Ahh, thanks to the wonderful eBay sniping tool known as a kitchen timer, I was able to bid on some tubes four seconds before the close of the auction. Now I’ll also have five NOS 12AE6A tubes for the Millett Hybrid MAX headphone amps, which seem to be the most widely used part. I figure it’ll be good to test both tubes and see which sound best.
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RAM Board in Mac Pro w/2GB of Crucial RAM
I’m not sure if any of you are interested, but I’ve posted some photos of unboxing and setup of my Mac Pro (photo gallery retired). The box is a bit different shape from that of the G5, but the two machines are practically identical. This is good because it ensured that the aluminum shelf I made for it a few years ago still worked great once the machine was placed in the rack.
Also, this machine is amazingly quiet. It’s just as loud as my work laptop and loads more powerful. :D Anyway, here is the link to the Mac Pro album (photo gallery retired) if you are interested.
Power Mac G5 for AuctionAnyone want to buy my Power Mac G5? Well, it’s now up for auction, starting at $0.01.
Woo! I had to go to the back of a very odd location in Pontiac to actually be able to pick up the Mac Pro, but it’s now in the trunk of my car. Since it was signature required and I wouldn’t be home to collect it, I made arrangements to pick it up. Thankfully a rather strong, very friendly person carried it out for me and placed it in the trunk of the car.
Now I want to go home. :D
AHT Successfully Run on Power Mac G5Before I list it on eBay, is anyone interested in my Power Mac G5?
$1500, delivered if you live in the Detroit-ish area.
· Dual PowerPC G5 2.0 GHz
· 3.5GB RAM
· 320GB Hard Disk
· Mighty Mouse, Keyboard, Brand New Apple Mouse
· Retail Boxed Mac OS X 10.4
· Works perfectly, very well cared for.
Nintendo DS Browser (Opera for Nintendo DS)Guess what’s out? Yep, Opera for the Nintendo DS. Inside the package is a huge manual, Memory Expansion Pak [sic], and the software cartridge itself.
It seems to work pretty well thus far, although it doesn’t appear to support Flash, as Meatspin just didn’t display. Nor did YouTube content. Poopy. Google Maps seems to work, just very slowly. I haven’t had a chance to try Gmail yet.
UPDATE: Gmail seems to work fine. And I purchased it at Target for $29.99. I had called a GameStop earlier and the person answering the phone quoted a price of $34.99 and insisted that it must be preordered, and that there is no other way to get it on Wednesday.
Well, thanks to the help of a friend I now have a Mac Pro on the way to me at a rather nice price. I’ve also ordered the extra RAM it needs to fit my needs. In the end it’ll be a quad core Xeon 2.66 GHz box with 3GB of RAM, 1x250GB and 4x320GB hard disks (two internal, two external for backups), and all my old peripherals.
That said, I’m now selling my Power Mac G5. If any of you are interested, I’ll give you first crack at it. I’m asking US$1500, and it is as follows:
Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 (PowerPC)
3.5GB RAM
2x 160GB Hard Disk
DVD Writer (SuperDrive)
All Original Software (Yes, I can ensure that Classic is on it.)
OS X 10.4 (Legal, Licensed, Boxed Retail Copy which I had purchased separately)
All original packaging, accessories, and cabling.
Apple Mighty Mouse
It’s been real well cared for, hasn’t left the air conditioned / non-smoking room it’s been housed in since I got it, and hasn’t ever had any problems. All but 512MB of the RAM was purchased from Crucial and is under their lifetime warranty.
I will ship it anywhere in the world, but please remember that the Power Mac G5s are mighty heavy. The case is beautiful, but it’s also a large hunk of solid aluminum.
This machine makes for a great photo / video editing workstation and is probably a bit overpowered for normal desktop use. Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, all of those run great on it.
Oh, and it will run OS X 10.5 which is slated to be released this year — buying this machine isn’t a dead end of any sort.
13 3/8″ x 17 1/2″ Fibrament-D baking stone in my oven.Well, the 13 3/8″ x 17 1/2″ Fibrament-D baking stone I ordered from bakingstone.com arrived yesterday. After my previous sandstone stone broke while baking this pizza I had to get a new one. While I thought I could do without, I soon realized that I do almost all of my bread and pizza baking on a stone, and I’ve been unable to make fresh or frozen pizzas at home!
Following along with the directions packed in with the stone I put it in the oven to temper it. This needs to be done by raising the temperature of the stone 100°F every hour until it reaches 500°F, then holding it there for two hours. This is to dry and temper the stone and get it ready for use. Doing this reminds me of the time I made a stand for my PowerMac G5 from 6061 aluminum and brought it to a T6 temper in my oven (photo gallery retired), except it smells of damp concrete instead of metal.
One interesting thing is that the top of the stone is rough almost like natural stone, and the bottom is textured almost like cardboard, which leads me to believe that it is poured into a form before setting.
The rest of the photos can be seen in my Fibrament-D photo album (photo gallery retired), if you are so inclined.
I just ordered a FibraMent baking stone to replace mine which was broken on Friday while extracting a pizza from the oven.
I purchased the 13 3/8″ x 17 1/2″ version, which is US$50 shipped. It should fit nicely inside the oven and provide a (hopefully better than before) platform for baking of bread and pizzas. The stone I had before was around 3/8″ thick, and this one is 3/4″.
(Click for full size image…)Oh, I also (finally) replaced the Dial-branded pump soap dispensers which I’ve had in the bathrooms since I bought this place with something nicer. The old dispensers weren’t dirty or worn out, but I was fairly tired of the smell and anti-bacterial-ness of Dial soap. The cheap, prone-to-toppling dispensers were a bit of a bother too.
Stopping at Trader Joes on the way home I picked up a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Liqiud Soap, in Peppermint. At US$8.99 for one quart it’s not very cheap, but it is very nice soap.
Also, don’t forget to read about E. H. Bronner‘s colorful, driven personality.
