MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
This is one for the guys that have been using OSX a long time. I've been using OSX since the move to Intel happened, though have had a couple of brief forays with PPC units before, but don't know how to do what I want to do...
Basically, today very generously when I told a lady who was asking me about Mac's "don't throw it out, it might be worth something" I got given an old G4 Power Mac.She was just going to take it to the tip, but offered it to me for free instead! Bonus...
So here I sit typing on it now, it's a 2001 Quicksilver machine, with a single 867MHz processor, a Zip Drive, a 60GB IDE HD and 640MB of RAM (upgraded from the 128MB it was shipped with). And it all works very nicely, having been upgraded from whatever version of OSX it shipped with (10.1 or 10.2 I assume) to 10.4 Tiger...
The first problem I have is that I would like to update it from 10.4.3 which it is on now, to the latest version of Tiger, 10.4.11. But... The user account is password protected, and she didn't give me the password, and I'm not likely to ever see her again sadly! Is there any way to get round the password protection at all, so I can update the machine and other software on it? Or do I have to start again? Which then poses another problem, as I have no install media with it at all... I'd need a copy of OSX Tiger from somewhere, just so I could do a fresh install, and that will cost money on ebay... (Anybody got a retail copy of Tiger kicking about they want to lend me for a few quid, or even sell me for not very much?).
The other problem is compatibility with newer things... Now this machine has two USB ports (1 not 2) and 2 firewire 400 ports, and that's it. Obviously I could buy a PCI card with 4 USB slots on it, but if I buy a USB 2 PCI card, will the machine support the USB 2 speed on those slots, or would it throttle them all back to USB 1? And what about Bluetooth? Any way of adding Bluetooth into the machine without going down the route of a USB bluetooth adapter?
Basically, before anyone tells me to stop being nostalgic, and throw it in the bin, I actually have a proposed use for this machine. I'm skint, so is my housemate, he doesn't have use of a computer right now, he needs only basic uses from a machine such as internet, email and MS Office use (it has an old version of Office still installed, Bonus!). It could sit in the living room, plugged into a big telly, where he can then use it very occasionally when he wants to, with a wireless keyboard (if I can get bluetooth on it). I want a media streaming machine, mainly for music and internet radio but occasional ripped DVD's too (ripped using a modern quad core machine mind), and again this would serve a good purpose there. If I can sort it out cheap!
So... Can anyone help at all? Anyone got a copy of OSX Tiger kicking about? Anyone got any PC133 SDRAM (512MB chips preferably) they no longer need? 🙂
Just a quick thing to try..... it might be they didn't give you a password because there isn't one, try leaving the password blank and hitting return.
As for many of your other questions (and seeing as everyone else is asleep just now) you might find some useful spec info on [url= http://lowendmac.com/ ]http://lowendmac.com/[/url]
Just a quick thing to try..... it might be they didn't give you a password because there isn't one, try leaving the password blank and hitting return.
Already thought of that one... No Joy... Tried probably 50 common passwords too, to see if any of them worked... 😐
Just having a good look around on that lowendmac website now... cheers
Just done a search, hope this helps...
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1274
or
http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/10/forgot-mac-password-how-to-reset-mac-password/
HTH
You can reset the password with the install disks (which you say you haven't got unfortunately) I think that the disks from that era weren't machine specific like these days. I might have a backup set of disks - ill check for you. The USB2 card will work fine, in put one in my Mirror door dual 867mhz. Bomb proof machines from those days!
It will be fine for simple computing and browsing
Mboy. I might have a copy of Tiger at work. Will check today. May even have a USB 2 card.
Defo don't bin it. I'm running a PPC Mac Mini to serve databases containing well over 4.5 million records to the interweb. It's fab!
Re the password - i did come across a site with a solution for reseting it but can't remember it now.
Do you have root access?
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_reset_my_mac_os_x_admin_root_password.html
Can you run leopard?
Might be able to help. (G4 Mirrored Drive Door model here)
Oh yeah - and mine has a PCI USB card in it with an internal usb port - stuck a tescos bluetooth dongle in and it works fine. Speed should be USB2 level.
Cheers for all the help so far guys, will try all the suggestions out ASAP.
Technically the machine will run leopard, which I have an install disc for, but it is bang on the min specs required. I'd rather a machine that ran slowly in Tiger than barely ran in Leopard, if you get me... It doesn't need to be bang up to date or anything, just to do a job.
Also, it's already got an old 2004 copy of dreamweaver installed, which I fancy having a bash with.
Cmd-S at boot time should bring you up into single user mode.. I think you can then reset the password (at the command line type "passwd <username>" (without the quotes and replace username with the name of the account on the machine).
This is from memory.. but it should be covered in the links to Apple knowledge base articles above.