Back to the Power Mac G5 with Dalmatian art!

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It’s been quite an ordeal to avail myself of a working Power Mac G5, but I’ve finally done it!

As we covered in Live stream is: Delayed, my main Power Mac G5 ended up having some hardware issues. I haven’t been able to fully diagnose it yet, but it feels like a power supply issue to me. It’s just too weird that it powers off waiting for Leopard to boot. It seems to run (at least for an hour) under Tiger, but I’m not convinced – this is probably just because there was no load on it as it was running idle.

I went in my closet and dug out my “backup G5”. Many moons ago, this was glen.foxkit.us and it was notable for being the first 64-bit PowerPC computer to run LXQt. It was relegated to “backup” status by having a failed GPU. Normally, that wouldn’t be such an issue, but its former owner had somehow drilled an oversized screw into the card retainer which proved impossible to remove. I put a new 500 GB WD Blue SATA SSD in the lower bay, a full 8 GB of DDR 400 RAM to populate all eight sockets, and then began the work to remove the GPU.

It took some out-of-the-box thinking between me, my best friend Horst, and my Mum, but we finally managed to think of a way to remove the screw. Using a steel Allen key as a primitive form of chisel ram, I put the end of the key on the observe of the screw hole and whacked it with a hammer until it was finally free. Part of the G5’s card chassis remained attached to the screw somehow, even.

The screw removed from the G5.
The offending screw, removed from my Power Mac G5. A bent washer remains affixed to it near the head. A round cutout of the G5’s card cage is tightly affixed to it spanning the second to fourth thread ridges.

I installed a Radeon 9600 pulled from a Late 2004 G5, and booted off a Leopard DVD. Signs of life! We’re getting places now!

Screenshot of the Mac OS X Installer.
The Mac OS X 10.5 Installer, showing approximately 50% progress installing Leopard to the Power Mac G5’s hard disk drive. The partition name is “Dylan 10.5”, revealing the new nodename for the machine.

I was quite happy to hear Exodus Honey playing from the front speaker when it booted into the installed system. That was quite a nostalgia hit! And lo and behold, the trusted iSight even decided to join the party and offer to take a photo of me for my account picture.

Mac OS X Setup Assistant showing "Select a Picture for This Account", and displaying output from an iSight camera.
The Mac OS X Setup Assistant offering to take a photo of Spots for her account. She is waving to the camera, smiling, and wearing a Pikachu t-shirt.

I spent the rest of the morning installing Adobe Creative Suite and the Wacom tablet drivers. I then had a go at some practice sketching. And since I know that’s what everyone is actually here for, I present Spots’ first Wacom sketch – who else would it be?

Photoshop CS on a Power Mac G5, showing a sketch of Da Vinci Dalmatian from 101 Dalmatian Street.
A sketch of Da Vinci Dalmatian from 101 Dalmatian Street open in Photoshop CS on the Power Mac G5. Spots is holding her phone to the right of the Power Mac G5’s display, showing a reference of Da Vinci for those who have not yet seen Best Puppy.

I’m super excited to have a working G5 again, and even more excited to be able to start planning art streams again! I hope to have something figured out by this weekend. Stay tuned to this blog and my Bluesky for an eventual announcement!

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