iBook G3 Quality, 802.11g for Older PowerBooks, Installing Tiger on a CD-ROM eMac, and More
Charles W. Moore - 2007.10.29
iBook G3 Quality
From Christoph Trusch:
Hello Charles,
I completely agree with your findings on iBook quality. I've worked
for years with a 12" G3 800 MHz model
(semi translucent keyboard), and have been completely satisfied. No
problems at all. It's still my secondary computer, and I will keep it
for booting into OS 9 since I know that I'll have to move to 10.5
on my primary Mac one day and lose Classic. I recently typed on a
friend's G4 model and was pretty shocked about the keyboard quality and
the overall build quality in comparison to the G3. Sad.
Best regards,
Christoph Trusch
Hi Cristoph,
Of course you could install up to OS X 10.4.10 (or 11)
Tiger on the iBook and still have Classic Mode support.
I have occasionally booted the iBook from OS 9, but
never used Classic boots for work on that machine.
Charles
iBook G3 Keeps on Going
From Charles:
Hi Charles,
I bought my iBook 700 in 2002
around the same time as you. Had one major repair under warranty (I
think it was the motherboard or the optical drive). It now sits on my
seventh-grader's desk, running Tiger. I hope to get several more years
of service out of it as a kid machine. You are spot on about fit and
finish. The clear plastic over white gave it a great look. Much
classier than the solid white case that replaced it. In fact, I had
been dreaming about buying a 1969 BMW 2002 sedan - the one with the
round taillights. The round speakers on the iBook actually cured me of
that.
Cheers,
Brian
Hi Brian,
Actually it sounds like your 700 MHz iBook is of the
previous generation to mine, which was the first iteration of the
"opaque white" finish as opposed to the clear over white of the earlier
machines. Still, I like the look, and it has a lot nicer finish than my
daughter's G4 iBook.
Ah yes; the legendary BMW 2002 - a ride I've dreamed
about as well. What do you think of the new BMW 100 series being the
contemporary reincarnation of the 2002?
Charles
802.11g WiFi for PowerBook G3
From John Johnson:
Dear Charles
I have a couple of Lombards using
Buffalo 802.11G wireless cards. Both the Buffalo WLI - CB-G54A and
WLI-CB-AG54 work natively with OS X 10.3.9 and show up as Broadcom
cards. Range isn't all that good, but the G54A comes with an antenna
socket. Can't vouch for 10.2.x, as I haven't tried it, but apparently
AirPort 3.1 is the earliest version supported.
The WLI-CB-G54 doesn't work, so you have to be very careful about
exactly which Buffalo card you get. I think both the Buffalo cards are
now out of production, but probably still obtainable via eBay.
802.11g wireless certainly helps get a bit more life out of these
machines.
Regards
John Johnson
Hi John,
I now have a Buffalo AirStation WLI-CB-G54 card that I
got from Wegener
Media, and it works just great with my Pismo and whatever version
of AirPort that is in OS X 10.4.9.
I can't really speak to range, but the throughput is
great. :-)
Charles
Problems Installing OS X 10.4 on a DVD-less
eMac
From Brian Cohen:
Good morning Charles.
I read your article on Low End Mac about installing OS X Tiger on
Macs equipped only with CD drives. I've got a CD-only eMac and have
obtained a copy of the eMac install disk for OS X Tiger that I
would like to install.
I do have an old G3 iMac that
has a DVD drive and am attempting to install the Tiger DVD on the eMac
using the iMac in FireWire Target Mode.
Here's what I've done...
- Connect the two computers via FireWire;
- Start up the eMac;
- Start up the iMac with the T key held down, which puts it into
FireWire target mode.
Everything goes fine - both computers start up, and I can see the
hard drive from the G3 iMac on the eMac desktop. The problem is that
when I insert the Tiger Install DVD in the iMac, it does not show up on
the eMac desktop, so I cannot perform the install.
I know the DVD drive in the iMac works, and I know that the install
DVD can be read by it.
Any tips on what I may be doing wrong, or how I could somehow get
the eMac to access the iMac DVD drive when the iMac is in FireWire
target mode?
Thanks very much for your help,
Brian Cohen
Hi Brian,
These unsupported installations seem to be
idiosyncratic, and what works with one pair of machines may not work
with others, so it's not likely a matter of doing something
"wrong".
The way I did it was to mount the destination machine
(my G3 iBook) as an external drive in Target Disk Mode, inserted the
install DVD in the machine equipped with a DVD drive (my Pismo PowerBook), and selected the iBook's hard
drive as the volume for the install to go. You can read a detailed
account of how things proceeded in Installing OS X 10.4 'Tiger' on DVD-Challenged
Macs Using FireWire Target Disk Mode.
