The Power Mac G5 Page.

(I realise that the Power Mac is a computer designed for personal use, but I’m going to refer to computers with Intel CPUs that usually run Windows as PCs for this page. )
In early 2016, I took a shining to the Power Mac G5, and considered getting one second hand. These were Apple’s top of the range computers from 2003 to 2006, and were pretty much the last PowerPC CPU based systems that the company made. Unlike their iMac desktop computer range, this is a proper sized tower computer with all the usual internal sockets for expansion cards and RAM. Strangely though, unlike most PCs, the CPUs are not upgradeable. Because the G5 CPUs create so much heat, there are 9 cooling fans! (2 for the power supply, 4 for the CPU, 1 at the front for the card slots, 1 near the hard drives, and another next to it, which seems to cool the backside of the logic board / motherboard. If you have a different video card with a fan, then you would have 10.) Later models used liquid cooling, but this was a little unreliable. Some people complained of leaks, which no doubt destroyed several of these systems. The fastest was a double dual-core CPU system of 2.5 GHz. Although there was also a straight dual CPU system of 2.7 GHz as well. The slowest Power Mac G5 was a 1.6 GHz single core system.
Apple only ever made the iMac and Power Mac systems with a G5 CPU. There were no laptop computers produced, due to the heat issues. The company retained the PowerPC G4 in their iBooks and PowerBooks up until the transition to the Intel CPUs.
“I’m having trouble with my G5. How much RAM do I need to properly run OS 9.6?”
Says Kate in Kate & Leopold. In reality, no G5 CPU based Mac will run Mac OS 9 at all, although there is an unofficial firmware hack that will apparently allow the Power Macs to run it. Plus I think that movie was made before the G5 based computers were even made. Although I’m not 100% sure. (Also from what I read, Mac OS 9 can only use 1 CPU.) The highest revision of Mac OS X you can run on these is Mac OS X Leopard, because it was the last OS made for PowerPCs. Because Leopard doesn’t support Classic, I’ve installed Mac OS X Tiger as well. (The 1st G5 Power Macs had Jaguar.) One issue caused by switching between the operating systems, is Spotlight’s desire to index the drives again, when you change. So you pretty much need to disable Spotlight entirely, unless you can deal with everything chunking up for about 5 minutes. I got tired of it, and moved exclusively to Easy Find 4.5, which is more powerful anyhow. By putting a file in the root directory of your drive called “.metadata_never_index,” you can prevent Spotlight from searching the drive partitions. You need one for both the Tiger and Leopard partitions though.
As I already have an Intel CPU based Mac, I wanted to branch out further into older Mac programs, but still with enough grunt to run newer stuff. I seemed to be picking up a lot of PowerPC software, and while I could run it on my iMac G4, I wanted something with a bit more oomph, especially for iDVD.
Video cards started with a nVidia GeForce FX 5200 on the initial G5 computers, with an AGP slot. On my one, it’s a PCI Express type nVidia GeForce 6600 with 128 MB of VRAM. Although I think you could get an ATi Radeon 9600 too, also with 128 MB of RAM. The Radeon has 2 DVI output sockets, but no composite video out, like my PC version. Apple did make an adaptor to allow regular video output however. The sound processor is built onto the motherboard, and there are sockets for it on the front of the case, along with a USB and 400 Mb per second FireWire socket. There is also a 800 Mb per second one on the back.
You can put up to an incredible 16 GB of RAM into this particular model of Power Mac G5, which would have been insanely huge back at the end of 2005. I decided to go with 2 GB, which should be enough for what I’m running.
You can put 2 hard drives into the computer in total, although there are 3rd party adaptors to allow you to put more internal drives in there. Now, can you use the new AF drives? Well, I am, so it seems so! Unless my drive is clever enough to know how it’s being used. It’s a 931 GB Seagate brand. (1 TB for them, but it’s really 931 GB that you actually get.) I don’t know about these with Mac OS X Jaguar though, which the original Power Mac G5s had, but it seems to be fine with Tiger and Leopard, and any G5 Mac will run them. I can’t speak for any differences in the electronics that communicate with the drives between Power Mac G5 revisions though. If there even are any.
