|
CaptainSarcastic posted:
It was usually a bad capacitor on the PSU board. When I started at a production house, on my first day it failed and an hour later I had resoldered a new one in and the bosses saw that I earned my money that week :P
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 05:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 02:05 |
|
|
The problem is, Notebooks are difficult to maintain and just won't last and you may have trouble acquiring spare parts. At least more modern notebooks, that is. Power supply maintenance in these old computers is pretty much always necessary. My A2k I've got in '87 and mentioned a few times in this thread has had so many parts replaced in the power supply, it's just barely original anymore. A well maintained power supply will last you forever though and some of these older power supplies (if put well together to begin with) are very easy to maintain. (If you know how) They're just often pretty wasteful, but well, so is the connected hardware usually. If you collect this sort of thing, usually the power supply is always on borrowed time and replacing it with a modern ATX power supply, while often advised all over the internet, is often not really a good idea as these weren't built for the kind of consumer such an old computer usually is. Modern computers do a lot of point-of-load regulation (generating the voltages that are needed locally right where the consuming components are) and usually only really need a power supply which can deliver lots of Amps on the +12V rail. Older computers sit almost exclusively on the +5V (or +3.3V if they're a little newer) rail which are barely used and usually laid out pretty pathetically in modern power supplies. Even if the ATX spec says something different these power supplies tend to do weird things if there's barely any load on the +12V and can go out of spec on the other rails. Just because you can make the mainboard plug fit doesn't mean it's always a good idea. These newer power supplies which do DC-to-DC conversion for these lesser rails might be a little better for that but they're hella expensive. A PicoPSU or something like that might be a good and cheap option if the computer doesn't need lots of Watts, but for a PowerPC these won't really be an option. Really like the 7600s design, I'm not a big fan of towers. A bit more power wouldn't hurt though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 05:02
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I would love to have my old 7600 (or its successor, the 7300) that I used at work in the mid-90s. It was a nice solid performer, and it had a case design that made my eyes pop: poo poo, you'd love my 7300, I had no idea anyone else gave a poo poo about them. It had a 266 G3 upgrade card, 96meg of RAM, 2 ex-server 10,000rpm SCSI drives, a PC PCI card w/Pentium 100 and a USB card. It's a monster on OS9, and runs 10.3 using Xpostfacto. Pretty loud though, those server HD's howl like banshees.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 05:37
|
|
|
Police Automaton posted:The problem is, Notebooks are difficult to maintain and just won't last and you may have trouble acquiring spare parts. At least more modern notebooks, that is. Fortunately, a slowdown of technological progress and a massive decrease in defects has made two of those problems irrelevant.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 05:41
|
|
|
CaptainSarcastic posted:I had some success running Linux on older Mac hardware, but there are some things which just won't really work, like Flash. You can still get Debian and several Ubuntu flavors for PowerPC machines. If you're putting a GUI on it, you'll definitely want something light like LXDE or Mate. And you're right, a few things (like Flash) just aren't going to happen. I still have an ancient first-gen Mac Mini from 2005. It's running Debian and still works great as a light-duty server at home -- mostly just handling incoming ssh connections plus a bit of torrenting. Every now and then I think about replacing it with something a little more modern, but there's no actual reason to. It's been rock-solid stable for years and years and years. I have to admit Apple makes really good hardware.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 06:08
|
|
|
Powered Descent posted:Every now and then I think about replacing it with something a little more modern, but there's no actual reason to. No idea about the Mini's power consumption but a good reason might be that. Sadly many of these old computers aren't very practical to use in many roles because they just eat so much power, for what some of them eat in a 24/7 setting in a year, you can get something that consumes a lot less power often. computer parts posted:Fortunately, a slowdown of technological progress and a massive decrease in defects has made two of those problems irrelevant. Nowadays? No idea. Notebooks are bad maintenance mojo, as long as they're in that form-factor that'll never change. Already starts when they've got active cooling and pull all the environmental dust in, eventually you'll have to clean that. Most notebooks have a very finite number of times you can take them apart and put them back together until something plastic irrvariably snaps off. The more modern they are, the more flimsy the casing seems to be. These just are not built to last a long time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 06:16
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I would love to have my old 7600 (or its successor, the 7300) that I used at work in the mid-90s. It was a nice solid performer, and it had a case design that made my eyes pop: Wow. That's pretty. What's up with the other 3.5" bay? This came out in the mid to late nineties, didn't it? Who was rocking two floppy drives by then? BgRdMchne has a new favorite as of 06:36 on Feb 21, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 06:32
|
|
|
Police Automaton posted:Nowadays? No idea. Notebooks are bad maintenance mojo, as long as they're in that form-factor that'll never change. Already starts when they've got active cooling and pull all the environmental dust in, eventually you'll have to clean that. Most notebooks have a very finite number of times you can take them apart and put them back together until something plastic irrvariably snaps off. The more modern they are, the more flimsy the casing seems to be. These just are not built to last a long time. You're over-tinkering.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 06:43
