Question - When was my mac first switched on???

I have been trying to find a widget, small app that can tell me when my machine was first switched on, and total time it has been on... not the last uptime like ShowOff Widget and iStat give...

I have a feeling there was a way to tell these two things... but I don't know if it was a widget, terminal script etc....

Maybe some more knowledge can help... I think this is interesting in hardware terms of how long your mac's been switched on for... I have a old G4 i'd like to know how long it's been on for compared to my current laptop....

Regards
Volks

Uptime (via terminal, iStat or any other method) is the only info that's available I think.

It'll tell you when your computer was last restarted or turned on. I'm not sure I understand how that's different to what you're after? Do you want to know total time your Mac has been on, including restarts?

As far as i know its not possible to get total uptime

I remember years ago in TechTool Lite (I think thats what it was called) you could see how many hours the machine had been used in total, but that was in the old OS 9 days, and on my 5400 and 5500 I remember doing it, there have been many ROM changes, etc, since then so not sure if it can still be done by anything similar.

Yes - some older Mac models, mainly 68K, did have an accurate display of hours used by running Techtool. Although most Macs wiped this with each restart or PRAM reset - some must have had this information stored on some sort of nonvolatile RAM chip.

We once owned a Mac IIfx used as a 24/7 mail server by CSIRO before if came into our hands - I think it went well over the 9999 hours mark

Another idea to find the age of Macs is there was this website that let you enter your serial number and it gave it's day and date of manufacturer - I can't find it for the life of me.

JB

Top job iSlayer - hard little bugger to find, that site

JB

I used that site a lot when Apple was not being nice about the eMac capacitor issue... Helped people distinguish what their computer's build date was, to help piece together info on the capacitor issue...

Basically though you don't need it... just the first few digits of any Mac's serial number...

Mine for instance, starts

YM430..........

YM = China
4 = 2004
30 = 30th week of the year (18 - 24 July, in that instance)

Model: Mxxxx MacBook Pro 2.4GHz
Screen size: 15 inch
Factory: W8 (Shanghai China)code_to_number: 2PL -

Production year: 1997
Production week: 23 (June)
Production number: 3114 (within this week)

its very Old School!

There is also a program called coconutidentitycard that will give you information about when and where your computer or ipod was made. Find it at http://www.coconut-flavour.com/cocon...ard/index.html

My eMac is "unknown" according to that app... (due to new logic board - "About this Mac" also no longer identifies with my serial number)