Newb with ibook g3 needs help.

[Rogue1]

First of all i would like to thank everyone here I have been checking the forum to see what I was doing buying a mac.

I just got a used ibook g3 800mhz with 256 meg of ram and I have a few questions for the mac guru’s of this forum.

1st I have a 30 gig hard drive on it and with only a clean install of tiger from where I bought it from I only have 12 gig left. Any advice on what I could dump to get some more space, machine is going to be used for wireless internet and mabie watching movies so I don't need a lot.

2nd I used handbreak on my pc to take a couple of dvd’s and make some mp4’s in h211 format, I think I said that right, and the video is crashing.
I have ordered a 512mg chip for the ibook to up it to 640 and I was wondering if that would help.

3rd I would like to say that I bought my mac to learn to use os x and because I wanted a second laptop for the house (wife keeps stealing my compaq) and I have to say that I am pretty impressed. Even with just 256 of ram this is running I would say just a little slower than my pc with 2ghz processor and 1 gig of ram when it comes to internet. It is smaller than my compaq and the battery life just does not compare. My compaq laptop which is much newer gets mabie 70 min and it is dead with the wireless on. The mac is getting well over 3 hr with the wireless on.

Thanks all for any input from a mac newb.

 

[NIPRING]

First of all i would like to thank everyone here I have been checking the forum to see what I was doing buying a mac.

I just got a used ibook g3 800mhz with 256 meg of ram and I have a few questions for the mac guru’s of this forum.

1st I have a 30 gig hard drive on it and with only a clean install of tiger from where I bought it from I only have 12 gig left. Any advice on what I could dump to get some more space, machine is going to be used for wireless internet and mabie watching movies so I don't need a lot.

2nd I used handbreak on my pc to take a couple of dvd’s and make some mp4’s in h211 format, I think I said that right, and the video is crashing.
I have ordered a 512mg chip for the ibook to up it to 640 and I was wondering if that would help.

3rd I would like to say that I bought my mac to learn to use os x and because I wanted a second laptop for the house (wife keeps stealing my compaq) and I have to say that I am pretty impressed. Even with just 256 of ram this is running I would say just a little slower than my pc with 2ghz processor and 1 gig of ram when it comes to internet. It is smaller than my compaq and the battery life just does not compare. My compaq laptop which is much newer gets mabie 70 min and it is dead with the wireless on. The mac is getting well over 3 hr with the wireless on.

Thanks all for any input from a mac newb.

1. Tiger can take up as little as 3-4gb (besides, 18gb for tiger seems a little steep!!), i installed it on my 10GB ibook. I suggest reinstalling but use custom installation and deselect stuff you wont use. After install investigate a ltitle app called monolingual.
2 Handbrake is great, but its already slow on my 1.67 powerbook with 2gb ram, 640mb on a G3... i dont think your going to set any speed record there.


Bill

 

[krye]

Dump the foreign languages and the printer drivers.

 

[Dustman]

Reinstall tiger again, unticking anything like Garageband or any non-essential programs you don't think you'll need (after a format of course).

Video on G3's is pretty limited because of the age of the video cards and processors in them. If your encoding movies, id suggest encoding to just regular MPEG at a bit rate/resolution that wont over tax the CPU and cause it to crash.

 

[housewright]

ibook G3 help

My ibook (first one) was bought from someone who said it had a bad logic board. Couldn't say how they arrived at that conclusion, but my thoughts were it might be the video chip issue you read so much about. I go back a ways with macs to an SE (still works great!) and over the years, I have become proficient with G3-4 desktops. Now, I'm in a learning curve. So, here's the deal - Thanks in advance guys. First, brought battery to full charge and tried to boot. I got a chime. No video of any kind. Reset PMU and altered a sequence of disconnect and reconnect of power adapter and battery with single resets as I went. This time, chime and HD (although it sounded sickly). But, no video of any kind. Tried again to boot but this time, I exerted strong pressure to the video chip, above and below on the case. HD sounded stronger and got a grey screen but no apple. Gave it and me a rest for 10 and just tried a normal boot with battery and power adapter. I was in! Full clean boot with full operation. Reset the clock. One note, just prior to the boot, the front panel next to the latch opening mechanism flashed a white light and I thought I head a low tone? Well, as she was running, it seemed like the area above the HD was getting warm,,,,maybe too warm. So, I closed and shutdown normally. Here's the problem-- no matter how carefully the previous process towards the initial boot is followed, ibook won't come to life. Not even a chime. Took it apart to R&R HD with a known good BU and pulled the extra ram in the slot. Nothing.
I'm thinking I got lucky with the VC pressure that one time! Is it time to buy a heat gun???