Comments on: 'Tis the season to rebuild eMacs

by: Jax184

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:05:19 +0000

It's actually a case of firmware differences between video cards made for macs and PCs. It's possible to flash certain ATI cards to work in a mac, and some just work in both out of the box. RAM isn't platform specific.

by: corinoco

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:33:34 +0000

I found a G4 in the gutter last week - I grabbed it with hopes of building a Mac to toture, if only for the pleasure of finding all the creaky bits in OSX then going to the Apple store and be infuriating. Yeah small things for small minds.

Unfortunately it turned out to have no ram (SDRAM) and no video card (AGP). Fortunately I have plenty of old SDRAM and AGP cards lying around outside of my Mame table (which occasionally needs to be fed a new stick of SDRAM when one dies). Unfortunately (again) freakin' Apple chose make things so you can't use an object that has become non-holy by once being in a PC. Prices for such Apple-blessed parts on Ebay, are needless to say, hilarious.

by: rndmnmbr

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:54:10 +0000

Very nice. I figured OSX would have a way of rolling updates into the install image.

Now, if only Apple would release OSX sans hardware restrictions... ( I know there are hacked install images out there, but they're lacking things like common hardware support.)

by: computersolutions

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:13:12 +0000

@20 -

You mean like creating an install image, and adding the latest combo update to it?

Pretty easy on Mac, although I find installing manually is pretty quick anyway - a magnitude faster than PC's anyhow.

Installing a new Mac usually takes me about 20 minutes max.
Mind you, I image the install disk to a partition, and install from that - *way* faster than DVD...

System image software here - http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/serveradmintools105.html

by: Itsacon

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:45:17 +0000

> Was I the only one to assume from the title that you were re-compiling the Emacs text editor?

Why would you think that? The Emacs people knew how to capitalize words... (hint guys: FIRST letter)

by: rndmnmbr

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:44:58 +0000

It's only too bad that there aren't any handy utilities for OSX resembling one of the dozens of slipstreaming utilities out there for XP. I never install from scratch until after I've built a 100% updated install disc to do it with.

I also keep an updated copy of an Autopatcher disc around, just in case I come across a system desperately in need of patching.

(of course, things like this become necessary if, for example, one hypothetically acquired XP via extralegal means, and thus this hypothetical non-genuine install of XP was incapable of passing WGA checks, rendering XP incapable of updating in the orthodox manner...)

by: pompomtom

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:07:27 +0000

As an aside, I’ve never understood why the same people who refuse to install a legitimate update when prompted have no such restraint on clicking browser pop-ups.

Right, but as a mac user, they probably don't ever see browser popups, and even if they did, and then clicked on them, the malware likely wouldn't install.

by: j

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:39:39 +0000

Well, I feel like a nerd.

Was I the only one to assume from the title that you were re-compiling the Emacs text editor?

Ah, I see that I was.

by: Chazzozz

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:18:26 +0000

Although I agree a lit match appearing out of nowhere inside a gas tank probably wouldn’t set it off, I’d be more worried about setting off the fumes directly above the filler while trying to throw the match in. I suppose that may depend a bit on where you are and what season it is. When I was just a young 'un, we'd amuse ourselves by dropping lit matches into open buckets of gasoline...but it was Northern Canada in winter when the temperature was at -30C or lower. There would've been next to no vapour coming off the surface then. You could even get away with defrosting your frozen locking-gas-cap using a cigarette lighter. Of course, doing either of those where I live now (Queensland, Australia) would be totally unthinkable, because the ambient temp all year round is much higher! Obligatory YouTube link.

by: TVarmy

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:43:11 +0000

You've probably tried this, but have you considered getting the OSX Tiger discs, holding down C while the machine boots up, and then tell it to "Archive and Install?" A pirated version will also work, and there's no DRM or serials or activation to worry about. This will save her user folder and apps, create a compressed copy of her old system files (in case you, for whatever reason, need/want to revert despite them being ruined), and copy over virgin system files. Then, after that reinstall boots up, download this patch: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html

Install it, then try running System Update. I think this approach is best, as the computer reinstalled from the disc will still need a lot of patches, and by getting it to 10.4.11 in one patch, it keeps the computer from installing older updates made unnecessary in newer code, and keeps it from messing with an outdated System Update.

Speaking of which, if it's not that old, you might want to consider an update to Leopard, so that she can have automatic backups via Time Machine, and some other features she may or may not care about. Leopard has the benefit of being easier to find a copy of, both in real life and online, and of being on one DVD for a faster install/burn.

If you have any questions, I assume you can see the email in the box above. Or reach me via MeFi: http://www.metafilter.com/user/61286

Hope it goes well!