Ladies and gentlemen. I finally have the holy grail.
The DLSD.
The DLSD.
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Club 17
- Thread starter eyoungren
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Right on, and congratulations!
Throw in a Linksys WPC600N PC Card and find yourself with the joys of a 17-inch DLSD running 802.11n AirPort-native wifi.
Today I got my Powerbook G4 17 inch that I won cheap in an auction. It has a bit of a dodgy opening latch, and right click, but apart from that, it's in pretty good condition. I do plan on changing the HDD to an SSD, bumping the RAM to 2GB at some point, and cleaning it up a bit more.
Here are the general stats/look and feel of the machine:
The "cool" thing about this Powerbook G4 is that it's a 1.33 GHz logic board transported into the body of a 1.67 GHz model, so that means it gets a light-up keyboard.
Here it is with my 12 inch PB running Tiger:
And with my 15-inch MBP '07 running Mavericks:
Here is the size comparison between them all (it came out as portrait mode for some reason):
Here are the general stats/look and feel of the machine:
The "cool" thing about this Powerbook G4 is that it's a 1.33 GHz logic board transported into the body of a 1.67 GHz model, so that means it gets a light-up keyboard.
Here it is with my 12 inch PB running Tiger:
And with my 15-inch MBP '07 running Mavericks:
Here is the size comparison between them all (it came out as portrait mode for some reason):
If it is a 1.33GHz board it will come with ADB based connectors for touchpad and KBD meaning that those would also come from an older PB.
-> no "2 finger" trackpad (those were USB only found in PB5.6-59 and the very last iBooks/12" PB)
Also, according to everymac the "ambient light sensor keyboard" was introduced with the 5.3 (1.33GHz) PowerBook making it even more obvious that these parts did not come from a 5.7 or 5.9.
It is entirely possible to use the case from a low-res 1.67 model whilst transporting logic board and topcase assembly from an earlier unit, so as to keep the ADB functionality intact across the transplant. The side cut-outs for the ports between the two model series variants are one-for-one, as are the mount points for screws.
Sure, been there, done that... the other way round... transplanted a dented 5.7 with broken screen into a 5.5 case.
It did say on the listing that it was a logic board transplant, and I had a look at the specs under the battery and it said 1.67 GHz was the original model that the body came from. 1.67/512/80. Seems like it was once a low-res 1.67.
But I didn't know that the 1.33 GHz also had light-up keyboards, though. But yeah, no two finger scrolling. Just appears to have the body transplanted but the internals of the 1.33 GHz, not that I'm complaining.
The 17-inch PowerBook, from its inception, brought backlit keyboards to Macs. Not even the base model 15-inch aluminium variant in 2003 has that (the higher-end variant, however, did, but even so, the 17-inch line got the backlit keyboard tech many months earlier).
You can get two finger scrolling.
My 1Ghz 17" PowerBook has it (iScroll2).
Also…the 1.0Ghz model is the only 17" PowerBook out of the entire line that has L3 cache.
You can get two finger scrolling.
My 1Ghz 17" PowerBook has it (iScroll2).
Also…the 1.0Ghz model is the only 17" PowerBook out of the entire line that has L3 cache.
Yeah, I put that on my PB 12 inch, lol. (Also 1GHz model). I was thinking of putting it on the 17 inch.
And thats weird that the 1 GHz is the only one with L3 cache lol. I thought the higher end models would have it, but my PB 12 also has it. Maybe it is a 1GHz thing.
The reason the original 17" (and later TiBooks) had L3 cache is because they used the 7455 chip, rather than the 7447 used in later models.
IIRC they didn't put any L3 on the 7447 because of the improvements to the L2 cache and the clockspeed.
It's also the only 17" PowerBook to lack USB 2.0, so there's that as well.Also…the 1.0Ghz model is the only 17" PowerBook out of the entire line that has L3 cache.
You can add USB 2.0 to the original 17", but you can't add L3 to the later models...Yes, which is why I have a PC USB 2 card.
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Ah, that makes sense.
Yes, which is why I have a PC USB 2 card.
Random question but do you know if you can get USB 3.0 cards that work in the PB 17-inch? Or are they too old for those? I wouldn't mind 2x USB 2.0 from the PC slot either, though. I think that the PC slot is a great idea for the PB and it's a pity that they did away with it.
Even if USB 3.0 PC Cards existed, they wouldn't work. OS X on PPC doesn't have a driver for USB 3.0 controllers.
Some MacBook Pros (15": 2006 to 2009, 17": all) have an ExpressCard slot which is the successor to CardBus/PC Card. And this allows turning them into vicious beasts.
Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought they might be too old for that. USB 2.0 isn't bad, though. Better than 1.1 for sure. Miles better.
I'd love to see my Macbook power a 5K display, that would be funny lol. I suppose having a WiFi dongle isn't the worst thing, if you can do cool mods like that.
______
On another note, I upgraded my RAM to 2GB and my PB started glitching. Made sure the RAM was in tight, and reset the PRAM. Booted up fine, and it also turned out that I needed to hook it up to the original power supply that it came with to power it on and have it boot up normally.
Now it's charging at the Power PC Table (which could do with another desk, somehow). If I moved my bookcase, I could put a table there, but too much effort for now. I could always use the Book Table ™ temporarily, which works a treat for my Early Intel laptops. Perfect size for them too.
And even if these drivers existed nothing PPC short of a PCIe G5 could handle the bandwidth anyways....
PC Card/Cardbus is 133 MB/s max, so even after deducting overhead it would still be faster than USB 2.0, which gives me 35 MB/s (on a 2011 MBP).
Addendum: There are eSATA cards for Cardbus/PC Card, so if you can find one with a chipset that has drivers for OS X on PPC or — possibly more likely — works with Leopard’s universal AHCI drivers, this should be faster than FireWire 800 even.
Sure, but anything USB comes with massive overheads so you wouldn't get much faster then USB2.0 (which I doubt goes to the 35MB/s you mentioned on a G4).
USB3 card for normal PCI do seem to exist but even here they make limited sense.
There were two rounds of USB 3.0 for OSX. The first was a proprietary effort by Caldigit and that required 10.6.8 IIRR as a minimum plus the driver. The generic USB 3.0 driver came in with OS X 10.8.3 both of which leave PPC completely out in the cold. I don't know whether it would even be possible to retrowrite the generic driver for PPC because it might rely on frameworks and other bits of OSX that came with Intel.