DLSDelighted! (Finally arrived)

[tevion5]

Having not satisfied the urge to unnecessarily splash my cash on old Macs in too long I thought I'd treat myself to one this Christmas. One obvious gap in my collection is a PPC laptop. And if I'm likely only going to get one for the foreseeable future, I might as well get the best. Thankfully Lightbulb helped me scope out a great number:

PowerBook G4 15" DLSD, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD (BTO), including charger and original box and discs. Condition looks pretty good as well, so after winning the auction for £42 I'm rather happy with myself!

I'll post again once it arrives and I get to inspect it first hand.

(Also, the only thing lacking about it is the dead battery, so if anyone knows a good place to get affordable and reliable batteries for this model I'd appreciate it!)

 

[beanboy89]

Beautiful laptop. They're nice pieces of kit. I love mine, but don't use it nearly enough as I really should be. Enjoy.

 

[Kirk Boragine]

That's a really good price! I'd get one for that price in a heartbeat. Nice and useable as well.

 

[tevion5]

That's a really good price! I'd get one for that price in a heartbeat. Nice and useable as well.

Plan on using it as my new tinker assistant. Something to run network diagnostics on, read iFixit guides and User Manual PDF's while I'm working on other machines. Rather not disconnect my mane MBP from it's docked setup if I'm not leaving the house, and I also quickly grow tired of creaking my neck to squint at the screen on my 6S!

 

[Kirk Boragine]

Plan on using it as my new tinker assistant. Something to run network diagnostics on, read iFixit guides and User Manual PDF's while I'm working on other machines. Rather not disconnect my mane MBP from it's docked setup if I'm not leaving the house, and I also quickly grow tired of creaking my neck to squint at the screen on my 6S!

Sounds like a plan. Very nice. Congratulations!

 

[MacCubed]

I have the exact same model, 2GB RAM, but mine has(moved to another PBG4) 128GB SSD, and a working battery. The battery was some $13 china battery. It works well enough, but lasts 30 mins at most

 

[tevion5]

I have the exact same model, 2GB RAM, but mine has(moved to another PBG4) 128GB SSD, and a working battery. The battery was some $13 china battery. It works well enough, but lasts 30 mins at most

Nice! I think I'll leave the 100GB 7200rpm drive as it's a fairly rare BTO option. It's a big step up from 5400 I know from experience anyway. I ordered some cheap Chinese one as well. Hopefully it'll at least give enough power to move from place to place.

 

[tevion5]

--- DLSDelays ---

Update: Just to let everyone know that I amen't having you all on, my DLSD actually is on the way and should be here shortly.

The company it was initially sent with Parcel-Force managed to mess up the delivery address and held the item in a shipping center for the best of three weeks...all the while the seller was contacting them by phone and email with updated details, as well as my own email inquiries. Incredibly poor service.

In any case, the time was untimely retired to sender with a full refund. It's since been sent via UPS 2 days ago and is well on its way here. Should be here by the end of the week. Will post when I finally get my hands on it.

Had hoped I'd have more of Christmas time off to tinker with it but I'll have to make do with what ever amount of time I squeeze out of the college semester.

 

[MagicBoy]

Still deserving of the Parcel Farce nickname then!

 

[1042686]

Man, nice score and great price considering all the goodies. I am looking to get into a PPC laptop as well. Sorry to hear about your shipping woes. Par for the course with internet purchases I suppose - it happens to everyone eventually. Anyhow, forget that horse crud & Enjoy your new laptop

 

[tevion5]

After an obnoxiously long delay, its finally arrived. Rather it would have arrived sooner but I'm very glad it has. It's in great shape especially for the price I got it at. Battery was dead but I already had a spare to swap out. The aluminium back of the screen has 2-3 small dents that you only notice in certain lights, but aside from that it's pretty much mint looking.

"High Res" 15" display looks great. The stylish light keyboard still seems cool, and it's fun to flick off the lights and watch it respond. Imagine having this number back in 05'! It's got 2GB Ram already so no need to upgrade that. The HDD is also the BTO 100GB 7200RPM so thankfully not 5400RPM. (To think I went for nearly 5 years with one of those in my 2011 MBP...SSD all the way now.)

