Anyone Playing With Old Macs

Mac
#1

After just reading this topic:

iMac G4 is 20 years old

and playing around with my old PowerBook G3 Pismo last weekend, I was just wondering if anyone is still playing around with any old Macs.

I have my original Mac, a PM 7300 (actually have a spare as well), a PM 9600 (that I got from someone on MacTalk), my Pismo, a dual processor 500MHz G4 (digital audio I think) and a Mirror Drive Door G4. I’m talking about G4 and older here. I believe these are all in working condition. If I do a bit of tidying up I might be able to set a couple up semi permanently. There is still a fair bit of recent stuff on YouTube regarding vintage Macs. Last night I was watching some stuff about old 3dfx Voodoo video cards. The guy was playing Unreal Tournament etc. and it looked great. I had a Voodoo 1 card in my 7300 at one stage back in the day and I bought a couple of better Voodoo cards from someone on MacTalk also which I never did anything with. I’ll have to dig them out and see what I can do with them.

#2

Waits for @Oldmacs to appear… :slight_smile:

I have a few pre G5 machines…

TAM
iMac G4 Lamp
Pismo
Cube
Newton 2000

Might have 1 Clambook too

Only the Cube is in use currently. Have hopes to get the TAM and Cube on some kind of display when we buy our own house this year. Will then decide if I’m going to keep the iLamp or not… I love the Pismo, though if I can get the Cube to run OS 9, I wont have any major reason to hold onto it…

#3

What are you using your Cube for? I remember back in the day you talking about your TAM? To be honest, the only real use for most of these old machines, apart from just tinkering with, is playing old games. I want to get Falcon 4.0 set up on my G4. Let me know if you ever want to sell your Pismo. It doesn’t hurt to have a spare. I just got a Bluetooth/USB 2 PCMCIA card for mine. Works well. Would like to get a wireless card for it too and I’m thinking about putting an SSD in it.

#4

My Cube is used as a live picture frame… and if I ever get my Harmon Kardon speakers working - music too.

Yeah - I think from memory I “found” MacTalk because of my TAM - when I bricked it trying to instal OS X. One day I’d love to try a bit of restoration on it, getting it working properly again… but have no time these days.

I was really looking forward to playing - Puyo Puyo - on my Cube… but then couldn’t get OS 9 to run! Think it’s the Sonnet upgrade card… need to do some research. I know - not the most groundbreaking game - just shareware lol - but good memories.

#5

This looks awesome - as a cool vintage CD player:

#6

I think 99% of playing/tinkering with old Macs is about the memories.

I have 2 or 3 Sonnet upgrade cards. They’re worth their weight in gold these days!

#7

The price is about right from what I’ve seen.

Finally - it’s about at the price I payed in 1998! :slight_smile:

Expensive CD player… I do love the sound it puts out though. Even if Bose has its haters.

#8

I was playing Duke Nukem for a few hours last night. I was a bit rusty compared to the old days!

#10

That’s cool…

#11

The 2009 iMac is a pretty good machine, IMO.

I recently popped an SSD and more ram into my old 24" model for my son. He then somehow managed to make it fall off his desk, and it no longer powers up… :roll_eyes:

#12

I did some tidying up in our garage/shed over the weekend and came upon some interesting stuff. Some of which I thought had been lost or accidentally thrown out. I don’t think any has seen the light of day for the best part of 10 years.

A new (old) PRAM battery for my Pismo. I’ve fitted it but not sure if it’s any good yet. Next thing to try is to re-pack the main battery. Biggest problem is getting it apart!

A couple of AirPort base stations. These both work.

The 3dfx Voodoo video cards that I mentioned earlier in this topic, along with various other old PCI cards. And, get this, an ATI Radeon Mac 9200. I thought I had sold this years ago…

A set of NetComm Powerline adapters that I can’t get to work.

And a whole heap of my old game CD’s and three joysticks.

Hopefully will have time to have a play with some of this stuff next weekend. And there’s still a few more boxes to sort through.

1 Like
#13

I have had success with my Late 2011 MBP 15 which had suffered from the failing discrete GPU issue.

Firstly, I ran a security update which failed and left the machine unable to boot. I think this was because the AMDRadeon3000 kext file was missing from the library folder, - the first “fix” I had been using to get her running again a couple of years ago. This left everything working, sleep, brightness etc. but the machine did still get hot and run the battery down fast.

So, I had to rebuild a High Sierra boot volume on a USB drive attached to my 2015 MBP 13 (which luckily will boot into HS, and hence allow me to make the USB boot drive.

I then used the HS USB to Boot the 2011 MBP 15, and with the aid of the well documented procedures on the web, I removed the GPU kext again, but this time I also disabled use of the GPU by booting into single user mode and and entering a magical command that has lots of zeros, ones and percentage key characters which sets the integrated Intel Graphics to be used instead in the NVRAM.

Another command line instruction loads the kext after booting the machine, which apparently is the key to ensuring the discrete GPU doesn’t idle and drain power. - This is set up as a LoginHook to run automatically on startup.

Then obviously, I used CCC to clone the USB to the MBP’s internal drive system / boot partition.

I have set up a script in the root directory so if I need to reset the NVRAM, I can easily power the GPU down from single user mode with a couple of keystrokes, restating the custom configuration.

