Used 'Book Value, Overheating 12" PowerBook, Target Disk Mode Weirdness, and More

• Used PowerBooks and the Ever-Shifting 'Low End'
• Overheating Little Al Continuation
• Some Hard Drives Incompatible with Target Disk Mode
• Pismo Target Disk Mode Weirdness
• Unibody All the Way
• Leopard Broke Wireless Printing for HP PSC 1350

Used PowerBooks and the Ever-Shifting 'Low End'

From Barrett:

Dear Charles,

To say the least, I've loved your writings (on LEM and elsewhere) and enjoyed your chronicling of the evolving state of Mac hardware in your domain over the years, which seemed to resemble my own tech changes, albeit a few generations ahead of wherever I happened to be at a given moment.

Where I happened to be, notebook-wise, up until the night before last, was with a tricked-out PowerBook G3 "Pismo". I've mentioned this particular Pismo before: One of my clients (I'm a freelance Mac & PC tech in New York City) brought the Pismo to me for repair a few years ago. While I was in the process of breaking the machine down for diagnosis (the problem turned out to be relatively simple), the client ran out and bought a very-late-model PowerBook G4 aluminum model (probably the 1.67 GHz hi-res screen version, since the very first MacBook Pros had just been announced), and I wound up with the Pismo as a partial payment. This worked out nicely, as I was getting tired of nursing along an inherited and much-abused PowerBook G3 WallStreet. About a week of work and upgrades later, I had a (relatively, for its age) screaming Pismo, with a gig of RAM, fast 40 GB hard drive, AirPort card, and a lean install of Mac OS X "Panther". It was hard to believe a laptop that came into being in 2000 could still more-or-less hang with modern machines in terms of WiFi and general-purpose usefulness. (Heck, I even did some basic Photoshop work on it.)

But, of course, the time ultimately comes when one seriously has to reckon with the Necessary Upgrade. I use my PowerBook as a heavy-duty tool in my work, from on-the-fly online research to bump-starting a client's dead-in-the-water Mac hard drive via Target Disk Mode, to hastily copying vital data from another computer's dying-by-the-minute hard disk. The Pismo could do some astounding heavy lifting, and I loved its "mechanic-friendly" modular design (the best Apple ever made in that regard, IMO, and I take it I'm hardly alone in this thinking), but its architecture was starting to show its age. The last straw came three weeks ago when the video suddenly, and totally, died, and a simple fix was out of the question. This also happened at a moment when my reserve funds were, to put it gently, pretty meager.

A fellow tech in Harlem came to the rescue with an "empty" (no hard drive, RAM, battery, or optical drive, but otherwise functional), which he offered to me quite cheap. About 20 minutes of work on his bench had me up and at 'em again, but I also decided that it was time to move on. The thing was now nine years old. Yes, most PC laptops that age were on their second mortgage in the landfill they were occupying, but I was stretching things to the breaking point in terms of my needs.

I have to say that, even on a good day with the Pismo, I've secretly pined for a late-model G4 AlBook . . . the 15" model in particular (the 17" model had a bit too large a form-factor for me, while the 12" model, IMO, is little more than a glorified iBook G4: no CardBus slot, no backlit keyboard [well, I never saw a 12'" AlBook with one; correct me if I'm mistaken], somewhat limited RAM capacity, a processor-speed ceiling of 1.5 GHz . . . and somewhat overpriced on the used market, as a casual glance at Craigslist (CL) would bear out).

Yes, my ideal was a 1.67 GHz high(er)-resolution model like the one I recently fixed for another client recently. But, yet again, people on CL were asking silly money for fairly beaten-up, early production models. But two nights ago, while casually cruising CL, I spied an ad for a 15" 1.67 GHz model for a price that seemed almost too good to be true. (Let's just say it was south of $500.) To top it off, the owner claimed the unit was in excellent condition, with the exception of one scratch on the lid. I took a chance and emailed in reply, even though the ad was a couple of days old.

Glad I did. The owner said it was still available, even though she had received quite a few inquiries, but no serious buyers, and asked if I was truly serious about buying. I said that I was, if that machine was all she described it as. After a few phone calls, I headed over to check the 'Book out.

It was immaculate. The scratch on the lid was almost not worth mentioning (most AlBooks I see look like they were used as Olympic curling stones). Other than that, you could have told me it was a new-old-stock model just taken out of the box, and I'd have believed you. The screen was perfect, no dead pixels, and none of those nasty white blotches early production AlBooks suffered from. It wasn't the hi-res model, but at this price, and in this condition, I didn't care. It had had a logic-board replacement a few years back, but had no other problems besides this (the fact that the owner was up front about that made me feel even more comfortable), and it had a full gig of RAM to get me going without instantly running out to get more (although I will max it out to 2 gigs before long).

In short, it was that rarest of laptops, a cream puff, at a crazy-cheap price. Naturally, I bought it on the spot.