|
|
|
a happy snowman posted:Sorry, I used them in several pro environments and when you have extensions up the wazoo and all your publishing stuff deep in the guts of everything (ATM anyone?) that poo poo hard locked all the time. OS8.x was terrible, 9 was a house of cards. BgRdMchne posted:What's up with the other 3.5" bay? This came out in the mid to late nineties, didn't it? Who was rocking two floppy drives by then?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 07:09
|
|
|
JnnyThndrs posted:poo poo, you'd love my 7300, I had no idea anyone else gave a poo poo about them. It had a 266 G3 upgrade card, 96meg of RAM, 2 ex-server 10,000rpm SCSI drives, a PC PCI card w/Pentium 100 and a USB card. It's a monster on OS9, and runs 10.3 using Xpostfacto. Pretty loud though, those server HD's howl like banshees. Aw man, Cheetah drives?  I had one of those in a server. Fortunately I never had to share a room with it.And yeah, drat, those PC compatibility modules. Pentium on a card! It's just like modern virtualization! Except for the part about it being tolerable to use 
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 07:31
|
|
|
I'm Crap posted:you know nothing of pain. 8 and 9 were brilliant masterpieces of the software engineer's art compared to, say, 7.5.3 A friend of mine worked on the QA team during 7.5.3. He says it was pushed out far too early by a clueless higher-up and released only over QA's written and signed protests.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 07:38
|
|
|
I'm Crap posted:you know nothing of pain. 8 and 9 were brilliant masterpieces of the software engineer's art compared to, say, 7.5.3 All the cool kids had external zip drives.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 07:40
|
|
|
Police Automaton posted:What would you Mac specialists say would be a good PowerPC Mac of the 90s? Imagine you had unlimited money. 9500 with the 604e processor, preferably the one with two of em http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/specs/powermac_9500_180mp.html
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 07:51
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:A friend of mine worked on the QA team during 7.5.3. He says it was pushed out far too early by a clueless higher-up and released only over QA's written and signed protests.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 08:01
|
|
|
I'm Crap posted:you know nothing of pain. 8 and 9 were brilliant masterpieces of the software engineer's art compared to, say, 7.5.3 I don't know much about Macs although I have some old 68k ones. Is 7.5.3 the worst release and is that why they let you download it for free?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 08:14
|
|
I'm Crap posted:you know nothing of pain. 8 and 9 were brilliant masterpieces of the software engineer's art compared to, say, 7.5.3 My first machine ran 7.1. Luckily, we were smart at work and skipped that 7.5.x mess entirely.
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 11:59
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Here's another entry from the Apple Hall of Shame: the PowerMac 6100. FFFfffffffffff Used those machines as an undergrad ca 1995. Everyone had their lab rapports on disks, and after writing the entire drat report, time to switch discs and welp there goes the last couple of hours.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 12:15
|
|
|
Police Automaton posted:Nowadays? No idea. Notebooks are bad maintenance mojo, as long as they're in that form-factor that'll never change. Already starts when they've got active cooling and pull all the environmental dust in, eventually you'll have to clean that. Most notebooks have a very finite number of times you can take them apart and put them back together until something plastic irrvariably snaps off. The more modern they are, the more flimsy the casing seems to be. These just are not built to last a long time. If you look at the $249 plastic Best Buy AMD specials, this is true. Look at a real business computer like a Dell Latitude, Precision or similar series from Lenovo, HP etc. and the opposite is true. Metal chassis construction throughout, premium LCD panels and component quality, parts availability supported by the OEM for a minimum of 5 years and then by resellers and eBay for many years later. They are also designed to be serviced in the field by untrained technicians, and most components are accessible by removing 1-3 screws, whereas the Best Buy crap often has 18 screws just to split the case, to make up for the floppy lovely plastic. The AC adapter plug for Dells has been the same since 2004 until today. Clean out the fans, put new cooling paste on the CPU and GPU, pop in some memory and an SSD, and these computers will live forever until you have no choice but to retire them because of the obsolete performance. I am writing this on a quad core Latitude E6520 from 2011 I pulled out of the trash and restored in this way. It has replaced my Sony Vaio 13 Pro from 2014 as my primary computer, simply because it's so nicely built. Edit to add on some more stuff: Older SATA II controllers which you might encounter in older computers do not deal well with SATA III SSD drives, and will choke them down to SATA I speeds. I have saved a bunch of old SATA II 64 and 128GB SSDs just for these cases, since they are faster on these old computers than newer drives. The most infamous example are the Core 2 Duo Macbook Pros with the Nvidia chipset. Also on business computers: tons better keyboards, palmrests made of antibacterial materials, touchpads with real clicky buttons and clit mice. evobatman has a new favorite as of 12:54 on Feb 21, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 12:46
|
|
|
You'd have to handle a $249 notebook very badly for it to not last 4-5 years. (or it would have to have an inherent design/manufacturing problem - which happens) I've got a netbook from what is it, 2008-2009 in almost mint condition and still working perfectly. I'm more talking here about buying old G3 powerbooks used and then intend to keep them as sort of retro machines for many, many years. I would not bother with it, these things will not be comfortably maintainable if they're used in any regular way. Same is true for todays notebooks 10-18 years down the road. You'd be suprised which things become problems on even well-made computers at such a timespan. from connectors to simple power switches. Time is your biggest enemy there.
