My AlBook G4!

[theMarble]

So I posted some photos about my PBG4 Rev B from Late 2003 on the Apple Collectors forum here and you guys wanted to see more of it.

First of all, I got it as a hammy-down back in 2013 from a friend who had upgraded to a 11" MBA. I've been using it on and off since then as my main computer for editing work and more for 1-2 years and a side system to have some retro fun with.

It has the 1.0GHz PPC 7447e CPU, 1GB of RAM as the bottom slot died about a year ago, a 60GB hard drive (soon to be replaced with a 120GB SSD) and the ATI Radeon 9600M 64MB GPU. The battery has died but can sometime hold a small charge if you be nice to it

It can run YouTube videos without any dropped frames at 144p through TenFourFox, and other website can run aswell through older HTML and mobile versions of the site.

Currently it is running 10.5.8 and Lubuntu (PPC) 14.04.3. OS X runs better on this machine however Lubuntu (obviously) has better driver support for cards and external adapters, as the ethernet port is broken so I use a Edimax EU-4208 adapter.

I put the LeopardRebirth theme on it to modernize the feel of Leopard awhile back and it surprisingly doesn't hurt the performance of the machine at all!

It runs the old Adobe CS2 suite and FCS suite aswell (Final Cut Express, LiveType, Soundtrack...) and can make graphics at 240-360p too.



I'll post more photos once I boot it up later.

(Yes that is Marble Blast Platinum in the Application folder, it can run it full-screen at 1024x768)

 

[wicknix]

Nice machine. For a better YouTube experience you may want to give either tenfivetube or ppcmc a try.

 

[theMarble]

Nice machine. For a better YouTube experience you may want to give either tenfivetube or ppcmc a try.

I'll have to look into those. I remember a program called MacTube? that was pretty much a website replacement version of YouTube. Don't think it has been updated for at least 10 years though.

 

[Imixmuan]

I'll have to look into those. I remember a program called MacTube? that was pretty much a website replacement version of YouTube. Don't think it has been updated for at least 10 years though.

It was called Mactubes, was better than sliced bread, and its been dormant for years after a particularly obnoxious Google API update. There was a crazy Russian about these parts a year or so ago who promised a modern version of mactubes, he only got so far though, and then stopped posting. Tenfivetube should give you comfortable 360p playback on that Powerbook. Wicknix's 12.04 remix will perform better than 14.04 era, and if you are so technically inclined you can even chroot Void Linux or Debian and run more modern software on it. Dronecatcher has demonstrated a bunch of different playback methods on his Aluminum G4, all of which work for me as well. You can also download off youtube with PPMC and playback 720p in Coreplayer.

Your enthusiasm is quite refreshing. Here is some light educational viewing, perhaps best not in 144p:

 

[Dronecatcher]

Dronecatcher has demonstrated a bunch of different playback methods on his Aluminum G4, all of which work for me as well.

SMTube sadly no longer works as a streamer

It takes some setting up but this is still the most CPU efficient way of streaming Youtube and could do 720P before Viewtube stopped 'seeing' the 720P mp4 files:

Streaming 720P Youtube On Powerbook

Largely thanks to @B-G and his thread here I've shifted the duties to IceWeaselPPC (thanks @wicknix ) and MPlayer to stream Youtube on my 12" 1.33Ghz Powerbook running Tiger. As we know, Tiger is pretty much out in the cold now for Youtube options with SMTube on hold and security protocols...

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