"Development" machine - a used Mac?

[Jon Mayo]

I just picked up a B&W G3 for $150 and dropped in a 1Ghz chip from
PowerLogix. Then dropped a 1GB of RAM into it for next to nothing.
Obviously a G4 w/ AGP slots is a better choice, but people want a lot
of money for their used G4. G4 and G3 isn't really so different,
especially the older G4 which has the same bus speed. actually
PowerLogix makes a G4 upgrade chip you can drop into a B&W G3 logic
board, but why spend the extra money when the performance is the same?
(it's not like you use Altivec in your normal applications)

The only trick is the PowerLogix chip needs a little initialization to
run it at 1Ghz in FreeBSD (and in Linux too). By default the chip
starts up at a cool 500Mhz.

On 2/13/06, Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I bought the Mac mini with the intention that I would do FreeBSD
> development (ok - testing, reporting bugs and so on, I'm not a
> developer) on it. However, the mini soon took place as my home theater
> machine, mainly because it runs MythFrontend well enough.
> This means that it is "hard" to get it free for FreeBSD use, at any
> given time.
>
> So now I'm thinking about buying a second machine to mess around with
> FreeBSD. I could just buy another mini, but I see that I can get used
> G4's for about half the price of a mini here. And yes, budget is always
> an issue. :-)
> A couple of examples:
> http://www.applehistory.norhost.net/g4agp.html
> with 400 or 450 MHz cpu, 312MB or 640MB RAM
> or
> http://www.applehistory.norhost.net/g4_quick_2002.html
> with 933 MHz cpu and 768 MHz cpu.
>
> Would one of these be a good development machine?
> And, does the G4 make a lot of noise, or is it (nearly) silent?
> How much RAM do I need? Is 512MB enough, or should it have more?
>
> Should I consider other machines instead?
>
> Any hints welcome.
> --
> Regards
> Torfinn Ingolfsen,
> Norway
>
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--
Jon Mayo
<jon.mayo at gmail.com>