Lothar Joerger's Page

Tales form the Past
2004: A friend of my showed me his new Apple and MacOS X. Apples can be considered as Alien Item in Germany, they are very rare. So i was very surprised to see my first Apple and MacOS X. I used Linux and Gnome on my PC and was impressed about MacOS X. One week later i bought an old Beige G3 on eBay for less then nothing. It cost me about 3 weeks to figure out how to install MacOS X Jaguar (10.2) on this thing. Apple is so mutch different to PCs. Thanks to XPostFacto 3 additional Weeks later the G3 was running Tiger.

2005: One Mac was not enough. I bought a defect Power PC G4 and a G3 Blue & White. Both had broken Powersupplies that were easily repaired with cheap PC components.

2006: More fun with old Macs. Suddenly some old Macs appeared around Cologne at eBay. I bought a Performa 6400 (G3 Cache Upgrade + 128MB RAM) with a lot of Books and Software for about 10 Euros. This was my first contact with Classic MacOS. Well ... the Performa is now running MacOS X 10.2 (slowly but boldly).

2007: I rescued a Performa 5300 form being dumped into the trash. It had a AV Modul with CableTV-Tuner and is now my secondary Television-Receiver.

2008: I bought a G4 Cube with 17" Studio-Display for less than 100 Euros. I think this is the most wonderfull Machine Apple has every created.

2009: Most of my Friends received an iMac G3 as Birthday-Present. They all use iTunes and they like the outstanding Sound of these Mashines (Harmon-Cardon).

About the Performa 6400
This Machine has a 603e PowerPC Processor, 8 MB RAM-Onboard and two 64 MB FastPage-Mode DIMM Modules (= 136 MB RAM), a 40 GB IDE Harddrive, a SCSI-CD-ROM Drive and the Audio/Video-Module with S-Video and TV Receiver. The Sonnet G3-Upgrade Processor is installed into the Cache-Socket and only works with MacOS Classic.
With the help of XPostFacto 3.1 this Machine runs MacOS X 10.2.8. Because the Onboard-Graphics-Chip is not supported by MacOS X i had to install an additional PCI-Graphiccard. I used a flashed PC-Version of a Matrox-Millenium-II.
MacOS X runs slow with the 200MHz 603e Processor but it is possible to Play MP3s with iTunes and surf the Web with Safari (if you install a Ethernet Card into the second PCI slot).

2009.Jun.16: Just bought a Bondi Blue iMac for a sixpack of Pepsi-Cola. The Case is in very good shape, but the CRTs High-Valtage-Transformator seems to be dying soon. At a resolution of 1024 x 786 you hear loud crack-sounds. Maybe it is possible to exchange the CRT with a cheap 15" - TFT Display someday.