Using Apple's Pro Desktop... From 21 Years Ago!

[Music] the mirror door Power Mac G4 is honestly one of the coolest Apple Mac designs but does this stylish Mac from over 20 years ago still have a purpose or does this one in particular that I got for free even work well let's take a look this dirty old Mac was given to me by a viewer here in Adelaide some time ago and I recall them saying something about it not working or powering up correctly and since I picked it up I haven't even bothered to turn it on and of course the most unique design aspect is the mirror the reflection will hopefully look a little bit clearer by the end of this video when it comes to airflow there are these little holes at the front which are quite aesthetically pleasing the back features many more holes similar to the current Mac Pro Design airflow is very important since this Mac features two one gigahertz G4 processors just like the G3 PowerMax that preceded it getting inside is as easy as pulling this lever since it has been sitting in our shed for a little while I opened it up first to make sure nothing was living inside and once again today's video is made possible thanks to Opera the best browser for technology people with built-in AI tools Opera is super fast and easy to download with Advanced features such as a built-in free VPN ad blocker and tracker blocker all enabled with a few simple clicks of your mouse see the latest tech news first Opera browser gives you direct access to the information relevant to your interests watch pop-down videos viewing content while working in other tabs in Windows has never been easier you can also create customize and share the perfect snapshot it's never been easier and if you like making memes you'll appreciate all the templates on offer if you download the Opera browser using the link below AI prompts are built right in and enabled by default if you've already got Opera chat GTP and AI can be enabled in the settings then you've got easy access to powerful AI proms you could ask it to write a song explain Concepts or generate endless ideas make Opera look the way you want to with the ability to easily enable dark mode and even forceful web pages to do the same changing your background is also a piece of cake there are tons of free ones in the library to choose from both animated and static switching from another browser well you're in luck your bookmarks and passwords can be synced within seconds chat while browsing with many different messenger apps built right in so what are you waiting for enhance your browsing experience today with Opera links are in the description below and in the comments if you'd like to try it out for yourself it also looks as if no components are missing there's a hard disk RAM and even one of those little pram batteries that could potentially leak everywhere fingers crossed I plugged it in and the power light briefly comes on and nothing else I unplugged it and let it sit for a bit and try it again this time the power light stays on and the fans spin up after some time the fans Go full blast but still no boot chime and no image on the display I attempted pressing the reset button on the motherboard this had no difference the next thing I tried was removing the pram battery which you should do with ultimax as they can leak then I tried holding down command option PR on the keyboard during startup which is supposed to reset the NV Ram this also didn't make a difference maybe the graphics card is at fault installed is the original 64 megabyte AGP card still no boot chime I then removed all the RAM sticks there appears to be almost 2 gigabytes in total now I was hearing a beeping sound perhaps the problem has been the ram all along and to determine which stick was at fault I began by only using one in the first slot it played out an insanely loud and distorted boot chime I'll take that as some level of success to rule out one of the Sticks being bad I reseeded all of them in the same order surprisingly it played the boot chime perhaps all it was needed was the ram to be installed again most importantly it displayed an image on screen and loaded into Mac OS and since I had no luck signing into any of the accounts I think it's time we wiped the hard disk and put on a fresh operating system I completely forgot that power PC basemax can only run as high as 10.5 meaning snow leopard 10.6 will sadly not work not to worry many years ago I made and install a USB for Mac OS 10.5 leopard it was thankfully detected and this whole process took way longer than it would have fire and installed DVD since this Mac only has USB 1.1 ports two hours later yes back in the early days of computing Apple had little intro videos that played after an installation said the music is definitely copyrighted so I can't play it here as we can see it is indeed the Dual 1 gigahertz model with a decent 1.75 gigabytes of RAM in Australia at the time the 867 megahertz dual processor PowerMax G4 started at a hefty 37.95 ouch now it's time to take the Mac apart and give it a good cleaning the mirror doors do look a lot better afterwards a bit of eucalyptus oil was great at removing Gunk that had built up on the top of the casing thankfully this Mac hadn't been dropped and the casing is in pretty good condition although the top handles do have a slight yellow tint to them likely from UV exposure inside there is a considerable amount of dust the outside is likely as bad as it is due to its sitting for a few years with the outside wiped off I can tackle the interior and take it apart the extra pins from the AGP Graphics slot provide Power to ADC connected monitors powered entirely by the Mac itself getting the motherboard out requires the removal of several connectors along with the large silver heatsink covering the Dual G4 processors there are four screws holding it in place and be sure to lift it straight up and out to avoid knocking it against any of the circuitry both of the CPUs are on a removable card making upgrades to 1.25 gigahertz and Beyond possible a new application of thermal paste will definitely help as these chips get nice and toasty now to remove the main board itself and I wasn't exactly sure what the next step was to take I thought there might be some hidden screws behind the back plastic piece or maybe some screws underneath the side cover which seem to be clipped in place from the inside what I needed to do was actually take out the CPU card which is done by prying up from the back side then this little plastic piece could be removed finally allowing me to slide the board towards the front and lift it out taking off the side panels was my next goal the handle had two screws holding it to the