Forum :: Lounge :: The Best Things in Life are Free...

Just had this baby given to me. Absolutely Free.

It's a Power Macintosh G5. 1.6GHz IBM PowerPC 970 "G5" Processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive. When these came out in June 2003, they were one of the worlds fastest personal computers. They didn't hold back in building them, every circuit and chip was tuned to get the most out of the G5 CPU. It runs hot and uses a ton of power. The case is 5mm thick arc welded aluminium and weighs accordingly. It has 9 fans, 4 over the processor that can displace two pressurised jets of air (enough to blow the papers off the other desk from 3 to 4 meters away) from the back of the case when running at full speed.

I've seen plenty of fast computers, but none as tough as this one.

Only problem is the Logic Board (Motherboard) is shot. I've already found out which component has failed and i'm already in the process of repairing it, currently waiting for the tools to arrive. Once it's running I can probably increase the memory and install twin hard drives in it for some extra capacity.

To top it all off, I got a free LCD with it as well. 17-inch LG Flatron LCD Panel with VGA and DVI inputs, works perfectly.

How awesome is that?

While we're here, what crazy and somewhat awesome things have you managed to score for free? 

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)

duuuuddeeee ur soo luckkyyyyy i need one of those so i can run my studio smoothly

For free? Nothing that awesome. Only a torn-up couch that sat in the rain for a day before I picked it up. It works fine and is actually comfortable, but I don't even want to think about where it has been or what its been through.

I can think of two things I've gotten excellent deals on. The first being an AM/FM analog surround sound receiver - Stereotech model 1200, including a bunch of audio equipment and two tall speakers for $10 USD at a yard sale. Everything works, and I've used it as a sound system consistently for 6 years without any issues. The sound quality is incredible. The pictures are the actual equipment I got. The other equipment included an old knob radio, CD player (early 90's so it's huge), and professional tape recorder but I don't have pictures of those.

The second thing would be this projector for $150 dollars from work. It had a completely new bulb, and the image quality is fantastic. So, not quite free, but still a fantastic deal considering replacement bulbs run from 200-400 dollars.

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class EOSERV {
Programmer | Oldbie
Open source EO Client: https://github.com/ethanmoffat/EndlessClient
};

Well without my parents paying.. Junk. The best things in life cost money.

I have about 10 free computers here, all Mac, 3 of them running Intel Core processors, some iPods, studio speakers, tons of power supplies, LCD panels, processors, memory, hard disk drives (I have at least 6 Terabytes of storage here), graphics cards, wireless cards and routers... I had to pay for my MacBook and 24-inch iMac though. Cost very little though (they were broken, I fixed them up over a weekend).

I do a lot of computer repair work though and some electrical rework (motherboard repairs, power supply repairs, etc) with a turnover of about 1500 machines a year so it's expected to get some scrapped machines coming through from time to time that only need very minor/free repairs.

I get a lot of useless junk as well. Anyone want an Acer Celeron? Neither do I.

I love being able to pay for something nice and new and shiny, but the freebie pickups are sometimes the best, especially when they still have decent performance and a strong resale value, you can turn that free computer into free money very quickly.

We won't even get started on the "love is free" thing. Beautiful as it may be it can be costly.

Now, I wonder if I can turn this G5 into a server somehow... IBM Power4 with RAIDed 320GB drives, 4GB RAM, Dual NIC and BSD/Mach UNIX sounds awfully tempting...

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)

Truly a legend in personal computing. Despite my dislike of Apple's business "choices" this is a great looking design (copied by many) and a milestone for geeks as we allstarted to dream of 64-bit computing on our desktops =D

@Cheddarchees. I hope to God you don't mean that. This was powerful in it's day but is easily out performed by cheapcomputers these days =P Also, by "studio" I assume that's just a trendy word for "bedroom" and not some real multimedia creation hub XD This computer has massive amounts of internal digital-analogue crosstalk making it horrid for studio work =S

@iMac err.. I mean sblord (force of habbit =P) as horrid as this sounds.. Gut it and make an x86 Mac with the looks of a G5!

