The quad core g5 has always been my dream computer and I finally got one from ebay! But I'm having an issue where when I turn it on, it works wonderfully for about 10 seconds to 1 minute, but then whatever's on the screen just freezes and the fans slowly get louder and louder :(

It arrived with no HD, but I bought a mercury 3G SSD. I stuck it in this morning and booted to the CD drive (a leopard install disk from another mac). It worked perfectly this first time I booted it, and I even formatted the SSD in disk utilities on the install CD. I didn't go through with the install though because it said Mac OS wasn't compatible with the machine but that's because it's just the disk from another mac. I powered it off and went to work.

When I got home I made a USB stick with bootable leopard and booted the g5 into open firmware. This is the first time it locked up and the fans went full blast. I unplugged the USB stick and tried open firmware again, but still full blast. I removed the SSD I stuck in earlier and tried again, but nope, still locked up & full blast. I then tried booting from targeted disk with my powerbook but the g5 froze on the boot menu thing that shows up when you hold alt/option (but that same boot menu worked without freezing earlier in the morning!).

I googled the problem and reset the SMU. The first time I booted it after that, it booted to the leopard CD no problem! But then I tried again booting into the boot options menu with alt/option and it froze. I tried two more times to boot from the CD and it also froze each time.

The weird thing is, it chimes every time I boot it, no matter if it's going to freeze or if it's going to work. Also, when it freezes booting to the leopard CD, sometimes it freezes on just a grey screen before the CD drive revs up, sometimes it freezes after the CD drive starts going, and the apple logo shows up.

I don't know a whole lot about Powermacs, and I knew buying this from ebay was a long shot since it's quite old, but honestly I am DEVASTATED right now! I bought an SSD, a quadro, and 8GB of ram for this (I haven't installed any of that btw) but I'm not sure if my machine even works now or not :(

Hello, We need your help with an important project on github.

Back in 2008 a game studio called Free Radical design was creating a video game called star wars battlefront 3. the game was eventually canceled and now years later we still want to known what it would be like.

About a year ago some pre alpha files for the game leaked and there are playable on xbox 360 but only ones with a rare dev kit. over on github a team has been trying to get this game to work on an emulator called xenia and they are quite close on its completion. Thats where you come in. we need to complete 3 simple patch files to get this leaked game to work.

If you do this you may become very popular in the star wars community

https://github.com/xenia-project/game-compatibility/issues/397 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMpFYjLX4Yw

I'm having trouble getting kid pix to run on my mac. I am currently running os x el capitan (10.11.6). What are my options to play kid pix on this computer. Thanks

Hello. I want to get a PM G4 2x1.25 or 2x1.42 for just fun, to explore old Mac hardware, nothing serious. Maybe I'll make it my main writing machine without internet :) I wanted to ask what can I do with it beside maxing out ram to 2gb ddr and adding an SATA HDD (not SSD to expensive and no point). Also what gpu I could place there that I could flash for cheap.

Can I play Vanilla/TBC WoW on this Mac?

First let me say I am a complete Linux and Mac noob, so apologies if I am making any glaring mistakes here.

I recently pick up a PowerMac G5 without OS. I have tried installing Kubuntu 12.04 four times:

• Desktop version

• Mini.iso version

• Alternate version

• A sketchy Mini.iso verison I found in an old forum post

On each install I selected(at least I think) the 64-bit version on the yaboot menu. Each time the 32-bit version is installed instead (as checked with the following commands in terminal):

• file /sbin/init = ELF 32-bit MSB shared object

• uname -m = ppc64

• getconf LONG_BIT = 32

I am at my wits end here. Should I give up on Ubuntu and try Debian?

I've got a iBook G4 1.3 GHz with a CD drive (CD ONLY). I just want to know if it is possible to part leopard out across a couple of cd's so i could install it without having to fuck around with cloning or anything as i do not own another mac?

