I look in a variety of places for additions to the Mac Museum – eBay, Craigslist, FreeCycle, other online venues, friends, yard sales, local thrift stores – but sometimes I find things in places I’d never think of, like the Dover Recycling Center. I went there yesterday to drop off a printer and a case that I no longer had use for and I joked that I might come back with an addition to the museum. After stopping in the “office” (i.e. a trailer that I think someone tried to recycle in the past) to pay the $5 fee to recycle the printer I drove over to the metal collection trailer where all of the computers and TVs were dropped off. It was full and equipment was spilling out of the front onto the snow. As soon as I pulled up I spotted a small G4 Cube sitting right at the front, complete with a keyboard, mouse, power supply, and LCD monitor. I immediately snatched up the cube and its power supply and drove away as fast as I could. The LCD was broken and the keyboard was yellowed so I left those, but the Cube was in good physical shape. Even if it didn’t work I could probably use it for parts.
After I got home, told Sally, and watched her roll her eyes as I told her how great of a find it was, I plugged it in and booted it up. Turns out that the power supply was dead but the rest of the Cube was not. It’s got a 450 MHz G4 CPU, 256 MB RAM, DVD drive, and a 20 GB hard drive, which was the standard configuration for the cube in 2000 when it was released. The case is in good condition, better than the case of the other Cube I have (which cost me $75 on eBay). The hard drive has a complete user account on it, complete with some music that I can borrow. It does exhibit some odd behavior by randomly going to sleep but I’m not sure if that’s a hardware or software issue. Even so, I can swap out the case with my fully functioning Cube pretty easily since the entire thing just slides out. A G4 Cube can cost anywhere from $75 – $300 on eBay depending on the condition so finding a free one that works is fantastic. Plus they’re small so they are easy to store.
Guess I’ll be frequenting the Recycling Center more often now :).
For additional info about the G4 Cube, check out my Desktops & Towers page.
Relatively Ambitious 