Dell's 802.11g Card for PowerBooks, Glad for the Death of Classic, FireWire Cams, and More
Charles W. Moore - 2007.11.05
Another 802.11g Option for G3 PowerBooks
From James Barbour:
Charles,
I have a Dell-branded 802.11g card in my Pismo that works a treat, and shows up in System
Profiler as an AirPort Extreme card. I read about the card being
compatible on one of the Mac blogs a while back, can't remember which
one though.
The card is a "Dell TrueMobile 800", although the sticker on the
reverse identifies it as a Broadcom.
As for FireWire cameras, I have a Sony DCR-PC5 mini-DV cam that's
eight or so years old and works great. They're still available on eBay.
And a quick look on the Sony website reveals that they're still using
the i.Link standard in current models.
Finally, regarding Leopard on upgraded G4s, I hope to test this soon
myself. I have a Digital Audio G4
running dual 1.8 GHz processors, a big hard drive, lots of memory, and
a modern graphics card - I'll be very disappointed if I can't run
Leopard on it.
Cheers
James
Hi James,
Thanks for the info on the Dell WiFi card and Sony
FireWire cameras.
There have been many reports of reasonably
successful installs of Leopard on older, unsupported hardware (see
below). One caveat is that reportedly, the new cat likes lots of RAM
(like more than 2 GB) to keep you out of the swapfile tedium.
Charles
Where to Find FireWire Cameras
From Ed Hurtley:
Pretty much 100% of "miniDV" cameras include FireWire. The vast
majority of HDV cameras include FireWire. FireWire was the
standard for digital video before HD came along. (Again, even the vast
majority of HDV cameras include FireWire, it's only the newer DVD,
flash, and hard drive-based camcorders that have done away with
FireWire.) One thing to remember is that FireWire has three names:
FireWire (Apple's trademarked name for it), i.Link (Sony's trademarked
name for it), and IEEE-1394, (the IEEE designation for it).
The original post may have been referring to FireWire
webcams, though. Those were always a niche market, and few were
ever made.
The two biggest names were the
Orange Micro "iBot" (the company has gone out of business) and the
ADS 1394 PYRO (company still around, but product discontinued, the
name "1394" being a reference to the IEEE designation for FireWire). In
addition, the original external (and also discontinued) Apple iSight should actually
work as a DV input device on OS 9, although I haven't tested
it.
I did find one store that seems to still sell FireWire webcams:
http://www.firewire-1394.com/fire-i-webcam-unibrain.htm
If the original poster was talking about digital still
cameras that use FireWire, well . . . good luck. There is no
major reason for a still camera to include FireWire. If you want to
transfer the pictures fast, you can get FireWire memory card readers
(Lexar sells FireWire, including FW800, Compact Flash readers). But
even on USB 2.0, the memory card itself is often the bottleneck, so the
only reason for a FireWire connection is on older computers without USB
2.0.
And if Bruce T. Brodnax is in
my neck of the woods (Portland, Oregon), I'll gladly "haul it off"
without charging him a dime. :-p
Ed Hurtley
Hi Ed,
Thanks for all the helpful info. I understand that
Sony makes still cameras that support "i.Link".
Charles
Obsolete Macs and Silent Computing
From Bruce Brodnax following up on FireWire Camera?:
Thank you for the reply; I really wasn't expecting that! I'm
from a long line of pack rats, so throwing obsolete stuff out is really
hard for me! I managed to divest myself of a stack of old Mac desktops
this past summer [actually, I gave away two worthwhile systems in all
the stuff, but hey, it went to a friend who probably cobbled together
3.5 working systems from all that stuff, & it opened up a lot of
space in my garage, so I can't complain! ;-)
Right now I'm hooked on Civ2 all over again, playing it on a
Pbook 3400 I dragged out of the closet to
put on eBay - only to discover I should have sold it a year ago when I
last uncovered it during a move; there doesn't seem to be any activity
in them any more [but is this at all surprising, given that they were
discontinued over a decade back?]. Yet it's still eminently usable
within its limitations. I even had a PCMCIA/CF adapter & 1 GB
Compact Flash card around, and am currently as close to Mac Plus-level
silent computing as I've been since selling my Pbook 100 [aka, "the Mac Plus in a notebook"] a decade & a
half ago....
