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and here it is :) A MacBookPro4,1 I managed to pickup for a very nice price (especially as it came with a fairly good condition first gen magsafe 1 charge thats worth what I paid for the whole machine)

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have wanted one of these for a fair while now because they are able to run a very wide range of OS X versions, from Tiger to 10.13.6 (and beyond even if you dont mind serious system patching)

the MBP4,1 is basically a MacBookPro3,1 but with a Penryn CPU upgrade which thanks to Penryn's SSE4.1 support allows it to un-officially go far beyond its official 10.11.6 maximum, but because it is very similar to a MBP3,1 and Apple kindly added Penryn CPU support to Tiger (despite no penryn mac ever shipping with tiger) you can also shoehorn 10.4.11 onto it with full graphics acceleration too :)

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as you may have noticed from the decreasing PCIe lane width in the pictures, this machine sadly is not one with the revised GPU and the ticking time bomb has already started counting down so its a case of placing bets on how long it will keep going! I actually kindly got given a dead MBP4,1 a while back with suspected GPU issues, so when this one dies, it can Join it in the queue to my BGA rework station LOL

no green dot as expected but the 4GB of RAM is nice at least

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it came to me without a Battery which I thought "ah no problem ill grab the still good battery from the other dead MBP4,1 I have!"

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so much for that Idea LOL, I do have another battery somewhere an Anker one I got many years ago for my long dead MBP3,1, but of course its vanished after regularly being spotted in the past...

at least the machine throttling itself to buggery due to the lack of a battery will keep the dying GPU going for as long as possible LOL (tho I would like to get a battery fitted before I start chucking heavier OS's on it)
Question, given this looks like the PowerBook G4 design and if nothing inside really change, can the battery from this work in a 17 inch DLSD since the pins line up ?
 
Not exactly a purchase, but I finally picked up my Quicksilver from my grandmother's house. I said I didn't want to modify an Apple stock card on 68kMLA, but I decided I'm going to swap out the CPUs with the now two 1GHz 7455s I have, and overclock them as fast as I can get them (hoping for 1350 but will try further and settle for less), on top of getting the bus to at least 150 and throwing the to-be-downclocked 9800 in there.
Anyone know if any PCI-X (or otherwise 64-bit) RAID cards I might find on eBay are bootable? I'd like to have the most ridiculous, unnecessary Quicksilver I can, and would love to get a little more out of a readily accessible SATA-3 SSD; I'm going to be editing video and recording audio on the computer, so I can actually feel the read/write speed a little.​
 
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No.

No.

No.

Hope that clears up any confusion.

While I definitely wouldn't recommend doing this in any circumstance, I took a look, and it's less implausible than I thought at first.

The most obvious problem is that the 17" PowerBook G4's battery (A1309) has its locating feet closer together than the 17" MacBook Pro's (A1189). One could probably shave them down, but then the battery would want to fall out and any other issues from the different enclosure styles would still need to be addressed.
battery-comparison.png
(Of course, the 15" MacBook Pro's battery (A1175) has no chance of fitting physically.)

The connector pinouts are almost compatible, with the exception of an SMC alert line running from the A1189 to the Mac that is used as a battery detection line on the A1309. Since this line is active-low in both cases, there's a reasonable chance that the PowerBook wouldn't recognize the battery is present at all unless the battery is in an alert state (typically indicating an error).
Pin NumberA1309 (PowerBook G4)A1189 (MacBook Pro)
1PPVBATT_BATTPOS_CONNPPVBAT_G3H_CONN
2(Tied to GND)(10 Ohms to GND)
3BATT_CLKSMBUS_BATT_SCL
4BATT_DATASMBUS_BATT_SDA
5BATT0_DET_LSMC_BS_ALRT_L
6​
GND_BATT_CONNGND_BATT

(Pin 2 is probably tied to a PRES# input on the battery-side that lets the battery know if a computer is connected.)

Although the SMC registers for battery communications are fairly well-defined, the A1189 has a significantly pickier battery management IC than the A1309 and may respond differently when it comes to battery configuration commands.
 
