Hi there,
I am new to audio recording, and am creating a budget setup. I have an older Power Mac G5 running OS X 10.5.8 (PowerPC 970 processor), on which I believe Cubase 4 would be compatible. I found a link somewhere on http://www.steinberg.net to download Cubase 4, but receive an eLicenser error when attempting to run the program. I’d like to purchase or obtain an eLicense to run Cubase 4.
I read elsewhere in the forum that older versions may run using the newest Cubase 9.5 license. There are three versions of Cubase 9.5 available; is it possible to run this legacy software using a license from the elements version? Is there perhaps someone else in the forum who would be willing to sell or transfer me a license for Cubase 4? I don’t only have money to offer: I can screen print and roast coffee 
(but I probably can’t ship coffee outside the USA). See Ancient Organism Coffee for a sample of my work. Let’s make a deal!
No, you need a Pro license to run Cubase 4
Please don’t waste your time with old hardware. You’re going to suffer, not to mention that Cubase 4 is harder and slower to use than Cubase 9.5.
I recommend getting a newer medium-tier desktop computer and using Cubase Elements 9.5 for the time being. Cubase 9.5 has better stock content than Cubase 4. Cubase Elements is missing a few plugins like the 2 excellent synthesizers and a very good reverb that are included with Cubase Artist 9.5 and higher, but it should be more than enough for your first year of making music.
You can upgrade to Cubase Artist or Cubase Pro later if you feel like, and you’ll actually receive a discount if you upgrade after Cubase 10 comes out.
You’ll probably need an audio interface if you plan to record at decent quality and low latency. The Steinberg UR interfaces come with Cubase AI for free, which might also be good enough for now, and it can be upgraded to another version, giving you a $50 discount.
elements has the same audio/midi track capacity (64 midi tracks, 48 audio tracks) as a copy of cubase LE4 which you can find for free with some older audio interfaces so i would say no; that is not worthwhile to the guy at all;
he said he wants to use a powermac g5. while you may think the powermac g5 is old + obsolete thats your opinion;
the powermac g5 while it may SUCK in benchmarks compared to newer computers; and its power consumption is very high compared to newer computers; is still VERY MUCH useful for music production; and there is a LARGE LARGE amount of software written for that platform and can still be very useful in the studio environment to a mac user;
i own the 2003 single cpu PowerMac G5 1.8ghz model; compared to my other machines it sucks for alot of things; it sucks as a web browser even; but using midi software and acting as a sequencer + using early 2000s versions of VSTs… it most definately does not suck at that; its actually really great for music production as alot of music production software doesnt require 20k benchmarks to be useful.
one mans trash is another mans treasure.
this is a perfect example of that.