My next older Mac project (PowerBook G4)...

[dandeco]

Today at work, I visited our satellite facility a few towns over, an even larger warehouse where lots and lots of electronic devices are stored! And because they don't bother to resell old PowerPC Macs on our eBay store, my bosses said I could take any such older Macs from our facilities for my own personal use, to tinker with them and whatnot, and so I got me this...

A 15" aluminum PowerBook G4! It's the 2005 A1106 model with a 1.5 GHz processor; currently it has 512 MB of RAM in it and no hard drive. We also don't have any 65W PowerBook G4 AC adapters, but I was able to test it at work by using my power supply box with a universal power jack with the compatible adapter tip for PowerPC iBooks and PowerBooks, set to the proper voltage, and it started up to the flashing question mark folder icon!

I've got quite a few plans for this new addition to my growing collection of older Macs. I'm going to get a compatible 65W AC adapter for it, install a 120 or 160 GB PATA hard drive inside it and load Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger along with a Mac OS 9.2.2 system folder for Classic application usage, and max out the RAM to 2 GB!
I've always wanted to get a nice PowerPC Mac laptop for my collection, and I think I've made a great choice!

 

[teamteor]

Following. My old 13” PowerPC Mac still boots up as well, but it is painfully slow once it’s in the OS and almost nothing runs on it anymore. Is there a way to off load anything that could be bloating the system? I’m pretty sure it is maxed out on 2gb of ram. I loved that laptop and used it for years till it started to take mins to load up a simple webpage.

 

[eyoungren]

My old 13” PowerPC Mac still boots up as well, but it is painfully slow once it’s in the OS and almost nothing runs on it anymore. Is there a way to off load anything that could be bloating the system? I’m pretty sure it is maxed out on 2gb of ram. I loved that laptop and used it for years till it started to take mins to load up a simple webpage.

This is two different things.

Is it slow running apps that were current at the time it was for sale?

Or by slow do you really mean it's slow to open web pages?

I suspect you mean the later. And the problem with that isn't your Mac, it's websites. As computers got more powerful, website coders got less concerned about streamlining code. More powerful computers can burn through sloppy code, but older ones (like your Mac) have to process it and most of the time that's with the main CPU.

That causes the CPU to spike, which causes the computer to bog down. There are some alternatives (take a look at the stickied threads at the top of this forum), but in general you can't expect your old Mac to take on the current internet without help. Again, that isn't your Mac's fault. It didn't slow down, things got more complicated.

 

[B S Magnet]

Today at work, I visited our satellite facility a few towns over, an even larger warehouse where lots and lots of electronic devices are stored! And because they don't bother to resell old PowerPC Macs on our eBay store, my bosses said I could take any such older Macs from our facilities for my own personal use, to tinker with them and whatnot, and so I got me this...
View attachment 1793838
A 15" aluminum PowerBook G4! It's the 2005 A1106 model with a 1.5 GHz processor; currently it has 512 MB of RAM in it and no hard drive. We also don't have any 65W PowerBook G4 AC adapters, but I was able to test it at work by using my power supply box with a universal power jack with the compatible adapter tip for PowerPC iBooks and PowerBooks, set to the proper voltage, and it started up to the flashing question mark folder icon!

I've got quite a few plans for this new addition to my growing collection of older Macs. I'm going to get a compatible 65W AC adapter for it, install a 120 or 160 GB PATA hard drive inside it and load Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger along with a Mac OS 9.2.2 system folder for Classic application usage, and max out the RAM to 2 GB!
I've always wanted to get a nice PowerPC Mac laptop for my collection, and I think I've made a great choice!

Sweet find!

If you’re aiming for maxing out this ’Book, it may be worth your while to find a 2.5" PATA-to-m.2 SATA adapter and a SATA m.2 SSD (which have gotten quite affordable).

Doing this will substantially speed up the launching of not only OS X (I’ve had PPC Macs where moving from a 7200 RPM spinner to an SSD moved the boot-up times from ~80 seconds to 39 seconds), but also in launching applications, or in situations where virtual memory disk swapping functions become needed. We have an old thread which shows the performance jump when putting an SSD into a PowerPC Mac. It’s an inexpensive way to give your PowerBook a healthy boost in responsiveness and performance.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Again, that isn't your Mac's fault. It didn't slow down, things got more complicated.

They have indeed. Even on an i5 Mac that I use as a daily driver, I'm finding web browsing to be an increasingly unpleasant experience that sends the machine's fans into constant overdrive and monopolises the CPU whilst I'm carrying out relatively light tasks online. It seems that the programmers have become lazy and as you mentioned, sloppy and inattentive and no longer regard optimising and tweaking their code to be a priority.

