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iBook G3 500Mhz, bad smell, "new" OS etc.

Zotaccian

Zotaccian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 25, 2012
645
7
Bought an iBook G3 for 26USD including shipping. It is missing battery, optical drive apparently will not stay closed, that's what the seller said and it is indeed taped. Other than that it seems functional and it will serve it's purpose, being a testing machine for chargers and batteries (actually I didn't check but isn't this compatible with iBook G4 batteries?). It is 500Mhz model with 640MB ram and small hard drive, I guess it is 15GB or something. I had spare Airport card which I installed.

Even though it is just test machine I'm thinking of install Tiger just for the fun, now it has 10.3.9. Tiger probably will be blazing fast on this machine :)

One strange thing I have noticed, the machine smells bad. It stinks like some kind of glue or unnatural material?
 
Zotaccian said:
Bought an iBook G3 for 26USD including shipping. It is missing battery, optical drive apparently will not stay closed, that's what the seller said and it is indeed taped. Other than that it seems functional and it will serve it's purpose, being a testing machine for chargers and batteries (actually I didn't check but isn't this compatible with iBook G4 batteries?). It is 500Mhz model with 640MB ram and small hard drive, I guess it is 15GB or something. I had spare Airport card which I installed.

Even though it is just test machine I'm thinking of install Tiger just for the fun, now it has 10.3.9. Tiger probably will be blazing fast on this machine :)

One strange thing I have noticed, the machine smells bad. It stinks like some kind of glue or unnatural material?
Click to expand...

It's the glue. It smells like nasty BO.
 
Not a bad price at all! The 500MHz iceBooks can be great little machines, and yes, with the amount of RAM you have in it Tiger should fly.

As for the smell, see here. It's a well-known problem that they developed after a few years; the glue that holds the label on the bottom of the keyboard starts smelling like rancid feet bathed in armpit sweat. That article has a few tips and tricks for helping to mitigate the smell.
 
My iBook had the smell problem, but it went away after a few months leaving the laptop open. Guess it had to air out.
 
Okay, it seems to be the glue indeed. I peeled of the sticker and the smell increased for a brief moment or so it did feel. I will try to scratch that glue of and see if it makes difference. Probably wash the keyboard little.

Probably gonna try installing Tiger also, I dunno if the CD drive works though. It seems that OS X 10.3.9 cannot join WPA2-PSK secured network and it doesn't even see the network shared by my Android Phone. I remember struggling with WPA2-PSK even with Tiger prior to 10.4.11 version and there was also discussion in these forums about it. However, the WLAN connection created by my phone is unencrypted so I wonder why it does not see it... one possible explanation would be that the phone does transmit on a channel not supported by the Airport card. I remember reading somewhere that US Airport card has less frequencies than EU Airport card, my phone is originally bought from UK...
 
The original Airport card that your iBook has, cannot connect to WPA2 networks. Only WEP and WPA, with 10.3.9+.
 
Well, the upgrading process didn't go as planned :D
I just started to install Tiger using my old discs which I have used countless times and it really begins to show. However because the installation processes have succeeded this far despite the scratches I didn't let the installer to check discs, which I really should have done. Installations fails at the same spot everytime. The error message is that "some files could not be written correctly" or something like that, I translated from my language.... In addition of discs I suspected hard disk because it says "could not be written" but I dunno. I do have spare Combo optical drive (the iBook has onyl CD-ROM) which according to the model number has been used in these iBooks too even though it is from Fujitsu machine, I think even the front bezel should fit, however it takes quite much disassembling to swap drives so I dunno if I'm willing to do that...

So because those Tiger discs are out of the question I only had Leopard and Jaguar, of course I only had one choice so now I basically just downgraded my OS one version :cool:

Well, maybe I could find Tiger somewhere....I wonder if iBook G3 can do USB boot, if not from the boot menu then by goofing around in Open Firmware?

EDIT: and btw, I remembered I had an USB WiFi dongle, found it and apparently it needs atleast 10.3, which I originally had :D
 
Last edited:
Well, managed to install Tiger. As said, the machine did not have burning capabilities but with the power of internet and PowerISO I simply created new installation disks by using my PC.

But even with 10.4.11 I can't connect to my modem and iBook still doesn't see the network created by my phone. Tried the USB dongle but for some reason the RaLink utility crashes so I guess no wireless then unless I reduce the password strenght from my modem.

Gotta say that I can't see (based on the time I have used this) huge difference between G3 at 500Mhz versus G4 running over GHz. I did surf the internet, hooked the cable. Of course YouTube and some encoding etc. would reveal speed difference but this machine doesn't feel as slow as I expected, never owned G3 machine before.
 
Zotaccian said:
Well, managed to install Tiger. As said, the machine did not have burning capabilities but with the power of internet and PowerISO I simply created new installation disks by using my PC.

But even with 10.4.11 I can't connect to my modem and iBook still doesn't see the network created by my phone. Tried the USB dongle but for some reason the RaLink utility crashes so I guess no wireless then unless I reduce the password strenght from my modem.

Gotta say that I can't see (based on the time I have used this) huge difference between G3 at 500Mhz versus G4 running over GHz. I did surf the internet, hooked the cable. Of course YouTube and some encoding etc. would reveal speed difference but this machine doesn't feel as slow as I expected, never owned G3 machine before.
Click to expand...
Can you shut the wifi on the computer, connect via USB you iphone and USB share it's internet while at the same time going to system preferences on the mac and check network settings? Maybe the USB shared internet will work that way.
 
Well I don't have iPhone but Android 4.1 phone. It of course has USB network sharing function but apprently needs driver or something, which I guess does not exist for PPC, I will Google about that.

The phone also has Bluetooth network sharing, I found a Bt dongle which works on the iBook, I think I succesfully paired the devices but I don't know what I need to in OS X to enable networking trough BT, I know how to enable it on my phone. If I remember correctly, I made the Bt network to work on my iBook G4 or PowerMac G4 some time ago. I do have the same phone and same BT dongle, just can't remember what to do. The Os might have been Leopard.
 
So, reducing security allowed the iBook to connect by using Airport.

I've have tried to scratch the glue off and also tried washing it (not by throwing it to water or anything like that) and for a moment I thought I had destroyed the keyboard but apprently it wasn't dry enough, some keys did not function or pressing one did many things but it seems to work now.

If possible, the smell even increased which is definently not a good thing. It is a horrible smell and currently the iBook is outside, probably going to let it be there couple days if someone does not steal it before :)
 
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