Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

howtogeek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 262 posts

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#21

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Causality1 wrote: post #14
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be better off with a CF to IDE adapter. SD really isn't well suited to be a main OS volume. Or just get a SATA to IDE adapter.

Aside from being pin-compatible is there a reason CF is more suitable for an OS volume than SD?

You're unlikely to get support for modern high speed SD cards in these sort of adapters. CF has a better shot of supporting UDMA and even if not PIO mode 4 will get you 16MB/s which will likely outperform a typical SD slot in these devices.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#22

Post by sneak »

foobiekr wrote: post #16
sneak wrote: post #7

For approximately 10x as much ($500 USD), you can get a pre-retina Air, which has a much improved keyboard, working wifi, flash storage, and a modern OS and browser. It also happens to be way lighter. To me that’s more than a 10x improvement over the setup the author describes. There’s relatively little you can’t do on such a $500 machine.

Except get security updates that are only ever packaged in newer OS releases, for one thing. I get where you're coming from, but this is the fundamental problem with network-connected devices. I'm an Apple fan, of sorts, and my whole family is part of the Apple ecosystem, but the company has a nasty habit of strategic obsolescence and doubly so around transitions.

$500 will get you an Air that will run the latest macOS, with all current updates. You can get a ten year old Air (that will not) for $100-200.

It will also run the current version of the Linux kernel.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#24

Post by sigjuice »

foobiekr wrote: post #16
sneak wrote: post #7

For approximately 10x as much ($500 USD), you can get a pre-retina Air, which has a much improved keyboard, working wifi, flash storage, and a modern OS and browser. It also happens to be way lighter. To me that’s more than a 10x improvement over the setup the author describes. There’s relatively little you can’t do on such a $500 machine.

Except get security updates that are only ever packaged in newer OS releases, for one thing. I get where you're coming from, but this is the fundamental problem with network-connected devices. I'm an Apple fan, of sorts, and my whole family is part of the Apple ecosystem, but the company has a nasty habit of strategic obsolescence and doubly so around transitions.

Both Mojave and Catalina support MacBook Air models from 2012.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#25

Post by kitsunesoba »

jeffbee wrote: post #18
kitsunesoba wrote: post #17

It's nice to see old laptops get a new lease on life this way, but it's hard to deny the compromises that come with such an approach. As nice as the old 12-inch Powerbooks/iBooks, T60s, etc were, they leave a lot to be desired by modern standards. This brings me to wonder how difficult it would be to develop a notebook that is specifically designed to be a focused offline ultraportable, using the most power efficient…

How would such a computer meaningfully differ from either a Pixelbook Go or an iPad with a keyboard? They both have stupefying battery life and there's not many ways to extend it because at this point virtually all of the power goes into the screen.

One of the benefits touted by the linked article is the forced offline aspect. The other is the much more restricted scope of apps, which keeps the user focused.

These are technically achievable with an iPad or Pixelbook, but require effort and discipline on the part of the user and on some level directly contradict the design and intended use of both products.

I think there are still significant savings to be had in terms of power usage/battery life. Lower power hardware puts a hard cap on how much any one application can consume and incentivizes efficiency on the part of the developer. The device's screen panel can also be selected for efficiency over density, brightness, color gamut, etc since those aren't priorities.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#26

Post by scarface74 »

One of these days I’m going to dig up my PowerMac 6100/60 with the DOS Compatibility Card and my LCII with the //e card and 5-1/4 inch drive from my mom’s house. All of my disks are in a bedroom so they might still be usable.

Any way I can get old Ambrosia games?

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#27

Post by [deleted] »

jeffbee wrote: post #18
kitsunesoba wrote: post #17

It's nice to see old laptops get a new lease on life this way, but it's hard to deny the compromises that come with such an approach. As nice as the old 12-inch Powerbooks/iBooks, T60s, etc were, they leave a lot to be desired by modern standards. This brings me to wonder how difficult it would be to develop a notebook that is specifically designed to be a focused offline ultraportable, using the most power efficient…

How would such a computer meaningfully differ from either a Pixelbook Go or an iPad with a keyboard? They both have stupefying battery life and there's not many ways to extend it because at this point virtually all of the power goes into the screen.

[deleted]

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#28

Post by linguae »

One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern displays and modern internals, and with extra bonus points if it has user-replaceable batteries and user-serviceable storage and RAM. I've found the Thinkpad X62 (https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/) and X210 (https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/) projects rather intriguing. Unfortunately I missed out on the 2017 ThinkPad T25, which I would have purchased had I not been strapped for cash at the time.

One idea that I have is for a laptop manufacturer to develop a chassis that comes with a high-resolution display and a high-quality keyboard (like those of older ThinkPads), and where the user can supply an Intel Compute Stick or a similar device for computing power. This way the chassis can be used for a long time while the user upgrades compute sticks.

Post reply on HN