What I sea-change! With the Pismo, I'd been going back-and-forth about moving it up to Tiger from Panther but knew that I'd likely want to strip out Dashboard and Spotlight to keep the thing from getting dragged down in performance, even though the RAM was maxed-out to a gig. (The limited video performance was getting a bit on my nerves, and I'm not especially picky about this with laptops . . . that's what I have a MDD G4 tower for). I also needed to do something about browsers: Firefox 2 has been my standard since its release, but support for it had been cut off late last year, and I couldn't use Firefox 3 without, of course, moving up to Tiger. The G4 came to me originally with Leopard on it, and it seemed to like that cat just fine, but since I decided to stay "one cat back" with the G4 tower, even though that machine can handle Leopard quite easily (look up "Three Cats Back" on Urbandictionary.com: that one's mine), I decided to do the same with my AlBook. Moving everything from my Pismo to the AlBook was, of course, silly-simple (although, for some reason, Microsoft Messenger doesn't want to work anymore, even after upgrading to the current version . . . of course, this is Microsoft we're talking about here...). Yes, I'll admit it now: The 'net is a lot more fun when your machine can handle practically anything it throws at it. The backlit keyboard and ALS means kissing my gooseneck USB night-light good-bye. And, yes, I can now synch my Palm TX via Bluetooth . . . no more cables! (You only have to do this once to get the point.) But, most important, this AlBook will be a much more capable tool for my work.

The main point of this long ramble - I think - is that upgrading doesn't have to be a scary-expensive ordeal if you're careful. For me, the advantage of buying gear via Craigslist, as opposed to, say, a Certain Auction Site, is that you deal with people face-to-face, and, most of the time, get to handle the merchandise before laying your money down. I believe the "honesty quotient" goes up quite a bit when you're dealing eye-to-eye with someone, but that's no substitute for asking important questions about the item, such as whether the item has had only one owner. (In my case, the person I bought the AlBook from was the original owner.) I'm hardly a person of great means, and, especially at this moment in time, few of us can afford to be profligate with what cash we have on hand. But, sometimes, by paying attention to what's important, we get what we need.

And, as a tiny gesture in the name of "paying it forward", I'm putting my still-useful Pismo on CL for a rather low price; not exactly giving the thing away, but pricing it within the range of someone who could use such a reasonably equipped machine, but has even less scratch than I do.

Thanks again for the great writing, Charles, and best wishes in the year ahead.

Barrett

Hi Barrett,

Thanks for the interesting account of your adventure in hardware upgrading and the kind words about my scribbling over the years. Congratulations on the great deal you found. Sounds like a cream puff. If you get anything like the great service I've had from my 1.33 GHz 17" AlBook, you'll be very happy with it.

I'm still using my Pismos for light to medium-duty work, including scanning and working with photos in Photoshop Elements (4 - I think 6 would be a bit too demanding for the old Pismo 9 MB graphics to handle), as well as one of them serving as my default road machine with a Buffalo WiFi card in the CardBus slot (the Mac OS thinks it's AirPort).

I'm running Tiger on the Pismos but have been using Leopard since October '07 on the AlBook. Tiger is a happier camper on PowerPC hardware I find, but I'm addicted to Spaces and willing to put up with Leopard's manifold angularities in order to have it.

My own computing arc is going to change with the arrival of the refurbished 2.0 GHz Unibody MacBook I've ordered (Thursday if the FedEx tracking site is accurate). I love the G4s, but it's time.

You are correct that there was never a 12" PowerBook with an illuminated keyboard.

Charles

Overheating Little Al Continuation

From Jacek A. Rochacki:

Dear Charles

With regard to My Overheating 12" PowerBook story, let me report that the disks were swapped; the 6 month old 120 GB serves now as the internal hard drive in my Little Al, and the original 80 GB serves for backups in the external enclosure. Unfortunately the laptop is still getting too hot when performing simplest operations and creates loud, whirling sounds, which now are coming from the area of the fan only. At least the elimination of the hard drive as source of these annoying sounds was a reason good enough for swap of the disks.

So the next step will be putting new thermopads (according to what we see at iFixit and PowerBook Medic) and replacement of the fan; I would prefer to use the brand new fan, but it seems to be not so easy to find proper fan in my "eyesight", so most probably we shall install the secondhand but operational one, which comes from identical PowerBook that "went to the void" and serves as "giver" of spare parts. I hope to be ready with these operations in several days, and then I will take the liberty to let you know. I read in Internet several reports telling of loud, overheating Apple Alu laptops, and if by the occasion of my little misfortune we shall find a way of fixing it, maybe it will be of some use for others, too.

If the new fan will not "cure" the bad symptoms, we shall continue; the next eventual operation will be probably a thorough check of sensors, but I sincerely hope, that the fan itself is a "wrongdoer"; we shall see.

As always
Jacek

Hi Jacek,

The fan certainly seems at this point to be the most likely culprit - one reason why I try to keep mine from cutting in very often, the other being that I hate the noise it makes, but the sound has been pretty much consistently the same since the unit was new (to me).

I'm a bit apprehensive as to what fan activity will be like with my refurbished Unibody MacBook.

Keep us posted on further developments.

Charles

Some Hard Drives Incompatible with Target Disk Mode

From K. in response to Pismo Won't Enter Target Disk Mode:

Hiya,

What's interesting is what's not mentioned here.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that this Pismo has also had its hard drive upgraded, as John states he sprung for a G4 processor upgrade.

