Vintage Mac Living

My Incredible $110 Lombard and Power Mac G4 Deal

- 2007.07.11

Hello, Low End Mac readers. It's been a long time!

Has it really been two months since my last article was published? It's amazing how fast time moves.

Maybe I've had writer's block. Nothing in the last few months inspired me to write. I could go on about my car or the problems at my McDonald's, but I really doubt any of you want to hear about about that.

During the last few months I have spent some time upgrading my computers.

Pawned

I got myself another 400 MHz Lombard with a good battery, and I replaced my old Power Mac 9600/200MP server with a 466 MHz Digital Audio G4 (which I must say is much faster at running OS X Server than that 9600 was, even though it had a G3 card). I picked up both of these machines cheap at a local pawn shop.

I have to say, pawn shops sometimes have great deals on used Macs: A local "Jumping Jack Cash" pawn shop had a 1.25 GHz eMac with a gig of RAM in it, and they sold it for $125! Too bad I was second in line. Fortunately I did get the Lombard and the DA G4 together for only $110 - what a deal!

Power Mac G4

The G4 that I got was an amazing deal; it has a Radeon 9000 card, 1.5 GB RAM, a 300 GB hard drive (with an ATA/133 card), and a SCSI card. I went ahead and put the ATA card, 300 GB hard drive, and Radeon 9000 into my G4/733, and now it positively screams.

All I did to get my new server up and running was put the 9 GB SCSI drive from the 9600 in it and load OS X Server on the a spare 30 GB drive I had lying around. So far I haven't had any problems with it at all. It's running so smoothly that I sometimes forget it's even there.

Lombard

The Lombard is a very nice machine, too. It's LCD is bright and sharp, and while it only has 192 MB RAM, the battery still holds a 3-1/2 hour charge.

It definitely isn't the fastest machine on the block, but it does a decent job at surfing the Web, chatting with friends, and word processing. All I need to do is get a WiFi card, and I'll be all set to go online without an ethernet cable holding me back.

Lisa

My Lisa is still doing a great job and hasn't missed a beat. My friends still can't believe that I got it working - and that I have a totally functional Lisa now.

By the way, Ray Arachelian has released the second revision of LisaEm; anyone interested in Lisa should download it. It is much faster than previous versions.

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What a waste! Some schools would rather store old computers than put them to use, 2007.09.12. Denver Public Schools is one example of a school district so ready to buy new computers that it has tens of thousands of old, usable computers sitting in storage.
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Mac of the Day: Mac IIfx, introduced 1990.03.19. This 'wicked fast' 40 MHz Mac trumped the 33 MHz DOS world.
February 14 in LEM history: 98: A perfect compact Mac - 00: Extended computer warranties worth the cost? - Making your PC work with your Mac - 01: Customize Microsoft Word - 02: Quadra revives a passion for computing - 03: Real world performance - DIY Pismo screen replacement - Best Mac for writing - 03: Fastest browser on the Mac - 06: 15" MacBook Pro - Impressions of a newly acquired Lisa - Finding and using free WiFi - Apple should liberate OS 9 - 07: New Mac mini cheaper than upgrading a Power Mac - 08: Falling in love with OS X
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