The CPU intake fans. These disconnect to allow for access to the RAM and button battery. It’s also good for cleaning.
Opening the case is a breeze. You simply lift a lever on the back and can then remove the side panel. Why more PC manufacturers didn’t take this approach, I have no idea. So top marks for a well thought out case. Speaking of the case, you can see why it has all those air holes, what with all the internal fan-ery. It was also smartly designed for when you needed to lift it. The obvious back and front handles are a great idea, which seem to carry on from the Power Mac G4. And you really need these, because it weighs a lot! Probably around 21 kg. Unlike the G4 and G3 Power Macs, the logic board / motherboard is not on the side of the case. It’s inside like how most PCs have it, except on the reverse side. As such, the video card, and any other cards you have for it, go up the other way too.
If you expect to use Photo Booth, and make lots of silly faces of yourself, you will need to buy a separate, compatible camera, obviously. You can also plug a microphone in the back if you have one. The computer also has a big speaker inside, like most other Macs, because you have to have the big start-up “BONG!” noise. You will also hear it through whatever other audio system you have plugged into the audio output socket at the same time.
You will also need a 3rd party remote control and sensor for it, if you’re desperate enough to want to use Front Row. Because yeah, there is no infra-red sensor anywhere. (You may also need to see if you actually have Front Row installed too!)
If you have a Canopus ADVC-110 like me, or other similar device, you can easily and instantly turn this computer into a video capturing machine! iMovie and iDVD for me, are one of the best perks of Mac OS X.
Today (7 March 2017) I got a DVI to HDMI adaptor, to output video into my Gefen scaler. I had heard stories of some people having issues with Macs and the HDCP malarkey of the HDMI, but this didn’t seem to be an issue at all, since the Gefen scaler doesn’t support it. In Mac OS X Tiger, the resolutions seem to be limited more to the standard computer monitor types. 640 × 480 pixels, 800 × 600, 1024 × 768, 1600 × 1200 and so forth. In Mac OS X Leopard however, both the NTSC and PAL resolutions and frequencies are listed. (720 × 480 pixels at 60 Hz and 720 × 576 pixels at 50 Hz respectively.) So, perhaps Apple made some improvements to this part of Leopard. You can also rotate the display in 90° increments as well. Something else which Tiger doesn’t allow for. So if you want to plug these computers into a TV with a HDMI socket or a similar scaler like mine, this is an option. Apple did make a composite video out adaptor for the Power Mac G5s as well, but if the quality’s like the one I have for my MacBook, then I’m glad I went for this adaptor instead. (You will need a male DVI to female HDMI type. Or a cord with the appropriate plugs. I already had the cord part, you see.)
According to Apple’s web site in February 2006, these computers started at $3199 when they were new, but just over 10 years on, and I got mine for $425, which included free postage. That’s pretty much the same price I paid for my iMac G4 with postage costs, 7 years ago. (2009.)
Start-up time into Mac OS X Tiger is 48 seconds, and 1 minute and 13 seconds for Leopard, which is pretty painful, really. Out of the 2, I’d probably have to say that Tiger is the better looking, although the pseudo reflection effect on the Dock in Leopard is pretty neat. Plus the transparent & blurred effect on some of the windows.
(What I mean by the “pseudo” reflection, is that while it does make a reflection of other windows and Dock icons, they appear transparent in a way that would not occur in reality.)
Although it should be obvious, you don’t need to restart your computer every time you choose to change the startup drive / partition. You can set it, and then turn off, if you’re actually finished. Then the next time you start up, it will boot into the new choice you made. (You can hold down the Option key once the computer’s been turned on to choose what drive / partition you want to boot from, but it will not permanently change to this choice. It’s also painfully slow to start up in this manner.)
Here are a few screen shots of some of the sexy interface.

