How many have a Powermac G5?

Just bought a dual G5 to replace a 700MHz eMac, so obviously I'm far from the bleeding edge... I don't see myself needing to upgrade in the next 3-5 years (unless I get filthy rich in the meantime).

I don't even have a G4 yet!

Dual 1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 purchased new - August 2004. Still running strong 5 years later as my daily Mac.

I don't anticipate needing to upgrade until the release of Mac OS 10.7 - and then I'll just hand it down to my Mom (currently on an iMac G5 1.8 GHz single processor).

If it counts, I have an iMac G5, and the last time I bought a real mac was back in 2005. Old iBook G4 that I destroyed, I have never purchased one of my more recent macs.

how much further can ANY software company go with OS's... I mean really OS's are ment to RUN programs...

Look at some people who are still running OS 6 on a mac classic or a SE/30... 7.5.6 on a performa.... 8.0 on a 9600....look at os 9.2.2 I have that on my AIO and it is fast and snappy and it runs the internet VERY well...and people are happily running and doing pretty much the basic tasks that people with 4K machines are doing...but doing it on 15-20 year old Macs...

If you figure that out you know how much money they saved not being into LAGS? ALOT.....

It's just like little johnny needs a new computer so mommy and daddy buy him one and 3K monster just to write emails and play a game....Duh!!!

Man I remember when I was younger 16 (in 1982) and if I asked my parents to buy me a computer,,,, they would of said, "Go Get A Job" and save up for it... Not today, parents give their kids everything and the kids "don't have to save up"...

it's funny I was thinking people upgrade color classics (I had one) and they run the internet or word, excel... and actually the startup's of the old OS's are so much faster because of the fact there is no BIG requirements on overhead, like there is now...

what's next in 10.7? just an update... just like 10.6 is... companies look for the bottom line, making money, apple is not different...

Then apple will release 10.7 that can run NATIVELY on PC's and the Mac machines will be so much cheaper B/C of that... That will cheapen Apple So much in my opinion... but they make more money on iPods, iPhones....

Bleeding edge... not me... I bought a few NEW macs and tell you the truth the used ones worked out better...#1: cheaper, #2: can run all the apps everyone else can, #3: Did I mention it was cheaper, more money in MY pocket. not corporate...

Don't get me wrong, I Love Apple, I work on Macs and PC's (for 17 years) and I hate PC's..... Like I say to People PC's S*ck!!!!!

And some people say it's a status thing... not to me... PC's just S*ck!!!!!!!!! all around.... Mac's rule!!!!

To add to my original post:

I will be upgrading to the 8-core Mac Pro when I finally retire my G5. I fully expect 6-7 years of continuous service from such a machine.

I got a Dual 1.8Ghz G5 w/ 1GB (4x256MB) RAM and a 160GB HDD off of Craigslist for $240 (was 280)

Runs great. Did a few upgrades. Swapped the 160 for a 1TB Green HDD (Western Digital) and threw in 6GB RAM (4x 1GB and 4x 512MB). Also swapped the DVD-+RW for a faster one (4 speed DVD-+RW Before, 16x now w/ DL burning).

Also swapped the video card (AGP 8x Pro GeForce 5200GT w/ 64VRAM for a Flashed GeForce 6200 w/ 256MB GDDR2 VRAM)

Rocks now!

To add to my original post:
I will be upgrading to the 8-core Mac Pro when I finally retire my G5. I fully expect 6-7 years of continuous service from such a machine.

Click to expand...

Well, when you retire your G5, they may be up to a 12-core Mac Pro. (See http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3645, "Gulftown")

Speed is of coarse the driving factor for most using the Mac Pro. I think the loss of PPC support will eventually get a lot of people to move on once Apple stops releasing security updates and whatnot for Leopard. Also, I would bet that many developers are going to quit coding PPC software here very shortly as well. Adobe is one of the big ones for sure. You also have to keep in mind a lot of Mac Pro users aren't just buying a $3000+ system to watch YouTube. Many of these people are professionals who use the computer to make money, so they need faster Macs that run newer software. Many of these people got rid of their G5's years ago. The pro user is more likely to upgrade more frequently than the guy who buys a budget Mac just for home use.

I bought the last of the G5s, a dual core with 7800GT and 2.5 GB of RAM when it was brand new.

It was a great machine, but with the switch to Intel suddenly $500-1000 worth of PC parts made a much better Mac than you could buy from Apple. I sold it last year and have been using a Hack as my main machine ever since.

