Bought a Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 of Ebay - Pleasantly Surprised

[macuser453787]

Their mere existence is an injustice on humanity. They're anti-human.

LOL sounds like you've had some personal experience(s) with this. Many years ago I got a cat that didn't get along very well with me or the two other two cats I had at the time, so I gave that cat to someone else. The mean ones are out there for sure, as it is with dogs and other animals. But the vast majority of my experience with cats has been pleasant.

 

[Mr. Dee]

So, I installed the necessary security update and Combo 10.1.5, so I am fully updated. Just waiting on my copy of Adobe Design Collection 1.0 and 20 GB iPod Classic. All relevant apps like iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie are all installed. Really impressed its working so great.

How can I extend the battery life? I currently get about 4 hours on it. I keep it plugged in most of the time.

 

[z970]

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[macuser453787]

Wow, didn't know it's been such an issue for you and your family. I have compassion for you.

There are three things I can think of to get rid of the cat:

1. Stop feeding it, no matter what.

2. Keep it from getting on your porch.

3. Stop paying attention to it.

Its two primary reasons for being there are food and shelter. It comes around because it knows it will get those. Getting attention is probably secondary at best, but cutting off all three of these things will work if you and your family will do them consistently, all the time.

This is not past the point of no return. If you cut off its supply, it will go somewhere else. It probably won't happen overnight, but it will happen if you stick with it and don't let it take advantage of you or your family's emotions. The safety of you and your family is much more important than whether or not the cat gets fed and sheltered by you.

Hope that helps.
[doublepost=1526576255][/doublepost]Apologies everyone for sidetracking this thread. Didn't intend that and will stop now. Any further cat concerns can be PM'd to me.

 

[Slix]

Nice find on the nice PowerBook G4! I recently got two Titaniums myself, and decked one of them out with a 32 GB mSATA SSD, but I still need more RAM... It's running Tiger and it runs pretty well! It's super nice to have a laptop with a working battery and new enough and old enough to run Tiger but also Classic games for on the go.

 

[weckart]

I do also like a really good hot tea from time to time, prepared with half and half and sugar. A nice Earl Grey, Assam, English Breakfast, or Yorkshire Gold, all from the Taylors of Harrogate brand, are quite delicious.

Bleurrrgh! Tea should ideally be made with skimmed milk. Save the cream for coffee. The way milk fats react with the various brews makes or breaks them. I hope you aren’t putting milk in your Earl Grey, either.

 

[AphoticD]

Holy diversions! That’s the trouble with cats.. they take over EVERYTHING. Even this thread

To the OP; 4 hours is a fantastic run for an ancient lithium ion battery, but you can also try a few things to improve upon this;

1. Set performance to “longer battery life” in energy saver settings.
2. Switch off power to the Airport Card if it has one. (Also Bluetooth if it has it)
3. Dim the display.
4. If you know you’re not using the hard drive for extended periods. E.g. You are typing for a long period of time, set the drive to spin down during inactivity.
5. Again, lower the spindown delay to 1 minute using ‘pmset’ in the Terminal (if that existed in Puma).
6. Install a 32GB or 64GB mSATA SSD in an IDE adapter to remove the spinning disk altogether.
7. Set your desktop picture to solid white (this is only a theoretical improvement to reduce the LCD’s energy consumption used in darkening pixels, but I haven’t tested to see if it actually makes a difference)
8. For Tiger or Leopard, remove the AudioIPCDriver.kext extension to reduce CPU consumption when idle. (I now do this on all of my PowerPC Macs during setup)
9. Make sure the machine is adequately cooling. Allow it to breathe. Don’t cover up the vents or you’re asking the internal fans to run harder than they should need to.
10. Use a laptop stand to keep it running cool.
11. Repaste the CPU with a quality thermal compound and renew the thermal pads. This will improve the overall thermal performance, reducing the fan requirements and saving energy.
12. Avoid using powered devices like USB, Firewire or a PCMCIA card.
13. Load your regular use apps and documents onto a RAM disk and operate from there. See Esperance DV here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/finally-found-a-use-for-a-ram-disk.2027295/
(This May not work in Puma, but there might be an older copy).
14. This also brings up the point of maxing out your RAM to reduce swap / memory paging hitting your hard disk.

Can anyone think of any other tips for longer battery life?

It’s also worth fully draining, then fully recharging the battery without interruption to calibrate it’s internal power management controller.

—————

I ordered another non-working Titanium to use for rebuilding my latest hard knock life 867. It also has a Garamond “PowerBook G4” label but the seller provided no specs and says it doesn’t boot. Maybe I’ll get lucky and score a 1Ghz unit with 64MB VRAM that I can take the logic board from. Either way another AU$30 (plus shipping) spent on TiBooks.. this is quickly adding up!

I just did a quick headcount and there are 25 Apple laptops in my home with 6 currently undergoing repairs.

 

[z970]

@macuser453787

Thank you.

 

[macuser453787]

Bleurrrgh! Tea should ideally be made with skimmed milk. Save the cream for coffee. The way milk fats react with the various brews makes or breaks them. I hope you aren’t putting milk in your Earl Grey, either.

