I bought a Mac

Summary

Yep. I regret to inform you all that, as of January 2025, I am a Mac user: I bought a Mac. I have betrayed the penguin. Behold: My shame. What? Yes. The first Mac I have ever owned: this beautiful beast, a PowerMac G4 MDD: specifically a top-of-the-line dual 1.25 GHz FireWire 400 model circa 2002. Here’s the full specs if you’re curious. 2x PowerPC 7455 G4 CPUs @ 1.25 GHz [Stock] 2GB (4x 512MB) DDR-333 PC-2700 RAM [Upgraded from 512MB] 512GB Lexar SSD + 750GB Seagate Barracuda (come back to) HDD [Upgraded from 1x 120GB 7200RPM HDD] ATI Radeon 9650 w/ 256MB of VRAM [Upgraded from ATI Radeon 9000 Pro w/ 64MB of VRAM] 1x CD/DVD-RW drive [Stock: CD-RW/DVD-R SuperDrive]1 It should be noted most of the stock specs are pulled from Wikipedia for reasons that will soon become obvious.2 So, how did such an icon of early 2000s Apple fall into my grubby hands? Well, it all started with the Wii U. I’m not joking. For a while now, I have been working intermittently on the Wii U Linux kernel. In December, for reasons that aren’t important right now3, I turned my attention towards fixing KVM on the Wii U, but in order to fix it, I needed to figure when and why it broke, and the easiest way I could think to do that was with a PowerMac.4 Fortunately, my roommate already had a 233 MHz Bondi Blue iMac G3, which he very kindly agreed to lend me. However, when I tried to use it, it was so slow that I couldn’t even get Linux installed. After that, I decided I’d rather get crushed by a crane then do kernel debugging on a 233 MHz G3. I realized, somewhere, something needed a change.5 That’s when CursedSilicon6 stepped in. He owned not one, but two PowerMac G4 MDDs, one of which he very kindly offered to sell to me for the low low price of $0 (plus shipping). Did I mention G4 MDDs are very heavy? … $91 and a few days later, the husk of a PowerMac was now under way. Yes, according to him, someone stole the RAM, hard drive, and PRAM7 battery out of the G4 before he shipped it to me! Apparently...