I recently acquired a 17" PowerBook G4 (A1052) from a friend to save it from the bin. It runs on OS X 10.5.8 and the WiFi seems to be working (green button in network utility), but Safari (5.0.6) is not working at all. From the terminal, pinging apple.com etc is OK - about 8 ms. Any ideas would be most welcome! Thanks
Fortunately, you have a few possibilities, with two being current, out-of-the-box, as of 2021 (as security updates go).
The
PowerPC Browsers Options Wiki has links to those two most current browsers, TenFourFox and InterwebPPC. Both are Mozilla-based and derived from an earlier version of Firefox, but backported with 2021 security fixes. Also, on that Wiki are links in a subsection called “MR Community Tweaks” which help to speed up TenFourFox and InterwebPPC on older, slower Macs. These tweaks work on both Leopard and Tiger.
Also, there is a 2018-era browser called Leopard WebKit, which updates the same browser type as Safari, giving you the Safari experience and, at least for now, most of the functionality, as well. This would be good for casual browsing, though probably not for something like banking (unless you’re mindful of its three-year-old security limitations). If you want to get your hands dirty, there is a method to bring some of the security frameworks to 2021 standards (also linked in the Wiki).