The Dashboard has handy widgets. You can set which ones you want to view, and despite what Apple says, you can delete ones you don’t use. Although you will need Administrator privileges.
(This is from Leopard.)
The System Preferences. Here you can set up things the way you like it.
The Activity Monitor lets you keep an eye on processes that are running and hardware aspects also.
iCal lets you make notes of appointments and other tasks.
Starting any pre-Mac OS X programs launches Classic. (So long as you have it installed. Yeah, Tiger is the last revision of Mac OS X to support it.)
Naturally there’s a DVD player, so you can sit back and watch a movie. The one in Leopard seems to handle de-interlacing better though, I think.
Sauerbraten is a pretty fast running game that has some pretty nice real-time reflections and refractions as well.
iStat Pro is a handy widget for monitoring your temperatures and fan speeds, as well as other hardware related stuff.
Disk Utility makes it super easy to backup your entire drive to another disk, and if you’ve bought a new hard drive, copying over your old one is as simple as partitioning the new one (if you want to do that), and then restoring from your previous one. Once it’s done, you’re ready to go, and of course it will be bootable too. If only Windows made it this simple!
By using speech recognition, you can issue commands to your Mac with a microphone. The accuracy is really bad though, especially when you tell it to switch to various programs, and it opens the wrong one. While I was fiddling, it ended up quitting a program instead of saving a file. Oops! Even with my fake American accent, it didn’t do much to help it.
With 2 GB of RAM, the Power Mac doesn’t mind at all, loading up multiple programs. Although when I tried to load a big wad simultaneously, the 2 main Corel programs snuffed it. But if you do it slowly, they’ll be fine. Here I’m running Cog, Firefox 2, Corel Photo-Paint 11, Corel DRAW 11, Art Of Illusion 2.5, iCal, Open Office 3.3, TextEdit, EasyFind 4.5, Activity Monitor, Camino 2.1, DVD Player, HyperEngine-AV, Hills, MPEG Streamclip, Netscape 9, VLC 0.95 and Unreal Tournament 2004. Up until U.T. 2004 was loaded, I still had just on 1 GB of RAM free.
Both the DVD Player and QuickTime can continue to play videos in minimised form on the Dock.
Some time ago, Corel released WordPerfect 3.5e for free, but without clipart, sounds and other stuff. Like a lot of pre-Mac OS X software, this is rather unstable in Classic, usually with it unexpectedly quitting. Compared with Open Office, it feels very dated, and unless you have old WordPerfect files lying around, I probably wouldn’t bother with it, apart from the novelty value. You can download it from this site.
Top: If you try to run a program designed for a later revision of Mac OS X, you’ll get this error message.
Bottom: If you try to run a program that’s been made only for Intel CPU based Macs, you’ll get this message.
And of course they both have the nice smiley Finder face looking smugly at you too. It probably would have been better to have had a sad one.
With my file time modifier program, you can correct, or change pretty much any file’s creation date and time, or the modification one as well. This can be handy if you want to retain a date on a file, but need to make a correction to it.
Even this old PowerShop sample CD from 1995 will run. Well, kind of. I had to copy it to the hard drive first and change the main program’s RAM size, but after that it did. The quit message is exactly the same in Windows, so this dialogue style is built into the program it would seem.
Calling the number for your free of charge catalogue will cost you 55¢ per minute.
And good old Mac Paint will run too. I remember using one of the versions of this in high school on the Macintosh Classics. Corel Photo-Paint 11 can also open the pictures this creates. Ah, those memorable patterns! They sure remind me of those earlier days.
Mac Draw 1.95 from 1987 will work as well. If Classic is already loaded, it will start up with a click of your fingers. Not only that, but Mac Draw 0.9 from 1984 too! But the other one is more stable I would say.
Shufflepuck Café will run, but the sound doesn’t work. This is better off played using Mini vMac and System 6.
   
The weather widget will give you predictions about how hot it’s going to be and what the weather’s up to. This is all in °C, since it doesn’t say that, but you can change it to °F as well. It still seems to be able to retrieve the data from wherever it comes from, even though the O.S. is over a decade old now.
