carnage

Specifications: PowerBook G3 Series ("Wallstreet").

Link: PowerBook G3 Series specifications at LowEndMac.com

A Tiger on Wallstreet.

After wiping some drives in eager anticipation, I ran into a small wall when attempting to install Tiger on the Wallstreet. I was puzzled until I figured out that that machine didn't come with a DVD drive, and Tiger is the first version of Mac OS X to come on DVD by default. (The Wallstreet won't tell you this, by the way; it will just tell you it wants to have a shot at formatting the installation DVD. In Pro-DOS format, no less.)

I have to figure out whether I can boot from a FireWire or other attached drive. I'm pretty sure the installations are machine-specific (e.g. I can't use the Titanium to install it one a drive and then transplant it). Either that, or take advantage of the Tiger Media Exchange (sidebar) by July 9th. Turn in your DVD and proof of purchase, plus $9.99, and Apple will mail you a set of Tiger CDs.

PDF: Apple Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger Media Exchange

UPDATE I may have spoken too soon. It looks like someone has done the transplant successfully.

DIY: replacing batteries on the PowerBook G3.

I have 3 PowerBook G3 Series (Wallstreet) batteries floating around, and they all have less than 10 minutes' worth of charge in them. This is par for the course; if you leave your PowerBook (or any other laptop with LiOn batteries) plugged in most of the time and the batteries don't get a chance to run down all the way, they're not going to hold a charge after a while. It's good to "exercise" them once in a while.

I did some digging and found this article on how to replace the cells inside your PowerBook G3 battery, and some photos of the battery disassembly process. Turns out each large battery has 9 smaller AA-sized LiOn cells in it, and if you're handy with a soldering iron, you can replace them yourself. The risks are high, though: LiOn batteries will explode if they're not wired up just right. This project is beyond my skill level, especially since it looks like the finished product won't give you anything near the battery life of a factory replacement.

But the plastics on these things are so sturdy. I wonder if I could crack them open and make them into 2.5" FireWire/USB drive cases...

RAM for PowerBook G3.

While messing around with XPostFacto and Panther on the PowerBook G3 Series last night, I remembered that I have to check out the RAM situation on that machine. Currently it has 2 sticks in it, both of which appear to be 256MB. However, the System Profiler is only reporting 256MB instead of 512MB. One of the sticks isn't labeled, though.

According to LowEndMac, the maximum for the PowerBook G3 Series (Wallstreet) is 512MB, and low-profile DIMMs are required. I'll have to do more testing/research to figure out what I've got in there now. Maybe there's a faulty 128 in there instead of a 256. At any rate, at $22 for another 256MB, I think all I have to do is make sure I order the right thing.

512MB should be plenty for playing MP3s and the occasional MPEG file on my living room entertainment system, which is what this PowerBook is destined for.

Experiments.

I did a couple of experiments last night: I upgraded the B&W PowerMac to Tiger, and upgraded the Wallstreet to Panther with the help of Ryan Rempel's excellent XPostFacto.

I'd actually done the XPostFacto trick before on this same PowerBook G3, but it didn't really take. The video had problems with colors, and overall it felt pretty creaky. But this time, I used his latest stable build, XPostFacto 3.1, read through the known problems, and decided to check the "Use PatchedRagePro" as suggested.

XPostFacto is very easy to use: just download the application to your OS 9 boot drive, insert your OS X Install disc, launch XPostFacto, check off a few options as necessary, and click the "Install from CD" button. Your Mac will restart and you then follow the normal procedure to install. Total time for me was under an hour. Not bad for a 7-year-old machine with just 256MB of RAM. Which reminds me; I should see about boosting that.

The Blue & White was just a bit less trouble-free: it reported that "there were problems while installing" and suggested that I try again. A casual Google revealed that sometimes this can be due to problems reading data off the disc, and since I had a relatively ancient third-party combo drive in there, I gave it another shot. The second time was a charm.

These were both test runs. When I get those laptop drives I ordered I'll stick one in the Wallstreet and try Tiger via XPostFacto 4.0b3.

New drives for the laptops.

I was planning on getting a new hard drive for the Titanium anyway, but I was going to take that old drive out and put it into the Wallstreet, since it was quite a bit bigger (20GB vs. 4GB) and ran quieter. It would have made a great drive to try installing Tiger on, via XPostFacto. Unfortunately, it's about to die, so I went hunting for not one, but two new laptop drives.

Chris helped me get a price check on some drives, and ultimately I went for couple of 60GB 5400rpm Western Digital Scorpio drives for $80 bucks from the Dell Small Business store, which I found through dealmac. Total damage: $175 shipped. Not bad, but not as good as the $20 Western Digital 80GB desktop drives I scored last week from Best Buy.