Comments on: Another G5, Another SSD nightmare

By: JackBender

JackBender — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 08:15:17 +0000

I recently got a Power Mac G5 (PowerMac7,2) for which a compatible SATA SSD was also hard to find.

Various modern SATA III 6 Gbps drives simply won’t work on the SATA I 1.5 Gbps interface of the Power Mac G5 and iMac G5 because these modern SSDs can’t negotiate the protocol down to the earlier interface protocols.

I found out that “Intel 320 Series” SSDs with their SATA II 3 Gbps interface do work nicely with the Power Mac G5. I got three of these SSDs with capacities of 80 GB to 160 GB to easily switch between Mac OS X, Debian and OpenBSD.

It can be assumed that the “Intel 320 Series” SSDs would also work with the iMac G5. They are plentiful on eBay.

BTW, OpenBSD 7.4 (32-bit) and Debian trixie/sid with kernel 6.5 do work well on the G5.
Action Retro has a YouTube video titled “Installing MODERN DEBIAN on a Power Mac G5!” explaining how to install the current Debian ppc64 port on G5 machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-Ugfqj1ank

Also, a shameless plug, here are pictures of how I got the Power Mac G5 to be quiet by installing Noctua and Arctic fans instead of the original loud ones: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjB3kLZ

By: Logout

Logout — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 08:08:25 +0000

In reply to neozeed. My PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 was in daily use from 2005 to 2018, when I migrated to PC (and after another couple of year to POWER9), because the good old G5 was simply too slow to be my daily driver. Even in 2005 it was bought as refurbished. And it still works with no problems whatsoever. Yes, iMac G5 had capacitors problems, yes some PowerMac G5 had board failures, but they were far from being "least reliable" Macs out there. For example I haven't met a MDD G4 yet, which didn't have a PSU failure during it's lifespan :)

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 11:59:59 +0000

In reply to Lubo. These are the restore disks I had gotten on eBay, and yes it must be the same 10.3.5 set. It does actually boot up on the iMac! However it won't install telling me that the bundle isn't for this machine. Quite annoying! Although for what I want to do I don't really care if it's 10.3 or 10.4, so I'm fine with either. It's 10.5 that removed classic, so although I do have that retail DVD which does boot/install fine, I don't want it. I must admit my use case if anything but normal.

By: Lubo

Lubo — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 04:40:31 +0000

According to:
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/index-powermac-g5.html

The lowest spec. oldest G5 iMac came with 10.3.5, so any version less than that, like 10.3-10.3.4 is expected to fail. 10.4 is the sweet spot IMHO. Classic for all your MacOS 9 needs, plus Xcode for compilation. There are also open source packages courtesy of MacPorts and even a 10.4 Homebrew branch.

I recommend Adelie, because PowerPC is a supported platform today, both 64 and 32 bit!

Anything Debian based has to be old versions as they no longer do PowerPC sadly.

OpenBSD would work, if you can dig a less polished approach than Linux, and also run faster, even fully updated.

There was even a HaikuOS for PowerPC once, but it has been bit rotting for years, and is likely unusable without a dev. system to recompile everything. Probably cross compilation on a HaikuOS x86 would be easiest.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 19:52:26 +0000

I got the machine for £20, so my expectations are pretty low. But it’s a shame that the ppc ultimately was such a letdown

By: Kalvin

Kalvin — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 10:33:07 +0000

Sorry to tell you, but the G5’s (both iMac and PowerMac) are the least reliable vintage Macs out there. The iMac G5 is known to have capacitor issues.

I had a PowerMac G5 dual 1.8 GHz that went out on me due to a bad motherboard. I suspect that’s due to the lead-free solder used. I’ve decided it wasn’t worth fixing and went with a G4 dual MDD instead.

Besides some upgrades, all you can do is pray that yours will last as long as possible.