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Identifying a Titanium Powerbook G4

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benwild_33

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 15, 2016
165
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I've been looking at Titanium powerbook G4s and most of the reasonably priced ones are sold as parts/non booting, the issue is unless the seller knows, I have no idea of the spec. I asked the seller of one if there is a sticker in the battery compartment with the specs but they came back saying there isn't anything.

Is there anything external that I can use to identify one? I'd feel bad asking them to unscrew anything to take a look as they aren't a usually Mac specialist.
 
Most easily identifiable is the Infrared port and VGA outputs on the 400- early 667MHz models. Obviously you can’t see the VGA port without the door open, but a look at the back of the machine will show the IrDA port even with the door closed. The DVI models later 667-1GHz lose the IrDA port and have DVI video output.
 
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On the base of the TiBook is the model number. That should narrow it down to a Mercury (M5884), Onyx (M8407), Ivory (A1001) or Antimony (A1025).

Full specs are on a sticker on the side in the battery compartment. You have to remove the battery to see it with bar codes plus specs.

A working Onyx sold today near me for £5.50 including a mouse. To be honest, if I hadn't plenty of these already I wouldn't really care what the specs were for that price.
 
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MagicBoy said:
Another giveaway is the PowerBook text logo at the bottom of the display bezel. If it's sans serif then it's a last gen A1025.
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... unless you have a mutt like mine, with a display from a A1001 on my A1025 :)

(Mine also has a NOS A1001 bottom panel. A true mutt all the way)

But yeah... typically, the font gives it away. You'll just have to figure out if it's 867 mhz or 1 ghz from there.
 
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weckart said:
On the base of the TiBook is the model number. That should narrow it down to a Mercury (M5884), Onyx (M8407), Ivory (A1001) or Antimony (A1025).

Full specs are on a sticker on the side in the battery compartment. You have to remove the battery to see it with bar codes plus specs.

A working Onyx sold today near me for £5.50 including a mouse. To be honest, if I hadn't plenty of these already I wouldn't really care what the specs were for that price.
Click to expand...

I was watching that one but it was about 3 hours drive from me and collection only so would have cost a fair bit more by the time I collected it. The one I am looking at is an A1001. It has the radeon 7500, I have heard bad things about these in the iBooks and thinkpads, are they as bad in the powerbook?
 
benwild_33 said:
I was watching that one but it was about 3 hours drive from me and collection only so would have cost a fair bit more by the time I collected it. The one I am looking at is an A1001. It has the radeon 7500, I have heard bad things about these in the iBooks and thinkpads, are they as bad in the powerbook?
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I've got a 667MHz A1001 and don't have any problems with the Radeon 7500.
 
Thats good to hear, if this one doesn't get too expensive tomorrow, I may go for it. It's sold untested for parts with no charger but I can test it with my 17" powerbooks charger. Would be a call project to get OS9 up and running on it.
 
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