While I definitely wouldn't recommend doing this in any circumstance, I took a look, and it's less implausible than I thought at first.

The most obvious problem is that the 17" PowerBook G4's battery (A1309) has its locating feet closer together than the 17" MacBook Pro's (A1189). One could probably shave them down, but then the battery would want to fall out and any other issues from the different enclosure styles would still need to be addressed.
(Of course, the 15" MacBook Pro's battery (A1175) has no chance of fitting physically.)

The connector pinouts are almost compatible, with the exception of an SMC alert line running from the A1189 to the Mac that is used as a battery detection line on the A1309. Since this line is active-low in both cases, there's a reasonable chance that the PowerBook wouldn't recognize the battery is present at all unless the battery is in an alert state (typically indicating an error).
Pin NumberA1309 (PowerBook G4)A1189 (MacBook Pro)
1PPVBATT_BATTPOS_CONNPPVBAT_G3H_CONN
2(Tied to GND)(10 Ohms to GND)
3BATT_CLKSMBUS_BATT_SCL
4BATT_DATASMBUS_BATT_SDA
5BATT0_DET_LSMC_BS_ALRT_L
6​
GND_BATT_CONNGND_BATT

(Pin 2 is probably tied to a PRES# input on the battery-side that lets the battery know if a computer is connected.)

Although the SMC registers for battery communications are fairly well-defined, the A1189 has a significantly pickier battery management IC than the A1309 and may respond differently when it comes to battery configuration commands.

I literally own one of each.

Superficially, whilst the two laptops appear similar, there are significant and compound differences, both externally and within, between the 17-inch PowerBook G4 and the 17-inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is deeper by a small margin (manifest by the display appearing taller with the lid up, next to a PowerBook.

As well, the 17-inch MacBook Pro battery is about 1cm wider and 1.4cm longer than the PowerBook battery, having taken advantage of smaller internal components over the PowerBook predecessor.

To repeat what I said before:

No.

No.

No.

Stop asking.

And please, unless you have both laptops in your possession, best to refrain from speculating on this.


EDIT to add: I apologize for my tone. I don’t always do well with being dismissed by guys with respect to matters I have verified to be irrefutable. And, frankly, a little bit of search engine kung-fu and some time to look into it could readily produce technical specifications on those two Apple consumable products and their fundamental differences.
 
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I literally own one of each.

Superficially, whilst the two laptops appear similar, there are significant and compound differences, both externally and within, between the 17-inch PowerBook G4 and the 17-inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is deeper by a small margin (manifest by the display appearing taller with the lid up, next to a PowerBook.

As well, the 17-inch MacBook Pro battery is about 1cm wider and 1.4cm longer than the PowerBook battery, having taken advantage of smaller internal components over the PowerBook predecessor.

To repeat what I said before:

No.

No.

No.

Stop asking.

And please, unless you have both laptops in your possession, best to refrain from speculating on this.


EDIT to add: I apologize for my tone. I don’t always do well with being dismissed by guys with respect to matters I have verified to be irrefutable. And, frankly, a little bit of search engine kung-fu and some time to look into it could readily produce technical specifications on those two Apple consumable products and their fundamental differences.

My apologies; I was primarily approaching the question from an electrical perspective out of curiosity and was not trying to disparage your expertise but rather provide further perspective as to why it wouldn’t work.
When I was researching my post, I looked for battery dimensions and was only getting results for the PowerBook’s PRAM battery. However, that was a deficiency in my search-fu since the model numbers readily link to pages with dimensions that are indeed as you say. My bad.

While I don’t own any 17” hardware, I do have a 12” PowerBook G4, a 15” 2008 MacBook Pro, and a slightly ridiculous amount of spare parts. I used the battery harness from an A1211 and a battery connector from an A1185 to make this entirely legitimate battery extension cable to find out what the electrical compatibility is like rather than simply speculating.
It turns out that the PowerBook will boot from and charge an A1175 MacBook Pro battery quite happily (as long as I don’t butterfinger it and accidentally disconnect the cable when repositioning the computer - oops).
However, the MacBook Pro won’t even recognize that the PowerBook’s A1022 battery is present.
 

