Postmortem G5 questions

Hi, no idea on their plicy, but you can use Migration Assistant on your new Mac by pulling the drive out of the G5 & using one of these...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U2NV2SPATA/

What kind of connection does the Cinema Display have, there miniDisplay Connector to other converters, but ADC would be a big problem...

There's 3 possible types, ADC...

VGA & DVI...

If tth Monitor's native rez is 1920*1200, then this will work...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/587728-REG/Apple_MB570Z_A_Mini_DisplayPort _to_DVI_D.html#Overview

You'd be better off selling your old G5 on eBay or similar than returning it to Apple, even dead they still sell for a good price for parts/repair - also going that way will mean it is used again or used to help repair other ones. I don't think Apple would give you anything for it if you gave it to them, there is an option to value older machines online but it doesn't look like they will pay anything for one that does not start up.

Sorry, to interrupt, but what G5 is it? Was it a G5 Quad or one of the earlier G5's?

Ah, ok.. reason I asked is if you are still interested in staying with a PPC mac, the G5 Quad or even the dual core 2.3 would be better choices as those use PCIe for the graphics slots and architecture in general. While not really future proof, you would certainly have more options compared to AGP based G5's.

Don't forget that the liquid-cooled Quads have a lot of serious problems with coolant leakage though - for reliability I'd go with one of the latest aircooled ones like the dualie 2.3, they still offer high performance but without the risk of leakage which will destroy the entire machine unless caught early (and could be dangerous too).

Ok, I forgot to mention that, sorry.. But in most cases there have been reports of more leakages with the earlier Dual 2.5 and 2.7 respectively. Have a look at this url which shows the LCS failure rate for the Quads only is around 1 percent.

http://www.fusina.net/G5_coolant_leaks/index-stats.php

And if you DO happen to get a Quad, make sure its from 2006 as Apple switched to a much better and more reliable liquid cooling method. One more caveat: the G5 runs HOT!! Mkae sure your ambient room temperature isn't too stuffy, otherwise when you go to run the Thermal Calibration to silence the fans on a hot day the program will report over temp errors and not calibrate - I had this happen to me last night, but when I took my Quad outside to test it Thermal Calibration worked great and no LEDS came on while in the "stuffy" room.