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I am Titaaaaniiuummm! (New PB G4)

Slix

Slix

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 24, 2010
1,658
2,654
Hey guys!

In a wonderful stroke of luck, I picked up a Titanium PowerBook G4 yesterday, in wonderful condition! It also came with a Mac OS X 10.2 disc (the disc 2), and some originally-printed-in-2002 Apple webpages of the PowerBook G4. Neat! So far, I really enjoy using this machine, the keyboard is really nice, and the build of it feels really nice too. The battery even works still! On the first 100% drain run through, it lasted about 3 hours of playing around with web browsing and stuff.

It's 800 MHz, with 256 MB RAM and a 60 GB HD. It appears however that the internal hard drive is really noisy and probably going bad, since it's way slower than it should be for nearly any task (opening Finder windows, loading a TenFourFox tab...). I looked a bit online but couldn't find any concrete examples of what kind of hard drive I would need to buy to replace it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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Congratulations. Now that looks like a particularly good example, without the paint loss/oxidation signs that one usually observes on these TiBooks. If only I could find a near-mint one I would off-load the two others I've picked up along the way.
You may want to consider an mSATA SSD (Transcend MSA370) together with a Delock 62495 converter. I have these installed in a 1GB TiBook and performs well.
 
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Wow, that is some clean TiBook! I'm still waiting to find a replacement 1GHz board for mine since it died suddenly. Lovely machines they are, with their ultra thin bezels and floating displays. Congrats and best of luck to you with it!
 
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AmazingHenry said:
I see you have Tiger now, which is definitely the best option.
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That is a matter of opinion.

I know you believe and will continue to believe Tiger is the best option, but seriously. I ran Leopard on a TiBook 400 with 1GB of ram. It ran just fine. I ran Leopard on my son's 1GHz Titanium DVI and it was a ***** rocket.

You're covering yourself by saying that others make different choices, which is fine, but when you make statements like this it's always best to say "In my opinion" or something like that. Because I do not believe with you that Tiger is the best option.

Sorry. I just don't.
 
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eyoungren said:
That is a matter of opinion.

I know you believe and will continue to believe Tiger is the best option, but seriously. I ran Leopard on a TiBook 400 with 1GB of ram. It ran just fine. I ran Leopard on my son's 1GHz Titanium DVI and it was a ***** rocket.

You're covering yourself by saying that others make different choices, which is fine, but when you make statements like this it's always best to say "In my opinion" or something like that. Because I do not believe with you that Tiger is the best option.

Sorry. I just don't.
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Sorry about that. I edited my post. I thought this opinion would be shared by everybody but apparently some people are OK with the speeds of Leopard on a 400MHz Mac, which is fine.
 
AmazingHenry said:
Sorry about that. I edited my post. I thought this opinion would be shared by everybody but apparently some people are OK with the speeds of Leopard on a 400MHz Mac, which is fine.
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Have you ever used Leopard on a TiBook 400 or a PowerMac G4/450?

I have. And I do not deny they are somewhat slower in performance. But they aren't turtle's either, especially if you have ram.

Take away their L3 cache, which is what makes this possible, and then I would totally agree with you. But, as I am fond of saying, we did full on production work for a weekly newspaper for years on a G4/450 with 1.75GB ram. A bit slower, but it did the job.

I won't even get into past discussions about Windows environments and print servers.
 
Very cool Find! that is one nice looking TiBook :)

in regards to replacing the drive i would recommend going down the mSATA plus mSATA IDE adapter route, as Large capacity 2.5 inch disks are getting quite pricey and rare these days coming close to the cost of an mSATA SSD and as we all know an SSD is much faster then an old ide 2.5 inch platter drive so IMHO it would make much more sense to go for an SSD :)

in regards to OS, IIRC the 800Mhz Book has L3 cache so should run Leopard fairly well as mentioned above :) tiger would also run very well on it and so would Mac OS 9.2.2 esp off an SSD
 
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eyoungren said:
Have you ever used Leopard on a TiBook 400 or a PowerMac G4/450?

I have. And I do not deny they are somewhat slower in performance. But they aren't turtle's either, especially if you have ram.

Take away their L3 cache, which is what makes this possible, and then I would totally agree with you. But, as I am fond of saying, we did full on production work for a weekly newspaper for years on a G4/450 with 1.75GB ram. A bit slower, but it did the job.

I won't even get into past discussions about Windows environments and print servers.
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Wasn't aware of this L3 cache, which my iMac G4 700 clearly doesn't have as Leopard is very slow!
 
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I plan to keep Tiger on this one. My Aluminum PowerBook G4 has Leopard, so I'm thinking keeping them distinct in that way could be cool. Also, as it stands, I don't have any more RAM for the Titanium yet, so Leopard would be super sluggish probably. I also have Mac OS 9 on it, though it seems my install is corrupt right now (it was cloned from an iMac G3 image, so that could be why; I'll look more into that once I get a new drive).

