NCD Mac stuff

[MOSHWITZ]

Sup?

So,,,I kinda stepped into a painless local trade earlier today, with a studio owner from Birmingham
( Great guy,, and it looks like he's got a bitchin setup)

and wound up with 2 older Apple G5 powermac dual 1.8ghz and pro tools 8Le + some mastering software on both. they both have the airport cards, and one has an extra Firewire PCI card and a Promise PCI card( which I guess I could add 2 HD's on, and he gave me 2 adapters so I could run 2 Non Apple monitors on each, as he said one of the ports on the vid cards is Apple proprietary.

He sent me these pics, and still had them set up for me to come down and check it all out, and give it all a run through, but I couldn't get all the way down there, so he drove up and met me half way and we just did the deal.

They both have OSX 10.5.8 one has 4 GB of RAM and the other has 2,,But it just so happens IIRC, I have 4x 1GB sticks of Kingston memory that is compatible with this( If I read the spec page right)

Now,, I already have my main D.A.W. rig setup,,,and know these are older computers,,but I have never owned any Apple products and thought they would be fun to make for a couple separate recording rigs to play around with, or load up Synths or Drum software, Etc. and pipe them into the Main rig and it wouldn't put any strain on my main rig.....or whatever else I can figure out what to do with them.


He gave me 2 brand new Wireless USB mice, But I have to get 2 keyboards for them, so I'll have to wait till I can track a couple down on the super cheap
Then I can see exactly what all is on there( he kinda told me but you know,,,,the Short term is usually the first to go)

Anyone familiar with these? or still using them? Were they good for their day? what do you think they would be the best at doing in a studio situation? etc. etc.

Now I don't know dick about anything Apple, except now I have to find a couple more forums to read and learn on, So... Any info, Advice, or whatever would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys.


Not a bad day,,,,,,,for a change:Smug:
MOSHON
DAVE

 

[Code001]

I'm very familiar with them. They were decent computers back in their day, but Apple really took off once they swapped to Intel processors. The main issue with that era of G5s was heat. Towards the end, to combat the heat problem, Apple started to ship their computers with watercooling from the factory. However, they obviously didn't know much about watercooling, and they were very prone to leaking. These were the 2.5 GHz and 2.7 GHz models; not yours. Just giving you some Apple history. Those last gen. G5s lasted about 3 or so years until they made the major switch to Intel. 10.5 had some early blue screen issues, but that was due to some old...something. I don't exactly remember, but it was cleared up fairly quickly. It occurs at login, IIRC. Most programmers/software manufacturers today have dropped support for that OS, BTW. To be honest, I wouldn't use them, but if you can find a use for them, that would be pretty cool.

 

[xTomx]

Go to the nearest Apple Store and check out their workshops, they're free and you'll learn faster than you would do tinkering around yourself.

 

[MOSHWITZ]

Sup?

Thanks for the info. I seem to remember coming across a post talking about some sort of buggy stuff happening in 10.5.

He said he never had any problems out of either one. they were pretty solid and used them for years. just moved on to other stuff, mostly to mobile rec. now.

My main rig, is a Mackie D8b> RME HDSP 96/52 card in an AMD 6 core with 16 GB of ram and 6 1TB HD's( System- Audio- Drum Samples- Synth Samples- 2X storage+ Backup) running 64bit Win7, so I'm not out to replace it at all, or looking to upgrade these or whatever, just having fun and love to tinker with stuff.

The deal was so sweet, I just thought it would be fun to see what they were all about, What they could do/ handle and I'm kinda curious about back in the day when these were the new thing,, what were people pushing them to do. Plus if they work pretty good at doing,,, whatever,, I figure you cant go wrong with extra gear that can be of use somewhere right

I might also have a chance to work out a thing to pick up an old first gen Yamaha O2R, and was thinking about maybe pairing it up with one these to play around with. when I'm done having fun,, I'm sure I can sell the whole thing to some young guys that want to break into recording themselves/ band/ whatever at a great deal for both of us.....or you know,, cash in on the scrap aluminum from the cases


But seriously,, seeing that 10.5 had some weirdness, and pretty much as far as it went on this platform, might it be better to downgrade to another OSX vers.? what OS was stable for these. What kind of programs ran pretty solid on them back then?


As for the nearest Apple store,,it's about 35 Mi. away IIRC( I'm out in the mountains here) so hanging out there is not gonna happen too much

MOSH-ON
DAVE

 

[greyskull]

What I would do with a machine of that age, is to set it up so it's at it's best for the era... e.g. 10.5.8, P.T 7.4 (MAYBE 8) and older plugins like sonnox, MH channelstrip etc etc, then it'll be a great tracking machine, throw in a few UAD 1's which you can pick up for peanuts, and it'll see you fine for mixing.

If you want rock solid, 10.4.11 and PT 7.3 Is bullet proof.

 

[MOSHWITZ]

Sup?

What I would do with a machine of that age, is to set it up so it's at it's best for the era... e.g. 10.5.8, P.T 7.4 (MAYBE 8) and older plugins like sonnox, MH channelstrip etc etc, then it'll be a great tracking machine, throw in a few UAD 1's which you can pick up for peanuts, and it'll see you fine for mixing.

If you want rock solid, 10.4.11 and PT 7.3 Is bullet proof.

YES..this is exactly what I'm talking about

Right on, more great info.

Thanks
MOSH ON
DAVE