My first PPC Mac...part the second.

[SoyMaxV]

Sweet! 10.4 was probably the most stable OS I ever ran. I should fire up the old FrankenG4DA. It's been a while...

Biggest issue with those old Powerbooks is the battery. Not many options these days.

Tiger still holds its place as my favorite OS of all time. I miss the days of running it on my iMac G5 rev. C

 

[DCBassman]

A 65W charger should be able to deliver stable power without a battery but you might want to reduce consumption.

Reduce screen brightness, turn of kbd light and maybe even remove the non working IDE devices since you also need to run the FW drive.

See the if that reduces USB dropouts.

Also try running the USB sticks through a powered hub.

The only other thing on USB is a mouse dongle. I don't like trackpads at the best of times, but the one on this machine is rather flaky. Largely unusable in the boot picker, for example.

 

[DCBassman]

A 65W charger should be able to deliver stable power without a battery but you might want to reduce consumption.

Reduce screen brightness, turn of kbd light and maybe even remove the non working IDE devices since you also need to run the FW drive.

See the if that reduces USB dropouts.

Also try running the USB sticks through a powered hub.

The FW drive with the OS on is from a powered dock, so no issue there. I've added a powered USB3 hub and as a test, I'm cloning the main drive using Disk Utility. It's very slow, but it hasn't dropped out. Also, the trackpad seems to work properly now.

 

[Bug-Creator]

I'm cloning the main drive using Disk Utility. It's very slow, but it hasn't dropped out. Also, the trackpad seems to work properly now.

So it's clear you got a power issue (among others).
- some issue with the PSU (genuine or 3rd party?) preventing it from delivering the full 65W and/or handling spikes
- an issue with the DC/DC board (which also has the left USB)
- a unusual high resistance on the logic board, micro fracture or other defect

At this point a battery of any kind even if it only has 10min of charge left could be helpful, but realistically unless you can pinpoint the issue it's a lost cause.

Last sales on ebay suggest a 80-120€ for a working PB depending on condition and specs which doesn't really leave much wiggle room for repairs.

15 years ago (PowerBooks went for 300-500€) I had a small side hustle running of just buying any broken one and assembling about 3 good ones out of each 4. If you can find a cheap with broken display, KBD, case ect you might have a chance.

 

[DCBassman]

So it's clear you got a power issue (among others).
- some issue with the PSU (genuine or 3rd party?) preventing it from delivering the full 65W and/or handling spikes
- an issue with the DC/DC board (which also has the left USB)
- a unusual high resistance on the logic board, micro fracture or other defect

At this point a battery of any kind even if it only has 10min of charge left could be helpful, but realistically unless you can pinpoint the issue it's a lost cause.

Last sales on ebay suggest a 80-120€ for a working PB depending on condition and specs which doesn't really leave much wiggle room for repairs.

15 years ago (PowerBooks went for 300-500€) I had a small side hustle running of just buying any broken one and assembling about 3 good ones out of each 4. If you can find a cheap with broken display, KBD, case ect you might have a chance.

Genuine PSU. Over here, even dead batteries go for £100+. Working A1107 up to £800! The Bookyard prices are somewhat more reasonable, but they have not had even a poor battery for many months. It's also possible that the USB contacts are cleaning up somewhat as I play with it.

 

[DCBassman]

Have cloned the Crucial SSD onto the mSATA one I intend to use if I can get the ATA bus to see it. It occurs to me that the original drive is still in there, drawing current...

 

[Project Alice]

I've run this down before, but it bears repeating I guess…

Anyway, the vast majority of my Tiger use was at work. Everything we needed was on server shares, kept on the PC server (Windows 2003 SBS at the time) and shared to the network via SMB. AFP was not an option, as the only way I could use that was to install FSM (File Services for Macintosh). That presented an OS7/8 era version of AFP that required 8 letter filenames with three letter extensions. In the meantime, it eliminated SMB sharing for any Mac shares entirely.

So, to even connect, I had to have security reduced on the server. Passwords sent in clear text, SMB signing off. Once I worked that out, then I had to be prepared to accept that I could only make two Finder commands at a time and they both had to be similar. For instance, two copy operations to or from the server shares. Or two file deletions. I could not initiate a file copy AND a deletion, or make three Finder commands without getting SBBOD. And once I got SBBOD, that was it. There was no recovery, no waiting for Finder to stop spinning. It was a forced restart every time.

Files didn't want to save over the network from inside programs, and I had issues with overwriting files. It got to such a frustration level that I ultimately ended up installing DAVE on both production Macs running Tiger.

Last but not least, Tiger has an archaic printserver. I didn't find that out until around 2013 when I attempted to share the postscript printers from a G4 running Tiger so that the new MacPro could print correctly. Tiger's printserver would shut down repeatedly after printing a job and the only recourse was a reboot. Bit of a problem when you're running that G4 headless and controlling it through screen sharing.

We eventually installed Leopard on the production Macs and the majority of my network issues went away.

Tiger was pretty stable on my home Macs, which is why I didn't have much issue with installing Tiger Server on my G3 B&W. But, I was never trying to do much at home of what I did at work. And I had mostly Macs, no PC server.

My experience is largely not what everyone else's was/is with Tiger. It's unfortunate, but is what it was.

I feel like I have read this from you before.
This sounds like one big incompatibility rather than a stability issue. Not being able to use SMB or modern version of AFP at the time, seems like to me it would cause all sorts of problems in almost any setup

At home, I have a TrueNAS setup as some of you here know. All the shares are both SMB, and AFP. AFP works flawlessly on just about everything except Windows and iOS of course. Tiger and Leopard are both unable to connect over SMB, but newer macOS versions are. Tiger, even Mac OS 9.2 is able to use AFP just fine. I don't have any issues with multiple commands or different ones. This suggests that may have been a compatibility issue between whatever archaic version of AFP was being used, that either got fixed server side by the time Leopard came around, or was fixed in Leopard.

SMB has more problems for me than AFP does. Its sole purpose is for my iPad and when I occasionally boot into Windows. For example, on my iOS devices I cannot delete or move files on the SMB shares, but I can on macOS and Windows. They use the same user with the same permissions. It also tends to be less stable overall, more frequently dropped connections than AFP, which I keep open 24/7 on my Sequoia install.

 

[DCBassman]

And...bingo!
'Twas the drive cable. Have disconnected the ODD, as I'm unsure if it's OK. Will use the FW400 external if needed.
Trackpad seems better too.

Now I need to address two things: main battery and PRAM battery.
From what I can see on line, eBay and iFixit have different ideas as to what the PRAM battery looks like, so I'd be grateful if someone can clarify this.
Main battery? Unobtainium.

 

[Bug-Creator]

I have seen PRAM modules with 1 or 2 coin cells (soldered).

Haven't one in mine for >10 years, but since I have good main battery it's mostly a non issue (only if I leave it unplugged for weeks).

 

[Rocks_PPC]

Main battery? Unobtainium.

Do the PPC machines throttle without a battery, I wonder?

 

[Doq]

Do the PPC machines throttle without a battery, I wonder?

As far as I know, throttling only happened with the higher-clocked Titanium G4s. I've never had batteryless throttling with any other machine.