I hopefully can keep my G5 for a long time, I Love the design.... simplistic and tough...

I recieved my Mac Mini from Ebay Mini 2009 model and it seems that my G5 is just as fast, my info is in my sig...

Can you imagine if apple ever went back to PPC Chips.... PPC IS faster than intel X86... If there was a NEW PPC chip for Mac in 2009 it would be alot faster...

Think of this...

If the G5 Chip had 4MB Cache per core.... how fast would it be? FAST!!!!!!

I think the main problem with PowerPC is that the G4 was stuck at around 1.6 GHz, and the G5 was just too hot and power hungry to ever put into a laptop.

the reason why Apple didn't keep going with the G5...


There are 6 parts to it...

in the end it's Jobs that said "Apple And Microsoft need each other"

Dual 1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 purchased new - April 2004 IIRC. Upgraded to 1.5 GiB and OS 10.5, still going strong. I hope to upgrade to a Mini next spring/summer, but that may not happen.

Still going strong, why get a mini?

a newer vid card for the G5, more memory and a faster HDD... come to about 250.00 and more speed...

That is what I did and my G5 screams... 16GB ram the max in the machine, ATI X1900 and 2 HDD's with 16Mb MB and one with 32MB cache...

I would not switch to a Mac mini:

- slower, more expensive hard drive and more expensive optical drive (if you ever want to replace it)

- only one HD and one optical drive

- non-upgradable non-discreet graphics card

- non-upgradable CPU (the newest ones do not use a socketed CPU anymore)

- hard to upgrade memory

- lower RAM ceiling (maybe your processor is fast enough, but you run out of memory)

All of these things lead the Mac mini to have a much shorter useful lifespan. The Mac Pro (or G5) can be upgraded and last a lot longer.

While the G5 can still be useful, there's already an OS and software it won't run. The Mac Mini is faster than his G5. The MacPro of course would be a lot better but it's 4 times the price of the mini.

Yes, the hard drive in a mini is slow but it still boots faster than a G5. It would have been nice if Apple had made the case slightly larger and fitted a 3.5" drive. Still, plug in a FireWire 800 drive and boot off it and you'll really see the G5 look sluggish.

While the G5 can still be useful, there's already an OS and software it won't run. The Mac Mini is faster than his G5. The MacPro of course would be a lot better but it's 4 times the price of the mini.

Yes, the hard drive in a mini is slow but it still boots faster than a G5. It would have been nice if Apple had made the case slightly larger and fitted a 3.5" drive. Still, plug in a FireWire 800 drive and boot off it and you'll really see the G5 look sluggish.

I have a 7200 rpm drive in my G5 and it boots Leopard faster than my 5400 rpm MacBook Pro boots Snow Leopard. I can plug a new SATA drive in 5 minutes and get 150 MB/sec. With the mini you can plug FW800 and get 80 MB/sec or spend half an hour to replace the internal hard drive.

A Mac mini with an SSD might be cool though. Use the SSD to boot and have all your apps and everything and use an external FW800 for bulk file storage and backups. Mac mini has 300 MB/sec SATA so it would be fast.

and are you going to move to Macpro..?
do you see benefits of ditching your machine in favor of a macpro (besides speed)...?

How often do you buy Mac's?

Jim

Click to expand...

Hiya Jim.

Actually I have an MacPro '08 first and recently I'd acquired a PPC G5 - i know that's not normal... lol

Usually I'll buy a Mac when I discover there's something I need... could be a speed bump or a dedicated machine for a simple task..

In this case, I just need a machine to download stuff. The G5 was cheaper than a MacMini.

The Powermac G5 is no where near obsolete...

I use my PMG5 more than I use my new Mac mini...

it is snappier than the mini...

Don't get me wrong the mini is great but I prefer the G5.

And I finally aquired a PCI-E WiFi card to replace the USB WiFi, the PCI-E is alot faster than the USB and it came with 2 antenna's and it's a B,G and N card.

that is one of the most unfair comparisons ever...

"snappier..."

let's see.. you have a VERY modern, fast, high cache 1TB 3.5" drive in the G5...

