Since the last purchase for 3 powermac G5, I was stumbled upon some Powermac G4 for sale online.
I was thinking how cool would it be if I collect all of the full range of Powermacs. I can collect Powermac G3 B&W, Powermac Graphite (Sawtooth), Powermac G4 (Quicksilver), Powermac G4 MDD (FW800), Powermac G4 Cube and Powermac G5.
I won’t be collect every single sub version and just focus on one each for each different casing design.
So back to the first Powermac G4 I’ve found online. The seller initially listed for RM 300 (USD70) initially. Then after a couple of days, I saw he dropped the price to RM 30 (USD 7). That’s a massive drop I asked the seller. He told me that he can’t turn the machine on due to faulty PSU (power supply) hence he dropped the price. I paid and collected the Mac in a heartbeat (I won’t elaborate how long the process was that as he is 400KM away from me. Thanks to the help of a friend in Johor Baharu).
My friend Redza who helped me to collect and safe keeping the Powermac G4 until my visit to JB. Bought his a latte and a cake from Starbucks for his help. We are both Volvo V40 enthusiast by the way.
Nothing came with the Mac. I won’t expect much as I’ve paid only peanuts for it. I didn’t turn it on either as I thought it has been faulty from the beginning. The idea of ordering parts and fixing it was always in my to-do list. But finding a compatible PSU at reasonable price has been proved to be challenging. It would have been easier if the PSU is for newer designs (Quicksilver and MDD).
One day on my long holiday. I thought why not just give it a try?
I plug it to the power source. To my surprise, it powered right up.
The system works perfectly except some complains from the digital audio plug. Other than that it’s a beauty.
It’s a Powermac G4 533MHz. Seems like my lucky day. I thought it was just a 400 or 466 MHz processor before I fired it up.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_533.html
What’s more interesting is that I found this label on top – “MediMac”.
A quick googled shows apparently this is from a secret prototype department in Apple. It could have been a unit shipped to their 3rd party software developers.
http://sonnydickson.com/2013/07/23/the-mystery-of-medimac-apples-secret-internal-support-team/
So far, I’ve been trying to keep it running Mac OS9 for classic Mac Games.
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