G4 Powermac Hardware advice

[stefcep2]

Found a Powermac G4 with the silver drive bay covers on the street:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_1.25_mdd.html

Has 512 mb ram, 80 GB hard drive and two video out ports that match the photo of an ATI card RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION (DVI)

No keyboard, no mouse though.  Thinking of USB keyboard, but there's only two USB ports, if I stick keyboard and mouse in there i have no USB.  So what cheap keyboard/mouse can I use?

[Matt_H]

Any keyboard and mouse will work. Apple intended the mouse to hang off one of their keyboard's USB ports, which explains the small number on the machine itself. You could probably get one of those era Mac keyboard for pretty cheap, otherwise there might be some generic keyboards that have a similar feature. Failing that, there are hubs and USB2.0 PCI cards.

[stefcep2]

are wireless usb keyboards and mice supported by morphos?

[commodorejohn]

Hey, congratulations! You've got the best OS9 machine there is, as well as a solid MorphOS box. You might want to re-do the thermal paste on the CPU heatsink, though, as a preventative measure - my MDD came with it cracked, dry, and utterly ineffective, and suffered from constant overheating, but I slopped some Arctic Silver on there and it runs great now.

As for the mouse and keyboard, I can't speak for wireless, but I've yet to run into a wired USB mouse or keyboard that doesn't work with USB Macs.

[krashan]

@stepcef2

Depends. I have two Logitech wireless mice (M510, M345), they both work with MorphOS running on PowerMac and PowerBook.

I have also a cheap Manta USB wired keyboard with USB passive hub builtin. This keyboard works, also for entering Open Firmware and boot selection. Different mice connected to the hub work too.

[Tenacious]

Any keyboard and mouse will work. Apple intended the mouse to hang off one of their keyboard's USB ports, which explains the small number on the machine itself...

This was such a great idea (mouse & keyboard requiring only 1 port on computer).  I've often wondered why no other manufacturer ever caught on to this.

[commodorejohn]

Actually, multiple manufacturers did. The problem was just that they didn't work well with PCs that expected the mouse to be connected directly to the motherboard and not through a hub, so half the time you wound up connecting them separately anyway.

That and the fact that PCs already had dedicated ports for mouse and keyboard and it was pretty stupid to waste perfectly good USB ports on them. (Of course, that was true of Apple as well, but St. Jobs decided that ADB was Old and therefore must be done away with even though it was perfectly satisfactory.)

[Matt_H]

Well, I'm certainly not going to complain that the proprietary ADB was replaced by standard USB. If it wasn't, then the easy mouse and keyboard replacement we're talking about in this thread probably wouldn't be possible. Besides, it was probably the last move to a recognized standard Apple made. All their other interfaces are proprietary now!

As to why no one else did something like ADB, Commodore was working on it. I think it's mentioned in either the 1993 DevCon notes or a later Dave Haynie interview, but of course they folded before it was fully developed.

[AppleIIGuy]

Besides, it was probably the last move to a recognized standard Apple made. All their other interfaces are proprietary now!

What Apple Interfaces are proprietary? They have USB 2.0/3.0, Display Port, and Thunder Bolt. Only one which could be considered proprietary is TB which it licensed from Intel

[Matt_H]

What Apple Interfaces are proprietary? They have USB 2.0/3.0, Display Port, and Thunder Bolt. Only one which could be considered proprietary is TB which it licensed from Intel

Well, I was speaking more rhetorically than definitively. But still: MiniDisplayPort and Thunderbolt, while not technically proprietary, aren't (noticeably) used by anyone else. And before that they had MiniDVI, MicroDVI, and MiniVGA. Then there's the 30-pin iPod connector and now the "Lightning" connector on the iPhone. So maybe it's not all their other interfaces, but they certainly seem to be embracing the general concept of vendor lock-in.

[tone007]

ADC was pretty annoying for the time it was around.



..and of course, going back further, not using standard 9 and 25 pin connectors for modem/printer connections on the old 68k Macs...