Only functional issue is the audio jack is stuck on digital out for some reason (a somewhat common issue I've noticed others who's bought these units encounter). Plugging in headphones does work, and I can use one of my external UCD audio interfaces and connect that to studio speakers or the like, but it's a shame the built in speakers don't function as it is.

Very pleased with it however. Got it loaded up with Tiger and Leopard, as well as a bucket of Apps I have already from my Quad and Quicksilver. Playing games makes me miss the FX 4500 on the quad I'll admit! But it can run things like AOE II very well, which is great seeing as there's still no native way to play that on Intel Macs. Spotify, TFF, Webkit, etc all working no problem, and I even got the Java IDE Eclipse Galileo (christ that's one from the archives) up and running on it and wrote and complied a few lines of Java just to say I've compiled something on PPC.

Still better looking than most laptops today IMO.

-----------------------------------


Came with original box + accessories, manuals, stickers.


Installing Leopard 10.5.4 from a temporary partition.


Pretending to be modern with good looks and a BT Mighty Mouse.


Hooked up to some studio equipment and an old monitor.
Logic Pro 8 performance is much worse than G5 Quad as it can't cope with many instruments, so production is not really that feasible to a useful degree. You can get away with 2-3 instruments and a reverberated audio track but that's about it.


A photo I shot for the gram to look all pro and ****.


The box added into still somewhat messy the shelved collection.

 

[eyoungren]

Only functional issue is the audio jack is stuck on digital out for some reason (a somewhat common issue I've noticed others who's bought these units encounter). Plugging in headphones does work, and I can use one of my external UCD audio interfaces and connect that to studio speakers or the like, but it's a shame the built in speakers don't function as it is.

The 17" PowerBook's audio (in and out) jacks are actually on a board that is referred to as the 'sound board'.

Looks like this:

If the 15" is the same, all you'd need to do to fix this problem is replace that board.

Cost me $20 the last time I had to replace it.

 

[tevion5]

The 17" PowerBook's audio (in and out) jacks are actually on a board that is referred to as the 'sound board'....If the 15" is the same, all you'd need to do to fix this problem is replace that board.

Hmm that looks pretty manageable as long as theres no soldering involved. It's so close to being fully working I might as well. Thanks!

 

[eyoungren]

Hmm that looks pretty manageable as long as theres no soldering involved. It's so close to being fully working I might as well. Thanks!

No, no soldering. On the 17" PB's there's a screw or two. Just unscrew it and removed the board. Since the jacks are attached to the board they come out with the board.

Then just replace. I can't imagine the 15" is any different, although the physical shape is probably different because it's a different case design.

But the issue is with the jack. It's a hardware issue and not a software thing.

Have a look: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/PowerBook+G4+Aluminum+15-Inch+1.67+GHz+DC+&+Sound+Card+Replacement/651

Apparently the 15" integrates the sound board with the DC-Inverter so you'd also be replacing that. But here's what you're looking at:

 

[bobesch]

I've once "kind of fixed" that red-light of death issue on an iMac G5.
There's a tiny lid within the socket, that gets pressed against the wall as soon as you plug in the 3,5 Klinke jack.
Then that tiny lid gets contact to the socket's wall and by that the internal speakers get switched off and sound-out through the headphone socket is switched on and optical sound-out is activated simultaneusly and the red light switches on. That tiny lid might get bowed flat against the wall by oversized or misfitting audio-jacks, that were plugged in with brutal force or just by heavy usage ... causing continuous contact between lid and socket-wall with permanently activating the the headphone socked, switching the red light on and switching the internal speakers off.
I used an otoskope and a paperclip (it's end bend to tiny hook) to bend the flattened lid back off the wall.
Unfortunately the lid completely broke off - now I have the internal speakers work again (which was my primary and more important intention), but the headphone jack is out of function. If I ever shall need sound-out for speakers or headphone I'm gonna use my USB-soundcard - the one I got for my cube...
I think it's worth trying to fix the Powerbook's sound-out this way (but go for a replacement sound-board too )
BTW: If you open the Powerbook for replacing the sound-board you could also swap the drive for an mSATA and use the spinning drive as a backup-solution.