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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

Today I tried something I saw on the 68KMLA forum, using a IDE to SD adapter as HD on a PowerBook G3 Lombard.

SD to IDE drive replacement for PDQ PowerBook G3

I happened to get quite a few 128gb MicroSD cards for very cheap and my PDQ PowerBook’s hard drive was on it’s way out. Since the G3 PowerBooks have a 128gb maximum drive capacity I thought one of those cards would be perfect to use as a hard drive replacement. You need a 44-pin IDE to SD card...
68kmla.org 68kmla.org

s-l500.jpg

These are super cheap.
Tried this Previously on a PB1400c, but wasn’t very satisfied with the result, on OS 8.6 was alright, but on System 7.6.1 made the thing super slow… I think the thing doesn't like the HFS standard drive format used for Syst 7.
So this time cloned this OS9.1 Lombard HD to a 8Gb SD card, so exact same system, on HFS+ volumes, and run some tests :

Hard drive test :
Keyser-Soze-ToshHD-150422.jpg

IDE to SD test :
Keyser-Soze-IDEtoSD-150422.jpg

Cool. I'll leave it in that Lombard.
 
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Found this little gem, then noticed it's even in voids repository. Nice console internet radio / podcast app.
github.com

GitHub - chronitis/curseradio: Command line radio player

Command line radio player. Contribute to chronitis/curseradio development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
It probably would run on 10.4/10.5 if you edited it to use mplayer instead of mpv. I may have to try it some day.
curseradio.png
 
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Pulled apart my 2005 Mac mini 10,2. I previously replaced the battery and now swapped in an SSD with ATA adapter. I put the old ATA drive in a Firewire 400 case I had and used it to boot. Everything initialized fine and DVD is still visible (some ATA adapters do not handle automates master/salve correctly. I checked and could have installed Tiger from the original DVD, but decided just to clone from the original drive. Also had made some full backups of both Tiger/OS9 and Leopard on this system.
Based on some read errors I am getting this might have been "just in time."
Also gave everything inside a nice clean. For a system that is 17 years old it did not look too bad, but it had been mainly powered off in the last few years. Fun nostalgia and faster than UTM with Tiger on my M1 Ultra.
 
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Which adapter and what SSD did you use? And what version of mini (CPU GHz)?
Running OS 9.2.2? How about a QuickBench 1.5 report from OS 9? Please.
Seeking new SSD approach here for the Minis. Thanks.
 
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I broke my Lombard keyboard. It happened because I was being lazy and didn't actually remove it when replacing the hard drive, and when I reassembled the system afterwards, one column of characters is out.

I understand these things are fairly delicate and this isn't uncommon, but it had been working perfectly well beforehand.

But, I did find my replacement hard drive - an SD-IDE adapter with 32Gb SD card, worked perfectly. And pleasingly fast too. Not sure whether to be pleased or sad!
 
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I've been messing with GPU today. The Radeon x1950GT has RV570 chip bit same layout of texture units etc as the X1900 just in a smaller nanometre process. Wondering if it can be cross flashed for use....

Before I spend lots of extra time on this, has anyone else tried?

Nevermind: I tested my "working eBay" card and found it was borked anyway :-(
 
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wicknix said:
Nothing exciting, but i did make my Void install on the 17" powerbook look like win9x/2k. 😂
Click to expand...
Nice, but the fonts give it away. :p

lepidotós said:
Cleaned up my desktop, went back to my E773s, and added a link to my applications and documents folders, a feature I really missed from Leopard.
Click to expand...
Loving your oldskool folder icons. But can you not drag folders into the Dock in Leopard, right-click them and tell it to display the contents as a list? (This is how it works in Mojave here.)
 
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Plenty of giveaways as someone that used W2K until 2018. Looks neat though.

I just tested and yeah, you can. I might start using that actually, I'm tired of clicking the view more button.
Gershwix 2.5, by the way.​
 
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Added a 1.8ghz DP PM G5 (7,2) to my collection recently. It has the problem a lot of
G5s have where the lower handles have bent away from the rest of the case, but looks good otherwise. It didn’t come with an HDD, so I sourced one from my broken iMac G5 1.9ghz iSight (display was going bad). Getting the HDD out of that iMac was a pain. I had to remove the logic board to do it. Discovered that the caps on the logic board had gone bad, which was depressing to see. After removing the HDD and other useable parts of that iMac, I opened up my new Power Mac and put the iMac’s HDD in. I also removed the PRAM battery, reseated a RAM stick and screwed a PCI slot cover back in place.



Once that was done, I turned the Power Mac on and…no video. What the heck?! Swtiched graphics cards and the same thing happened. I couldn’t zap the PRAM either, that was until I tried hooking up my Apple Pro Keyboard directly into one of the USB ports without the USB extension cable I was using. I usually use this keyboard with an extension cable because of how short the built-in USB cable is, but thankfully the keyboard’s built-in cable was able to reach the G5. After zapping the PRAM I finally had video and successfully booted into Sorbet where I discovered I only had 512 MB of RAM despite having four sticks of RAM inside. I then remembered that the loose RAM stick I had reseated earlier had a different color PCB board than the rest. According to EveryMac, RAM must be installed in matched pairs, so I’m thinking this means that mixing brands isn’t allowed. Would much rather that be the case than the RAM slots being dead. I decided to buy a 2 GB kit from OWC and will remove all of the other RAM once I install it. Hopefully that works.



