Old Mac, new life?

July 15, 2009 8:36 PM

A friend gave me a Powermac G3 this afternoon It's not the fastest in the world, but it has OSX installed 10.4.11. What are some cool things I can do with this machine?

I had an ibook g4 before a few years ago, but I ran over it :( so I do know a little about Apple computers, other than don't run over it with a car.

I would like to do something cool with it, to make it useful in some way. I was thinking of a media streaming server, but it only has a 6GB hard drive installed at this time. I don't mind installing a new one if I can test it for a usefulness factor first.

My setup is this:
XP/Ubuntu dual boot desktop
Win7 laptop
and new/old MacG3

I thought about installing boxee but that's Intel only. Any other suggestions?

I also have an iphone, xbox360 (streaming media through the xp machine), and a wii if any of that matters.

And of course I would like to this without a huge $$ investment.

I'm also an IT student so I really got it to learn a little more about Apple computers and get a little more familiar w/ OSX.

posted by bsexton to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Almost anything. 10.4.11 is only one version off the current 10.5, so you're fine for almost any regular application. You will start to find problems sooner because of the G3-ness, so anything that is Intel-Mac only isn't going to work.

I used a blue G3 tower as an iTunes/fileserver for years and years, I think it ran 24/7 for about five years straight, sitting on the bottom of a bookshelf. Those are very durable machines. (I only replaced it because I accidentally soaked it with a bucket of water -- don't ask -- I had other "old" computers to repurpose). Otherwise it was just fine and snappy enough.

You'll want 512Mb of RAM, at least. It probably does not have TV-out, and it doesn't really have the horsepower to decode/play video very well, so media-player is out, but it'll work well for most other applications.
posted by rokusan at 8:55 PM on July 15

For getting familiar with modern OS/X, just run every application in "Applications > Utilities" and see what it does. You'll recognize most as pretty versions of common Unix tools.
posted by rokusan at 8:56 PM on July 15

Samba server.

Sorry 'windows file sharing' server
posted by pompomtom at 9:55 PM on July 15

It's got Apache installed, so any kind of web stuff if you're interested in that kind of thing? Just turn it on in System Preferences > Sharing if it's not on already. It should have PHP and MySQL as well, though maybe not the most wonderful versions.

And as rokusan says, looked at from the command line, it's roughly equivalent to a Unix box. And if there's anything you'd expect to be on a Unix box but you can't find, you'll be able to install it by means of either Darwinports or Fink.

As for getting to grips with OS X, did you know that apps are really just directories? Right-click on them, choose "Show Package Contents" and all kinds of goodies are revealed. I got frustrated with a menu shortcut in something the other day and I figured out that if I went into the package at Contents > Resources > en.lproj there was a file called "main.nib" I could edit to change how the menus worked.

Which reminds me, you should definitely install the right version of Developer Tools for that OS.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 10:31 PM on July 15

I got frustrated with a menu shortcut in something the other day...

I did that last year, after the FTP program Transmit Command-D disconnected me instead of duplicating a file for the seven-hundredth time. I went in and moved the shortcut from "Disconnect" to "Duplicate" (where it always should have been, WTF is wrong with you, Panic people?)

Realizing how easy it was to change turned me into an elite-hacker-of-my-own-applicashunz, and this can be great fun. So that's definitely a good way to get your head around "How OS X works" at a deeper but not completely geeky level.

Just remember to keep unmolested backups.
posted by rokusan at 11:27 PM on July 15

Router.
posted by stewiethegreat at 12:15 AM on July 16

Put a Sonnet Tempo PCI card in it to give you SATA ports, fill it with inexpensive HDs and make it a network-connected storage array to back up to.

SharePoints will allow you to easily create network sharepoints without having to install Mac OS X Server.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 4:53 AM on July 16

I use mine as an FTP server for my offsite backups of Websites. A cron job on the webserver dumps a full backup of the site to the Mac once a week.
posted by GJSchaller at 6:25 AM on July 16