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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

Certificate of Excellence said:
I think that actually looks really cool. Great job with the prints. They look very clean. I keep wanting to do something to the black panels but I can’t figure out what that is haha.

Great job :)
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For a bit I considered doing the rest of the bezels (and the entire machine for that matter) in black. Only problems are that my printer isn't large enough and only the bezels themselves are plastic; the rest of the outer chassis is metal.
 
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Doq said:
For a bit I considered doing the rest of the bezels (and the entire machine for that matter) in black. Only problems are that my printer isn't large enough and only the bezels themselves are plastic; the rest of the outer chassis is metal.
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I had that thought too. Something all black styled like a Vader 2600 or early iterations of Seans cursed mac. If the front bits can be 3d printed, then the metal sides n other pieces could be refinished with primer and some black rattle cans and some tastfully placed silver pin striping and ... yeah I just love spending other folks time and hard earned money Haha :D

Sure looks cool in my minds eye anyhow. Maybe one of these years I'll get around to doing something like that to an old abused fugly cased mac. What printer did you use? I saw that Retro Action Sean gushed about his 3d printer .. flashforge maybe? I could be wrong there. Anyhow, I dont have a ton of time to finely dial in and calibrate such 3D shenanigans so looking for a fast plug n play solution for now.
 
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Doq said:
Bambu A1 Mini. Absolutely recommended for a straightforward plug and play printer.

The pieces wouldn't actually fit on the bed until I rotated them 45 degrees though. If size is a concern, consider the full size A1.
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Ahh you nailed it. BAMBU is what Sean was raving about in terms of quality and ease of use/maintenance. Thank you for jogging my brains into recall.
 
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Was for another thread, but used the G5 to prove a point that you do NOT need something as fast as an M.2 drive on an M-Series Mac to support multiple 4K video clients.

They were getting stuttering video on clients being served media from an M4 Mini with an attached NAS. Definitely something wrong with their setup, codec, or otherwise.


full


The G5 did well, serving the following clients with various video files.

  • iPhone 7 streaming an HD video .TS H.264 format (VLC Client high latency setting)
  • iPhone 13 Pro streaming a HD video .TS H.264 format (VLC Client max latency setting)
  • Mac mini M4 Pro streaming 4K video .TS format (VLC stock setting) Wired
  • MacBook Pro M3 streaming a 4K video .TS format (VLC client 10 second buffer setting) wireless
  • Apple TV 4K streaming a 4K .TS video (high latency setting in VLC) wireless
    • Airplay to stereo pair of OG HomePods
Still amazed how well the G5 does with networking and supporting newer clients. It can't play / process the files it is serving, but has zero issues with file output with an old SATA1 5400RPM drive!
 
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On 2023, my father had brian surgery to remove a tumor, and I took my 15" PB to the hospital as an entertainer device (phones don't work underground). Surgery was a success! thus, the same surgery was repeated due to some residual of chemotherapy/ immunotherapy, Powerbook came with me as sort of "cabala", The brain surgery will have its own scientific paper (according to the doctors, who knows), because it went "more than successful"!!! The PB not only delivered as usual (and kept me distracted) but my brother and my cousin son's gave me this "sort of image" of modern times (they were playing xmoto:))

68242562-5C84-4AD1-B7B1-B8107539BCF6.jpeg
 
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Amethyst1 said:
You know the card is crap, right? :)
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Is there any really decent card(s) for the MDD?

I installed a 30€ Radeon 9600 Pro AGP to my G4 MDD using that Mac Elite -sites instructions and it works perfectly. I think its a G5 card originally. Haven't really compared it to anything so no idea.
 
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@Amethyst1, I agree that the 5200 is no speed demon, but particularly since we are talking about a G4 MDD, "crap" may be a bit of a strong word.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the 5200 - it has served me well over the years. In my experience, it is a solid workhorse. It is not particularly fast or particularly elegant, but it works well in many cases where little else will. I always keep one of two of them in my "stable" of parts - they are incredibly useful when debugging suspected problems with other, more advanced, video cards. I was just using a 5200 this week in fact to help shake out a suspected GF7800 issue.

Going back to the era of the G4 MDD, the 5200 was not a bad card at all. It certainly wasn't the best available, but perhaps "solid but uninspiring" might fit better than "crap"?
 
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I have only 1 Mac edition AGP card and it is Fx5200. Alternate - Radeon 9600 is PC card, need flash chip replacement with larger one. And got Ti4600 - but it have own issues (vertical violet lines on screen, bad RAM?). That's why I'm asking about 5200 :). Or m.b. it is possible to install 7800GS? Don't know if it's flash chip size suitable for Mac ROM.
 
