iMac Update

[ffutures]

The iMac G5 I was given is working - 2gb RAM, 1.8ghz, and now 500gb hard drive. Unfortunately the drive is currently held in by Meccano, not the correct cradle - which also incorporates a fairly important heat sensor - so I've ordered the cradle on eBay. I've also ordered an Airport Extreme card, so the total to get this up and running will be about £35. Apart from that it needs a lot of cleaning - there's grunge which looks like cigarette tar in the internal ventilation ducts, and what appears to be blobs of candle wax and general greasiness on the outside. It'll come off, but I don't expect it to be easy.

What I really need, for this and for my iBook, is the family (multiple installations) PPC-compatible version of OSX 10.5 - not essential, I've put on 10.4 and it works, but desirable since it supports later versions of Safari, flash, etc. that address some of the site compatibility issues I've encountered. If anyone in the UK sees it on sale cheap somewhere please let me know, eBay and Amazon prices are a bit too high to justify the expense. I've looked at using a PPC Linux instead, but I'm really not very impressed with the ones I've tried.

At the moment the plan is to keep the iBook G4 as my bedroom computer if I can sort out its issues; sell the iMac G4, which is a bit on the slow side, more of a collector's computer that a working machine; and probably give the iMac G5 to a niece or grand niece/nephew.

But this will probably be in the New Year, really don't want to mess around with courier companies etc. at this time of year, and to be honest I don't WANT to sell the iMac G4, it's so pretty.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind temporarily considering me part of your family that would be great - I'm seeing the Drop-in version on Ebay but the suppliers are all in the USA which isn't ideal, especially at this time of year. If I could do this now I can wait to buy a legit family pack if one comes up cheap.

Or if you don't want an arm and a leg I would be happy to buy it from you.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think 'mates rates' would be £60; plus you might need to lend it to Alex McLintock at some point -- who I have offered a couple of times to put Leopard on his PPC but he hasn't got round to taking me up on the offer.

The non-family-pack one is currently available on Buy-it-Now *right now* for £35 -- as the only difference between the family pack and the non family pack is the sticker on the box saying 'family pack' (and, originally, a sheet of paper specifying that it was five licenses), that might be a good option for you.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MAC-OS-LEOPARD-Installation-Disks-/111533476937?pt=UK_Computing_Software_Software_SR&hash=item19f7e9cc49

I can't sell you mine for that because I know the magic words you have to put into the title string to get your copy to sell for stupid money ("operating system").

You can also get (fake) Leopard on a USB stick very cheap but I wouldn't recommend it; it's famously difficult to write Leopard to a DVD, and PPC Macs will not boot from USB.

I wouldn't recommend install disks either, though they do sell quite handily.

For reference, my favourite search string for finding leopards on eBay is "leopard -snow" in category Software.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - £60 is a bit more than I really want to spend on this, and I've just found a couple that are still at low prices on ebay, so I'll persevere there, see if I get lucky.

One thing - are the versions sold as Macbook install disks a complete version, or are they machine and processor specific?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Later - turns out that CEX shops have this for £30, I'll use that as my fallback if all else fails.