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My apologies; I was primarily approaching the question from an electrical perspective out of curiosity and was not trying to disparage your expertise but rather provide further perspective as to why it wouldn’t work.

Thanks for the clarification.

When I was researching my post, I looked for battery dimensions and was only getting results for the PowerBook’s PRAM battery. However, that was a deficiency in my search-fu since the model numbers readily link to pages with dimensions that are indeed as you say. My bad.

No worries.

While I don’t own any 17” hardware, I do have a 12” PowerBook G4, a 15” 2008 MacBook Pro, and a slightly ridiculous amount of spare parts. I used the battery harness from an A1211 and a battery connector from an A1185 to make this entirely legitimate battery extension cable to find out what the electrical compatibility is like rather than simply speculating.
It turns out that the PowerBook will boot from and charge an A1175 MacBook Pro battery quite happily (as long as I don’t butterfinger it and accidentally disconnect the cable when repositioning the computer - oops).
However, the MacBook Pro won’t even recognize that the PowerBook’s A1022 battery is present.

There’s probably some additional logic circuitry with the MacBook Pro batteries which the laptop expects to interact with, which may not be present with the PowerBook batteries.

For instance, on the Clouded Leopard project, I found in testing components (Table 4 in that link) that there is a kext written solely for Intel architecture (by all measures I’ve been able to find, from its inception) called AppleSmartBatteryManager. It’s probably this kext which, on the MacBook Pro/MacBook, is looking for that logic circuitry on the respective batteries (and not finding it on the PowerBook/iBook batteries).

I’d even speculate this logic may be what delivers expanded info to the MacBooks, in addition to battery firmware info, features like the more robust sensor health of the connected battery and which regime to use for a recharge or balancing a sustained charge whilst connected to the MagSafe adapter.

Whatever the case, this kext is probably a good place to start looking into it a bit further.
 
Thanks for the clarification.



No worries.



There’s probably some additional logic circuitry with the MacBook Pro batteries which the laptop expects to interact with, which may not be present with the PowerBook batteries.

For instance, on the Clouded Leopard project, I found in testing components (Table 4 in that link) that there is a kext written solely for Intel architecture (by all measures I’ve been able to find, from its inception) called AppleSmartBatteryManager. It’s probably this kext which, on the MacBook Pro/MacBook, is looking for that logic circuitry on the respective batteries (and not finding it on the PowerBook/iBook batteries).

I’d even speculate this logic may be what delivers expanded info to the MacBooks, in addition to battery firmware info, features like the more robust sensor health of the connected battery and which regime to use for a recharge or balancing a sustained charge whilst connected to the MagSafe adapter.

Whatever the case, this kext is probably a good place to start looking into it a bit further.

I cracked open a dead PowerBook G4 battery, and it looks like it has a TI bq20851DBT battery controller coupled with a TI bq29311PW analog front-end.

Comparing that to the TI bq20z80/bq29312 combo in the early-Intel batteries, it looks like the bq20z80 is much more advanced, including lifetime tracking of charge status for the battery and fancier charge controls.

Both controllers implement the Smart Battery System 1.1 spec, which includes the basic gas-gauge-style capacity-tracking that pops up in System Profiler for both batteries.
Without disassembling that kext and digging into what gets sent over the SMBUS to make sure, I'm fairly confident that your speculation is correct and that the early-Intel MacBooks are taking advantage of the bq20z80's additional features and therefore get confused when presented with batteries that only implement SBS 1.1.
 

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I cracked open a dead PowerBook G4 battery, and it looks like it has a TI bq20851DBT battery controller coupled with a TI bq29311PW analog front-end.

Comparing that to the TI bq20z80/bq29312 combo in the early-Intel batteries, it looks like the bq20z80 is much more advanced, including lifetime tracking of charge status for the battery and fancier charge controls.

Both controllers implement the Smart Battery System 1.1 spec, which includes the basic gas-gauge-style capacity-tracking that pops up in System Profiler for both batteries.
Without disassembling that kext and digging into what gets sent over the SMBUS to make sure, I'm fairly confident that your speculation is correct and that the early-Intel MacBooks are taking advantage of the bq20z80's additional features and therefore get confused when presented with batteries that only implement SBS 1.1.