Sweet find!

If you’re aiming for maxing out this ’Book, it may be worth your while to find a 2.5" PATA-to-m.2 SATA adapter and a SATA m.2 SSD (which have gotten quite affordable).

Doing this will substantially speed up the launching of not only OS X (I’ve had PPC Macs where moving from a 7200 RPM spinner to an SSD moved the boot-up times from ~80 seconds to 39 seconds), but also in launching applications, or in situations where virtual memory disk swapping functions become needed. We have an old thread which shows the performance jump when putting an SSD into a PowerPC Mac. It’s an inexpensive way to give your PowerBook a healthy boost in responsiveness and performance.

Agreed: even a cheapo SSD will easily outperform the IDE HDDs found in those machines - most of which were never even high spec in the first place. I recall being shocked at the performance boost that was gained by replacing the stock HDD in a laptop with one that had a faster RPM rating.

 

[B S Magnet]

They have indeed. Even on an i5 Mac that I use as a daily driver, I'm finding web browsing to be an increasingly unpleasant experience that sends the machine's fans into constant overdrive and monopolises the CPU whilst I'm carrying out relatively light tasks online. It seems that the programmers have become lazy and as you mentioned, sloppy and inattentive and no longer regard optimising and tweaking their code to be a priority.



Agreed: even a cheapo SSD will easily outperform the IDE HDDs found in those machines - most of which were never even high spec in the first place. I recall being shocked at the performance boost that was gained by replacing the stock HDD in a laptop with one that had a faster RPM rating.

In the case of the pair of HDDs I swapped out in the link above, both HDDs were top-end (for the time) 7200RPM spinners. For the iBook clamshell, I bought the highest-capacity 7200RPM drive available in 2007 (made by Hitachi). The PowerBook was actually BTO/CTO with the 7200RPM option and was still in the machine when I got it (and still working). But the move from HDD to SSD on both was too substantial to rationalize keeping the HDDs around.

One thing I have done with both SSDs in the years since is re-partition them slightly so that there is 1GB of unallocated, unformatted drive space for the drive controller to use for handling garbage collection, as both lack TRIM support (and which didn’t come around to being supported by OS X prior to 10.6.7).

 

[TheShortTimer]

One thing I have done with both SSDs in the years since is re-partition them slightly so that there is 1GB of unallocated, unformatted drive space for the drive controller to use for handling garbage collection, as both lack TRIM support (and which didn’t come around to being supported by OS X prior to 10.6.7).

Can you elaborate about the method for doing this please? It would be extremely useful information for the rest of us.

 

[B S Magnet]

Can you elaborate about the method for doing this please? It would be extremely useful information for the rest of us.

When the internal SSD controller deals with garbage collection (this is generally integral to newer SSDs of whatever form factor), it’s optimizing the wear-levelling across the individual blocks/nodes on the SSD. By reserving unallocated space on the drive, it over-provisions to manage the wear-levelling of formatted space.

Whilst some SSDs may have over-provisioning built into the drive (like when a 256GB SSD shows as 240GB), I don’t treat that as a given. I basically use Disk Utility in Leopard to live-resize the HFS+ partition with one less gigabyte than default to leave that unformatted space free for the SSD controller, in the event it needs it.

 

[dandeco]

Sweet find!

If you’re aiming for maxing out this ’Book, it may be worth your while to find a 2.5" PATA-to-m.2 SATA adapter and a SATA m.2 SSD (which have gotten quite affordable).

Doing this will substantially speed up the launching of not only OS X (I’ve had PPC Macs where moving from a 7200 RPM spinner to an SSD moved the boot-up times from ~80 seconds to 39 seconds), but also in launching applications, or in situations where virtual memory disk swapping functions become needed. We have an old thread which shows the performance jump when putting an SSD into a PowerPC Mac. It’s an inexpensive way to give your PowerBook a healthy boost in responsiveness and performance.

Oh, I'm definitely considering that!

 

[dandeco]

Today at work I managed to find a working power supply for the PowerBook G4! Turns out the initial ones I tested were third-party adapters meant for iBooks, so they had a smaller pin that did not go in all the way.

Booting it up to my Mac OS X Tiger install disk, just to make sure it works properly. This weekend I'll be ordering the RAM upgrade and the IDE/mSATA adapter for the SSD I'll be installing inside it.

