbook G4 15 inch 1.67 which is really nice and CAN play 720p using a lower version of flash.. 1080p is out of the question..

The 2nd powerbook I have is a G4 Pismo.. this is primarily to ease the nostalgia for OS 9..

3rdly, my Mac Pro 2010 model... serves all my Intel needs.

You see? Intel and PowerPC can co-exist and all Mac owners should have at least one powerpc mac and intel.. Sheepshaver maybe a nice emulator, but its no match for the real thing.

And I need the Mac Pro to rip through the HD video stuff !!

Does anyone actually need HD..? I know that doesn't answer your question, but a good video in SD or even 320x240 is better than mediocre junk at super-high-resolution, any day of the week.

You see? Intel and PowerPC can co-exist and all Mac owners should have at least one powerpc mac and intel.

Yeah, everyone should have one PowerPC machine (an older Mac) and one Intel machine. My Intel machine is a 3 GHz P4, although I can run many things in Virtual PC 6 on my Mac.

Message was edited by: paulpen

Hi,

For the record, I agree w/you about the HD video.. Not everyone needs that and really for the stuff I use my Mac Pro on a PowerPC can do the same stuff... I don't do video editing or anything hi grade on my Mac Pro, in essence, I use it as an everyday machine just as I use my PowerBook G4.

Did I mention also that I have a G4 Pismo?

I've even got a 56 K modem inside !

I'm still looking for ideas...??

If your internet service provider makes dial-up service available, you can use the internal modem of your G4 Sawtooth to connect to the Internet on those occasions when high-speed service to your location gets interrupted. Albeit, the dial-up service won't be very fast, but sometimes it can be helpful while a high-speed service interruption is being remedied.

Also, you can then share that dial-up connection with another computer by connecting them with a FireWire cable.

In OS X 10.4.11 Tiger:

In System Preferences > Sharing, click on the Services tab. Then click to put a check mark in the check box to the left of Personal Web Sharing. Then click on the Start button. Next, click on the Firewall tab. In the Allow box, there should be another check mark in a check box to the left of Personal Web Sharing, if the Firewall is on. Then click on the Internet tab. To the right of "Share your connection from:", select Internal Modem from the drop-down menu. Under "To computers using:" click to put a check mark in the check box to the left of Built-in Firewire. Then click on the Start button. When asked whether you want to turn on Internet Sharing, click on the additional Start button.

In OS X 10.5.8 Leopard:

In System Preferences > Sharing, do not yet click to put a check mark in the check box to the left of Internet Sharing, but rather click on the words "Internet Sharing" to highlight that option. To the right of "Share your connection from:" select Internal Modem from the drop-down menu. To the right of "To computers using:" click to put a check mark in the check box to the left of Firewire. Next, click to put a check mark in the check box to the left of Internet Sharing. Then, when asked whether you want to turn on Internet Sharing, click on the Start button.

It might take some time before the second computer is able to access the Internet. I'm not sure how long it might take. Maybe it will be immediate, maybe it will be a few seconds, or maybe longer. Also, the Internet connection might get dropped occasionally, although maybe it won't either. If it does get dropped, stopping and restarting Internet Sharing has eventually worked for me.

In summary, your G4 can be used as a back-up means of connecting to the Internet in case of high speed service outages.

Only probem is the Motherboard linked bus only recignized up to 127GB drives, and you can't find those anymore !

Good point. If you don't mind drives that are slightly larger, there is a 160 GB ATA drive listed here:

[http://eshop.macsales.com/search/3.5 InternalIDE/ATA]

You're welcome, Steven. 🙂

You could make it into a time machine server or file server..