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What To Do With an Old G5 Tower?
lunatic1969 writes "I've got an old G5 PowerPC tower that's sitting in a spare room not seeing much in the way of use. I'd like to stick a Linux distribution on it and maybe breathe some life back into it. I've got a few vague ideas — it might be a handy file server, streaming video for a security system, or simply just to have a spare box around. My question is therefore in two parts: First, are there any particularly creative projects or ideas anyone has for an old G5, and second and most important, which distribution currently offers the best support for this box?"
I'm keeping mine around to run games on, especially old classic games that have stopped working under newer versions of OS X or Intel chips. In addition to that, it might go to my photo studio as a browser and photo editing machine.
Hey, I am using a Wind Tunnel G4 right now. It works fantastically well and is lightning fast at running satellite simulations. Faster than my Core 2 Duo PC by a fair margin.
So turn it on when needed, but I wouldn't say it's a waste of electricity, considering it's already paid for.
Apple has done a great job of making XGrid platform independent. If you code with Xcode it'll speed up your compile times. If you do any video rendering, it'll speed that up.
Or toss OS X server on it and use it as a home server (if you continue to use OS X) or Debian
They may be power-hungry (idle power usage is 120-160w depending on the model/year; the later models were more power-efficient) but the G5's had a very impressive memory architecture. That and the G5 processor itself were designed to shovel bucketloads of data, mostly for media. Keep in mind that MacOS resumes from sleep mode very quickly, and power usage in sleep mode is nil. Not great for servers, but great for occasional work with media like photos or video.
Please help metamoderate.
The lack of RAID does that for you.
Plus the lack of rsync to automatically backup everything for you, and the fact that your other network devices cannot easily access it.
There are so many reasons why that can happen though. One of the first things i think of is that your program works well with the cache line size of the G4 (32bytes, i think) whereas the Core 2 is loading up more than it needs when it loads each new cache line (256bytes, i think).
You'll probably find if you make even the slightest changes to the data structure size or alignment in the program the benchmarks will switch around.
In the end CPUs have to be general and there is no doubt that in general the current x86s are faster. If you find the G4 is faster for you well then i say keep using it. It's an exceptional circumstance that you happen to have where your code closely matches the design of the G4.
Bingo.
I had the bottom of the line G5 for a time and had 2 other computers that had replaced it. Between Berkley and Emeryville, there were several studios and colleges for advanced audio. I think I got about 60-75% of what I paid for it. They didn't even haggle (and I priced a bit high for haggleability).
Geez, that is not a G3 Machine for God's sake. It is a workstation which is still used in production environments.
It is supported via OS X Leopard which the Snow Leopard doesn't share the same name just because Apple couldn't find a new cat name, it is because Snow Leopard was _built on_ OS X Leopard. Just like Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista. Of course, Apple did "security/safari/itunes only updates" but, it was their own choice with lots of iPad/iPhone stuff going on. Also you wouldn't want "snow leopard" pure 64bit OS on it since on G5, "pure 64bit" really means "access more than 4 GB on a single application", not anything else. It is not x86 which had "bonus stuff" coming to that archaic architecture which wins because of popularity. I am telling these "karma suicide" things since if you actually go pure Linux, make sure you pick a 32bit distro as "pure 64bit coolness" may&will mean overhead and slowness.
Unless developer is a complete "trendy type", he/she still supports OS X Leopard/PPC since there is no reason not to. Of course, I speak about "native OS X apps", not Adobe stuff coming with lots of Windows/X86 copy paste code. Look to top 10 downloads in various sites, they are all PPC/X86/Leopard+. Tiger has issues since it doesn't have kernel functionality in some cases, like the VLC (I heard it is about threads).
For the people saying "massive heat", "power". G5 in Workstation configuration, idles 37 degrees celsius. How much does your Intel do? SJobs had very valid points, about future of Apple and how IBM G5 (PPC970) doesn't fit to it... But the "heat", "watt" etc. were all misunderstood, out of context. It doesn't fit to portable future (which was proved right), it happily runs on desktop, _still_ with IBM current AIX 7 (beta, massive specs) included.
I owned a G5 1600, moved to Quad G5 2500 so I can keep on PPC arch for a long time (was proved right not to jump to those early Intels), I also got G4 Mini, there are more Intel Macs in house... I try so hard to get "impressed", like Wow factor, when you as Amiga 500 user, run Amiga 4000 first time... Can't yet... As Apple keeps doing crazy things like using core duo in this age, where i5/i3 exists, for a long time, I am staying. If Developers doesn't support? "My" vendors are real Mac software houses, you know the ones running XCode. They still support and unless a real necessity happens, they will keep supporting.
It would be "fun" to suggest some nerd fantasy, some kind of joke but, really if you come to slashdot asking "what to do" with a 64bit RISC processor which, if it was IBM pSeries, would have current OS.... You get it... Check the websites/irc channels you frequent, someone really did some reality field distortion to you.
I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. The Powermac G5s all idle at around 150W, and most used about 600-700W under load. Left idle all year serving files it'll cost $150 a year just in electricity to run... All this for a slower machine than a MacMini, which doing the equivalent thing would use 10W.