The hardware overview. It is indeed the early 2005 1.5 GHz model. The only downside is that it has a Combo Drive instead of a SuperDrive, but I really doubt I'll be burning any DVDs on a PowerPC Mac anytime soon. (And if I want to author a DVD in PowerPC style, I could always use my 2005 eMac with its' SuperDrive.)

 

[dandeco]

The mSATA to IDE adapter came in!

But when I was doing the disassembly process so I could get ready to put the drive into the PowerBook G4, I was disappointed to see that it was missing the IDE cable! So I ordered a replacement IDE cable on eBay, and for the time being the installation process is halted until it arrives, which may not be until later next week. But at least I will also be able to upgrade the RAM as that will have arrived by that time!

 

[dandeco]

The IDE cable arrived, and I installed it along with the mSATA adapter and SSD into the PowerBook G4. But I guess I forgot to wipe the SSD (it came out of a Windows machine) before installing it in the G4, and so it seems corrupted. Oops!
I think tomorrow I will take the SSD to work and try wiping it with my SATA hard drive cloning utility; I do have a couple of SATA to mSATA adapters as part of my tools and gadgets. Then once it's all wiped, empty and unformatted, I will try installing it back into the PowerBook G4 and see if I can format it using the Mac OS X Tiger installer.

 

[weckart]

The IDE cable arrived, and I installed it along with the mSATA adapter and SSD into the PowerBook G4. But I guess I forgot to wipe the SSD (it came out of a Windows machine) before installing it in the G4, and so it seems corrupted. Oops!
I think tomorrow I will take the SSD to work and try wiping it with my SATA hard drive cloning utility; I do have a couple of SATA to mSATA adapters as part of my tools and gadgets. Then once it's all wiped, empty and unformatted, I will try installing it back into the PowerBook G4 and see if I can format it using the Mac OS X Tiger installer.

You won't have to remove it if you put your PowerBook in Firewire Target Mode. As long as you can hook up your PowerBook to another computer with a Firewire cable, it will save some dismantling.

As for corruption, have you tried partitioning under Tiger? What error messages did you get?

 

[dandeco]

You won't have to remove it if you put your PowerBook in Firewire Target Mode. As long as you can hook up your PowerBook to another computer with a Firewire cable, it will save some dismantling.

As for corruption, have you tried partitioning under Tiger? What error messages did you get?

I tried Target Disk Mode as well, and I did try wiping/partitioning using the Tiger installer's Disk Utility, but I got messages saying that the wiped drive was unable to mount. I also tried Disk Utility on my Lepopard install DVD, but it just led to a kernel panic.
I'm going to borrow one of my mSATA-to-SATA adapters from work and try out wiping the drive from my Dell OptiPlex 9010 at home using my USB 3.0 SATA docking station, making the drive entirely allocated, and see if that helps.

 

[dextructor]

One thing I have done with both SSDs in the years since is re-partition them slightly so that there is 1GB of unallocated, unformatted drive space for the drive controller to use for handling garbage collection, as both lack TRIM support (and which didn’t come around to being supported by OS X prior to 10.6.7).

Do you think that only apply when you have more than 1 O.S. installed? Like 10.4 and 10.5(refering to the same file system) it will need 1GB for each system, and if you have different file systems like for Linux, MorphOS etc (1 for each O.S.)? Did it make any difference the free unformated space being in the beginning or the end of SSD?

Thanks

 

[B S Magnet]

Do you think that only apply when you have more than 1 O.S. installed? Like 10.4 and 10.5(refering to the same file system) it will need 1GB for each system, and if you have different file systems like for Linux, MorphOS etc (1 for each O.S.)? Did it make any difference the free unformated space being in the beginning or the end of SSD?

Thanks

Things like garbage collection get managed by the SSD’s controller IC chip and firmware; the Mac doesn’t interact with it or is even aware of that end of things. To the PowerBook, the SSD is nothing other than an old-school HDD spinner with sectors and blocks and so on.

By leaving, say, a gigabyte of the drive unformatted and unallocated, the Mac will ignore it while the SSD’s IC should use that unallocated space for garbage collection and other device-level reallocations. Consider this small, one-gigabyte provision as an offering to the SSD gods.

 

[dextructor]

Things like garbage collection get managed by the SSD’s controller IC chip and firmware; the Mac doesn’t interact with it or is even aware of that end of things. To the PowerBook, the SSD is nothing other than an old-school HDD spinner with sectors and blocks and so on.

By leaving, say, a gigabyte of the drive unformatted and unallocated, the Mac will ignore it while the SSD’s IC should use that unallocated space for garbage collection and other device-level reallocations. Consider this small, one-gigabyte provision as an offering to the SSD gods.

