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I need help getting Mac os x on my powerbook (lombard)

maccam

maccam

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 18, 2007
515
0
Wisconsin
Hello fellas!!

Ok, so I bought a powerbook g3 (lombard) and I need to get os x on it.
I don't have a firewire hard drive enclosure, but I do have a usb one.
The powerbook does not have a dvd drive (trying to avoid buying one).
Nor does the PB have firewire. So any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
 
Errmmmm . . . I am concerned how well your G3 is going to handle it, particularly the later versions of OS X.

You might be able to find a cheap DVD player for the Lombard on Ebay, but, I have to ask, why are you bothering if you are going to get a more modern computer?

Heck, if you act soon, you can get one for under $20 on Ebay.

--J.D.
 
Doctor X said:
Errmmmm . . . I am concerned how well your G3 is going to handle it, particularly the later versions of OS X.

You might be able to find a cheap DVD player for the Lombard on Ebay, but, I have to ask, why are you bothering if you are going to get a more modern computer?

Heck, if you act soon, you can get one for under $20 on Ebay.

--J.D.
Click to expand...

I bought this PB to fix it up (I was board!!), it was as-is and I got for $33 all it needed was a hard drive and an ac adapter.

The ebay item you have listed is a cd drive. And also these things run panther and tiger just fine.
 
maccam said:
The ebay item you have listed is a cd drive.
Click to expand...

eggheadsmile.gif


Er . . . okay . . . I should have realized that. I have an old DVD drive and poked about after that, and you can get one for . . . $25! :D

I will take your word for it. I upgraded mine awhile ago to the G4 so I do not know how slow the G3 will be. I have been told it is noticeably slower, but I use mine for browsing, playing music, writing papers, Powerpoint, and other stuff. So you may not notice much of a problem, particularly if you maximize the RAM to 1 Gig.

--J.D.
 
Doctor X said:
eggheadsmile.gif


Er . . . okay . . . I should have realized that. I have an old DVD drive and poked about after that, and you can get one for . . . $25! :D

I will take your word for it. I upgraded mine awhile ago to the G4 so I do not know how slow the G3 will be. I have been told it is noticeably slower, but I use mine for browsing, playing music, writing papers, Powerpoint, and other stuff. So you may not notice much of a problem, particularly if you maximize the RAM to 1 Gig.

--J.D.
Click to expand...

Does that dvd drive play cd's as well? Thanks for your help!
Oh, I will be selling this PB, I'm not going to keep it.
 
maccam said:
Does that dvd drive play cd's as well? Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...

No problem, I am devoted to my little Pismo. Apparently you can get--for ~$100 +/- DVD burners and other wild stuff. Anyways, to answer your question: "yes." As you reminded me, there WERE older PBs--prior to Pismo--that had just the CD drive. Maybe Pismo had that initally, I forget. To my knowledge all of the DVD drives play CDs--the Pismo is rather useless without it!! The old OS 9 disks are CDs!

Oh, I will be selling this PB, I'm not going to keep it.
Click to expand...

I have a friend who wants to "walk from the darkness into the light" from her PC to a Powerbook who would love to have a Pismo. I did my upgrades over the life of the computer. The problem--as you probably know--is to upgrade it NOW is ~$300-400 for a G4 Processor, 1 Gig RAM, and a 100 Gig HD. Most people are going to take that, add a bit, and get a more advanced computer.

Anyways, the good news is that I have a lower-end DVD drive that loves OS X. During the OS 9 upgrades the DVD drivers would not always work--you had to hack--Apple said "sod-off." Once I got OS X--DVDs and CDs play beautifully. So anyone interested in buying it you can reassure that they can play movies and certainly music with no problems.

So . . . I think you will need that for OS X. It use to be that you could NOT boot a Pismo on anything BUT an the internal CD/DVD drive--unless you are a tech-head. That can be a real pain for someone if they have a problem or want to do basic maintenance with Disk Warrior/Tech Tools/ or even reboot on a 9 CD or X DVD without the internal DVD player. Most likely, someone wanting to buy it will want a DVD player in it for that reason. RAM, HD, all of that? That is up to them!

--J.D.
 
Doctor X said:
Errmmmm . . . I am concerned how well your G3 is going to handle it, particularly the later versions of OS X.
Click to expand...

Also bear in mind that the Lombards will only go as far as Panther, unless you use one of those hacks for getting OS X on machines it wasn't meant for.
 
Okay, I think i'll just get a dvd drive, I noted that there are dvd drive that say "Apple DVD-Rom drive 6x" and there's also "Apple DVD/CD-Rom drive 6x/24x"
I guess i'll take a chance.

Upgrading this PB to a g4 500mhz processor would be insane, like you said it cost $400. So if you add everything up it be: $50 for the PB, $400 for the upgrade, $30 for the ram and $65 for the hard drive. It comes to $545, you could almost buy a MacBook for that much! I got a nice PB though, the specs are 333mhz, 256mb of ram, and I put in a 40gb hard drive. I got EVERYTHING for just under $100 :D By the way the PB lombard's only hold 512mb of ram, the pismo's hold a 1gb of ram. Again thanks for your help, you're a nice um... guy?
 
You keep writing "Lombard" . . . my brain keeps seeing "Pismo!"

Yeah, it would be insane to upgrade to processor on a Lombard! Actually, at this stage it would be insane to upgrade a Pismo unless you can--sometimes--find the processor cheap on Ebay and the like!

--J.D.
 
Well it better be fine, or it's your fault :p

I'll post again in a few days, when I get the drive.
 
Well I got the DVD drive (it's also CD) yesterday, and it works great! Come to find out it actually had 320mb of ram instead of 256, so I'm happy! I installed Mac os 10.2.8 instead of panther. Here is a picture of the PowerBook:

P.S Thanks for all your help Doctor X
 

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