16GB ram...

and you're comparing it to a 120gb laptop drive in a 2gb ram equipped system...

that mini will school the g5 in calculations hands down, but your over-equipping a horribly dated system with an absurd set of upgrades.. then comparing it to a stock mini.. big surprise what's faster...

this isn't even bringing into play the fact the g5 has a dedicated video card and the mini has integrated graphics.. on the upside, your x1900's shader level is pitiful by comparison, but ohhh, you're comparing apples to sour grapes since it can't run directx games anyway...

let's also take into consideration system cost... that G5's config would have been well over 3-4000$ easy when new given that ram alone (i'm out of touch with apple pro workstation prices)... and a mini is an entrylevel system priced and build from componets at a cost to the consumer of.. 600$?

edit:

as for being obsolete.. that g5 is long past obsolete.

will it run most modern Apple "PRO" apps, for which it was designed? NO

will it run current operating system from ANY vendor? NO

will it connect to modern display technology? NO

will it waste more power booting up that that mini will consume running all evening long? YES

edit x2:

now, this doesnt mean the g5 is a bad machine per se, just that it's NOT a viable example of modern computing anymore. as such, you should feel proud to have one fo the fastest "vintage" macs out there... but you, and a number of other users dead set on the superiority of ppc need to realize that the rest of the world abd apple has moved on, and if you can't jive with the fact that apple doesn't make computers the way you like them anymore (read; hot, loud, and ppc), perhaps you need to either not buy another computer again and figure out what you're going to do in 20 years when the g5 gives out, or deal with the fact that you're on unsupported hardware from this point out, and apple and the rest of the entire software world who have been waiting for 3+ years now for apple to kick the ppc's out of their support lineup, so that we can finally have an os optimized to MODERN cpu's, really don't care about a single thing that's going on in the legacy ppc world.

You know, there is a *big* difference between 'being obsolete' and 'being usable'. The G5 is very obsolete in computing terms, but its still usable

I typed up a big long post, and the forum software ate it, and I don't feel like typing it again.

That's fine, I didn't have time to read it anyway

It was something like this:

1. obsolete - who cares

2. pro apps - only recently, and the older version doesn't become invalid and worthless upon release of newer version

3. yellow dog linux

4. define "modern display technology". exists DVI > HDMI and DVI > MiniDisplayPort adapters.

5. concession on this point - G5 eats a lot of power

Thanks for the abridged version... I'm totally with you on points 1, 2 and 5. Don't know about 4 (I thought DVI was current technology), and I'm not going to say anything about Linux since I'm perfectly happy running Tiger, which IMHO is the best modern OS I've ever used.

For: Defor:

You can say what you want that is your opinion and that's fine.

But my point it that I don't have 3-5K to keep up with the LAGS (Latest and greatest Syndrome) I have more important things in my life like my 3 yr old daughter than to worry or spend money upgrading year after year.

My post about the PMG5 being snappier, yes it is so what?

My PMG5 runs everything I need to pro apps included... Do you upgrade Hardware and software every other year?

There are alot of people who cannot or will not upgrade year over year B/C technology changes so much that one can go broke keeping up, do you upgrade your car every 2 years? does it stop working after 2 years, after 4 years?

I have been in the I.T sector for 17 years and even companies that have DTP and web designers are still running G5's and cranking out work, some are running G4's also and they get the same results.

There are people running older versions of Office, photoshop on Color classics, 6400's, 6500's, PM G3's, PMG4's and getting the same results albeit slower.

Games are another story..

OS'es... one does not need to upgrade to the newest os'es everytime a new one comes out, why would you need to? 10.5.8 is fine for my PMG5. There are some features that were taken out from 10.6 that I do not like..

The upgrades to my G5; well it's maxed out, I won't run out of memory, the HDD's are fast I need to get a 1.4 TB hdd for the 2d drive bay to replace the 400GB B/C I need the space; and the graphics are fast, not the up to date but the machine as a whole is fast and I like it, works for me and that all that matters.

That beats the heck out of shelling 3-5K for a new machine.

It eats power... well so do G4's also... My PS in this machine is 600watts... ok the mini eats up 100 watts... the mac pro eats up; "Mac Pro 980W Power Supply"

My Dual 2.7 G5 is more than powerful enough for what I do - lots of CAD, some 3d rendering and light photo and SD video editing. So far, I see no reason to upgrade to an intel system, there are no killer apps that are intel only and I have an intel hackbook for the rare occasion I might want to run an intel only program.

I can't afford $5k every two years or even $10k every four just to keep up with apple's latest and greatest, and it doesn't seem necessary.

My only complaint is that the G5 is a space heater (idle temps around 51 degrees C), so I have to run AC more often than I'd like... but I don't expect a similarly specced mac pro to be any better.

Ok, so in this thread or another one I said I sold my G5 and bought a Mac Mini... I was NOT impressed with the Mini.

