Bringing G3 Macs into the Tiger Age

I’ve been carrying on an extended email conversation with Bill Brown for months. Bill is more-or-less the IT guy for an intense volunteer Mac program at a senior center. Certainly a confirmed Mac lover, he has made some interesting discoveries and developed some interesting techniques for refurbishing, repairing, and updating older Macs, particularly G3 iMacs.

Fooling the OS X 10.5 Leopard Installer with Open Firmware

I have found that, by far, the easiest way to install Leopard on unsupported G4s is to spoof the clock speed in Open Firmware before installing. Spoofing will have Open Firmware tell OS X that your G4 is up-to-speed until you reboot. This will allow you to install without hacking an install disc or working in […]

1 Working eMac from 2 Broken Ones

My track record with eMacs has not been the greatest. My first was a 700 MHz with a Combo drive. I purchased it refurbished after the second generation eMacs came out, which meant I got a great deal on it – and Apple’s one-year warranty. Good thing, as it ended up in the service department […]

Hacking Mac OS 7.6.1 to Work with Many OS 8 Apps

Blame it all on BBC, the British Broadcasting Company. I like BBC’s radio programs, but as my favorite operating system is Mac OS 7.6.1, there has been a problem called Real Player 8 (RP8). Regular OS 7.6.1 lets you use RP5, and the Appearance Manager brings RP6 (a.k.a. G2) in the game, but the BBC Radio […]

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, released on October 26, 2007, was the biggest change to Mac OS X since Apple first released OS X 10.0 in March 2001. For the first time, a version of OS X was certified as Unix, and the new unified appearance makes Leopard friendlier and less confusing for users. Leopard itself was also […]

MacBook (Late 2007)

This is the fourth version of the consumer MacBook – and the first to use the Santa Rosa chipset that made its way into the MacBook Pro line in June. The entry-level MacBook remains at 2.0 GHz, while the faster models see a tiny speed bump from 2.16 GHz to 2.2 GHz. At the same […]

Mac Maintenance: Effective Backup Strategies

Everyone knows they need to backup their data, but most people don’t do so regularly (if at all). Backups are confusing and annoying. Besides, who has the time? Well, your perspective may change during a post-crash enlightenment: Most people become religious about backups after their first catastrophic loss of data.

Mac Maintenance: Solve Disk and Hardware Problems

The disk directory is the table of contents for your hard drive. Directory errors build up slowly over time – or quickly after a crash. Such errors can cause problems opening or saving files, and if severe enough they can prevent your Mac from starting up, instead displaying the flashing question mark. Fixing the disk […]