Thank you for doing the good (and dirty) work. This is really helpful information.
 
I decided to check eBay for a Lombard just to see what was out there; no good deals as usual. Also, strangely more of almost every other PowerBook G3. A lot of Wallstreet’s and Pismo’s while only a couple listings were Lombard’s.

Anyways, I found this one and..
22362944-C4CF-4D7C-A04D-4DF3CE2B9BAD.png
Is this Lombard seriously running Debian with Gnome 3.x??
 
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I decided to check eBay for a Lombard just to see what was out there; no good deals as usual. Also, strangely more of almost every other PowerBook G3. A lot of Wallstreet’s and Pismo’s while only a couple listings were Lombard’s.
For as long as I can remember, this has always been the case. It seems that Apple shifted a lot more Wallstreets and Pismos than Lombards. I got my Lombard years ago and I had to wait for ages for one to come up. I had several Pismos and Wallstreets by then.
 
There's a PCI-X Power Mac G5 (don't know anything else, just that it's A1047 EMC1969C) for $50 on Offerup in my area that I'm really curious about, but I don't know if I'd have a use-case for it... maybe just saving it from a frustrated recycling until I can get it to someone else's hands. For Parts Only is my G5 toy... maybe I could use it for Linux and switch FPO to be a Mac OS X machine?
Also, I'm shaking. I just paid $50 for a DLSD and 1GB RAM.​
 
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Here's my latest acquisition, possibly the last HiFi audio CD recorder produced.

The internals don't look very impressive at all. At least there's a digital input... but no output! A possibly off-the-shelf 5.25" SATA optical drive deprived of any labels on the top is tasked with handling the disc (not that I'm overly surprised to see that!):

IMG_0183.jpg


Do yall have the CD-R music tax? I have a bunch of Maxell 'music' CD-Rs (burned Dreamcast games to them). What is a 'music' CD-R you might be wondering? It is just more expensive because of a tax that goes to record labels because CD-RS dont have any copy protection (I'm not joking).
Yep. Most stand-alone HiFi audio CD recorders only accept those — for the very reason you mention.
Seriously? You cant record to a CD-R unless it is a 'music' CD-R? Just another reason to use general computing tech instead.

Let's see whether this puppy is as picky as most of his siblings! The manual says yes, so let's feed it this nasty c0mput3r disc:

IMG_0186.jpg


*drumroll*

IMG_0185.jpg


"Tasty discy, me likey!"

:cool:
 
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Octron discs from Lidl? Their DVD recordables used to be a regular shopping fixture whenever I visited my local store because of the price. :D

Would it be possible to retrofit a digital output?
 
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Octron discs from Lidl?
I have no idea where my dad got them from, to be honest :D

Would it be possible to retrofit a digital output?
Good question. :)

My CD player has both coaxial and optical digital outputs so I just use that — connected to an external DAC — for playback.

Interesting tidbit: one of the PCBs is labelled "ERP2", and the display says ErP2 ON for a few seconds after powering on. What is this I wonder…
 
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As for me, now that I am back to work again - I might get an MDD 1.42. In addition, I am also in search of a graphite puck mouse and pro mouse black.
 
Good news: I won an 800MHz(? the body might be a donor, the screen says 1GHz) TiBook for about $100. It's pretty beat, but seems to function fine.
Bad news: I have $90 and need to borrow some cash.​
 
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Hopefully better than this one (don't look if you have a weak stomach, SFW):Bo

Apple PowerBook 15.2" G4 Titanium A1025 1GHz No RAM - NO HDD - PARTS/REPAIR
Bold of them to think that there are $80 worth of usable parts in that wreck.

A few years ago, I bought a working A1025 1GHz for a fraction of that before prices went doolally. The sender shipped it wrapped in a towel in a padded envelope. It didn't end well. Fortunately, the case survived without dings or bumps but the screen cracked. It still works and you can get an image on the top half of the screen. Occasionally, I'll have a lookout for a spare screen I can use at a reasonable price. Given the above, I don't think I'll bother now.
 
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