And also, should another security update come along, then I will just put the AMDRadeon3000 kext back before running the update. - I also now keep a full CCC backup of the boot drive as well.

Now the machine really just sips power. The ageing 993 cycle battery reports 76% health, but she runs for ages and obviously also just doesn’t get really hot anymore, so the fans spin low. I use Macs Fan Control too and even with conservative settings they still rarely run above 2500rpm.

The machine has an SSD in the SATA 3 drive bay and a 1TB HD in the optical bay using an OWC data doubler adaptor. There is still useful life for a 2.2GHz quad core i7 MBP ! :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:

This thread is also relevant → Ageing MacBook Pro issues

#14

Well, the PRAM battery In the Pismo seems to work ok. At lest for now…

#15

My Pismo’s PRAM battery is… in a box of bits and pieces somewhere. Probably with the TAM’s PRAM battery. :slight_smile: Neither of course holding a charge.

Thankfully both tend to work without issue without the battery, unlike some Macs I’ve had that really misbehave without it.

#16

Generally it seems to be better to take the PRAM battery out if it doesn’t hold a charge. Even if only to prevent it from leaking which can cause a lot of damage.

#17

I want to test these 3dfx Voodoo cards that I found. Anyone know if they’ll work in a Power Mac G4 under OS 9?

#18

My Pismo hasn’t been booted for probably at least 5 years… Plugged it into the 1 working YoYo I have left, pressed the power button, and - chime - started up no problem.

I think I must have prepped it for sale as it’s not set up how I remember, seems to be a fresh Tiger instal, though there’s also a number of shareware games in the OS 9 folder. (Well, that makes sense! :slight_smile: )

Going to show my son Escape Velocity by Ambrosia. He’s been showing me some submarine game from Steam that vaguely reminded me of the good old EV…

Wife’s first comment… Are you going to sell it? Me - No, it’s my Pismo!

On a full charge, the battery lasted about 15 minutes before the computer went to sleep. Better than I was expecting. :slight_smile: The DVD ROM from memory also doesn’t work… but otherwise - seems all good! Can’t connect to my router using the old Apple Card… but ethernet let me hook up and download some more games.

…
I have a feeling the Airport card in the Pismo is dead… think I swapped it out with the Cube’s card years ago… Will have to investigate that a bit more. But once I’ve loaded it up with games anyway - not expecting I’ll be browsing the net with it…!

Just booted into OS 9… Wow, the memories of “Classic”. And so much more viable to play OS 9 games than via the Mac OS X “Classic Environment”… way too laggy.

It’s all really just reminding me I ideally want to get my Cube sorted out to be my “Classic OS” machine. But… that said… the Pismo really does have a lot of charm!

#19

I don’t know if I’d ever sell my Pismo. I still have the original box & everything. I found a couple of old AirPort base stations & set one of those up & wireless works well. Also have a Bluetooth/USB 2 card. I would like to rebuild the battery (it’s completely dead) but it looks pretty difficult to get apart.

That being said, I do need to get rid of some of these old Macs to make some space for other things. I have: 2 PM 7300’s (one of which was my first ever computer); a PM 9600 (which I got from someone on MacTalk; A Dual 533 MHz Digital Audio G4; a Dual 1.25 FW800 G4 and my original 2010 Mac Pro 6x 3.33.
Plus my M1 Mac mini of course.

If anyone has any suggestions which to keep or get rid of I’d be happy for any advice.

Also, I have discovered the 3dfx Voodoo 2 card I have is a PC version. Apparently it will work in a Mac with the correct drivers. Just has 2 VGA ports so I would need to get a pass through cable. I can’t find out what the other card is. It just has one VGA port. I am going to sell the ATI Radeon 9200 as well.

#20

I think the thing about collecting Macs is - whilst you COULD collect what “everyone” thinks is collectable, ultimately it should be more personal than that. If I ever did have space for a display of Macs, I’d want to add a Mac Classic, which I would put above any other Macs of that form factor, yet others would want to go with a 128k, or SE II, etc. Reason being - my first Mac was a Classic! :slight_smile: Of the computers that I have laying around, the Cube is really the only one that was not a daily user. I purchased it purely because I had wanted it from day 1, but couldn’t afford it. (Ok, and I have kept my dad’s old iLamp… cos - iconic!)

I am trying to remember if I had my Pismo battery repacked or not… I know I had the PRAM battery repacked… Was just wondering whether somewhere like Battery World would offer a repack service, though I guess if it can be opened without destroying it, I should look at DIY… especially now I’m really frankly getting excited about OS 9 again. :slight_smile:

–
Under OS 9, the Pismo can’t see my network via ethernet / router… but under 10.4, it can. Frustrating. But, can live with having to restart a few times…

#21

Yeah, I think the hardest thing with repacking the Pismo battery is going to be getting it apart without destroying it! I’ll hang onto the PRAM battery & repack that when I get around to it. It worked fine with the AirPort under OS9 but, to be honest, there’s little point connecting to the internet in OS9.

I bought my PM7300 new in 1997. I upgraded it numerous times & was using it right up to when I bought my last model G5. I had an earlier model Mac Pro then the 2010 model which I would like to hang onto. The 9600 has all the upgrades from the 7300 in it now. The two G4s I picked up along the way. I really like the dual 533. I have OS 10 installed on all of them but the ones previous to the Mac Pro I pretty much just use to run OS 9 mainly to play old games.