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Sordie posted: (2nd Dec 2011, 08:59 pm)

Truly a legend in personal computing. Despite my dislike of Apple's business "choices" this is a great looking design (copied by many) and a milestone for geeks as we allstartedto dream of 64-bit computing on our desktops =D

@Cheddarchees. I hope to God you don't mean that. This was powerful in it's day but is easily out performed bycheapcomputers these days =P Also, by "studio" I assume that's just a trendy word for "bedroom" and not some real multimedia creation hub XD This computer has massive amounts of internal digital-analogue crosstalk making it horrid for studio work =S

@iMac err.. I mean sblord (force of habbit =P) as horrid as this sounds.. Gut it and make an x86 Mac with the looks of a G5!

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)

sblord posted: (2nd Dec 2011, 09:23 pm)

Sordie posted: (2nd Dec 2011, 08:59 pm)

Truly a legend in personal computing. Despite my dislike of Apple's business "choices" this is a great looking design (copied by many) and a milestone for geeks as weallstartedto dream of 64-bit computing on our desktops =D

@Cheddarchees. I hope to God you don't mean that. This was powerful in it's day but is easily out performed bycheapcomputers these days =P Also, by "studio" I assume that's just a trendy word for "bedroom" and not some real multimedia creation hub XD This computer has massive amounts of internal digital-analogue crosstalk making it horrid for studio work =S

@iMac err.. I mean sblord (force of habbit =P) as horrid as this sounds.. Gut it and make an x86 Mac with the looks of a G5!

I hear these days it's the single most sought after case for PC Modders, if only for the strength and appearance. I've seen these things fall down flights of stairs and still power up afterward, save for a few dents and scratches, maybe a broken handle. Indeed it was also possibly the earliest64-bit mainstream personal computer, and it could run 32-bit extensions (drivers) and applications in parallel, which was impressive in itself.

It has definitely been superseded performance wise though. Geekbench gives it a benchmark score of around 1000 points. In contrast the MacBook i'm typing on now benchmarked at 3200. Its direct successor, the Mac Pro starts at 8800 and goes all the way up to a massive22,500 points. Even Apple's cheapest computer, the Mac Mini, manages to score 5800. Sordie is also correct, certain models of the Power Mac G5 had analog ground loop interference issues making them useless for audio work, but this one doesn't seem to be within the affected range.Using Optical Digital Audio In/Out (SPDIF), built into the machine, also helps to alleviate the issue somewhat.

I considered stripping the machine out and installing a newer Core i5/i7 system in it, but I would like to try to make the standard Apple board work first. It almost wants to start, i've managed to make it run a few times with some trickery and isolated the fault down to dry solder joints, soit's not too far gone. We'll see though, a decent Intel/AMD board with an impressive liquid cooling system would look fantastic inside this enclosure.

Finally, believe it or not Sordie i've added another username to that seemingly infinite list, much to Sausage's dismay. Sblord is only still active because I can't change it, so i'm fine with whatever you want to refer to me as. :)

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Sordie posted: (2nd Dec 2011, 09:30 pm)

hehe I'll try to get back on IRC sometime if only to e-hug you all =P *spooky music* but who shall I be? Sordie, Cut, Aranka, Sassy, Seesor? ;]

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)

Mic: You have amazing luck. Congrats!! don't break it..

Sordie: I'll be looking forward to seeing you on IRC, "protector" ;) =D

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"Natalia"

Haha, thanks Natalie, but the reason is free is that it doesn't work. Unfortunately it's not repairable either. The entire motherboard has a curve in it. Impossible to straighten out.

Either I get another board or I part it out.

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)

I have to admit that the case design on that is awesome, apple has always been good at that. But you can't say this was one of the most powerful desktop PC's when it came out, I bought my 2 GHz athlon around the same time as that.

Good find though, I never find shit like that :P

We used to have spring cleaning around here, where everyone put their junk out on the sidewalk and in a week it was hauled off. I found loads of good stuff from that. I found a great soldering gun, and plenty of computer parts ripe for the picking. However, for some reason we don't have spring cleaning anymore. I think the garbage men were complaining that spring cleaning was too much work :(

addy posted: (7th Dec 2011, 01:03 am)

I have to admit that the case design on that is awesome, apple has always been good at that. But you can't say this was one of the most powerful desktop PC's when it came out, I bought my 2 GHz athlon around the same time as that.

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EOSERV.net Academy Of Trolls, Satirists & Sarcastics
5.5 Years Former Site Administrator / Moderation Team / Member (Retired)