People said it would run circles around the G5, Somethings it did somethings it didn't.

And snow leopard, yawn.... just an update....

So I recently bought off of ebay a PMG5 2.3 Dual core for 460.00 + 45.00 shipping.

I know the debate about the latest and greatest but I have all of the software I need and quite frankly I do not need the LAGS...

I sold the Mac Mini and turned a profit.

Call me nutty but so be it....

Repairs by Model

Overall average: 23% repaired

Overall Standard Deviation: 0.059 (moderate variation between models)

Least commonly repaired model:

11% Power Macintosh G5/2.3 Dual Processor [Apr 2005 to Oct 2005]

Most commonly repaired models:

32% Power Macintosh G5/2.0 Dual Processor [Jun 2003 to Jun 2004]

29%

Power Macintosh G5/1.8 Single Processor (2nd Version) [Oct 2004 to Jun 2005]

27% Power Macintosh G5/1.8 Dual Processor [Nov 2003 to Jun 2004]

Highest first-year failure rate:

26% Power Macintosh G5/1.8 [Jun 2003 to Nov 2003]

22%

Power Macintosh G5/2.0/PCIe Dual Core [Oct 2005 to present]

Component Failures

Overall component failure average: 2.7%

Standard Deviation: 0.022 (moderate variation between component types)

Most commonly failed/least reliable components (>1 STDEV above average)

Logic board

Least commonly failed/most reliable components (>1 STDEV below average)

Airport, airport antenna

What is everyone's opinion about what I did?

My opinion is two things on what you did.

1. Great listing. I wish we could get access to all the models of this type of data to know what to look out for etc when buying old machines. I know I'm going to take into account that #1 rating for the 2005 model G5 unit as the better unit. At least if I'm reading that 11% means 11% of all the machines you repaired were that model, and NOT 11% of them were fixable...Does that make sense?

2. Thank you for understanding what Standard Deviation is and how to use it properly.. That's one of my pet peeves at work. BRAVO!

I would not switch to a Mac mini:- slower, more expensive hard drive and more expensive optical drive (if you ever want to replace it)

- only one HD and one optical drive

- non-upgradable non-discreet graphics card

- non-upgradable CPU (the newest ones do not use a socketed CPU anymore)

- hard to upgrade memory

- lower RAM ceiling (maybe your processor is fast enough, but you run out of memory)

All of these things lead the Mac mini to have a much shorter useful lifespan. The Mac Pro (or G5) can be upgraded and last a lot longer.

Click to expand...

I disagree. You don't need to constantly upgrade a machine to have a longer useful lifespan. We have PowerMac 9600s which have had the same configuration for ten or more years which are still used occasionally as Avid ABVBs.

Each machine is targeted to a different thing. One could equally argue that a Mac Pro or PowerMac G5 don't make good post-apocalyptic machines because they're not portable and they take too much power, but that argument hinges around whether people care about usability after the apocalypse. Same with mini versus tower - you might care about the number of hard drives, and you might want to swap out the optical drive, but most people get what they need and that's perfect.

As far as the graphics and memory are concerned, the graphics are pretty decent (much better than the Nvidia 6600s and 7300s that come in the last G5s and early Mac Pros), and 8 gigs is as much as the pre-PCIe G5s can take, so that's hardly a point in favor of the towers.

Anyhow, how upgradable are the processors in the G5 towers? Sure, you could swap out a dual 2 GHz CPU card for a dual 2.5 GHz, but it's a TREMENDOUS amount of work, and the cost makes it not really all that worthwhile. On the other hand, if you wanted, you could pull the motherboard of a Mac mini, buy a mobile Core 2 Quad, then send them both off to a facility which does BGA to have them swapped.

My point is that it's really hard to say what's important to most people, and if you make examples which are very atypical, others can also make counterexamples which are atypical.

At work we still have a quad G5 and a dual G5, and we still get a good bit of Avid and Final Cut usage out of them. We also set up Final Cut from time to time on an Nvidia Mac mini. None of the machines is obsolete, and none is not useful.

I disagree. You don't need to constantly upgrade a machine to have a longer useful lifespan

Click to expand...

well the examples you gave for what is still working for you is a bit of a narrow spectrum

Its like saying my 87 oscilloscope is still doing its job fine so why should anyone need to upgrade to a newer / better / faster model

it totally depends on what your going to be doing with it, back to my scope it serves it need for me fine, but its near worthless in modern times

I'm still waiting for prices to come down more. I'm not buying a G5 unless I can get a quad core and even though they are at the lowest levels ever, I still think they have a good deal to drop before they become collectibles and start disappearing from the market.