Police Automaton has a new favorite as of 12:56 on Feb 21, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 12:53
|
|
|
holy poo poo i forgot about this until now who remembers crime fighter? this was probably the one fun game i played on windows 3.1. i was eight or nine, but i could bribe the mayor, steal from banks and shops, buy cool guns and cars that actually had uses in the game, fight people and gangs, mess around with the loan shark, and kidnap children for ransom straight from the playground (  )all in fun little minigames apart from the main map. i know i missed some features. it's been a very long time, but drat that game felt like it had endless crime fun. they probably picked the wrong name... or perfect name? for the game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 13:16
|
|
|
Lufiron posted:9500 with the 604e processor, preferably the one with two of em Did anything much on MacOS even know how to use the second CPU?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 13:29
|
|
feedmegin posted:Did anything much on MacOS even know how to use the second CPU? Avid, a few filters in Photoshop, and that's about it IIRC
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 14:28
|
|
|
The_Franz posted:Oh yes, and since Apple built a whole advertising campaign around the idea that "Macs don't crash" they had no reset button on them. When they did crash, and they crashed a lot, you had to crawl under the desk and pull the plug because the power button was a soft button and didn't work if the whole thing was frozen. I remember using my uncle's brand new iMac and having that piece of garbage crash just from scrolling down a web page. Ejecting a CD on those things was basically rolling the dice too, even into the early OSX years. This is what put me on the bad side of my graphic design teacher (a fat walrus of a woman with a comical "New Yawk" accent) - all because I wanted to eject disks and CDs like you would on any old Windows machine. Nope. Gotta drag it onto the Trash icon first and pray that it ejects without loving itself all the way up somehow. That, and making an incredibly ghetto CD cover titled "Pimpalations." It was the sort of poo poo that would have made No Limit Records proud.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 16:37
|
|
|
The_Franz posted:Oh yes, and since Apple built a whole advertising campaign around the idea that "Macs don't crash" they had no reset button on them. When they did crash, and they crashed a lot, you had to crawl under the desk and pull the plug because the power button was a soft button and didn't work if the whole thing was frozen. So Mac users were too stupid to buy a two-dollar switch to go between the outlet and the plug? You can operate a switch with your foot. LIFE HACK
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 16:46
|
|
|
a happy snowman posted:Avid, a few filters in Photoshop, and that's about it IIRC Didn't 3D rendering software like Bryce and infini-d take advantage as well? In either case the question being posed was the most badass, which I was wrong it's the 9600. Same 604e processor, that was the last old school Mac computer before they started with the G-series.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 16:47
|
|
|
Baddest Mac of that era was the Powercomputing PowerTower - faster than the fastest "official' Mac, sued by the owners of "Nancy", the comic strip, and you could mount your Zip drives and CD burners inside the case like God intended. http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2014/07/we-miss-power-computing.html?m=1
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 18:13
|
|
Lufiron posted:Didn't 3D rendering software like Bryce and infini-d take advantage as well? In either case the question being posed was the most badass, which I was wrong it's the 9600. Same 604e processor, that was the last old school Mac computer before they started with the G-series. Yeah, I'd forgotten. I knew video people but no 3d folks. I had an 8600 for a while, with an UFUW SCSI chain with dual Quantum Fireball drives in RAID 0, with Zip drives for backup. Like I said, the relic is me. I am the relic.
