This page is dedicated to Makkintosshu, my 2000 Pismo PowerBook G3 workhorse. Why do people dedicate whole pages to their beloved computers? Because they're beautiful, spend days on end with them (or months in my case), and have grown to love their individual personality. For many programmers, their computer is a significant other (as much as our friends, family, and other significant other may hate it), so why not dedicate a page to it?

So, time for the juicy details. Makkintosshu is a sleek black 400MHz 2000 Pismo PowerBook G3 with 320MB of RAM and the original 6GB internal hard drive that it came with. It currently runs Mac OS X 24/7, it also has OS 9.1, but doesn't really like it for some reason... I can't blame it, I don't like Mac OS 9.1 very much either. It sits on top of a RoadTools CoolPad to keep the temp down a bit and for the sweet swivel feature (thanks to a colleague for introducing the CoolPad to me).

At school it has an introvenous T3 connection to the Internet... hehe... at work it gets by with only a partial T1, but at home it has to fight withdrawl symptoms with a measly 56k modem, luckily that too is introvenous ;) It does however have a 10Base-T ethernet connection with some of its buddies, although not many of them like to talk to it now that it runs Mac OS X. Eventually I'd like to get an AirPort card and Base Station so that I can go outside with Makkintosshu (one of my favorite activities other than mountain biking, concerts, getting together with friends, and writing code).

Makkintosshu is my web/application development powerhouse. It easily handles any graphics & html editing I throw at it, and it even runs Java, Perl, PHP, and Apache for all my web applications development needs. When it comes to application development I primarily use ProjectBuilder to write apps, demos, and games using OpenGL and Carbon or Cocoa, although it much prefers Cocoa :) It definitely wishes it had a nice fancy desk to sit on, so maybe sometime soon I'll manage to get one and keep it organized... haha, yeah right!

For all it's audio needs, Makkintosshu has an umbilical cord running to my stereo which happily pumps out any tunes that I'm in the mood for. It may have cost me only $15 at a yard sale and the addition of some hand-me-down speakers, but it definitely compliments Makkintosshu quite well, even when playing my punk & ska 45's (while Makkintosshu happily records them into mp3 format, or course)!

Currently I'm waiting for the delivery of a brand spankin' new QPS! M3 60GB, bus-powered, slim, FireWire hard drive... now that should make Makkintosshu a little happier... 10 times the disk space and faster than its internal hard drive! It's not like Makkintosshu is completely out of disk space or anything, I do have a Lacie 4x4x2x USB CD-RW drive, that thing is pretty nice, especially now that blank CD-R media is so cheap.

I also have an Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 ink jet printer, it's a sweet portble model, I currently can't use it from OS X due to a lack of drivers for non-LaserWriter printers (which REALLY sucks, cause that's the only printer I have other than a couple Image Writer II's and those'll probably NEVER work with OS X). So, if Apple ever releases drivers for it (or a Printer Driver SDK so I can try a hand at writing my own), then that'll make another perfect addition to my system.

What's next for Makkintosshu? Hopefully somebody will make a G4 processor upgrade card, it shouldn't be too hard since the processor is already on a daughter card, cause there are times when it needs a little extra umph. Until then, next on my list is a USB 2-button optical mouse with scroll wheel (probably a Kensington)... for gaming :) I'm also looking for one of the dark blue (not blue & white) 15" LCD Apple Studio Displays with either a VGA or DVI connector. I love using a second monitor with Makkintosshu, but I don't have the desk space for a full-fledged CRT, nor the money for a brand new Apple Studio Display with ADC (which also needs a $300 ADC-to-VGA adaptor... ouch). Not only that, but I think the color scheme would match the jet black a bit better. Eventually I'll probably also upgrade to a full 512MB of RAM, but with Mac OS X I haven't really seen the need so far (not to mention I barely upgraded from 128MB to 320MB).

Eventually I'll have to put up some photos (hopefully when I get a really fancy desk and such), but until then you'll have to use your imagination and some screenshots. Hopefully, in not too long I'll have a system comparable to that shown here... gotta hand it to that guy, he's got a beautiful set up!

BTW - if you have an Apple Studio Display (like the one I described above) that you're looking to get rid of, let me know, I'd REALLY like to get my hands on one!