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TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 13, 2007
329
18
USA
Just bought a powerbook (gigabit ethernet model 2001) with airport, dvd, 667 g4 processor and a 1 gig of ram. I realize this is somewhat below spec for apple's minimum with leopard - but I was just wondering, has anyone put leopard on a machine like this, were there any problems and how did you do it?
Thank you all!
 

bigandy

macrumors G3
Apr 30, 2004
8,852
7
Murka
The minimum required is an 867mhz G4, so it won't install by putting the DVD in.

You could possibly do it by installing from another PPC based Mac using target disk mode.

Xpostfacto hasn't been updated yet for Leopard IIRC, so that's your best bet.


But it'll be slooooooooooooooooooow.

I personally haven't heard of anyone attempting it. My advice would be to keep to tiger. ;)
 

TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 13, 2007
329
18
USA
it's got jag on it, i could put 10.4.10 on it and call it a day - might make more sense to do. Does it have to be run from another PPC mac? I have an intel C2D mac mini with firewire/etc
 

bbergie

macrumors regular
Jul 3, 2006
213
0
Calgary
I wouldn't recommend doing it. I imagine the Leopard experience would be compromised on your PowerBook model. Tiger is a great and solid OS itself, and I can say that it runs really well and efficiently on the 667 Mhz PowerBook G4.
 

TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 13, 2007
329
18
USA
Brett - I'll take your advice. I notice you have the same model. Is there anything you recommend I do to make this model run efficiently? I've got the mini as described, which is plenty fast - I just want to maximize the 667mhz's that i have, haha.
 

heatmiser

macrumors 68020
Dec 6, 2007
2,431
0
Oh goodness, stick with 10.4.11. I've got a Macbook, and I'm still using Tiger. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
 

FJ218700

macrumors 68000
Mar 8, 2007
1,740
0
Blue Dot, Red State
I'm running it on a 500 MHz TiBook, 733 MHz tower, and an 800 MHz eMac. On these PPC systems, Leopard is slower than Tiger, but the added benefits of quicklook, spaces, screen sharing, etc., for me, outweight the CPU/GPU lag.

install via Target disk mode from a supported Mac. That's the easiest way unless you feel comfortable with the terminal.
 

TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 13, 2007
329
18
USA
I'll stick with tiger - I thought it was sufficient on my old 1.42ghz iBook. I just wanted to have a nice backup program for my external hdd - enter time machine...
 

bbergie

macrumors regular
Jul 3, 2006
213
0
Calgary
Brett - I'll take your advice. I notice you have the same model. Is there anything you recommend I do to make this model run efficiently? I've got the mini as described, which is plenty fast - I just want to maximize the 667mhz's that i have, haha.


Nothing specific, but I've found this website to be a helpful resource for maintaining my system and being proactive to keep it optimized. I hope it's useful for you, too. Enjoy the TiBook. It's a good machine.
 

rdemby

macrumors newbie
Mar 8, 2008
5
0
Install Leopard on PB 667

For those with 667Mhz PowerBooks (Or possibly other Macs that don't work with LeopardAssist):

1.) Place the 10.5 Install disk in your drive.
2.) Restart your Mac (don't use on the installer on the disk)
3.) After the chime, hold down COMMAND+OPTION+O+F until you see a light gray screen with black text
4.) let go of the keys and type in the following commands EXACTLY as shown, and hit the RETURN key after each line (you will see an "ok" confirming what you typed was correct):



dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " min-clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " max-clock-frequency" property
multi-boot

Select Leopard Install DVD

Runs very well on my PB 667
 

falco

macrumors newbie
Jun 19, 2008
6
0
For those with 667Mhz PowerBooks (Or possibly other Macs that don't work with LeopardAssist):

1.) Place the 10.5 Install disk in your drive.
2.) Restart your Mac (don't use on the installer on the disk)
3.) After the chime, hold down COMMAND+OPTION+O+F until you see a light gray screen with black text
4.) let go of the keys and type in the following commands EXACTLY as shown, and hit the RETURN key after each line (you will see an "ok" confirming what you typed was correct):



dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " min-clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " max-clock-frequency" property
multi-boot

Select Leopard Install DVD

Runs very well on my PB 667

Thats very interesting since I did not manage to install Leopard via target disk mode from a MacBookPro onto a PowerBook G4 667 Mhz (first, I had to apply the GUID partition table from disk utility. The installation of Leopard proceeded fine but I could not boot from the PowerBook later).