   

So far, I’ve yet to see any other GUI that can top the beautiful look of Tiger. Apart from maybe some of the earlier renditions of Mac OS X. The glossy buttons, the watery looking scroll bars and pretty much all the controls are so appealing. It makes you wonder what Microsoft and Apple were thinking in downgrading the look of their operating systems now, rather than trying to make something even more amazing.
The Braun T1000 Weltempfaenger (World Receiver) Radio from 1963. It was said that this design by Dieter Rams inspired Sir Jonathan Ive in the case design of the Power Mac G5.
(This is my own photo by the way — I didn’t nick it.)
With that said though, customisation options for the interface are pretty slim, with only aqua and graphite colour schemes, but luckily they’re both pretty awesome anyway. You can get 3rd party software to change the look of the UI though, but that’s always a b*tch.
One area where Mac OS X Tiger is more consistent than Leopard, is in terms of remembering what Finder windows you had open. Often when you come back to Mac OS X Leopard, including on my MacBook, all the windows you had open last time will be gone again, which is a bit of a pain at times. In Tiger, they always seem to come back, and exactly where you left them as well.
Unlike Windows, you can’t change your mouse cursors in an easy fashion either. You can move the Dock to the sides of your monitor, rather than the bottom though. It can’t be put at the top though, because of the Menu Bar.
Even though a lot of Mac users would frown at the idea, you can run Windows via Virtual PC 7. Earlier versions of the emulation software will not work, because they relied on the previous generations of the PowerPC CPUs’ little endian support, which is absent from the G5. These newer CPUs are big endian only. Although, apparently the G5s do almost double the amount of instructions per clock cycle as the G4s, (— some site said ~38 vs ~20, but I’m not sure if this is totally correct —) and their faster speed should theoretically boost performance in this area. The Low End Mac web site however, reports that Windows XP is sluggish in Virtual PC 7 and not suitable in any way for games. Although they were running it on a 800 MHz G4 iBook, which is a lot slower than my G5.
Microsoft however, were able to get the original XBOX emulated on the XBOX 360, although we’re talking about a triple core 3.2 GHz PowerPC CPU, which is faster than any Power Mac, apart from maybe the parallel processing power of the double dual core 2.5 GHz model. I don’t intend to get into all the technical details of working all that out, anyhow. Needless to say, you’ll no doubt want to stick to a PC running Windows natively if you want to play the likes of Morrowind and Oblivion, even though those games could run well on this hardware if they’d been written for the different CPU. Unreal Tournament 2004 runs okay, but it only seems to support one CPU core, and you’d probably want a better video card than the one my Mac came with.
Getting back to the hardware side of things, while a lot of people have no doubt dumped these computers, turned them into grills, tables and other furniture, they still have plenty of oomph for many tasks. Word processing of course requires barely any grunt, and the same can be said about browsing the web, editing pictures and listening to music. Processing videos and rendering 3D scenes of course, needs something quite beefy. But I’ll chuck a bit of stuff that way on mine anyhow. And as these are the last of the PowerPC Macs, anything you run on it that gives a “real time” experience should be pretty good, because there is nothing much better in terms of PowerPC CPU hardware. Well, the “quad” 2.5 GHz model would be the mightiest. So games for this hardware are going to be pretty sweet, unless of course the developers expected Apple to continue the PowerPC range in something faster. In any case, my main computer, which I use for nearly everything, is probably only half as grunty, so for me, the Power Mac is around my 3rd most powerful computer.
Even though I don’t use either, the Mac also includes Airport and Blue Tooth hardware. Although I think it may have been optional. (Airport has nothing to do with the places planes land; it’s a cordless networking system which uses radio waves.) It had no trouble picking up one of the neighbours’ networks.
