I must admit I don't understand the appeal of Apple products, many of you will disagree, but that's just the way it is.
However this one was donated to me by Trevor Smith, so I had to have it
This one is the lowest specification version of the eMac family, it has a 700MHz G4 processor and 640MB's of SDRAM. for the installed operating system it has Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther installed, which is massively a little out of date these days
I've never used Mac OS X before, so I had no idea what to expect
Before I boot it up, we shall have a look around the unit
You can see the main unit, this is the computer and monitor combined, next is the Apple Pro keyboard, note the missing F5 key, but it has a built in USB hub with two ports, so you can plug the mouse in, I think this is genius. Also here is the Apple Pro mouse, this is a laser mouse and bizarrely it only has one button, which is the whole body of the mouse, how does that work?
Anyway, time to fire it up...
I have never used Mac OS X (or iOS) before, so I won't go into that, lets just say that it works. You get the usual Mac start up sound effect, then the fans kick in. It is a very loud machine
As it hasn't been used in a while, the clock battery has gone flat, so I had to set the date
Here is the Mac OS X "about" screen
Here is a little bit more about the hardware and operating system
Lets have a look around the unit itself now...
Here is the underside of the mouse and keyboard
This is each side of the unit
Here are the ports, from left to right they are, headphones, audio input port (there is a built in microphone), 3 x USB, 2 x Firewire, modem socket (not fitted), Ethernet, and external monitor (mini VGA?), to the right of the ports is the power switch, this is a momentary switch rather than a toggle, then finally the power socket.
At the lower rear of the machine is the cooling fan, by the way did I say this machine is very loud
On the bottom of the machine is an access cover which gives you access to the SDRAM and clock battery
Here is the CD burner, I assume it is a burner, I haven't tried burning a disc, although the option is there in the OS. But it won't read DVD's, I tried
In the first picture you can see what resolutions the monitor supports, it is a very good monitor, although the highest resolution flickers slightly, and you can see in the second picture the eMac supports transfer mode (hold down T on the keyboard when switching on)
Root access in the terminal is possible
This is all you get when trying to install a modern browser, there may be suitable browsers available, but I gave up here
Ahhh, bummer!
?VERIFY ERROR