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You'll find information on everything Macintosh. In particular I am focusing on information for G4 computers. Look at the various links in the left and right side of this page for useful links to vendors.
I currently have the following Macintosh computers:
- Dual 1.42 Ghz PowerPC G4 Macintosh
- G4/400 G4
- Centris 660AV
- Titanium PowerBook G4 computer
- PowerBook G3
I am currently looking into getting a new Macintosh computer but haven't 100% decided on if I should get an iMac or a Mac Mini.
Computer Configuration:
- Processor: 1.5 Ghz PowerPC G4
- System: Mac OS 10.5.8
- Memory: 1 GB DDR SDRAM
This computer sitting at my desk at work, I use this to do some server work and some Macintosh testing. The original battery wasn't lasting that long and so I purchased another battery on Amazon.com. The new battery works great and it is averaging about 2 hours of battery time.
The highest OS version that this computer can now run is 10.5.x (Leopard). Apple has decided not to support the PowerMac line of computers in the newer versions of Mac OS X. Recently a lot of software manufacturers announced that they are not supporting 10.5 in their software upgrades. (Firefox 9 and BBEdit no longer support 10.5) This is making the computer appear to be older and older.
This desktop computer is now sitting in the basement of my house, and hasn't been used in many years. The last time I turn this on was probably 2005, when I was checking to see if it would still boot up. The internal battery is dead, and I don't even have a LCD monitor to hook up to the computer. I still have a keyboard and several SCSI cables left over. I don't know what I'll do with the computer. My last task that I did with the computer was to backup the entire hard drive to a CD, so I could still access the files if needed.
The last time that I used this computer on a regular bases was as a phone answering machine. I used to set this up so that I could get digital archives of my voice mail messages. There's probably still a folder on the desktop of some old voice mail.
This is how I was able to record live (AM/FM) radio sounds on my computer. The first thing you need to do is make sure that the station that you want to record is near you so that you have a very clear signal. You can find out what towers are near you, use Antenna Search. Next you need to set up a Radio near your computer. I used a Aiwa CA-DW480 and the CC Radio. The CC Radio worked the best since you can dial to a specific station very easily. Connect the stereo to the Macintosh using a audio cable, just use the "phone" plug in the stereo/radio and set the volume to 8 or 9.
To record the audio with your Macintosh, download and install Audio Hijack Pro. The source type is "Audio Device" and the Input Device is "Default System Input" and the Output is the "Default System Output." Set up the schedule to when you want to record the show, for example every day at 6am. Click on the Recording Tab, and make sure that the "Limits" is set to start a new file every hour. You can set the tags so that it will be all set when you open it in Itunes. For AM radio recordings, using AAC 128 kbps Stereo seems to be fine. An hour recording will take 83 MB.
With Audio Hijack Pro you can set up different sessions to record different radio programs. If you have two radios, you can record different broadcast at the same time. This is very easy to setup using USB Audio adapters.
This is a two step process, and you need to make sure that you have plenty of disk space on your computer for the first step. Also keep in mind that this may take a few hours and some of the tasks can be run overnight.
Step One: You need to "rip" the DVD contents to your computer. Essentially this is just making a digital copy of the movie in the full format size. You can use RipIt or MacTheRipper.. This takes about an hour to ninety minutes to get done.
Step Two: You need to convert the data to be viewable on your iPod or iPod touch. I really like VisualHub, but that has been discontinued. You can try using Handbrake, it works really well on some DVDs and other DVDs it doesn't work at all.