Installing Tiger was a bit of a git. The version I got was actually too old for this hardware, and it caused a kernel panic trying to boot from the disc. These operating systems are expensive, so it was lucky I had another solution! I already have a bootable backup of my iMac G4’s drive, and so I was able to use this to boot the G5 with a newer revision of Tiger. I could then run the installer from inside this environment and tell it where to install to. After it had done that, I ran the updater, which also lets you choose where to install to, and I was then in action. Could you imagine Windows letting you pull that off? (Actually I’m not sure if it would.)
Unless somebody comes up with a work-around, you can only boot from a hard drive with an Apple Partition Map. GUID Partition Tables for Intel CPU based Macs will not work. You are also limited to about 2 TB with an APM as well. If you buy a bigger drive, like ~4 TB, it will not work. You can partition it with the GUID partition table, and read it for storing other stuff, but the computer won’t be able to use it for starting up from.
Removing the battery (— a CR-2032 type —) in this computer is a pain in the butt if you don’t know how to do it. What I found easiest, was to lift it up slightly from the bottom, and then twist it anti-clockwise, so that it comes out almost side-ways. Hopefully you should only need to do this if you notice that your clock is reverting back to some time in the past. (Although it’s also responsible for some kind of settings storage IC too. Probably the PRAM or something.) I removed mine when I was having issues with the Airport card, and wanted to see how much oomph it still had, since it was in there when I bought the computer. Earlier Power Mac G5s have different, bigger batteries, so this may not apply to you, if you have one.
Ripping audio CDs in Mac OS X couldn’t be easier — the tracks show up as AIFF files, so you can just drag which ones you want to whatever writable drive you want to put them on.
Apple’s own DVD player is a bit of a pain when it comes to screen shots. It actually blocks them while running. The usual Shift + + 3 method will just bring up an error message, however, if you use the Terminal, you can get around this, by entering “screencapture -c”, and this will copy the screen to the clipboard. Better still, you can use a program I wrote to do that for you.
As you’d expect, Mac OS X comes with QuickTime, since it’s by Apple, so it’s already installed. It’s pretty much the main software that other programs rely on for playing videos, audio and even showing pictures in some situations. It is however, like a base rendition, and you can pay for a pro version, which has more features.
This particular model of the Power Mac G5 doesn’t come with an internal modem, but no doubt you can provide your own. None of my tower computers have in-built modems anyway, so this isn’t really all that strange. In any case, my Mac connects to our network “switch”, so it can get Internet access via my main PC.
So, what software can you run on these computers? Well, I never recommend anything that’s not worth trying out, so here’s a table of stuff that I’ve run myself, and made myself:

Firefox 2 — one of the early versions of Firefox. This was possibly my favourite one that they did before they made all the weird changes in version 3. Version 2 also doesn’t have the bug where nothing will happen when you try to load a HTML file from your own drive.
Thunderbird 2 — Mozilla’s e-mail program. I’m still running version 1.5 in Windows, and have had no issues with it. Unlike web browsers, you can still get away with an older e-mail program.
Camino — This browser has been discontinued unfortunately. It’s Mozilla based, and newer than Firefox 2, but doesn’t support the same kind of add-ons as Firefox. Probably only worth getting if you’re desperate.
Opera 10 — This is another alternative browser choice, but I’m not totally fond of it. This is the last official version though for PowerPC based Macs. Like the Windows version, to me it always seems more sluggish than the Mozilla browsers, both at loading up, and retrieving stuff from the web.
Corel DRAW 11 — This is a must-have program for bitmap and vector graphics, however the Mac version isn’t very well optimised, and even on the G5 CPUs, it’s sluggish at some operations. Version 8 on Windows is much, much snappier. This is a commercial program, so you may have to look very hard to find it now, as it came out in about 2002. I paid about $345 for it in 2008. It’s also the very last Mac specific version, unfortunately, and one of the reasons I would never go passed a Mac OS capable of running it.
Open Office 3.3 — This isn’t too bad once you get it up and going, and if you need something a bit newer for your “office” related tasks, like word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and stuff, then this is worth a shot. There seems to be a bug though, which I can’t figure out, that changes the colours based on your monitor profile. So you can often end up with inconsistencies which are quite obvious.
