I found myself unexpectedly back in G3 space last week. I haven't
used a G3 Mac for production work (or, for that matter, much of
anything) since I bought a 17" 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4
back in February 2006.
However, for the past several months, my oldest Pismo PowerBook (actually it's
the youngest of the three that I have in terms of date of manufacture,
but it has the most hours on it by a wide margin) had begun
sporadically manifesting the dreaded black screen on wake from sleep
syndrome almost always associated with waking by clicking a mouse
button rather than hitting the spacebar. When this happened, my only
recourse was to shut down the PowerBook by holding down the power key
and then restarting. Inconvenient and annoying, but it's been are
enough not to be a major issue.
Near Death of a Pismo
However, it happened again last Thursday, and that time my restart
workaround didn't work. The screen remained resolutely black, and the
startup chime was replaced by an alarming sound - something like a
cross between a car crash and stiff paper being crumpled. I hadn't
heard that sound in years, but I vaguely remembered it from the old
days as signifying a hardware failure issue.
Repeated attempts to start the Pismo failed until I removed the
battery, unpluged the AC power adapter, pressed the reset button, and
waited a few minutes. A subsequent restart lit the screen, but the next
sleep/wakeup cycle resulted again in the crashing sound and a
stubbornly black screen. Had the old Pismo finally died?
The Pismo's reset button is on the back.
I switched to my remaining working Pismo - the one I usually use as
my road machine - for my Thursday morning online session. No real
hardship. That one is in nice condition and has the best keyboard among
the three units (although all three are excellent).
Bringing Pismo Back to Life
However, I decided to try some component substitution before giving
up on the old machine and achieved provisional success on my first try.
I popped out the processor daughtercard with its 550 MHz Motorola 7410
G4 CPU and 1 GB of RAM, rummaged around, and found a 500 MHz G3
daughtercard with 768 MB of RAM installed. It would've been a simple
matter to just substitute one of the 512 MB RAM sticks from the old
daughtercard for the 256 MB stick on the G3 card, but I wanted to stay
with known good components.
Happily, the Pismo started right up, and it has continued to do so
up to this writing (but see below). I'm going to give it several more
days to prove itself, but the initial inference was that it appeared to
have developed a defect in either the G4 processor or one of the RAM
modules.
You Really Want a G4
Meanwhile, I'm experiencing a refresher on why I've been an
enthusiastic advocate of Pismo G4 processor upgrades. The old 500 MHz
G3 is usable running Mac OS X
10.4.11, but only marginally. Browser performance is the most
significant stumbling block. Opera 10.62, Sea Monkey 2.0.7, and iCab
4.8 are all depressingly sluggish with the G3's anemic power. None of
them is exactly a speedster even with the 550 MHz G4 and a gigabyte of
RAM, but the contrast in performance is dramatic, inclining me to
suspect that they still have a fair bit of AltiVec optimization in
their PowerPC versions.
I'm figuring it's mainly the slower processor, because the other
Pismo running with just 640 MB of RAM has been satisfactorily lively
using these same browsers (within reasonable expectations). On the
other hand, Finder response is surprisingly good, even though the PPC
Tiger Finder is said to be AltiVec optimized.
I have a couple more G4-upgraded Pismo processor daughtercards in
the parts bin and just enough 512 MB RAM sticks to restore both
machines to the most power possible in a Pismo, but I'll bide my time
until I'm reasonably certain that the black screen issue actually is
resolved. Sunday evening I managed to drop the mouse a couple of inches
while moving the sleeping rig, and ominously I got the black screen
phenomenon again, requiring a forced shut down. The machine booted
right up again with no drama and the screen lit normally, but there's
something still amiss, I guess. Probably time to start looking for a
deal on another Pismo.
In any event, it's definitely been an interesting exercise using a
G3 again for production work, albeit not one I want to persevere with
for any protracted length of time.
To be continued. 
Update, Monday, October 4, 11:30 a.m.: Woke up the old Pismo this
morning and commenced my morning session. Receive a phone call that
lasted long enough for the laptop to put itself to sleep, and since
then it has refused to light the display. I can hear it booting
normally, and it shuts down obediently with pressing the power key and
then hitting Return, but no joy, so a serious hardware issue that isn't
the processor or RAM is indicated.
Switched back to the other Pismo, having bumped it to a full GB of
RAM. It's delightfully lively after three days in G3 land.
Now in the hunt for a good Pismo.
