Virgin Pismo unearthed

[California]

Was looking for a laptop for a new guyfriend of mine; I have an obsession to switch all my friends to Apple otherwise, I wonder if I can be friends with them? Anyway, I
answered an ad for what sounded like an unused Pismo, but ya never know until you see.

OMG. It WAS unused. I mean, in the original box, with accessories etc. I've never really seen one of these up close, they seemed too MacMacho for me, with all the swappables, but yikes. It is pristine. I dropped in an Airport card, 512mb ram to its stock and difficult to get at 64mb oem chip

and couldn't bring myself to swap out the original six gig Travelstar hd. Because, it is basically BRAND NEW.

So I did a two gig install of Panther, updated it, put 2001 Office on it (actually my preference over 2004 Word) and it still banks 3.44gbs of hard drive space.

What a lovely, brand new machine. Sorry, I try not to brag but this still has the new computer smell. I have to call the guy who sold it to me and thank him. I'm also going to try and get my friend to send this in to Daystar for the G4 upgrade that is only $229 now. It is such a butch machine. Wow. Huge screen too. I didn't know...

 

[yoda13]

Yeah, those were great computers!! I miss mine.

 

[xfiftyfour]

nice find - almost makes ya not wanna use it, eh?

 

[Mechcozmo]

How is the battery doing, after so many years in stasis?

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

nice find!

i love those computers..

 

[Demon Hunter]

Lucky, lucky, boyfriend!

 

[Steven1621]

pics? i'd love to see it.

 

[California]

How is the battery doing, after so many years in stasis?

Looks like a little less than five hours?

And it came with some empty cartridge thing for one of the bays.. to make it weigh less? Funny. I'll get some pics in the morning. The box is also pristine! And it's a 400 G3 FW PB and I nagged the poor seller down. Now I feel guilty. My friend will be all over this machine. I called him and he almost cried he was so excited, tho I had to explain to him WHY he should be excited. He's gotta learn Panther as an old school Windooozer.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Looks like a little less than five hours?

Wow. That's really good... it should be around there (5 hours) for a brand new battery, but batteries age moreso than a computer will.

Have you calibrated it yet? That may get you over the five-hour mark. (And a second battery will make it 10-12!)

 

[California]

To calibrate, I should let the battery run all the way down and then fully recharge without unplugging?

Anyway, here are some pics. The "smell" factor is unfilmable.

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

Nice find Cali. You really like the old powerbooks and a pismo at that price is great. Congrats!

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

To calibrate, I should let the battery run all the way down and then fully recharge without unplugging?

Anyway, here are some pics. The "smell" factor is unfilmable.

I hear after the battery drains you should let it sit for a couple of hours, but I'm not entirely sure. You've got the process right though.

 

[Nuc]

That was a steal. I got $400 for mine about a month ago. Of course it came with extras..

Nuc

 

[Mechcozmo]

To calibrate, I should let the battery run all the way down and then fully recharge without unplugging?

Anyway, here are some pics. The "smell" factor is unfilmable.

Charge battery to full. Let it drain to empty in one long burst. (PowerBook will go into emergency sleep). Let it charge back up to full.

Linkety to Apple's word on it.
Linkety to the kBase article on it. The new computers seem to be... smarter... than their older brethren and require new methods of calibration. Kind of neat, actually.
Linkety to the PowerBook G3 kBase page

 

[dmw007]

Very nice deal California.


I loved my old PowerBook G3.

 

[California]

Did a bit of Pismo research on hard drives. Anyone know if the Pismo is really unable to use ata-6 hard drives or should I play it safe with ATA-5 hard drives? I don't understand what ATA means, but I read that Pismos are ATA-5...

 

[dpaanlka]

Wow you are so lucky.

 

[Krevnik]

Did a bit of Pismo research on hard drives. Anyone know if the Pismo is really unable to use ata-6 hard drives or should I play it safe with ATA-5 hard drives? I don't understand what ATA means, but I read that Pismos are ATA-5...

I slapped a Hitachi 40GB UATA-6 drive in my Lombard /and/ Pismo... so they should work just fine. ATA is the IDE connector type, and UATA-6 is the max speed mode supported. It can scale back to whatever speed mode is supported by the machine itself.

I actually kinda miss my Pismo too.

 

[carlsalt]

Solid State Drive for Pismo?

Has anyone experimented with Compact Flash memory as a solid state drive for the Pismo? I tried this. I used two 133x 32 GB CF cards. It boots and runs in OS 9 and in 10.4. It is absolutely quiet. But it is dead slow. Any ideas? Thanks...

 

[TheReef]

I swapped a 80 GB drive from a dead PowerBook G4 into my Pismo, (ATA - 6) and has been working fine.
Gotta love the Pismos, put two batteries in them and you have a day of working time for school, work etc.

Has anyone experimented with Compact Flash memory as a solid state drive for the Pismo? I tried this. I used two 133x 32 GB CF cards. It boots and runs in OS 9 and in 10.4. It is absolutely quiet. But it is dead slow. Any ideas? Thanks...

Compact Flash memory, do you mean using an external card reader with a Compact Flash card? If so, it would be slow because the Pismo only has USB 1.1, where you should be using USB 2.0 to boot an OS. You can buy Cardbus USB 2.0 Cards to fit in the expansion slot and would give you noticeable speed gains.

 

[Mac_Max]

I think he means a 2.5" HD 44pin IDE to CF adapter. Modern CF cards are faster than the stock 6GB drive by a large margin .

 

[TheReef]

I think he means a 2.5" HD 44pin IDE to CF adapter. Modern CF cards are faster than the stock 6GB drive by a large margin .

Wow never knew those existed. Definitely looking into one of those

 

[carlsalt]

IDE to Dual CF adapter is exactly what I used...

The IDE to dual CF adapter is exactly what I used. I formatted the CF cards with a Firewire CF reader, then loaded Mac OS 9, then OSX 10.4, then some basic apps. It all works but is terribly slow, about 1/5th the speed that I had before with the stock hard drive, and it was NOT a cheap project. This was a very disappointing result. I would love to have better success. Does anyone have some ideas? Better drivers perhaps? The Pismo is otherwise loaded and has been an excellent long lasting machine.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Who made the CF cards?

The cards max out at 20MB/s read/write.

Maybe the adapter is bad?

 

[carlsalt]

IDE to Dual CF adapter

The cards are Transcend Compact Flash Ultra Speed 133x 32 GB.