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Twelve things to do with an old Apple computer

by Mark Bowytz Apr 7th 2010 at 6:00PM

As I type this article on my MacBook Pro, I can't help but glance over at my poor PowerBook Lombard G3 with its awesome translucent bronze keyboard, sitting in its dusty laptop bag. The battery is long toast. When I last booted it up, the clock thought that the system time was close to 1970 thanks to the internal clock battery no longer holding a charge, and thanks to the fact that it's capped at OS X 10.3.9, I can't get a new version of Firefox on it. In short, it's seen better days. However, for all its faults, it's still got a decent hard drive and nearly a gigabyte of RAM, so it can't be totally useless. This makes made wonder, what can I do with this old 'Book (or an even more ancient Mac)? Here are a few possibilities:
  • First of all, if you have an older but still functional laptop (like me!), you could strip off the plastic, keyboard, etc. and turn it into a hanging digital picture frame on the cheap.
  • Use it to surf the web, old skool style, with Contiki. Yes, surprisingly, even the old Apple IIe can surf the modern internet, though only in text form.
  • Turn it into a Personal Webserver. Of course, your newer Macs can serve up web pages using Apache. Personally, I've had great success in getting my server up and running (along with MySQL and PHP to boot!) using XAMPP, but if you want to really be different, turn that old Macintosh SE/30, IIci or LC into web server.


  • Have a distraction-free word processor. You would be amazed at how much you can get done when IM, Facebook/Twitter/etc and email are all taken away from you. Be warned, you might have some challenges in trying to get your files back onto your main computer.
  • What's that? Have a Mac Mini and an external Apple 5 1/4" floppy drive lying around? Why not pitch the guts of the floppy drive and use it as a case for the Mac Mini
  • That old Mac was good enough to run all your favorite games back in the day, so it should be able to still play those oldies today. So long as you can find the disks, finding software is as easy a searching on Google.
  • Use it to stream the desktop of another computer. Ok, this one is hardly useful, but totally worth it when you tell your geek friends that you are streaming from your high-end Quad Core Vista machine to an Apple II .
  • Hand it down to someone else. Of course, it's not really fair to hand an old IIc to your grandparents hoping that they can get it onto the internet, but if you're going from an G4 iBook to a MacBook, do someone a solid and pass it on!
  • Turn it into a media server. Even if the processor and RAM is a little on the lower side, a nicely-sized hard drive can take the load off of your desktop when it comes to transcoding video and serving it back out.
  • Pair that Mini up with an iSight camera and combine 'em into the creepy telepresence robot of your dreams! (or nightmares)
  • Put Linux on it. Even the lowest and oldest Macs (like the Mac Classic) can have run Linux. The older the model though, the greater the geek street cred of course. If you have a newer model, there's always Ubuntu.
  • If all else fails, you can always do the responsible thing and recycle it. When you buy a new computer from Apple, you can opt for them to recycle your old computer for free - they'll even pay for shipping it back to them via FedEx. Even if you didn't buy a new Mac, don't fret, they'll still recycle your old model for $30. Should you go the recycle route, dry that tear you're shedding. Take heart; today's modern computers have the advantage of emulation. Mmmmm... Oregon Trail FTW!
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As I type this article on my MacBook Pro, I can't help but glance over at my poor PowerBook Lombard G3 with its awesome translucent bronze...
 

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modernmagic

I use a Clamshell in the garage, wirelessly connected to my home network, for email, web, ichat, and streaming Leo Leporte on the weekends. Its nice to be able to look up advice on cars and to find parts for sale.

I use a Pismo as my home backup server. I run Crashplan which backs up my home theatre mini to an external FW drive. Then it backs that up to Crashplan online. Triple backup of all my photos, music and movies!

April 08 2010 at 12:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steven Fowler

I use a 17" PowerBook G4 from 2003 as my main laptop. At 1.33ghz and 1gb ram, it certainly isn't the fastest machine on Earth, but it runs all of my applications like Final Cut Express, EyeTV, and even CS3, and it handles the web perfectly, though some sites like Hulu only run at ~10fps. When my iBook G4 (my first Mac) had a logic board failure last year, I had to choose a new (used) laptop to replace it, and when it came down to a first generation MacBook or an older PowerBook G4 there was no question at all in my mind. The 17" screen is incredible, and 95% of the programs I use run fine on it (plus I also have an Intel iMac for more powerful programs), and the PowerPC processor means I can still run older games via Classic Mode (though right now I only have Leopard installed).

As if that weren't enough, recently the hard drive on the PowerBook crashed. I had gotten used to not needing to get up and go to my desk whenever I needed to check something on the internet, so I pulled out the newest computer from my vintage laptop collection, a 200mhz PowerBook 3400c from 1997. After trying out a few different web browsers I settled on Mozilla, and despite the cramped 800x600 screen I am really surprised at how well it renders the modern web. Sites like Flickr, eBay, and Apple are rendered perfectly, and even Hulu looks right before it brings down the browser. I used that computer as my coffee table laptop for about a month, and though it is good to have my PowerBook G4 back, I now know that even a 13 year old computer can still be useful.

April 08 2010 at 1:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tdowling

Man, I was getting all excited to read about how to install Linux on a Mac Classic...but they really go out of their way to stress that 68000 processors are not supported. Dang.

April 07 2010 at 11:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to tdowling's comment
chris

Been there... But with the PPC601 processor. What you need is mkLinux, if it exists any more. It most probably is defunct by now.

April 08 2010 at 3:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mallens

I use a G3 iBook ("iceBook" as it was called) nearly every day, I bought it brand new in 2001. It's running OS X 10.2.8. It won't install any version of Flash beyond v.8 but generally works fine as a web browsing/email checking device. I use it mainly while I am connected to my home dialysis machine. It's compact size is good because it allows me to leave plenty of space for dialysis bits and pieces, and believe me, there are lots. I also use Chicken of the VNC on it to communicate with my G4 Mac Mini running eyeTV. Use of Chicken is a fall back position when eyeTV freezes (once a week) and Salling Clicker is unable to help. Gotta watch something while I'm there for five hours.

April 07 2010 at 8:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mallens's comment
Mark B

My good sir, you are truly hardcore. My best to you.

April 07 2010 at 10:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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