Well, as I found out with my Power Mac G3
that is not as easy as you'd think.What are the prerequisites?
The giveaway is already in the title of this post, BOINC on Mac OS X. It just won't work on OS 9, as was the OS of the G3 I found in a dumpster. The absolute minimum version of OS X that is supported by BOINC is OS 10.3.9, and that will give you at max a 6.6.36 client.
The Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White) -as is the full official name of my best apple- can officially be upgraded to at max Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger, which could mean a 6.12.35 BOINC client. Unofficially you can install Mac OS X Leopard with a PowerPC G4 CPU upgrade and LeopardAssist, but this still will get you no further than a 6.12.35 BOINC client.
The G3 ran, depending on the version, at 300 to 450 MHz. so I am thinking of using the casing for a new AM1 system or so. An alternative could be Linux for PowerPC, but then you can -slowly- run only Seti@Home, what a bummer...
But we now know that you need a better/later Mac than a G3. Would a Power Mac G4 do?
Well...The earliest G4's were hardly better than the G3, running their PowerPC G4 CPUs at 350 to 500 MHz, but there is a 2002 edition that has a Dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 -dual in those days still meaning two CPU's. Still these -and later G4's- are all hampered BOINC-wise by their PowerPC architecture because, as with the G3, you can't get them past a BOINC 6.12.35 client.
The Power Mac G5 then?
At the risk of sounding repetitive: even the Power Mac G5 (In its ultimate "Quadcore" version with two dual core 2.5 GHz PowerPC 970MP CPUs) is hampered BOINC-wise by its PowerPC architecture and can not get a better BOINC client than the 6.12.35 version. Still, I will pull it out of the dumpter if I see one....
After the Power Mac G5 we got the Mac Pro, here next to a dustbin, you'd think:
Actually it is THE latest in Mac Pro design...
With the Mac Pro you can run the latest BOINC client (7.6.12 using a 64-bit Intel CPU and running OS X Version 10.6.0+)
