How can I use my old macs in the studio?

[Darlington Pair]

So I'm planning on buying a new Mac mini in the somewhat near future. My current recording rig is a G5 2.3 dual processor, I also have one of the last G4 powerbooks and my wife's old first intel macbook pro. I was thinking about just putting my powerbook over with all my synths to run sequences, but I don't really do that kind of stuff, I'm more of a live band in a room kind of guy so that seems fairly pointless. The G5 I have a couple drives in and the mini doesn't come with an optical drive so I was thinking about just putting the mini on top of the g5 so that it's just a giant hard drive and optical drive.

So I've got these computers around and I would really like to make use of them, so should I use them for server-y stuff or what?

[kingtoad]

You could use them as outboard FX units? Office stuff?

[lysander]

If you're going to the most recent Mac Mini then you may encounter a lot of software and hardware incompatibilities that will make it very handy to have an older machine around. The latest Apple machines all boot the system in 64-bit only; they're not backwards-compatible with older systems and software that runs at 32-bit (and the pre-Intel stuff is getting really old now). There is a converter for plugins and soft synths (32Lives, it's called), but you may run into problems with audio interfaces and other hardware type stuff.

The G5 will be useful for backing up sessions, samples, and installers given the drives in it. The Powerbook G4 is more difficult for me to imagine re-purposing. I gave mine to a charity last year since it's still useful for email and word processing stuff..

[syrupcore]

You could use them to keep your new Mac Mini off of the internet (perhaps other than OS updates). Big ass thumb drives are dirt cheap for all of your sneakernetting needs.