@eyoungren: Thanks for the suggestion on hard drives! I wouldn't need a 320 GB though, that's pretty large for something like this for me. :)

@CooperBox: Thanks! I looked, a little pricey for my tastes, but a good idea if I choose to go down that route. :)

@LightBulbFun: Do you have any links to adapters or SSDs you'd recommend? Thanks! :)
 
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Slix said:
@eyoungren: Thanks for the suggestion on hard drives! I wouldn't need a 320 GB though, that's pretty large for something like this for me. :)
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Well…that's me. Always going to the largest size possible I can find in hard drives. :)

But they also made a 120 and a 250. My wife has the 250 Scorpio Blue in her 12" PowerBook.

Easy to find on eBay. Just search for WD Scorpio Blue PATA/IDE drives.

Be careful though as there IS a Scorpio Blue SATA drive as well. In fact, I have a 640GB SATA Scorpio Blue on my desk. You want to get the right one.
 
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Slix said:
After some more research, I think I've decided to go with an adapter plus an SSD like the one that @CooperBox suggested. However, I couldn't find the adapter you mentioned.

Which one of these is the right one? :p
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...dapter+msata&rh=i:aps,k:ide+2.5+adapter+msata

Thanks again to all of you who are clearly more knowledgable about this model of hardware than me! :D
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I had cause to buy one of these earlier this year. The price has increased but not by much.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/mSATA-to-2-...954907?hash=item23474b07db:g:MAEAAOSwCmZZTW15

*MODS! NOT my auction!!!
 
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Slix said:
I plan to keep Tiger on this one. My Aluminum PowerBook G4 has Leopard, so I'm thinking keeping them distinct in that way could be cool. Also, as it stands, I don't have any more RAM for the Titanium yet, so Leopard would be super sluggish probably. I also have Mac OS 9 on it, though it seems my install is corrupt right now (it was cloned from an iMac G3 image, so that could be why; I'll look more into that once I get a new drive).
Click to expand...

Boot into TigeR, open the OS 9 System Folder, and double-click on the System suitcase. You'll see the happy Mac appear, and you should now be able to boot into OS 9 as long as nothing else is corrupt.
 
eyoungren said:
I had cause to buy one of these earlier this year. The price has increased but not by much.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/mSATA-to-2-...954907?hash=item23474b07db:g:MAEAAOSwCmZZTW15

*MODS! NOT my auction!!!
Click to expand...

Wow, that adapter is at an almost give-away price, which translates to only 12euros! o_O Are they good quality & function ok? I'm all for a great bargain, but not for a Schenzen cheap/not very cheerful model. But I may be very wrong, could you please confirm?
I've purchased and installed 2 of THESE (in a TiBook and G4 1.67GHz Powerbook) at 33euros each ($37), together with THESE 128GB Transcend mSATA SSD's (were 67euros each when purchased). Very satisfied with the compatibility and the performance, but wiil certainly consider something cheaper in future.
 
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CooperBox said:
Wow, that adapter is at an almost give-away price, which translates to only 12euros! o_O Are they good quality & function ok? I'm all for a great bargain, but not for a Schenzen cheap/not very cheerful model. But I may be very wrong, could you please confirm?
I've purchased and installed 2 of THESE (in a TiBook and G4 1.67GHz Powerbook) at 33euros each ($37), together with THESE 128GB Transcend mSATA SSD's (were 67euros each when purchased). Very satisfied with the compatibility and the performance, but wiil certainly consider something cheaper in future.
Click to expand...
AFAIK they function just fine.

I didn't really get to use it that much because the mSATA I tried it with did not work in my PowerBook. But for the brief time where I had it attached via USB to my MBP it worked just fine.
 
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Well, I went ahead and ordered the 32 GB Transcend SSD and the adapter that eyoungren posted. :) Hopefully they'll arrive before July 1st!

I tried blessing the System Folder today, no luck, but I'll worry about that when I get the new SSD. I'll probably just reinstall everything then, make it as clean as possible, since this cloned image I have on my iMac server is from like 4 hodgepodged computer systems. :p
 
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Great score! These are becoming increasingly rare, especially in good condition (no paint chips, etc)

As timing has it I also got myself a Titanium 'Book (867Mhz, 768MB, 32MB VRAM) which arrived yesterday. Also in excellent condition. No paint chips, tight hinge and access door, clean, no warping and the battery appears to hold a charge. The original 40GB 4200rpm drive was noisy, so I swapped it out with an 80GB 4200rpm'er I took from my G4 mini 1.42Ghz. This drive is quiet and appears to be quite a bit faster (being 2 years it's junior). The keyboard is beautiful to type on, although there is a little lag in Leopard, Tiger and older OSes operate silky smooth.

I've re-partitioned the drive and setup to boot Leopard, Tiger, Panther, Jaguar and Mac OS 9. This is my only native OS9 capable Mac, so I'm going to have fun diving into my archives of old software that refused to run in Classic. Woohoo!

Yes, I've spent my Tuesday in nostalgic nerd heaven and neglected to get any actual work done!

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