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 22:55
|
|
|
laserghost posted:Worminator? Praise the load that is it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:00
|
|
|
Police Automaton posted:You'd have to handle a $249 notebook very badly for it to not last 4-5 years. (or it would have to have an inherent design/manufacturing problem - which happens) I've got a netbook from what is it, 2008-2009 in almost mint condition and still working perfectly. yeah seriously what the gently caress was up with netbooks, i know of many people who have these lovely rear end EEE PCs that are somehow in good condition and still work just fine for browsing the internet or watching netflix. not all of these people are proven to be good at taking care of anything let alone their consumer electronics so i'm left to wonder if they designed netbooks out of pure unobtanium
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:13
|
|
|
I had a look at eBay and Craigslist today and was happy and surprised to find to find that the current retro gaming and computing bubble hasn't hit the late power pc macs. You can get a powermac g5 (in those mammoth metal cases) for $70-100 plus shipping. Those cases were really cool not just for looks but also the modularity of them with hinges and sliding areas. I'd say the case is worth $70 alone but you also get the guts with it. Cheapest VIC-20 I could find was over $100. About 15 years ago I bought one complete in box for $7 at a thrift store and hit up a local user group to get a VICmodem and a cassette drive for an additional $10.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:21
|
|
|
Turdsdown Tom posted:yeah seriously what the gently caress was up with netbooks, i know of many people who have these lovely rear end EEE PCs that are somehow in good condition and still work just fine for browsing the internet or watching netflix. not all of these people are proven to be good at taking care of anything let alone their consumer electronics so i'm left to wonder if they designed netbooks out of pure unobtanium I'm guessing most netbooks were only ever used about as often as exercise equipment, and when not in use they were small enough to sit safely in between some books. I have one that sits in my closet 363 days out of the year, only to come out when I have to develop something that requires a Windows IDE and I can't make it work in a VM. 800x600 class screens are unbearable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:29
|
|
|
GutBomb posted:I had a look at eBay and Craigslist today and was happy and surprised to find to find that the current retro gaming and computing bubble hasn't hit the late power pc macs. You can get a powermac g5 (in those mammoth metal cases) for $70-100 plus shipping. I've got three of those machines sitting in my attic; they're so badass I can't bring myself to ever let them go. I feel like someday they'll come back into vogue, like the Cylons will be able to foil any technology based on Intel and the earth's only hope is to coax from retirement the last best champion from Motorola. The way those things handled airflow was   Also why the gently caress did it take until this thing for case designers to think of putting the power supply on the bottom 
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:37
|
|
|
One downside of putting psu on the bottom is if you're being dumb and slotting stuff in with the tower upright. Then it's really easy to drop a screw into it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2016 23:40
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Also why the gently caress did it take until this thing for case designers to think of putting the power supply on the bottom I'm currently typing this from my main computer at home, a 2010 Mac Pro, and the power supply is definitely at the top. I don't mind, the unit itself is never too far away from a power supply. Also, goddamn, my baby is almost six years old 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 02:16
|
|
|
Tubesock Holocaust posted:This is what put me on the bad side of my graphic design teacher (a fat walrus of a woman with a comical "New Yawk" accent) - all because I wanted to eject disks and CDs like you would on any old Windows machine. My school had Mac Classics. No CD drive, but the problem was kids would try to put a second floppy in when there was already one in there. If I recall correctly, I think the problem was that they kind of succeeded I think the second floppy would end up on top of the drive?Casimir Radon posted:One downside of putting psu on the bottom is if you're being dumb and slotting stuff in with the tower upright. Then it's really easy to drop a screw into it. Well you just sold me on the PSU being at the top, I don't want to have to make space to lay the case down every time I do something in it! Also I guess PSU at the bottom makes the dust issues even worse if you have carpet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 03:12
|
|
|
Buttcoin purse posted:My school had Mac Classics. No CD drive, but the problem was kids would try to put a second floppy in when there was already one in there. If I recall correctly, I think the problem was that they kind of succeeded Only if you're sitting it directly on carpet, which you shouldn't do for any electronics
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 04:14
|
|
|
And the thing about the PSU in the G5 case was that it was a long, skinny, flat self-contained unit like in a server, in its own segregated compartment. You ain't dropping poo poo into it
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 04:39
|
|
|
drat I might have to snatch up one of these G5s for $100
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 05:54
|
|
|
I'm a little surprised they've dropped in price. Of course they were probably still useful for video editing or whatever last time I looked.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 05:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 02:05 |
|
|
Where I live you can get one for 50$ if you shop really carefully. The G5 doesn't register for me as "retro" TBH though. Lots of the older PowerPC macs like the aforementioned 7600 you can pick up between 10-30$. They were never expensive over here as they were not really widespread and I guess there just is little nostalgia.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 07:09
|
|