Zipeg — This is a slightly dodgy extraction program, which does support a whole stack of different archives though. (7-Zip, RAR, ZIP and so on.) Its one main benefit is that it lets you see inside the archive if you don’t want to extract the entire thing. If you’re using Tiger, you will most likely need to download the Java addition from Apple’s web site. One annoying issue with it, is that it puts the dates in some $#!++y format, and doesn’t obey your settings in the OS, so it can have you scratching your head trying to work out the internal file dates.
Easy Find 4.5 — A really great search program that will uncover a whole heap of files that Spotlight will never do. Unfortunately the program itself isn’t as easy a find as it could be.
3-2-1 — A count-down timer widget.
Virtue Desktops — The really cool desktop extender with nifty transistions! This is ONLY for Mac OS X Tiger. You can add additional virtual screens, which you can change to with your keyboard.
RapidoStart — Start your programs and what not, from this other nifty program! It even has cool transitions. The icons could be “filtered” a bit more. In some cases it looks like they’ve been resized without any anti-aliasing.
Real Player 10 Gold — Obviously plays Real Player movies and sounds. Plus it can manage a few others too. Totally free to download as well.
Cyberduck — It’s a pretty weird name, that’s for sure! But this is a FTP program.
FastIcns — Easily make icons out of PNG images, and the other way around. Does resource fork type icons too.
Cog — If you want support for a wide range of audio files, this is THE player. It can handle MP3 of course, Ogg, FLAC, Monkey’s Audio, and a whole host of modules as well. (Such as MOD, XM, S3M and so on.)
VLC — I’ve been using the 0.95 version, and it’s surprisingly good, after the 0.86 one I had some years ago. If you have something a bit odd, this player will usually manage it. Plus it’s a good solution for DVDs from another region, because it won’t affect your drive’s region setting.
MPEG Streamclip — This is a pretty nifty video conversion and trimming program. I’ve used it to convert DV files from iMovie into MJPEG encoded videos, but it’s also good for converting back the other way. If you use Perian, you should be able to convert those sodding video camera MOD files into DV as well, for use with iMovie.
JES De-Interlacer — This program is superb at converting NTSC videos over to PAL for iMovie, which was why I got it. It can also correctly reprocess wide aspect videos into a bordered normal video. It does require Mac OS X Leopard though.
Trim The Fat — this program will strip the Intel machine code out of universal binaries on a PowerPC Mac, and the other way around too.
Mini Talking Clock — This one’s by me. It announces the time, and there’s an alarm, plus you can change the colour of the numbers. You will need the sounds for it as well.
Computer Curser — Another one by yours truly. Play up to 18 sounds in any format that QuickTime supports. It was intended to play funny swearing quotes from movies when something goes wrong on your computer, but you could use it for anything really.
File Time Modifier — Again, by me. This program lets you change the creation and modification date of a file. Just drag on the file you want to change, and the program will extract its current dates. Then you can make the alterations you want.
QTE Challenge — This is a game inspired by the Excite QTE game in Shenmue 1 & 2. Has top 3 high scores and a customisable key configuration for the 2nd set of keys. (Arrow keys + 4 others.)
Password Generator — By me as well. It will make passwords up to 12 letters long for use with web sites or your own computer. Or whatever.
Cube 2 / Sauerbraten — a freeware F.P.S. game with some pretty nice effects.
Quinn — A freeware Tetris style game with customisable pieces. The original site and high scores have gone.
HexFiend — A compact hex editor.
Wallsaver — Lets you use most of your screen savers in place of your wallpaper.
FLACer — converts your AIF files into FLAC.
Small Image 2 — A JPEG image stripper. Gets most of the extra junk out of image files. Sometimes it doesn’t “see” certain elements, which get left behind.
Tag — An audio file tag editor for Ogg, FLAC, Monkey’s Audio and WavPack.
Unreal Tournament 2004 — The demo of this runs really well, and you can crank up the settings fairly high too.