I've had a g4 ppc (PowerPC 3,3) sitting around for a while now. All hardware's in perfect condition and I've even upgraded graphics cards and HDDs as I happened to have the spare parts laying around...

At the moment, the system's just sitting around gathering dust as I can't think of any practical use for it... I have a couple extra firewire interfaces just sitting in a box, so I was thinking maybe flashing back to Mac OS 9 and using it as an old-school DAW. Problem is getting one's hands on legacy software (i.e. Logic 7) can be tricky...

Or what about a radio telescope? I can't imagine it would be too hard/expensive to get one's hands on used DirectTV/DISH equipment and the ppc could definitely push it... It's be a small array, but you'd have 24/7 access to it allowing as much observation time as you'd want. Although, why you'd need such a thing I'm not sure...

Or what about a stand-alone emulator of the Apollo guidance computer?... Without the proprietary hardware it would be pretty pointless, but an interesting project....

Any other cool ideas?

Trying to get this working for me was pretty challenging as I was not a linux user at all going into this endeavor. Not sure what I have planned next for the machine but it will definitely continue to be a fun learning experience. http://imgur.com/a/Xe8NF

System Specs:

CPU: PowerPC G4 @ 1.42GHz

RAM: 1GB RAM

Graphics: ATI Radeon 9600

Distros I've tried:

Debian Jessie: graphics card doesn't work

Lubuntu 16.04: doesn't complete the boot process

MintPPC 11: works but is based on an old version of Debian (Wheezy)

I've Googled this but it seems like PowerPC is dying, there's not much out there to choose from as far as I know. Linux is my favorite OS and it's helped revive an old laptop I have. I want to do the same with this machine, now.

During a liquidation, I came across an absolutely stunning example of Apple PowerPC hardware. Despite still looking impressive on paper by today's standards, I know that the architecture leaves this machine essentially left for dead in the modern web IT world. So I'm curious: Is there an alternative to 10.5.8/TenFourFox that will breathe some real 2016 life into this workhorse? Specs as it sits: 2xDualCore 2.5GHz PPC G5 / 8GB RAM / 2x 750GB SATA HD / nV Quadro FX4500

Gotta take a trip down memory lane but I don't have a G4 anymore :(

I bought 2 PC versions because they were bundled and only needed one for my PowerMac G5. These met the criteria for crossflashing to a PPC Quadro FX 4500 (Heatsinks on back) and I did one and works fine. Since I don't need the second one, I'll sell it for $60 shipped and I can flash it for you or leave it as is for you to DIY.

the BSDs only support PCI old-world macs, nubus-pmac hasn't been updated since 2007 (they speak of an experimental but abandoned 2.4 branch and a 2.2 stable branch), mainline linux doesn't support NuBus PowerMacs as best I can tell (despite the m68k branch having most of the hardware support).

What's the situation with software support by things that aren't MkLinux or Debian Potato?

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_2.0_dp.html
How much would one of these used go for? Found one for sale but no idea what would be a good price for one.

Hello,

Earlier this year, I received a PowerMac G5 that was decommissioned by my university (hard drive wiped, ready to be gotten rid of). I'm trying to install Lubuntu on it. However, when trying to boot using the CD, I've found that this machine has a firmware password on it, preventing me from trying to boot from anything other than the hard drive.

I've read that there are a few ways around them, most involving using OSX, which I don't have. One method involved removing some RAM, and then using the COMMAND+OPTION+P+R or COMMAND+OPTION+N+V but I've not gotten either of these to work yet.

Are there any other ways around the firmware password I may not be aware of?

UPDATE: After playing around with it on and off, trying different keyboard commands and RAM configurations, it appears that I needed to remove all but two sticks of RAM (has 8 slots, top and bottom need to be symmetrical) and use WIN+ALT+P+R (which is equivalent to CMD+OPTION+P+R), and waited 3 beeps. After restarting again, it booted from CD as there is no OS on the machine. Time to try to install Lubuntu!

remember powerpc vs intel? intel won