frame then I released these clips in the center allowing us to see the bare metal frame and all its shiny Glory one of the Wi-Fi antennas can be found here they are on the outside of the metal casing for better reception option here's a little tip that sure helped me if the side door closes you can open it without the Latch by Levering the little eject mechanism like shown if you were to ever upgrade one of these Macs it's pretty easy removing drives and components doesn't require a lot of effort and it's likely you'll be able to do it without the aid of a tutorial not only is there room for four 3.5 inch hard disks but also two Optical drives something absent from the G5 PowerMax that only have one optical drive slot in terms of the design aesthetic I prefer the Mirador G4 it's far more fun than the utilitarian metal enclosure that the G5 PowerMax have but if you prefer having a metal enclosure I guess you could just leave the sides off this thing one big downside is that the plastic compared to the metal has a tendency to crack and snap off thankfully this Mac hadn't been dropped and as such the handles and feet are virtually intact one thing I couldn't seem to remove was the back plastic which wouldn't fit over the side door lock thankfully all the other pieces came off with relative ease the mirror doors come off along with the whole front panel revealing a rather Dusty air intake the huge amount of airflow required for the power supply and CPUs means it wouldn't take much for this to become dirty once again and it looks as if all that warm air had at one point attracted spiders here's a nest that doesn't look opened no living spiders thankfully the large fan can also now come out I'm honestly surprised that the fan still works given that it cools most of the system and seems to run at high RPMs all of the time usually I'd also give the casing a good blowout on the table outside but the weather lately has been less than ideal you could say so getting into all the nooks and crannies with a brush will have to do one of the dustiest places is unsurprisingly the big fan which after removing the cover cleaned up nicely with a good brushing there's also a small fan that channels air below the motherboard which was next to clean the foam surrounding it had definitely seen better days it's quite dusty but I'm not entirely sure why it's needed either way I tried my best not to destroy any of the surrounding foam but in hindsight I should have just removed it all one of the main reasons Apple eventually switched to Intel is due to the performance per watt of the power PC processors being pretty bad there's a reason why they never released a G5 powered laptop it would have been a portable heater at least for a short amount of time before it chewed through the battery but Apple switched from Power PC to Intel is not dissimilar to them leaving Intel for their own arm-based processors which require far less power and as a result produce far less heat even though the G4 machines are pretty obsolete these days complete systems and parts do command high prices online so if you do find one of these for cheap Now's the Time to grab it as they are only becoming harder and harder to acquire and personally I think it looks nicer with the case on and there we have it a very clean machine once again let's hope it still works after the disassembly and last of all how could we not install another clock battery a PK cell will do nicely now to make the experience as authentic as possible I'm pairing this Mac with a period accurate ADC display although it seems as if the stand has broken once again I repaired it many years ago but it appears to have broken when something heavy was possibly placed on it it won't collapse thanks to the metal bracket I installed but it seems as if the glue had failed this should hold for now perhaps I'll have to Tinker with it before storing it away again this Mac also has ports for these Apple Pro speakers so our listening experience will be pretty decent now the Moment of Truth does it still work the thunderous boot charm genuinely scared me it was super loud and after a few minutes the display got to a reasonable brightness level and all seemed well pressing this button on the screen will actually bring up the control settings which is pretty neat another surprising thing is updates still being available to download even though Mac OS leopard hasn't been supported for many many years and how about some games Halo Combat Evolved would have been quite popular on Mac back in the day it runs alright definitely doesn't look as good as it does on the original Xbox though another classic game is Age of Empires 2 which runs very well on this machine you can actually easily find this game online for free as abandoned wear web browsing on every browser I tried was painfully slow though but most pages will in fact load to some degree eventually if you know of any browsers that can still play YouTube let me know in the comments below as I try 10 4 Fox and kamino neither of which played the YouTube videos believe it or not there are actually versions of Minecraft that are modified to run well on old Power PC based Max this is very impressive given that this is a 21 year old computer next up a bit of music recording plugging in a USB keyboard Works totally fine in garagebando 9. here's a bit of Ramstein [Music] last of all let's make a little video using this ancient Mac I recorded some footage using my old Sony DV camera so let's take a look at the masterpiece the all-new Power Mac G4 with more mirrors than ever before and a stylish design that you can really see yourself in literally you can even see yourself in the ball speakers that's right get lots of work done lots of productivity with the all-new Power Mac G4 feel the power Mac G4 while it's very much obsolete these days this Mac is still a lot of fun to use and I'm glad to have a Power Mac G4 mirror door in my collection so there we have it the mirror door G4 Power Mac it was very expensive and Powerful at the time but over 20 years later there's not really a lot you can do with it if you're trying to achieve modern tasks but anyway considering that it was free it definitely isn't too bad and I'll likely keep this in my collection thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Psivewri

Views: 119,339

Keywords: psivewri, 4k, eucalyptus, oil, australia, tech, apple, mac, powermac, power, macintosh, g4, mdd, DP, 1.0GHz, 2002, computer, cleaning, cleaned, restored, vintage, old, gaming, tests, M8570, mirrored, drive, doors, mirror, steve, jobs, history, review, cheap, free, retro, desktop

Id: 2a44ayDwMgI

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023