Macs are truly amazing in their cohesiveness: Everything works
together extremely well in a manner that is unmatched on the PC side,
which leads to the unusual longevity (& of course, user
fanaticism!) of old Mac systems. I only hope that Apple doesn't lose
that in its progression to the Intel-based models and complete severing
of ties to the Classic environment.
As for your comments regarding FireWire: Yes, the ability to boot
from it is certainly a major factor in its favor. But unless it
supports the inexpensive peripherals like mice/keyboards/printers/flash
drives/etc. that USB does, it's days are ultimately numbered. Remember
SCSI? Same thing: Lots of high-end peripheral support, a speed
advantage over USB 1.0, but killed off in no-time by the greater
flexibility & inherent cheapness of the USB offerings. Develop a
USB 3.0 bootable, backward-compatible standard & watch the world
beat a path to your door... ;-)
Ciao!
Bruce Brodnax
Hi Bruce,
Yes indeed. I still have every Mac I've owned,
including the PowerBook 5300 that
returned to me after my daughter moved on to newer hardware. They all
still work, including the old Mac Plus, which I used to run off a
floppy using TeachText for blissfully silent computing save for the
clackety Plus keyboard and occasional grunts from the floppy drive.
Actually the 5300 was even better, running of a RAM
disk with the hard drive spun down. I could get a bare bones system, a
minimal install of Word 5.1, and my GlobalFax software all on a 16 MB
RAM disk. The 5300 keyboard was much quieter than the Plus 'board.
Those were the days.
Actually, the 20 GB IBM HD in my iBook is wonderfully
quiet, and the 100 GB Seagate in this Pismo I'm using right now is
pretty decent too, although a subdued whirring is audible. I'm looking
forward to flash drives with enough capacity to be practical in a
laptop at competitive prices.
The useful longevity of Macs has historically been
remarkable. I'm still using nearly 8-year-old Pismos for production
work. :-)
You're probably right about USB, although I hear the
IEEE-1394 folks are working on a new, faster FireWire to compete with
the coming USB 3.0.
Charles
Glad for the Death of Classic
From Howie Isaacks:
I for one, am glad that Classic is dead. Actually, Apple began the
slow bleed with the release of Macs based on Intel processors. I've
been a Mac user for over 21 years. I enthusiastically embraced
OS X, and I thought Classic on OS X was a great way to help
the customers ease into the transition. I guess my question is
. . . hasn't Apple been more than helpful in the transition?
Must Apple support Classic indefinitely?
While I was working as a Mac Genius at the Apple Store Willow Bend,
I was the "go to" guy for Classic Mac OS issues. The unfortunate truth
is that most tech guys, Mac Geniuses, etc. don't have much knowledge of
the Classic Mac OS. With OS X, Apple has developed a platform that
is far more scalable than Classic could have ever been. I think the
death of Classic should be celebrated.
Howie Isaacks
Hi Howie,
Different strokes, I guess.
I agree that the end had to come for Classic
inevitably, but I had hoped that they would retain Classic Mode support
for as long as the Mac OS supported PowerPC hardware.
I also agree that Apple has done a nice job with
transitions, first with the shift from 68K to PPC in the mid-90s, then
with the segue from Classic to OS X, and yet again with the move
from PPC to Intel. I'm not really complaining, just sad to lose the
Classic capability.
It certainly doesn't make me feel celebratory.
Charles
Leopard and the 867 MHz Limit
From anonymous by request:
Hi Charles,
Regarding the installation of Leopard on machines with a processor
frequency of less than 867 MHz, here's some information: The installer
script checks both for machine model and processor speed, and even
checks for the presence of a G3. You can see a part of the installer
script for build 9A466 (the Leopard release is 9A581) on this forum
post.
In fact, the script doesn't check for Power Macs/PowerBooks G4 by
machine model, so for these machines the cut is made only by the
presence of a G4 and by its frequency being higher than 866 MHz.
For myself, I have installed Leopard on an external FireWire drive
for testing before committing to it (it's never been the case for me to
have all my important software ready by the release of any OS X
version, so I'm quite used to wait). Since I wanted to test on both
PowerPC and Intel Macs, I installed from my Titanium PowerBook 867 MHz (the disk is
partitioned with an Apple Partition Map scheme, otherwise it wouldn't
boot PowerPC Macs, whose Open Firmware doesn't know about the newer
GUID Partition Table). I could have installed from my MacBook, but the installer would refuse to
install on a disk partitioned with the APM scheme, so I would be able
to boot only the MacBook with the external disk.