In what ways, specifically, did the G5 outperform the mini? I don't think anybody actually said that things which were completely disk-bound would be better on a mini, although I do remember saying that 2.5-inch 5400rpm disks aren't bad, as I've been using them in my main computer and haven't felt the need or desire to upgrade to faster ones. If disk performance is absolutely the limiting factor on your use of anything other than a G5, then the only upgrade I can recommend is either switching away from a Mac where you can get an inexpensive, low power consumption machine that can hold 2 3.5-inch SATA disks, or a Mac Pro.

That having been said, I envy what must be the prodigious amounts of spare time you've got , because I would never have found the time to switch my main computer not just once but two or three times in the span of a year. I'd gotten a new PC laptop in January 2009, and it has been my main (almost my only) computer ever since. The only thing I've really done to disturb the machine's continuous availability was to upgrade to Windows 7 -- which was a process that took me nearly a month in terms of planning so I could get it done as quickly as possible.

Owning a recent computer does not qualify as LAGS. It would qualify as such if, with said computer, you were indeed compelled to continue upgrading it or replacing it for whatever reason -- which seems to be what happened, admittedly.

While the mini isn't as visually robust as a PowerMac G5, I have a hard time thinking of ways in which it is actually less capable at anything. The HDMI input/output adapter from blackmagic design (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/ ) is one legitimate need for a Machine with slots, but PowerPC systems aren't supported, "yet" which means it's unlikely to be. However, the blackmagic design USB video input adapter ( http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/videorecorder/installation/ ) doesn't specify whether or not it requires PowerPC, but it's also likely to work very well with a Mac mini or iMac.

(Note: There are a few other more expensive cards that do work with the G5 -- but if you do any work that would require one of these cards, you probably either already own one, or are paid well enough to be able to justify the purchase price of a Mac Pro in order to take advantage of the additional speed and capability so you can do more of this work so you can get paid more.)

But like I said, you never specified what type of work you are/were doing with the machine.

And so, for me, $460 would go into a new 2009 Mac Mini.

I got my dual 2.5 LCU G5 for $20 (well, more like $40 after the repairs were made to the LCU) as a replacement to my trusty old 9600 and I love it.

lots-o-ram, lots-o-disk space, okay video card and a fibre channel card thrown in just in case (as well as all the other usual internal goodies) and running 10.5 makes it one of the most awesome macs I have ever owned. I only wish I had the 30" cinema display.

While the mini isn't as visually robust as a PowerMac G5, I have a hard time thinking of ways in which it is actually less capable at anything.

Click to expand...

GPU power is a big one if HDD access doesn't count.

G5s went up to 7800GTs, with slightly better models than that flashable too.

The mini only goes up to an integrated 9400 even in the brand new models.

Yes, the mac mini uses an IGP, no, I have never heard anyone say that most average use is worse for it.

The GeFORCE 7800 is ancient. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the 9400m could outperform it when you gave the mini 4 gigs of ram (so it can dedicate 512mb of the memory to the IGP)

Plus, as it has been mentioned before, many of the very latest software titles do not run on PowerPC macs, including Aperture -- which was the one thing hanging on for PowerPC, from Apple. Adobe's Creative Suite 5 will not run on a PowerPC system, Snow Leopard, which I would consider important due to security updates it probably has (like, Leopard's Java will never get updated, and there are some pretty serious security holes in there.)

My question stands: What are you doing on a PowerMac G5 that legitimately extends beyond the capabilities of a Mac Mini or even an iMac, but for which you can't justify spending the money to upgrade to a Mac Pro?

*(Keep in mind, I'm using what is today a midrange PC laptop, more or less the equivalent of the mac mini, but with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and battery built in.)

