iBook G3 Quality, 802.11g for Older PowerBooks, Installing Tiger on a CD-ROM eMac, and More

• iBook G3 Quality
• iBook G3 Keeps on Going
• 802.11g WiFi for PowerBook G3
• Problems Installing OS X 10.4 on a DVD-less eMac
• FireWire Camera?
• Mac OS X 10.5 on Upgraded G4 Power Macs

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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