At 9:49 AM -0800 12/10/08, Digital Bill wrote: >A friend has come into possession of a "huge collection of machines >all hooked together, mainly Macs" after the death of the owner, the >father of a co-worker. He knows nothing about them and wants to see >if they run and if so, if we can recover any data from them for his >friend. > >The machines are being removed piecemeal and he's trying to clean them >up and get them running. Currently he has either an Indigo Blue or >Blueberry iMac, a Power Mac G3 desktop with a "Powered by Sonnet" >sticker on it and a G4 GigE with dual 500Mhz processors. (I haven't >seen any of these machines myself, nor the others, so I'm working off >his descriptions, so please bear with me.)
You can't necessarily trust the stickers. I've swapped out components on various machines enough that they don't always contain what the label says anymore. (or, as Talking Heads put it: I've changed my hairstyles so many times now I don't know what I look like...) Hopefully the deceased was more anal retentive than I about that kind of thing. >Needless to say, most if not all of this stuff is in disarray; I don't >think he even has enough power cords, mice or keyboards for these >things. If he uses current day power cords, will it be safe? Power cords are interchangeable on those machines that you've described. If the beige G3 has a USB card, it's quite possible that you'll be able to use a USB keyboard on it instead of an ADB. >Secondly, what keyboards do exist need some serious cleaning up. If he >plugs his aluminum Mac keyboard and mighty mouse in, will they work, >or will they only work on the most recent flavor of OSX? The PM G3 >has a video card in it, with DVI and VGA ports - so he can safely hook >up a regular monitor to it, right? One of the nice things about Macs is that if the cord fits, it probably won't blow up and there's a good chance it'll work. Aside from the comments that Bruce made about the newer keyboards... I've never experienced that, as everything I have is in the "souped up LEM" category. >Finally, I'm concerned he may not have the original system discs for >these puppies. What kind of problems might this present to him when it >comes time to diagnose the hardware & software and set up Admin >privileges to manage the machines? Worry about that once you know what systems are running, whether there are passwords on the machines, etc. It may be helpful to have the installation disk #1 for a couple different OSXs - 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, maybe even 10.5 (though at the listed processor speeds it's not likely). >And the part that scares me is, his >friend did not know Macs, tried to shut them down while they were >running and networked together (with apparently a ton of stuff still >up and running on them), and she lost her patience and power switched >them off. Any idea of the nature of the programs that were running? What kind of business or hobby he used them for? That could give a few clues as to what may be on them. It may have just been that they were set up for filesharing and the standard 10 min warning came up. If set up to auto connect to other machines there may be warnings on startup that such-and-such a machine can't be found; there may be a specific sequence that the owner Rube Goldberged together. Or they might just come right back up with no problem. >Between some pressing deadlines and the holidays and all, I probably >won't get the chance to go and help him first-hand for at least >another week or so. In the meantime, I promised him I'd throw this all >out to the collective brain trust here to see what sticks. > >Needless to say, the operative word here is "Help!" ;-) Just out of curiosity, what city/state/country are we talking about. It may be possible that someone here could physically visit... -- Bill Christensen <http://greenbuilder.com/contact/> Green Building Professionals Directory: <http://directory.greenbuilder.com> Sustainable Building Calendar: <http://www.greenbuilder.com/calendar/> Green Real Estate: <http://www.greenbuilder.com/realestate/> Straw Bale Registry: <http://sbregistry.greenbuilder.com/> Books/videos/software: <http://bookstore.greenbuilder.com/> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