Thanks for your reply. Yes indeed some SSD's are marketed with the garbage collector as a feature, but it was on the beginning of the SSD frenzy. What was my question it's:
1) 1GB it's enough in your experience independent of how many operating systems (partitions of different formats) you have on your SSD?

2) Make's any difference in what position the unallocated partition will be?

 

[B S Magnet]

Thanks for your reply. Yes indeed some SSD's are marketed with the garbage collector as a feature, but it was on the beginning of the SSD frenzy. What was my question it's:
1) 1GB it's enough in your experience independent of how many operating systems (partitions of different formats) you have on your SSD?

I don’t have a deep enough sample set to definitively answer this question, but generally the number of OSes or partition formats on a single SSD shouldn’t make any difference to either the computer or the SSD controller, since the computer is not managing any aspect of the SSD controller’s oversight.

2) Make's any difference in what position the unallocated partition will be?

No, it shouldn’t. The SSD’s map of free space isn’t beholden to the physical circumstances of spinning disks or a moving R/W head.

For simplicity sake, I generally leave the unallocated space at the “end” of the drive, as seen/interpreted by OS X.

 

[dandeco]

Well, I've finally had some success with the PowerBook G4!

Because the initial 256 GB SSD I attempted to use I accidentally corrupted in some way due to trying to format it in the PowerBook G4, I tried out using another mSATA 256 GB SSD that I pulled out of a Windows PC at work (whenever we prepare to resell a Windows computer of some sort, if it's got a removable hard drive or SSD, I'm supposed to take it out so we can sell the PC without a bootable drive installed; the prior SSD I tried I had also pulled from a Windows system we were to resell). But this time, I put the mSATA drive into an mSATA-to-SATA adapter enclosure I bought, plugged it into my USB 3.0 dock and hooked that up to my 2012 13" unibody MacBook Pro, and formatted the new SSD into Mac OS Extended Journaled using the Apple Partition Map. Then I moved the mSATA SSD into another mSATA-to-IDE adapter I bought and heard better things about and installed that into the PowerBook G4.

2 GB of PC2700 333MHz DDR SDRAM popped into the PowerBook and ready to go!

This time, the Mac OS X Tiger install DVD was able to read the SSD and go forward with the installation...

Success!

The "About This Mac" screen. Needless to say, once I was able to hook it up to the Internet, I updated it to Mac OS X0 10.14.11, and then I set forward in installing iLife '06, Microsoft Office 2004 and a few other programs...

...including TenFourFox! It felt good to see that screen on the Macintosh Repository website. As you can see, I'm transferring files and such from my PowerMac G4 QuickSilver booted into Target Disk Mode via FireWire, along with one of my general backup drives I store program installers and such on (of course it operates at USB 2.0 speeds, but that's fine by me.) The backlit keyboard also works great. But I'm still going to need to get a new battery for the PowerBook, for if I want to operate it without always plugging it into an outlet.

 

[dandeco]

Some more pics of the PowerBook G4 in use...

I copied over my iTunes library from the PowerMac G4 QuickSilver for use in this older version of iTunes, and then added some MP3s from my current iTunes/Music library into this, to manually sync them. A little time-consuming, but it gets the job done.

Trying out iMovie HD 6 on the PowerBook. Of course, standard-definition video works great, but it struggles a bit with HDV. It doesn't capture in real time, instead at a quarter of the speed, so if I am going to edit HDV footage on it I'd need to work on my timing on this sort of capture.

I even got Mac OS 9.2.2 working in Classic Mode on the PowerBook and can run some of the old computer games of my childhood that came in Mac versions! Of course, for several of the games I have to manually change the color mode on Tiger to 256 colors, but it's a fairly quick job.

Here are my three aluminum Mac laptops set up side-by-side for this photo: the 15" PowerBook G4 from 2005, a 13" mid-2012 unibody MacBook Pro, and my 13" M1 MacBook Air. Three different types of processing systems, and three different case styles. We've come a long way in the history of Mac laptops during this past century!

 

[m1maverick]

One thing I have done with both SSDs in the years since is re-partition them slightly so that there is 1GB of unallocated, unformatted drive space for the drive controller to use for handling garbage collection, as both lack TRIM support (and which didn’t come around to being supported by OS X prior to 10.6.7).

I'm not sure there's any benefit to doing this. SSDs do not expose their total capacity for essentially this reason. For example a 256GB SSD may actually have a total capacity of 280GB to allow the controller to manage space to improve performance (along with wear leveling and for failed block reallocation) in the same fashion as what you're manually doing.