For those with a G4 Cube, you can now light it up from the bottom with this little base, on an idea by @xodium :
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6964919
https://github.com/mmuman/cad-retro-parts/blob/main/Apple/Macintosh/G4cube_base.scad
Some real photos here:
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/project-satanicube-or-xodiums-g4-cube-build.4206/
@smallsco@oldbytes.spaceThe new Power Mac 6500, "Miracle" has been moved onto the Tower of Power 
The internal hard drive is truly dead - Apple System Profiler is the only thing that is able to see it. So I connected the 4 GB LaCie SCSI drive up and formatted that to use for now, until I can pop in a new internal drive or a CF to IDE adapter.
There's still a weird problem with the video. Sometimes when I boot the machine, there's no video at all, and I have to power it off and back on again a few times before the video returns. But when it does have a picture, it's stable, and not flickering like it did on the TV or the monitor that it came with.
Finding an install disc to boot this from is troublesome. Most of my classic Mac OS install discs I burned 25 years ago, and turns out they don't work properly any more and just make the CD drive spin up and down a lot (like the 8.6 disc in the attached pic).
Eventually I found the original Mac OS 8.1 install disc from my Dad's old G3, which works, so I'm going to install that for now and see if I can upgrade the OS either to 8.6 or 9.1 later, once I have the machine on the network and can install from there.
@smallsco@oldbytes.spaceSo this morning, I was laying in bed and doomscrolling, when I got a Facebook Marketplace notification that someone in the next town over was selling a Power Mac 6500/275, with a bunch of peripherals, for an _unbelievably_ low price.
90 minutes later I was loading it into my car. 
It's a #MARCHintosh miracle!
Anyway, presenting the newest member of my Tower of Power:
- Power Mac 6500/275
- 128 MB RAM
- 60GB internal IDE hard drive (might be dead)
- 4GB external SCSI hard drive, working (the smaller one in the pic)
- ?GB external SCSI hard drive, condition unknown (the gigantic one in the pic)
- internal ZIP drive
- includes a 10/100 ethernet PCI card
- includes a USB PCI card (probably USB 1.x)
- includes a modem (lol)
- includes an Acer AL1716 monitor
It does have some quirks:
1. I'm not sure what the condition of the internal IDE hard drive is. Apple System Profiler recognizes that there is one installed, but doesn't recognize any volumes, and I can't hear it spin up. Not sure if it's dead or just needs to be formatted. Also the serial number is showing up in ASP as garbage characters?
2. I can't connect the second external SCSI drive because I need to connect the first one to boot right now. Later on I'll see if I can find a bootable CD to get around that.
3. It came with two VGA cables and two VGA-DB15 adapters. One of them didn't work with the monitor at all. The other one worked but the screen would flicker on and off every couple of seconds. So I hooked it up to my TV instead (which has a VGA port). The adapter that "worked" with the monitor didn't work with the TV, but the one that didn't work with the monitor worked fine with the TV. The screen flickered a couple times on the TV, but otherwise worked.
4. One of the plastic tabs on the back used to slide out the logic board was broken off. I was able to get the board out to inspect it using a flat head screwdriver but it was annoying.
5. The case needs a real good cleaning.
6. ASP says that there's no modem installed... but there's definitely a modem installed in the machine. I'm guessing it's just missing a driver or something? The OS install doesn't look complete.
7. Battery is dead and needs replacing. It's a Rayovac 840 so not as simple as swapping one of my MeowToast CR2032 adapters in. Hmm.
Anyway, I guess I have a second project for Marchintosh now. 
@sharewarewolf@bitbang.socialEDIT: It is taken.
#Free to a good home: A Umax Storm Surge motherboard from 1996 with two ASPD slots. This was stored with a note with a question mark. I recognize the handwriting, but have no clue what that's supposed to mean. 
#RetroComputing #VintageComputers #PowerPC #ASPD #PowerMacintosh #Umax #MacClone #MultiProcessor
The only way to burn a .TOAST image is with a MAC? Or do we have an alternative?
I need to burn an Install CD for MacOs 9.2.1 (fr) to restore an iMac G3.
I wrote an extensive article about the Mac Mini G4 as a retro-gaming machine.
