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Power Macintosh G4 "MDD"

2002

Specifications

History

Purchased from a rando in 2022, this machine was well-maintained and already upgraded to a 500GB HDD and 2GB RAM (the max). There was a shiny licensed copy of Photoshop CS4, and leftover files indicated it was a photo editing machine for a publication of some kind until just a year before it was sold.

@ the Museum

The G4 is kinda the collection centerpiece right now. It's really pretty, I like putting stickers on it, and it's a beast for games. I use it for:

This thing can run Halo CE & Cube 2: Saurbraten wowie! (put screenthots)

Quirks

This is the last Mac to natively support OS 9, which has no support for multiprocessing, CPU power states, or more than 1.5GB RAM. 9 just runs it flat-out @ 1.25GHz, fan blasting, & CPU#1 dead to the world. The last 512MB RAM is addressed but nominally consumed by the System process (insert screenshot). I'm curious why, so pls obliterate me @ this webzone if u kno.

It's difficult to keep cool in the tropical heat. The CPU & HDD cages are cooled by a single fan at the bottom of the case. Leftover heat pools at the top with only the PSU fan to exhaust it. I had to recap the PSU because the caps got toasted. My solution was to replace a PCI slot cover with a blower fan. Some old forum threads show people even cutting fan holes in the top of the case! (put a link to one).

TODO: