PowerPC Challenge 2017 – Introduction

If you follow either the PowerPC Centre facebook page (give us a like while you’re at it!) or ponder the PowerPC subforum on MacRumors, you might be aware of the PowerPC Challenge. This challenge takes place for the first week of the year (January 1 – 7, 2017).

The goal of this challenge is to use a PowerPC machine as a daily computer for the duration of the week, and thus far there are 39 participants on the MacRumors forum (including me). Many PowerPC users use G4 or G5 machines daily, so this may not be a challenge for them.

However, this will be a challenge for me! I have two machines that I use daily, and the first one is a custom built computer with an Intel Core i7-4790k, 24GB of ram, Radeon R9 290x, and a 250GB Intel Solid State Drive running Windows 10 Pro. My portable is a 2015 13″ MacBook Air with a 1.6GHz Core i5 and 4GB of Ram.

I rarely use a PowerPC machine, and when I use one it’s to either test software to add to the PowerPC Archive or to write a post on here. So, this is going to be a challenge for me!

So what will I be using for the challenge? A late 2005 Power Mac G5 Quad, 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR2, 6600 128MB, and the hard drive situation I have no idea about. I have a few hours to make my mind on this! For a portable, I will be using a 2005 14″ iBook G4 1.42GHz with a normal hard drive. I really wanted to have a PowerBook G4, and almost bought a DLHR right before the challenge… but I didn’t!

The unfortunate thing here is I will still need my MacBook Air at work for some programs that will not work under Leopard, so I will try my best to use the iBook as much as possible. At home I’ll be using the G5 for everything.

So that is how I’m starting this challenge. I figured it would be interesting to document and all of our followers may find it interesting! I’ll be posting daily updates on here with my adventure for the week, so stay tuned! My next post will be setting up the G5 Quad which you’ll probably see tomorrow afternoon since tonight is going to be a busy night for me!