I greatly dislike skim milk and will not drink it, lowest I usually go is 2% for drinking by itself. Half and half is what I like in my coffee and tea, yes including Earl Grey (and heavy cream for coffee around the holidays). Delicious!!! To my knowledge I've never had a problem with milk fat reacting with tea.

Any further coffee or tea comments can be PM'd to me also.

Congrats to the OP for your purchase!

 

[bobesch]

9. Make sure the machine is adequately cooling. Allow it to breathe. Don’t cover up the vents or you’re asking the internal fans to run harder than they should need to.

Yeah - that's it! The "Rain Design - iLap Stand" is the basic-gadget you won't regret - kind of heritage for all our family's books sitting around in our (and far away) place(s) ...

 

[bernuli]

That is my _absolute FAVORITE_ laptop of all time. Even now when it is useless for anything online, it has a keyboard I love and the closest thing to edge to edge screen Apple ever did (AFAIK). Still great for basic coding, word processing, and it plays all the DVDs I have (from back then at least).

Only problem was a small design flaw with the way the keyboard (or trackpad cable) was routed inside the case which causes freezes if I run energy saver in full mode. If I step CPU down to reduced it works fine, so laptop continues to be totally useable.

And wouldn't you know it, Apple reintroduced a new version of this flaw in the 2015 Macbook Pros. I thought they were all about ditching old designs!

 

[bobesch]

and the closest thing to edge to edge screen Apple ever did (AFAIK)

Fully agree, screen and small metal-frame are awesome! Screen looks huge compared to the last 15" Powerbook and early pre 2009 15" intel MacBookPros (not to mention the MacBookPros with that big black bezel ...)
I guess they've left the full-metal thin-edged screen of the TiBook in favor to a better wireless-connectivity with antennas placed behind the then non-metal bezels.

 

[eyoungren]

Yeah - that's it! The "Rain Design - iLap Stand" is the basic-gadget you won't regret - kind of heritage for all our family's books sitting around in our (and far away) place(s) ...

One of these is good too…

Just shove it under the rear of the laptop. The bonus is it makes your laptop look like it's floating up because it's hard to see it.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Sigh, well, I am now seeing a pink vertical line on my PowerBook G4 this morning. Five days ago I was seeing a faint line next left of the screen, but it wasn't significant, but it has certain become prominent. Is there any fix for this that is not invasive or possibly requires returning the system?

 

[eyoungren]

Sigh, well, I am now seeing a pink vertical line on my PowerBook G4 this morning. Five days ago I was seeing a faint line next left of the screen, but it wasn't significant, but it has certain become prominent. Is there any fix for this that is not invasive or possibly requires returning the system?

That's either the display or the LCVD cable. Replacing one or the other is the only cure.

The cable will cost less, but replacing it is time consuming and difficult and the possibility exists that it's the display and not the cable. The display costs more to replace, but installing it is much easier. However, not a lot of replacement displays are sold with hinges so there is surgery involved if you get one without hinges.

Either way, the problem with the screen will only get worse over time.

 

[bobesch]

One of these is good too…

Just shove it under the rear of the laptop. The bonus is it makes your laptop look like it's floating up because it's hard to see it.

Yep - it's like that fancy aluminum-stick (got one cheap as an occasion). But I like those iLap stands because you can stuff a lot of things (cable, USB-hubs/drives etc.) beneath.

 

[AphoticD]

Sigh, well, I am now seeing a pink vertical line on my PowerBook G4 this morning. Five days ago I was seeing a faint line next left of the screen, but it wasn't significant, but it has certain become prominent. Is there any fix for this that is not invasive or possibly requires returning the system?

The first thing I would try is to re-seat the LVDS cable on the logic board end. This will be the least invasive repair to attempt. Also try applying a little rubbing alcohol (Iospropyl Alcohol) to the copper pins on the connector in case there is simply an impaired connection causing the fault.

 

[Mr. Dee]

The first thing I would try is to re-seat the LVDS cable on the logic board end. This will be the least invasive repair to attempt. Also try applying a little rubbing alcohol (Iospropyl Alcohol) to the copper pins on the connector in case there is simply an impaired connection causing the fault.

Will try and tackle that over the weekend. Its not so bad right now, but the faint shadow of it is still there. Will be watching it throughout the week.

 

[CooperBox]

One of these is good too…

Just shove it under the rear of the laptop. The bonus is it makes your laptop look like it's floating up because it's hard to see it.

And there was me thinking it was your favourite coffee-stirrer at Colados......!

 

[eyoungren]

And there was me thinking it was your favourite coffee-stirrer at Colados......!

LOL!!!!

Ya know, Colados has a French Café theme…essentially I'm stopping by to visit you every time I go. Next time I'll show you the real favorite coffee stirrer!

 

[CooperBox]

LOL!!!!

Ya know, Colados has a French Café theme…essentially I'm stopping by to visit you every time I go. Next time I'll show you the real favorite coffee stirrer!

Take one of these with you next time. The difficulty though is preventing him from hopping out of the mug between sips........

 

[z970]

Take one of these with you next time. The difficulty though is preventing him from hopping out of the mug between sips........

"Yes, and would you like your espresso with extra glitter?"

"No thank you, I'm allergic to inedible materials."

"That'll be $6.50. Thank you for choosing Party City."

 

[macuser453787]

LOL

 

[z970]

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