The GeFORCE 7800 is ancient. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the 9400m could outperform it

Click to expand...

actually it right up kicks a 9400m in the ... if on similar setups, at best a 9400m is on par with like a 7600LE performance and design wise

according to "pass mark" benchmarking software for pc (never used it) a 7800GS is nearly 2x as fast a a 9400m

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

while I wouldnt claim that myself, it is pretty dramatic

actually it right up kicks a 9400m in the ... if on similar setups, at best a 9400m is on par with like a 7600LE performance and design wise

Click to expand...

http://hwbot.org/hardware.compare.do?type=gpu&id=681_1&id=1239_1&id=1233_1&id=1074_1&id=1361_1&id=1480_1No 7600LE on that site though, just Go, GS & GT.

a 7600LE is a 7600 with about a 25% clock reduction, half the feature count, and a narrow memory bus width, its along the lines of a MX setup but with newer generation technology (we used to joke LE stood for looser edition)

I have a agp 8x 7600GS on my now spare/bench machine (paired with a 2ghz single core amd 64 and 2gb of 400mhz ddr1 ram), and it can run something like need for speed carbon, a middle age xbox360 title at 1280x1024 and more detailed settings than the console version over 60fps

but my mothers 9400m laptop, more cpu, more ram, can barley run it on lowest res and lowest details above 10fps

would that matter to anyone if its not doing 3d, well no, but at the same token we have pretty much mastered and maxed out 2d video years ago, and things like hardware HD decompression are already started hitting things like netbooks, and was fairly standard in the upper end geforce 6 + desktop model systems

so if you want a web browser, media player, and general butler, it doesnt matter... if your concerned with power, yea the higher end 7x series will whip the crap out a low end mobile series any day of the week, if you want to start talking about 7800GT vs 9600GTm then there is a debate

Glad I bought the 7800GT for my BTO quad then.

I don't have a G5 yet, but I hope to within the year.

The main thing which kept me away from the was reliability, many more G5 PSUs, boards, and processors cooked themselves to death compared to other mac towers. Now that a lot of iffy machines have burned out, and they are passe enough for the prices to crash, it's getting to be about time for me to score one of the multi-core PCIe boxes. Why? Because I have a huge investment in PPC software, much of which will never make it over to intel. I can buy a decent G5 for $300 if I am patient, which is a lot less than it will cost me to upgrade my software. Getting a mini is a joke to me for multimedia work since I can't install a video encoder card, multiple ethernet cards, SCSI, more RAM, choose my audio and video interfaces, etc.

My strategy is to keep frozen systems for specific software. Just like I keep a MDD and TiBook for crucial OS 9 apps. I will also keep a last-era G5, probably with both a 10.4 and 10.5 partition for my final 64-bit PPC setup. Why screw around with an emulator is the real thing is easily available? I also have a NuBus PPC stashed away for use with certain hardware. I have a tower with special Windoze 98 hardware and software for when I need those. I use an ST Mega4 for older software which won't run on my Atari Falcon.

I just got my G5 a few months ago. It's a single 1.8 Ghz. I got it for $125 to replace my aging G4 Digital Audio 733. The SATA card in my G4 wouldn't allow the system to sleep properly - which isn't an issue in the G5. So, now I'm also saving a bit on my electric bill, because I leave it on all the time as a file server. I just use wake on LAN to access it when I need it.

I use an ST Mega4 for older software which won't run on my Atari Falcon.

Click to expand...

Brother Atarian! I have a Falcon 030 but my best ordinary ST is a 1040STF. I'm trying to track down a TT/030 but they are always like $500-$1000 when they come up on ebay.

I almost got that ST/ game console thing forget off hand what it was called, when it first came out, but I was shopping for a video game console and ended up with a genesis, other than that I have never seen a st in RL, I have seen a 400 tho

I have an 1040STE with an external hard disk. I wish I could say I use it frequently, but it was sort of an impulse buy. Maybe when I get my music studio set up, I'll dust it off as the MIDI controller.

I also have a STacy, which only partially works, and is the world's most benighted thing to disassemble.

I love my Ataris, but they have been put away for most of the past year while I have been slowly moving my music setup around. I've got a box of Dr. T's software which is all amazing fun. Actually I am just taking a break from working on my little studio right now.

Only reason why I got my Ataris for somewhat cheap is that they have all been "projects", ie broken when I bought them. Makes more sense than modifying a collectible unit. My STacy is not happy... I will get that one working someday.

Still have a 2003 PM G5 1.8 Uni which was little or no faster than the PM G4 1.42DP I wanted to replace it with. I added a Radeon X800XT and it is in daily use running 10.5x. Never quite impressed with the move to G5 even when they scaled to Quads and became more complicated.

A Mac Pro is definitely not one I can justify (maybe in 5 years when they are cheap as chips). Firmly stuck in the PowerPC camp at the moment although I do have a 2009 Mac mini just to play with Snow Leopard.

I would love to get my hands on a Mega ST/STE or TT and relive my youth using Calamus for graphic design on a Mega STE...