Crikey! Its been a long time since I've been here!
In my defense, I have been rather busy, with my own production company taking off, it has been difficult to sit down with an iMac G4 and play around with it. But I have managed to play around with some Macs, and even get some new toys :P Since my last update, I have replaced my 2006 Core 2 Duo iMac with a 2007 20 inch iMac, running my servers (until we outgrew them). Now that machine is used for legacy applications (as a production office, we often find the need for some really old version of a Creative Suite application to convert files etc. Last December (2015) I tracked down one of my all time favourite Macs. Though I had an 400MHz indigo iMac G3, I had always wanted a Snow. Though it loses the colour that was the driving point behind that range, I feel it just looked so elegant and charming. You can just about see inside - it looks rather like an eMac, but with those lovely pin stripes on the front! The seller new nothing about it, so I didn't really know what I was getting. Upon arrival came a wonderful, well kept 700MHZ! (top of the line, very rare) iMac G3 with software disk, AND one of my most anticipated Mac Games - Tomb Raider - The Last Revelation. Shipped, it was £30. I've spent more at the cinema, so it was a great deal! A few months back, I also took delivery of a 2006 Mac Pro, Quad Core 2.66 with an ATI Radeon 5770 (a screamer of a card!) and a massive 8gb of RAM. This is really what got me back tinkering again. The older style Mac pro is such a wonderful machine for expanding and playing with. I'm running it with Mavericks at the minute (El Capitan will be going on it at some point) and she serves as a great Premiere Pro/Avid machine for some proxy editing. Very happy with it. My newest addition, and one of my new favourites... I'm typing this page, through weebly, on an iMac G4. Though the G4 is a very popular second hand machine now, the 'holy grail' has always been the 20 inch version. Sold from October 2003 right up until August 2004 (one of the shortest shelf lives of any Mac!), the 20 inch was the most expensive iMac G4. In the latter part of the lifespan of the G4, you'd most commonly find the 17 inch version. The 20 was rather big (like the 27 iMac is today) and the 15 was now rather small, but fine for businesses and education markets. I came across this iMac on eBay, looking for replacement parts for another of my Macs. The price was a little higher than I wanted to pay (and this wasn't a mint in box) but I eventually won it (I was outbid, but that buyer pulled out and I was offered second chance - my only bid on the machine, and the original starting price!). There are some peculiar tidbits about the 20 inch version. Firstly, the base is the same as the 17 inch equivalent, but weighted to stop it falling over! Also, the iMac logo below the front of the screen, has a 3D look to it, like the iMac G5 has on its back, and like the iMac had above it's screen, unlike the rest of the G4 iMacs. It also has a much deeper LCD panel, and the backlight brightness it incredible. There are also some peculiar tidbits about my specific iMac G4 20. I knew, paying half the price of the usual asking price for a iMac G4 20 in my country would have some drawbacks, which I readily accepted to have this in my fleet. 1) the apple pro audio jack is physically broken, but still works flawlessly 2) There were a few marks on the base, but fixed with a magic eraser. 3) This iMac only had around 700mb Ram, but was easily upgraded to 1.5 by just replacing the stick on the base of the machine 4) This machine runs a little hot. Thermal paste upgrade required! 5) the neck works, but is a little TOO stiff for my liking - There appears to be black material trapped in the lower neck connection. Odd, but she seems fine, and I wont be opening that neck.
0 Comments
|
Apple VaultOfficial Apple Vault blog site, with extra iMac G4 goodies thrown in for good measure. Archives
July 2016
|