Noticed that the optical drive tray keeps getting stuck on the top of the case. Hopefully all I have to do is reseat the optical drive. The graphics card I have in there now is the Geforce 6200. I think the GPU that the G5 came with is the FX 5200. I’m tempted to buy the G5 version of the Radeon 9800 XT, so I can have more VRAM, but also so I can have Jaguar support. The 6200 doesn’t support Jaguar and I heard that the FX 5200 is terrible in Leopard. Might try the FX 5200 after the RAM upgrade to see just how bad it is first though.
 
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My iBook G3 Clamshell has recently had keyboard problems – shift and cmd keys sometimes not working. I picked up a NOS replacement, which fixed the problem... until a few weeks later, the same thing happened again!

I realised it must be a problem with the contacts, so today I picked up some WD-40 electrical contact cleaner, and gave the board contacts a good clean (the keyboard is of the few parts that is easy to remove from a clamshell). Sure enough, it fixed the problem.
 
MacFoxG4 said:
RAM must be installed in matched pairs, so I’m thinking this means that mixing brands isn’t allowed. Would much rather that be the case than the RAM slots being dead.
Click to expand...
I had in theory 4.5GB in my G5 however two of the sticks (2x 1GB) were dead until I realised that they weren't matching with the other sticks. Changed them for Micron sticks and now I have 4.5GB back. I doubt brands, probably related to timings, speed etc.
 
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Today I checked in on an MDD I'd saved from the e-waste in my old lab's building years ago during my undergrad. It was missing a PSU and had a big sticker on the top that said "Dead" on it, but it was a dual 1.25 with what looked like full RAM and a Radeon 9000 Pro, so I squirrelled it away in a store room until I had the time and space to figure out what to do with it.

Fast forward 4 years and I remember it's still sitting there, so I went in to catch up with an old lab-mate and take a closer look:

IMG_0893.JPG


The case is grimy, but in pretty good shape with no major cracks or scuffs! The main problem is the inside:

IMG_0894.JPG


As you can see, the PSU was removed completely, meaning that there's no way of attempting to repair it and no connector to easily splice for an ATX or SFF mod. Relatedly, the other big problem is that I have no idea whether the PSU failure took out any other components or not since I have no PSU to test it with. The caps around the PSU connector look a little iffy, but I'm not sure if I'm just seeing things or not:

IMG_0895.JPG


Anyway, my basic game-plan is:

a) Find a way to jury-rig an ATX PSU just enough to test the machine
b) If it works, try to track down a cheap replacement PSU (eBay prices are absurd), or alternatively try to retrofit a similarly-shaped PSU from an SFF PC to fit.

For the former, my main question is what sort of wattage I'd need just to test the basics, because I don't think I have a 400W PSU handy (it's an original MDD, so it had the 400W PSU). Would a lower-wattage one work fine for a basic boot test? Also, where would I go about finding the correct connector for the logic board side if the original PSU's missing? Would love to try and bring this guy back to life!
 
z970 said:
Over the past day, I've begun formulating ideas for a useful new app ...

View attachment 1996699
Click to expand...
I see you are dealing with Applescript. :D

You may be interested in Jon's Commands if you haven't heard about them already.

Documentation here: https://www.seanet.com/~jonpugh/JonsCommandsDocs.html

Jon's Commands made it much easier for me in my old job to copy, move, delete and overwrite files on network drives. There is an inherent limitation in stock Applescript that prevents these types of commands from working on anything other than an attached drive.

The version I link to above is OS X, but his initial release was for OS9 (and earlier). I have that too if you (or anyone else) wants that.

The combination of Jon's Commands and DAVE helped save my sanity when executing AS on Windows server shares.
 
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@eyoungren Yes, as fond as I am of UNIX shells, I wanted this one to have some sort of a GUI interface beyond text-based 'Yes / No' input. If trying to get it working ends up taking too long though, I'll probably just revert back to good old Terminal as I'm a touch pressed for time at the moment.

Thanks for the references, I'll take a look.
 
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z970 said:
@eyoungren Yes, as fond as I am of UNIX shells, I wanted this one to have some sort of a GUI interface beyond text-based 'Yes / No' input. If trying to get it working ends up taking too long though, I'll probably just revert back to good old Terminal as I'm a touch pressed for time at the moment.

Thanks for the references, I'll take a look.
Click to expand...
Do not forget you can call UNIX commands inside Applescript.

But you probably knew that. :)
 
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Put Rhapsody on the Beige Restoration Project.

It was not that much effort after I realised that the CD drive was dead and I replaced it. Looks kinda ugly because it was a black drive and not a beige drive but it did work. That was the only problem with it. That and the IDE headers on the logic board have all 40 pins populated, rather than omitting pin 20, making the two-drive cables I have unusable. Disappointing as I planned on installing a second hard disk. That'll have to come later perhaps.
 
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