Retirement of a tired Mac G4
Categories: Information Technology, TechnologySo I finally took the plunge and bought a new 20″ Apple iMac. I’ve got to say I love the machine in all its glass and aluminum glory, but I can’t let this transition pass without paying a little homage to my 400MHz Mac G4 tower that has served me so well for so long.
I bought this machine in January of 2000 (my senior year of college.) It has run essentially nonstop since then at any time carrying out some or all of the following duties at any given time:
- Ethernet router
- Wirless router
- Web server (with dynamic DNS)
- UNIX development machine
- MIDI workstation
- Editing short movies
- Rendering of POV-Ray images for Tom
- Countless MAME games
The system came with a 10GB hard drive which I immediately upgraded to 36GB. The initial 128MB of RAM was removed to make way for a couple 512MB chips giving the system a full gigabyte of RAM. Though this mac originally came with Mac OS 9 I was able to upgrade it to OS X, even 10.4 without any problems. Now I don’t mean it ran part of 10.4 or it was in any way crippled. This 7+ year old machine runs the latest OS just fine.
The decision to replace the machine came for two reasons. One, I wanted a machine I could hook up to my TV. Two, when working with large files (high resolution movies and pics from my 7 MP camera) things really slowed down. It was also time for a bit more hard drive space.
So with over 7 years of runtime with, by the way, no maintenance required I can happily retire this old G4 and honestly say it owes me nothing. I only hope the new iMac does just as well.
5 Responses to “Retirement of a tired Mac G4”
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Matt Says:
September 15th, 2007 at 6:26 pmRIP Mr. G4
Jon, I want a new iMac…I’ll hate you until I get one
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Zach Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 9:37 amI have it’s twin, purchased in the same year by the place you worked at the time you bought yours. It remains my primary work desktop. These were amazingly long lasting machines. Mine’s first duty was for student video editing, which meant it go pounded on for the first 3 years of it’s life before living out it’s end with me…
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Tom Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 10:55 amWow, I forgot about all of the POV-Ray rendering that was done on that machine!
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charlotte Salvaggio Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 11:31 amI have an iMac at work and loooovvvvveeee it! I’ve never used anything but macs!
Just got a G4 for home and can’t get the monitor to come on….it’s not an apple flat screen and i don’t know what i’m doing wrong.
c
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charlotte salvaggio Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pmThought I’d let everyone know about whey the monitor wouldn’t come on. The monitor was broken! Got a new monitor connected and it works like a charm! Looooovvvvvveeee my Mac!