This worked very well. There was a bit of confusion
when the installer went to restart the computer. After the installer
displays its "Installation of Software Successfully Completed" dialog,
it wants to reboot into the new system it has just installed. I
discovered no way to defeat this, so the Pismo rebooted from the
iBook's hard drive, which was interesting. No problems were
encountered, though.
At that point I shut down both computers, disconnected
the FireWire cable, and restarted each computers from its respective
boot system.
That install is still going strong, upgraded to OS
10.4.9 currently.
Charles
FireWire Camera?
From Bruce T. Brodnax in response to OS X Unstable with Video Compression:
"By the way, where do you find a FireWire digital
camera these days??? Nobody seems to make them any more. They're all
USB 2.0, and that won't work with a Classic system as far as I
know."
The only video cameras I've seen with FireWire were Sony products,
as Sony Vaios were the only other laptops besides Macs that came with
FireWire [Sony's label is different, "iLink" or something; don't have
my Vaio handy to check it] to my (admittedly limited & imperfect)
knowledge.
I have no knowledge of actual video cam model numbers, but given the
vintage, they're all probably Digital8 Handycams or something equally
antiquated by now [but ironically, possessed of superior Nightshot
capabilities than the present models]. As I am far to penurious to
actually buy a digital video cam, this is all just stuff I
dredged up from memory that I happened to learn in the course of
investigating other matters sometime in the past. Accordingly, YMMV,
caveat emptor, etc., etc.
Thanks for all the great LEM content; I've been reading a lot of it
the last few days, as I'm trying to clean out my closet & unload
some of my old junk on eBay. Much to my chagrin, I've come to the
realization that if I'd just gotten on the stick a year or two ago I
could have still rec'd. something for it, whereas now I'll likely have
to pay someone else to haul it off! ;-p
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the info and comment.
The world has definitely gone to USB, although I still
much prefer FireWire when large amounts of data must be transferred,
and, of course, FireWire is bootable and USB 2.0 isn't on PowerPC
Macs.
As for obsolete stuff, I have a bunch. Can't bring
myself to throw much of it out, at least yet, but I suppose the day
must come.
Charles
Mac OS X 10.5 on Upgraded G4 Power Macs
From Trevor J. Mahan:
Hello
I saw your recent write-up about OS X 10.5 not being able to install
on machines with less than a G4/867 MHz.
Y'all quoted:
"What the OS X installer does isn't check how fast
your processor is running; it looks at the model number of your Mac and
compares it to a list of 'bad' machines that are officially rated as
too slow. So if you've got an upgraded CPU and your box is actually
fast enough, well, it won't work....
Well, okay, this makes sense say for the non-CPU upgradeable G4
iMacs and PowerBooks, but this seems illogical for the G4 desktops.
After all, the Quicksilver first
came out with 700 MHz, 867 MHz, or dual 800 MHz CPUs. The motherboard
is exactly the same, and I can swap CPU cards around easily in that
model. But if I have a 700 MHz CPU in that machine, the OS X
Leopard installer will stop again, why? If it isn't checking the CPU
speeds, then it is checking the model. And several Quicksilver models
of both generations are supported at one CPU speed but not the other?
So if I have a Quicksilver originally at 700 MHz and have it upgraded
with a NewerTech 7448 at 1.8 GHz, it won't work. But if I have a
Quicksilver originally at 867 MHz and have it upgraded with the same
NewerTech 1.8 GHz CPU, it will work?
I suppose the only formal answer will be known after the release of
Leopard later this month. I have a Quicksilver 700 MHz upgraded machine
as described with the NewerTech CPU plus a Gigabit dual 500 MHz
original machine upgraded with a Gigadesigns 1.4 GHz CPU. Both run
Tiger beautifully with maxed out ram, a SATA PCI card, and SATA drives.
Both have great video cards - Nvidia 6200's at 256 MB VRAM. I run these
in a work environment and will very frustrated if I can't upgrade to
Leopard just because the 'original' CPU speed was not 867 MHz.
Thanks for the continued reporting on this. I have been a daily
reader of LEM since y'all first appeared on the scene years ago.
Warmly,
Trevor J. Mahan
Hi Trevor,
I am slow in replying because I hoped some new light
would be shed on this issue before the Leopard release, but
unfortunately none emerged.
Perhaps by now you've had an opportunity to try a
Leopard install on your Quicksilver.
Charles
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