I followed your instructions carfully. After typing "multi-boot"/return I ended up on a blue screen with two arrow symbols (one 3/4 quarter round arrow and one right-arrow button). I could click the button using the mouse or hit return but nothing happened.

How do I proceed after "multi-boot" ?
 

falco

macrumors newbie
Jun 19, 2008
6
0
I could click the button using the mouse or hit return but nothing happened.

How do I proceed after "multi-boot" ?

Correction: after typing return multiple times a "Mac installation DVD" symbol appeared, after typing return the installation process is now continuing.

Great.

For users with German keyboard it might be worth noting the keys:
" shift-ä
# shift 3
@ shift 2
/ -
- ß
y z
z y
 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
I've got 10.5.3 running nicely on my powerbook. No problems at all. Some of the rendered things like stacks look a little blurry but all in all, it is totally fine.
 

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
Thats very interesting since I did not manage to install Leopard via target disk mode from a MacBookPro onto a PowerBook G4 667 Mhz (first, I had to apply the GUID partition table from disk utility. The installation of Leopard proceeded fine but I could not boot from the PowerBook later).

I followed your instructions carfully. After typing "multi-boot"/return I ended up on a blue screen with two arrow symbols (one 3/4 quarter round arrow and one right-arrow button). I could click the button using the mouse or hit return but nothing happened.

How do I proceed after "multi-boot" ?

When the boot system is intel MBP, the installer will install an intel MBP install, (which does not work on iMac or other intel macs). PowerBooks cannot boot GUID anyway.

You need to boot from a PowerBook.
 

LouisBlack

macrumors 6502
Jun 21, 2007
313
0
Balham, London
+1 for running Leopard on a TiBook (500Mhz and 640MB RAM). I am writing this on the old tank actually.

It's pretty slow to boot and swapping between apps but, as was mentioned earlier, the advantages of Leopards many improvements such as Quicklook and Mail 3 outweigh the slowness. Once loaded Safari runs fine, in fact I currently have 7 tabs open and it's chugging along well. Not much slower than Tiger.

There are many things you can do to speed up Leopard. Google 'Optimize Leopard' and it'll give you terminal commands to turn off 3D dock and spotlight indexing plus many other tips.
 

spacewhaleseekr

macrumors newbie
May 1, 2009
2
0
In a couple of weeks I've got some time on hand so I was going to see what happens to a TiBook 667MHz with 768 megs of RAM.

LeopardAssist/XPostfacto are too shady for me, but this worked wonders after my mother's iMac 800 refused to install via Target Disk Mode off of both a MacBook Pro and PowerBook G4 867MHz:
For those with 667Mhz PowerBooks (Or possibly other Macs that don't work with LeopardAssist):

1.) Place the 10.5 Install disk in your drive.
2.) Restart your Mac (don't use on the installer on the disk)
3.) After the chime, hold down COMMAND+OPTION+O+F until you see a light gray screen with black text
4.) let go of the keys and type in the following commands EXACTLY as shown, and hit the RETURN key after each line (you will see an "ok" confirming what you typed was correct):



dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " min-clock-frequency" property
d# 867000000 encode-int " max-clock-frequency" property
multi-boot

Select Leopard Install DVD

Her iMac (Charla) has a GeForce 4 but I was surprised pleasantly by the video performance once I patched everything to 10.5.3 long ago. With Leopard they refined the drivers for their hardware- one of the reasons it comes on a double-layer DVD. However, it also requires a mountain of memory to the benefits of the UNIX. A gig is barely there and two is pretty good.

I am afraid that my 667 graphics and memory will be slow over a 133MHz front-side bus without DDR. The screen backlight also randomly dies but I was going to tuck it inside of an endtable and just have it do email and pull music over ethernet and send Firewire for my den's stereo.
 
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