For me it is near perfect as it is able to run almost anything from the late 80s up to early 2000s. And it has a very reduced footprint and can be easily plugged into modern display 
This article also expose some technical aspects such as the way PowerPC Mac OS machines could ran 680x0 software and delves into the history of PowerPC until the G4.
https://www.xtof.info/MacMiniG4-the-best-classic-macintosh-for-retrogaming.html
@BasicAppleGuy Aqua was so beautiful at the time! I'm still missing my iMac G4!
@Keldrim@meow.socialpolitics Apple
Wayfarer 9.0 released - a new major version of the only cutting-edge web browser for Amiga-like systems. It runs on MorphOS 
and sports an updated @WebKitGTK engine at version 2.46.5.
This post was created with MorphOS and Wayfarer 9.0.
#Christmas is the time of year for enjoying the classics. And this
Swedish computer game from the mid 90s is one those #classics.
#Backpacker:
Buy a plane ticket and travel to a country. Learn about its history and culture, answer questions about it to earn more money to travel to the next destination.
@Markus@bitbang.socialCelebrating the Apple Xserve G5! 
Its innovative features and exceptional performance make it a top choice - the System X (aka Big Mac :)) Cluster of Xserve at Virginia Tech even made Top 10 of the supercomputer list in 2004.
A nice evening with some #Crémant de Bourgogne and #Warcraft on my "new" #ibook G3
I have such memories of this game playing on my old #386. But I also remember the game taking just a few 1.4MB of ARJ compressed floppies and not 80Mb+ as the Mac version seems to be.
But I should have read mission objectives. Because I have explored the map and killed all the enemies and then later found out that was not the mission.
It's getting cold in the house. Time to spin up the PowerMac G5. 
Fantastic! #TotallyNormalComputing
Booting #MacOS9 Installer from USB, and without even touching #OpenFirmware. I really like the community for this kind of service!
'Mac OS 9.2.2 "boot kit" for booting your G3/G4 from an USB stick' by that-ben on Macintosh Repository just works out of the box! On a #powerpc #G3 #ibook with USB1.
And it was kinda fast to boot and install too. My #Powerbook got some company now!.
@santiago@masto.lema.orgPainter 7, running on Mac OS 9 on a 1.5Ghz G4 #PowerPC Mac Mini from 2005 + an old Wacom Graphire 2.
Not bad for a 19 year old machine. This is surprisingly useable. Excuse the quality of the art. I swear I was better at it in the past century. Holding a phone + a rotated screen + left hand doesn’t make it better …
Considering I once used (an earlier version of) this app on a 100Mhz PC this flies.
#RetroComputing
@colin@colincogle.name@marcan [social.treehouse.systems] That’s unfortunate. Back in the PowerPC days, you could boot macOS from USB or FireWire. I remember when my PowerBook died, I put the hard drive into an enclosure, plugged it into a computer lab Power Mac, and “my” system booted right up (albeit slowly due to USB 2.0 speeds).
#retrocomputing #PowerPC
@kkarhan@infosec.space@koakuma @techokami also #UltraSparcT2 as cool as it was at release (including dual 10Gbit-NICs and hardware RNG on die) has a lot of things noone would want to deal with in 2024 (i.e. DDR2-FBDIMMs).
Pretty shure @stman could write an entire curriculum on why #SPARC, #PowerPC, #s390x and even #ARM / #ARM64 should not be pursued and why #mc68k died alongside the unfixable-by-design mess that is #ix86 & #amd64.
Look, I'd love to get my hands on some Sun SPARC Hardware but aside from making my room hot and noisy there isn't much to justify blowing likely over half a Euro per hour (electricity price: € 0,40/kWh) just to have it up and running, as compared to a #PiCluster like those @geerlingguy had built multiple times are more practical.
And that's just bottom-billing, low-cost ARM SoC tech designed for a price tag (to the point that until the #Pi5 they neither included a power button nor #RTC onboard!
keyboard horror, filth
The perils of buying vintage computers. How do they get like this? #retrocomputing #powerpc #imac #keyboard
@ActionRetro Right now, I can't even get my #PowerBook G4 400 MHz #Mercury to start, even though it worked when I just bought it. I had it in storage for a couple months and decided to play with it again. Have done the usual, reset #PMU removed battery, let charge overnight. I'm planning to sell all my #PowerPC Apple laptops I have accumulated over the years because I sense they don't have much longer live.