That said - some hard drives will not allow a computer to go into Target Disk Mode, because for complicated reasons they cannot be recognized as SCSI devices (FireWire Target Disk Mode - yes, FireWire - is an offshoot of SCSI Target Disk Mode).

More to be found here on that subject: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1189.html#TargetMode

FWIW - I've found that Seagate Drives will uniformly go into Target Disk Mode on Pismos - anything else is up for grabs.

Hope this helps someone!

Peace,
K

Hi K,

Thanks for the excellent information and the link to the Apple Developer Note.

Both of my Pismos boot happily into FWTDM. One does have a Seagate hard drive and the other a Toshiba.

Charles

Pismo Target Disk Mode Weirdness

From John Black:

Hello again, Charles.

Thanks for the reply. There must be some incompatibility between my Pismo and the new BigAl that I recently acquired. TDM works in reverse that way, i.e., the 17" hard drive shows up on the Pismo when the 17" is put into TDM, but the Pismo dies when I try it the other way. Firmware has been at 4.1.8 for a long time.

Interestingly, I just tried TDM with the Pismo attached to our G4 Digital Audio (DA), and when I pressed the "T" key on the Pismo keyboard, it went immediately to TDM with the bouncing symbol on the screen. The Pismo hard drive shows up in the finder on the DA as it should.

Did you try your setup with the BigAl? I'm wondering now if the 17" is blocking the FireWire signal from the puny little Pismo, whereas the DA, being only one year newer than the Pismo, has similar circuitry and reads it with no problem. I can't see any reason that should be, but I'm at a loss as to how to explain it otherwise.

John

Hi John,

I have used the Pismos in Target Disk Mode with the BigAl, although not recently, and don't recall having any problems. I'm still inclined to think it's probably a software issue you're experiencing, but what do I know?

Charles

Thanks to you and K., Charles. My last email, however, confirmed that the Pismo will go into TDM when connected to our DA G4, but it won't do so when connected to the 17" Aluminum PowerBook. I did in fact replace the hard drive, but with a Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM drive.

John

Unibody All the Way

From John:

Hey Charles,

Just read your recent article, Plastic or Aluminum: What's the Better MacBook Now?

Unibody is definitely the way to go. I picked up the 13" Unibody, and it's my main machine right now. Nice, fast, portable, quiet . . . I can't say enough about it.

- john

Hi John,

I've come to the same conclusion. I ordered an Apple Certified Refurbished 13" Unibody MacBook 2.0 GHz on Thursday. Waiting for it to arrive.

Charles

Leopard Broke Wireless Printing for HP PSC 1350

From Eugene:

Hello Charles,

I've just read that you've made the plunge and ordered a Unibody MacBook. I just bought a leftover early 2008 2.4 GHz MacBook (white) at a very good price from MacConnection (for $899 after rebate).

I migrated from a 12" PowerBook running 10.4.11, and the upgrade in speed and features is really striking even though I'm not a power user. Even my copy of Microsoft Office X runs faster on Rosetta than it does natively in Tiger on the old PowerBook. I love the new MacBook and feel I got a really great deal.

However, I'm writing because the move to Leopard broke my ability to wirelessly print on my HP PSC 1350 (an all-in-one printer) through my AirPort Express. With my old PowerBook running Tiger, wireless printing was a breeze with the AirPort Express. Now, after three separate calls to AppleCare and one to HP, it was determined that there isn't a driver that supports my printer's ability to print wirelessly. I've searched many forums, tried some workarounds (such as using GIMP drivers), and still no joy.

I'm pretty steamed that I've spent money to buy the next generation product, Leopard, and now have lost an important feature that worked in Tiger. While my printer is five years old, I think it's pretty outrageous that a new operating system could render it useless.

At this point, I'm considering buying a new printer (unless if you or anyone else has any suggestions). I'm still happy with the upgrade to the MacBook.

Best regards,
Eugene

Hi Eugene,

I agree that you got an excellent deal on the MacBook, which should help mitigate the expense of having to buy a new printer.

For me, aside from losing Classic Mode support (not as traumatic as I had expected, although I still use Classic Mode on my Pismos running Tiger) the biggest aggravation has been that Leopard half-broke email over my dialup connection. Some SMTP servers, including my ISP's, simply refuse to respond with Leopard, although they continue to work fine with my Tiger machines over the same network connection and using the same software (Eudora 6.2.4) and configurations. What does still work (mainly Gmail and Lavabit) does so with speed barely exceeding continental drift, while again, throughput is fine with Tiger. It's maddening.

According to Primate Labs, your 2.4 GHz MacBook has a Geekbench performance score of 3088, while the 12" PowerBook (you didn't say which model you had) Geekbenches at from 427 to 721, so you performance boost is objectively substantial.

I'll be going from 693 with the 1.33 GHz 17" PowerBook to 2691 with the 2.0 GHz Unibody MacBook - not quite as dramatic, but still a big improvement.

Charles

Go to the Miscellaneous Ramblings Mailbag index.