(last updated: 18-Oct-2017)
The machine is as it was acquired, except that I have installed a hard disk, since the original was not included.
22" Cinema Display LCD monitor (M8149) (ADC) (s/n CY1450CQJU8)
15" Studio Display LCD monitor (M2454) (ADC) (s/n CY2202BXJPC)
Pro keyboard (M7803) (USB) (s/n KY1100C3HK4VC)
generic mouse (USB)
| PowerPC G4 933MHz, 512MB RAM (256+256+0), Firewire (IEEE-1394) x2, USB 2.0 x2 | |
|---|---|
| AGP | nVIDIA GForce4 MX 64MB with ADC and VGA connectors |
| PCI | (empty) | (empty) | (empty) | (empty) |
21-Oct-2011
This system was found at the University of Utah's surplus store and was purchased, without hard disk as is the U's policy, for $25, plus $40 for the Studio LCD monitor. There were other Power Mac G4s of similar vintage, but this was the cleanest, fastest, and the cheapest. The others were listed at $40, probably because they included a built-in telephone modem.
21-Oct-2011
Very clean to start with, with just a little accumulated dust inside. As is my usual habit, I vacuumed the exterior and interior, and then cleaned all surfaces with Windex.
23-Oct-2011
Without Mac OS installation media, which I need to acquire, I thought it might be fun to try out the PowerPC Mac version of NetBSD. I downloaded an ISO image of NetBSD 5.1 (macppc) and burned it to CD.
The CD will not auto-boot in the mac. The trick is to enter Apple's pre-boot command console and enter the correct commands to boot to the CD. Using both the "NetBSD System Disk Tutorial", "NetBSD/macppc FAQ" and "NetBSD/macppc 5.1 Install Notes" to learn how to install the software I learned to enter the Open Firmware command prompt by pressing CONTROL-Z when the happy mac icon appears immediately after power on. At this prompt I entered these commands to boot the CD:
0 > boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc
I also learned that I can eject the CD with this command:
0 > eject cd
I can scan a filesystem using:
0 > dev XXXX (i.e., 'cd' or 'hd') 0 > ls
Easy enough! At this point I followed the prompts to create the proper partition and disklabel on the freshly installed disk. I first had to wipe the DOS FAT style partition that was already installed, but that was no sweat.
[There are some other preparatory commands to create the NetBSD FFS filesystem, but I didn't make notes of that.]
Once the NetBSD installation was complete, I was able to boot to the hard disk with the following Open Firmware commands:
boot hd:0,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc
I could have set the Open Firmware environment variables to allow the system to boot automatically, but was not yet comfortable with making these changes. Since I was just running NetBSD as a temporary exercise, I just stuck with the manual method.
24-Nov-2011
After acquiring the installation media for both Mac OS X "Tiger" 10.4 and Mac OS 9.2.1, I was able to attempt a full-up clean installation of both OSs.
NOTE: I made working copies of the installation discs, and the first copy I made (on a PC) of the Tiger DVD was to a DVD+R media. TUrns out that this system's SuperDrive is not happy trying to read DVD+R media, and I had to make another working copy (again on a PC) using DVD-R media. The Superdrive can read DVD-R discs just fine.
I started with OS X, knowing that OS 9 can be installed from within a running OS X system, thereby producing a so-called "Classic" operating environment for OS 9 applications. I was unable to boot from the DVD installation media, however, since the system saw a valid installation (NetBSD) on the hard disk already. I was unable to figure out what proper key combination would force that to happen (later I located a source that suggests that CMD-OPT-SHIFT-DELETE would do this), so I finally allowed the NetBSD to boot to a command prompt. As root I wiped the initial 10000 blocks on the disk using dd:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/wd0c bs=512 count=10000
This, of course, erased the partition table and BSD disklabel. After this, I simply reset the machine and it booted successfully from the install DVD. The installation went without a hitch, quite straightforward. There were no issues that I recall being puzzled by; I simply created a single HFS+ (Journaled) partition on the entire drive and all went smoothly from there.
I forced the system to check for updates and allowed all updates to be installed.
24-Nov-2011
With the basic system loaded, my next step was to create the "Classic" environment, which required that I install OS 9. I simply inserted the installation CD and followed the prompts. No trouble.
I later went into the OS X System Preferences tool, selected "OS 9" and selected the option to "Show Classic status in tool bar" and set "Classic Sleep" to 5 minutes.
31-Jul-2012
Two Apple Pro keyboards (M7803) were found while browsing the University of Utah's surplus store. One is the "Graphite" gray (s/n KY1100C3HK4VC), the other is white (s/n KY3100QKJLZ7A). Each was a mere $5. I picked up the graphite keyboard, so that it would better match this system, rather than the white Apple Keyboard (A1048) (s/n KY5470CYQUABA) that I bought at the same time I got this system, and the second, white keyboard I bought as a spare.
Both keyboards cleaned up very easily with a vacuuming between the keys and then a complete cleaning with Windex on all surfaces and between the keys. There are a few little bits of debris seen inside on the underside, but this is not a big deal for now.
[The following notes were edited on this G4 Power Mac system, and I hope the line endings will not mess up rendering of these notes as a webpage nor give me trouble when I edit them on a Windows or *NIX system.]
07-Aug-2012
Today, another run through the University of Utah's surplus department turned up this nice 22" Cinema ADC display for just $40 dollars. It is a model M8149, has a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1024, and has some very slight screen damage from something being dragged across it. After cleanup and once powered, it is not noticable at all so I'm quite happy with this purchase. There are some permanent red marker stains on the back with the name of the previous owner (I presume) and a small single stroke on the front upper left corner. The marker's solvent has made it impossible to remove, since it has more or less melded with the monitors plastic. Ah, well, should I expect more for a mere $40?
10-Aug-2012
The 20GB drive I started with was getting a little cramped, with less than 5GB remaining after my activities with the system, and I wanted to install a drive with higher capacity. I had just bought three IDE drives from a fellow that I met at the U. of U surplus store who was selling two 40GB drives and one 30GB drive for $5 each. I was happy with that. One of the 40GB drives (IBM IC35L040AVER07-0) is now my target drive, to replace the 20GB drive (WD WD200BB) I started with.
At first I was not sure how to proceed. I installed the larger drive as IDE slave thinking I could just copy the contents from the master to the slave, but when I tried that, the Mac OS X file copy tool complained that I needed to be 'superuser' to copy some files. That got me to thinking that trying to copy the live boot drive was a bad idea.
Scanning the web for some ideas, several people commented on their use of software tools called Super Duper, and Carbon Copy. Surely, I thought, you can make a copy of a hard disk without extra software that must be installed, learned, etc.
I launched the Disk Utility and scouted around in there. Lo! There was a disk imaging tool built in to that! Wahoo! Okay, so I tried, indicating my smaller boot device as the source and the new larger drive as the target. Unfortunately, the tool complained that I couldn't use the boot device as a source device. Aha! I can boot the OS installation DVD and run Disk Utility from there.
Indeed, that's what I did. Now that the small hard disk was no longer the boot device, there were no complaints and in about 30 minutes the contents of the 20GB drive were copied (imaged) to the 40GB drive. Once complete, I powered down, removed the smaller drive, reconfigured the larger drive as IDE Master and fired up the system. It works just fine, with all of my prior software and configuration in place. Nice! Why anyone would need to use these other third-party tools is beyond me.
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