Here's the funny (and important for LEM readers) part. After having
installed from the PowerBook and very briefly tested the system, I
couldn't refrain from plugging the external disk to my unmodified
Power Mac G4 Cube @ 450 MHz with 1 GB
RAM. Well, the Cube just started from Leopard without a hitch. I
haven't done any benchmarking yet, but it didn't feel slower than Tiger
on that same machine. However, the processor almost never went below
30% usage - and was very often at 40 or 50% just browsing the Web. I
checked Spaces, Stacks, QuickLook, CoverFlow in the Finder: All worked
reasonably well, but it didn't feel "snappy". My impression is that the
culprit is the graphics card (the Cube has an Nvidia GeForce 2 MX with
32 MB memory, that's low-end by today's standards). But in any case, I
remember using a Power Mac G4 @ 350 MHz
(with plenty of RAM) under Jaguar that felt much slower than this Cube
under Leopard.
Finally, I started the MacBook from the external drive. All I can
say at the moment is that the Finder feels more responsive, that I
really like the new Preview and the new Terminal with tabs (I feel
sorry for iTerm; it has
served me well for many years). Beyond that, I can't say much, as I
haven't had time to install any software (my 2-years-old daughter takes
most of my time), and I spend most of my time in Tiger. I just read on
forums that MS Office v.X and 2004 work well, and that PowerPC apps
launch faster (Rosetta must have been optimized).
So, to summarize: Leopard runs on G4s with a lower processor
frequency than 867 MHz. The only "difficulty" (it's really not
difficult if you have several Macs with at least one that makes the
cut) is to get it there. One can modify the installer script (a
relatively involved procedure) if one doesn't have access to a newer
Mac.
I hope this (too) long message will help clear things a bit. If you
like, I can send you Xbench results as soon as I have done them, but
I'm also on a project for reviving an iBook G3 with the motherboard problem at the
moment, so it may take some time.
All the best and thanks for all your writing,
Anonymous
Hi Anonymous,
Thanks so much for your report. Clears up some things
indeed.
I'm a fan of volume partitioning and installing boot
systems on external FireWire drives. I have a Panther install on one of
my drives that boots all four of my current 'Books (two Pismos, a
G3 iBook, and a 17" PowerBook) nicely.
My daughter, who is running Leopard on Intel hardware,
say's she's finding 10.5 much responsive than Tiger on that machine,
even though she only has 768 MB of RAM installed. I think Apple
concentrated a lot on Intel optimization with Leopard.
Charles
Tiger Performance on iBook G3/600 MHz with 640 MB
RAM
From Sumeth Chaochuti:
Hi Charles,
Having read interesting discussions about G3 iBook in "Miscellaneous
Ramblings Mailbag", may I ask what kind of performance I can expect
from Tiger on this machine comparing to Panther [OS X] 10.3.9? A
friend said it was kind of slow even on the G4 iBook, but I think he
probably hasn't configured the System in such a way that the
performance is optimized. What's your take on this?
Thanks,
Sumeth Chaochuti
Hi Sumeth,
Well, my G3 iBook is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 "Tiger",
and I consider it the best-performing version of OS X on that
machine yet, and I've used pretty much every version since 10.3.1 (I
think) on it. It's satisfyingly responsive in Tiger, and just as fast,
if not faster, than it was running Panther.
Your mileage may vary, depending on what model of G3
iBook one is using. Mine is a 700 MHz unit with an ATI RADEON 7500 GPU
and 16 MB of video RAM, and I think that's about the minimum video
support you need to be comfortable running Tiger. The 600 MHz iBook, if I recall correctly, has an
ATI Mobility Radeon GPU with 16 MB RAM and AGP 2x support, which isn't
quite up to the standard of the RADEON GPU in my later machine, but it
might be powerful enough to give you acceptable performance in
Tiger.
You do need a decent amount of RAM. Like you, I have
mine maxed out at 640 MB, and it is definitely livelier-feeling running
Tiger than my daughter's 1.2 GHz G4 iBook which (still) has only the
256 MB of memory it shipped with, despite my encouragement to add
more.
Charles
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