I recently got my hands on an Indigo iBook G3 Clamshell M6411 for $170. I'm stoked to share that I've successfully installed OS 9.2.2 on it and even managed to load up Deus Ex. Everything's running smoothly!

Now, I’m excited to dive into some upgrades and restorations for this classic machine. Here's what I’m planning:

  • Screen Replacement: I already bought a replacement from a local marketplace. The current screen has some spots and scratches, so I'm hoping the new one will be an improvement.
  • Keyboard Cleanup: The previous owner used super glue for some stickers on the keys. I'll be working on removing those and cleaning it up.
  • Eliminate Musty Odor: The laptop seems to have been stored in a garage, and it has that musty smell. Any advice on how to remove it would be greatly appreciated!
  • Battery Replacement: I plan to swap out the old battery for a new one.
Looking forward to giving this iBook a fresh lease on life!

1735248823046.png
 
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vorob said:
I recently got my hands on an Indigo iBook G3 Clamshell M6411 for $170. I'm stoked to share that I've successfully installed OS 9.2.2 on it and even managed to load up Deus Ex. Everything's running smoothly!

Now, I’m excited to dive into some upgrades and restorations for this classic machine. Here's what I’m planning:

  • Screen Replacement: I already bought a replacement from a local marketplace. The current screen has some spots and scratches, so I'm hoping the new one will be an improvement.
  • Keyboard Cleanup: The previous owner used super glue for some stickers on the keys. I'll be working on removing those and cleaning it up.
  • Eliminate Musty Odor: The laptop seems to have been stored in a garage, and it has that musty smell. Any advice on how to remove it would be greatly appreciated!
  • Battery Replacement: I plan to swap out the old battery for a new one.
Looking forward to giving this iBook a fresh lease on life!

View attachment 2465965
Click to expand...

Give it the screen from a 3rd gen iBook G3… you’ll be going from 800x600 to 1024x768.
 
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My PowerBook G3 PDQ (266MHz, 192MB RAM, 4GB HD) arrived on Tuesday and I finally got a chance to play around with it. For a moment I thought it had been upgraded to a 400MHz processor but upon researching apparently System Profiler doesn't properly report the correct processor speed. I couldn't find a 400MHz G3 upgrade and the CPU daughter card appears to be the stock card. I'm fine with that as I got what I thought I was buying. Very happy with it, works great. Cosmetically the outside is a little scratched up but the screen, and palm rest (i.e. the "insides") are in great shape.

I am loving classic MacOS. While OS X / macOS is good I much prefer the look and feel of classic MacOS (though I prefer the modern underpinnings of OS X / macOS). Too bad they couldn't have put the underpinnings of OS X / macOS underneath classic MacOS. But I've been through this discussion before when they changed over to OS X.

One issue that maybe the forum can help me with is my original MacOS 8.1 CD will not work with this system. This is despite EveryMac reporting 8.1 is the minimum OS for this system. Low End Mac reports 8.0 is the minimum OS. I checked the release dates of 8.1 against the release date of this system to see if it required a special version of 8.1 but that does not appear to be the case (8.1 was released after the PDQ). I don't believe my 8.1 CD is an upgrade. Here are the part numbers on the CD, not sure which is relevant: 691-1912-A, U97073-121A:

Mac OS 8.1

Anyone have any ideas? Not an issue as it has MacOS 9.2 installed but I am curious why this system reports 8.1 is not supported.
 
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I didn’t finish the repair and refurbishment of my iBook Clamshell when I ended up buying a PowerBook Titanium 400MHz from 2001 🙈 It's in great condition, but there are some scuffs on the bottom. It doesn't have a battery, so I'll need to find a replacement.

I bought it for $160, and people on Reddit said it was too expensive. But to be honest, from what I've seen on eBay, this model isn't cheap either, and it's even harder to find it in the Russian second-hand market, where they are much more expensive.

Ideally, I wanted the last Titanium model with a 1000MHz processor. For now, I decided to get this one and study it, as the offer was inexpensive. I would like to refurbish it and sell it for a higher price to save some extra money for purchasing a future Titanium in its maximum configuration.
 
Some effortless transaction across generations…

Browsing Gemini and Gopher on my emulated Amiga 1200 on my Powerbook - wanted to export my bookmarks.

Open the AmiGemini folder and copy the bookmarks file to the Amiga Swap partition that has read/write access in OSX.

Open Swap folder in OSX and copy to my SwissDisk online drive that’s accessible from the Dock via Goliath.

Retrieve bookmarks file on my i5 iMac which also has SwissDisk available from the Dock.

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The power book is here. It’s working. It’s condition is good. The hinges are tight. Will need the battery replacement since my is completely absent. I can see some scratches on the screen from keyboard but in general I’m happy. I will study this device and will try to make it better.
 

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