HyperEngine-AV — A multimedia editor for videos and audio. I used it recently to do some “multi-track” song blending.
Netscape 9 — The last version of Netscape for any operating system. This version is based on Firefox 2, and supports the same add-ons it does, and comes with similar features. This is not like Netscape 7, with the Mail & Newsgroups and Composer features; it’s just the Navigator browser.
SnapTalk — A once commercial LAN chat program, that is now free. (Although you can make a donation.) You need to register the program to your name, which is also free to do, probably to satisfy the program which doesn’t know it’s now free. This is a universal binary, so you can use it at a good lick of speed on your Intel CPU based Mac as well. If you have one. There’s also a Windows version.
Screen Savers — Filigree, Flux, Hills, Lotsa Water, Plasma, Plasma Tunnel, Sky Rocket, Solar Winds and Supastar are a few screen savers that are worth having a squizz at, if you like that kinda thing. Supastar is a bit chunky, even though it doesn’t look as if it’s doing a great deal, and Sky Rocket only plays the audio on Mac OS X Leopard.
Text Sync — Combines text files of lists together while avoiding doubling up on entries. Useful for synchronising your BlockSite list, or even your hostperm.1 file (probably) for older versions of Firefox. Any lists of text files where the order is not important should be able to be merged, where each entry is on a new line. (Only accepts .txt files to be dropped on it, so you may need to rename certain files that have other extensions.) Any edits you make in the large results text box will be saved as well.
MacTheRipper — Who hasn’t had the odd DVD that’s cracked, or a bit iffy to read? This program makes it easy to backup your DVDs to your hard drive, so you can burn a new copy.
HandBrake — This program will convert DVDs and other videos to a type more suitable for portable players, such as my Cowon S9 (or the X9). If you have Mac OS X Tiger, you can use up to version 0.91, which will handle encrypted DVDs. Leopard can run up to version 0.94, if you can get it to work. Personally, I prefer the previous revision.
Stella — This is a pretty much perfect Atari 2600 emulator. It has its own interface style, and I found it best to run it in the full screen mode. It works well with Colin Munro’s XBOX 360 controller driver, and you can configure quite a lot of stuff with it. Version 3.92 is suitable for Mac OS X Tiger, and it’s a universal binary type program. But you can trim it if you want. Remember, you should own a paid-for copy of the games you emulate.
Mini vMac — This program emulates a Mac Plus, which will allow you to run older operating systems, like System 6. Apple actually has / had this OS available to download from their official web site as well.
It’s pretty easy to use and all, and the disk “image” files it uses can be renamed to have a DMG extension and opened in Mac OS X, to allow you to easily transfer files. I’m pretty sure it’s all black & white only; at least the version I have is.
Basilisk 2 — A Motorola 68000 variety CPU emulator. It seems to be aimed at System 7 mainly, but can also run System 6 and Mac OS 8. Good if you want to run older Mac software that won’t behave in Classic (or run at all on newer Intel CPU based Macs). You can set resolutions and colour settings, how much RAM you want, plus you can adjust the speed as well. You make up a hard drive “image” file, and then the OS you plan to run will need to format it.
Runs pretty sweet on the Power Mac G5 and makes use of both CPU cores.
Tinker Tool Classic G2 — This program lets you alter various settings that would normally be hard to do. It can show hidden files and remove the reflective style Dock, I think, in Mac OS X Leopard too. Not that I would want to do THAT!
Amadeus 2 — This is an audio editor, which has now been released for free. You can record stuff with it of course, and apply various effects to sounds and the usual kind of thing these programs do. If I remember correctly, you can use FLAC files directly with it, without having to convert them back to AIFF.
AV-Friendly — this is my own “front-end” program that gives a more visual interface to FFMPEG. (Which you need to provide yourself.) With the combination of this, JES De-Interlacer and Apple’s own iMovie & iDVD software, you can get nearly any video onto a DVD, and playing just as smooth as the original.
     

See the Downloads Page for more of my own software which will run on this computer.