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What to do with my PowerMac G5

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Kombi Garage

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Oct 22, 2023
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7
Hi there,

I'm wondering, apart from storing my PowerMac G5 in the basement, what can it be used for? I also have a Power Macintosh G3 and an older iMac that are just sitting around. What are some options for these to make them useful?

Cheers,

Joe
 
1. check out Leopard Sorbet, a tweaked version of the last version of OSX that will run on the G5 and possibly the others as well.

2. There are Linux and BSD operating systems that will run just fine on those as well.

There should be both VLC and MPV (video and music player software) that runs on both OSes for movie or music purpose, and you can always use SSH, Telnet, RDP, X11 remote etc. to connect to a server that is more powerful, but displays the results locally.
 
MrImprovement said:
1. check out Leopard Sorbet, a tweaked version of the last version of OSX that will run on the G5 and possibly the others as well.

2. There are Linux and BSD operating systems that will run just fine on those as well.
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Thanks, I'll check that out 👍
 
I would recommend heading over to Mac Rumors and asking the PPC forum. Those guys are very knowledgeable about keeping these old systems useful.
 
I second the MacRumors recommendation. If you're into making music, Logic 8 is as capable now as it was 15 years ago.
 
Instead of storing it in your basement, enjoy it while you can, because many models of the G5 are hideously unreliable. The logic boards on the early G5s are notorious for failure due to ROHS solder. The power supplies are also notorious for failure due to bad capacitors. Trying to repair the power supply can end up killing the machine, because to get the PSU out of the machine, you have to damn near strip the thing down to the rivets. Just flexing the logic board slightly can kill it by cracking random joints on the board from the terrible ROHS solder.

The later liquid cooled model has problems with the coolant failing on some of the units and causing thermal death.

Once you find a place to set the machine up, I don't recommend touching it or moving it.
 
I would like to stand this question on it's head... what CAN'T you do with your PowerMac G5?

It's a pretty short list: [1] the web and [2] email (because it includes so much web content).

Before anyone says it, I agree, you can't take advantage of all the IOS-friendly enhancements that have figured so prominently in recent macOS releases.

But everything is else... just as capably done on your G5 as on your M3. And simple Google type queries... the combination of Sorbet Leopard and the (still under active support!) AquaFox browser has made browsing the web from your G5 quite feasible once more (I have been using this combo for two weeks now - I speak with some real world experience).

Your G5 can never again be your "main machine", but it can get darned closer!
 
mac57mac57 said:
I would like to stand this question on it's head... what CAN'T you do with your PowerMac G5?
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- Run modern software.
- Run x86 software without slow emulation.
- Heavy multitasking.
- Not expect the machine to survive long term with the known hardware faults.
- Not drawing enormous amounts of energy, producing tons of heat and being super noisy.

Considering my G5 is dead as a doorstop, it will never be any machine again. But even when it did work, it was a pain to do anything on, even under Linux which did have modern software available.
 
No arguments with much of the above. The PowerMac G5 is NOT a new machine, so it's won't run the latest software, but it will DO most things with earlier software. For example, with Office 2008, there isn't a whole lot that I need to do that I cannot do with it vs. today's subscription-based Office 365. Office 2008 has the added bonus that I OWN it outright; no darn subscription fees.

The PowerMac G5 WILL do heavy multitasking! Heck, a humble 8086 will too... all that is needed is a multi tasking OS and Mac OS X is just that.

As to longevity, the fact that we can talk about this 20 years after their market introduction speaks volumes about longevity. These are demonstrably long-lived machines. I have 2 G5s; both are solid workhorses. One has been an internet-visible Gopher server since 2015. It is reliable and dependable.

Yes, these older machines draw more power than one of today's laptops - no argument. But I cannot characterize them as noisy. Do they make a perceptible noise? Yes, but it is low except under heavy load, when the fans ramp up to keep the CPUs cool.

Perhaps it is just nostalgia, but these are fine old machines and very capable. Except for web based banking, I do pretty much everything else on my G5.
 
Kombi Garage said:
Hi there,

I'm wondering, apart from storing my PowerMac G5 in the basement, what can it be used for? I also have a Power Macintosh G3 and an older iMac that are just sitting around. What are some options for these to make them useful?

Cheers,

Joe
Click to expand...
Well, i've got a G5 Quad and i built Gentoo Linux on it^^ It's a lot more stable than Debian (half the times i tried, the installer would freeze) and a lot of modern software runs just well... though it is obvious that it's not optimised for big endian ppc XD
There's also Arch Linux which works pretty well, and also OS X has tons of great 2000s apps for all sorts of purposes
 
NeXT said:
The licensing system is so evil that only an Amiga-centric mind could come up with something so stupid.
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Unless I'm missing something, it looks like the license is a one time fee per machine that's not transferable? That was pretty standard before all of the subscription cancer came arount.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Unless I'm missing something, it looks like the license is a one time fee per machine that's not transferable? That was pretty standard before all of the subscription cancer came around.
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The whole existence of the OS revolves around Amiga drama. Don't ever pay money for Amiga-centric software.
 
You can still demo it for free. If it isn’t your thing, that’s okay. I didn’t find it particularly Amiga drama ( I was never an Amiga person) but it is an intriguing OS nevertheless. I wish it ran on something more modern hardware-wise, for sure, but it does provide for an environment unlike Linux or MacOS and has a modern-ish browser and email client and active development. If it’s evil simply because it isn’t free, well I guess it’s evil? But it seems like you can transfer the license to another machine, which given the hardware it runs on, would probably be necessary.
 
resman said:
You can still demo it for free. If it isn’t your thing, that’s okay. I didn’t find it particularly Amiga drama ( I was never an Amiga person) but it is an intriguing OS nevertheless. I wish it ran on something more modern hardware-wise, for sure, but it does provide for an environment unlike Linux or MacOS and has a modern-ish browser and email client and active development. If it’s evil simply because it isn’t free, well I guess it’s evil? But it seems like you can transfer the license to another machine, which given the hardware it runs on, would probably be necessary.
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That's pretty much the way I see it. No disputing that the Amiga scene eats its young and moans about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean useful things haven't emerged. MorphOS is fast on the hardware it supports and obviously some support is better than no support (Mac OS X) if you don't want to run *BSD or Linux. I don't think it's utterly undeserving of its cost.
 
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