Pismo Power!

[Amethyst1]

While we're revealing our Hackintosh adventures: mine started in December 2007, after the purchase of an Asus U1F ultraportable. It had a 1.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2.5 GB RAM and a 11.1-inch 1366x768 screen – the thing was smaller than the 12-inch PowerBook in every dimension and weighed half as much. Ran Tiger pretty nicely. I showed the machine to a friend who was as sad about the 12-inch PowerBook having been discontinued without a true successor as I was, and he was blown away. I had this machine until October 2010 (still running Tiger as I followed the 'never touch a running system' rule)... then replaced it with the original 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Ah Vintage hackintoshing...

now theres a fun subject

I have done a LOT of hackintoshing both new and old

I dont like to run hackintoshes as my main system but im sure you guys know me by now

I LOVE to tinker and get things running on hardware they where not made too so I have done a lot of work with making OS X run on weird and whack PC x86 hardware

Have a picture of Mavericks running on a 3Ghz Pentium 4 super unstable and panicked if you just looked at it funny.

in keeping with the Pentium M theme, here is the DTK 10.4.1 intel build running on a Micro ATX Pentium M motherboard...

I have also done Leopard on an Early Northwood Pentium 4 this one is a weird no name clone of a Shuttle PC I have a video of this system on youtube if you wanna here someone ramble on for 25 mins about a Pentium 4...

any who im going horribly off topic now so i better shut up

 

[Macbookprodude]

I found that TenFourFox runs pretty well on my G3 Pismo with an SSD and 1GB of RAM, but anything less is painfully slow. There's a guy selling G4 550Mhz upgrade Pismo CPU cards over on the MacRumors Marketplace. This would substantially improve general performance and TenFourFox has a number of Altivec-only (G4+) optimizations.
[doublepost=1530248393][/doublepost]

Well, my Pismo has a 500 G4 already.. its running Tiger though.. maybe I should go to puma or Panther on it ?

 

[AphoticD]

Well, my Pismo has a 500 G4 already.. its running Tiger though.. maybe I should go to puma or Panther on it ?

I think Tiger is the best choice for the Pismo. It would be an idea to replace the spinning hard drive for an SSD and max out the RAM to 1GB if you haven’t already done so.

 

[bwillwall]

Measuring red (+) and white (-) reads ~3V

So it goes:
TOP: Red, connected to (+) of top row
MID: White, connected to (+) of bottom row
BOTTOM: Black, connected to (-) of bottom row

Each cell reads ~3V

Here are some photos of the operation:

View attachment 732439
1. The original PRAM battery, unplugged from the logic board and removed from the battery holder/sheath attached to the bottom case. To get to it, the DVD drive needs to come out.

View attachment 732440
2. The new 4x VL2330 cells (with tabs) in from Hong Kong (2pk was AU$10).

View attachment 732441
3. I sliced open the existing brown sheath and peeled it back (to be re-used). here's the circuit of the existing battery. Tabs go across the top (+ to +), under the top row (- to -), and the same for the bottom row. A single tabs connects the circuit between the top and bottom rows. (+ to -)

View attachment 732442
4. I peeled off all of the existing tabs with a pair of pliers, to possibly reuse them and noted the position of the wiring for the connector.

View attachment 732443
5. Here's my build of the new battery with the same circuit and wiring (as far as I can tell).

View attachment 732444
6. Finally, the outer sheath is back on and everything is taped up (I ran out of nice black electrical tape, so clear packing tape will have to do).
[doublepost=1509876692][/doublepost]Well, I had a think about it and I am pretty sure it is correct, so I installed the PRAM battery.

1. Booted up A OK - Date & Time and Startup Disk are all set OK.
2. Shut down.
3. Removed the main battery.
4. Waited 5 minutes.
5. Pressed the power button to drain any residual power.
6. Pushed the main battery back in.
7. Pressed the power button.
8. Startup was instant.
9. Date and Time are still set OK.

I will keep an eye on it and test as I drain the main battery during use, but I think I have the PRAM battery resolved.

Pismo Power!

Thanks, I have a dead pismo so I will have to give this a try when I get the chance. Seems there's nowhere to buy a pram anymore, and using new batteries would obviously be better

 

[bwillwall]

I think Tiger is the best choice for the Pismo. It would be an idea to replace the spinning hard drive for an SSD and max out the RAM to 1GB if you haven’t already done so.

Tiger performs as well as any osx on my 400Mhz Pismo, but I consider it an OS 9 machine because X does lag quite a bit

 

[bobesch]

Thanks, I have a dead pismo so I will have to give this a try when I get the chance. Seems there's nowhere to buy a pram anymore, and using new batteries would obviously be better

Try to remove the dead PRAM battery to try reviving the Pismo.
I have also opened the battery-case to remove the bunch of dead Li-batteries and make an empty dummy to fit into the battery-slot.
Mine is dedicated mainly to run os9. A os9/Tiger dual-boot option is also quite nice, but needs enough RAM and an SSD-solution would be of help.
Booting from CF-Card/PCMCIA-Adapter is a silent alternative to the rattling internal drive.
I have a Walstreet/PDQ too. The CF/PCMCIA with os9 can be swapped between both devices.
Cheap solution: PCMCIA-CFCard-Adapter plus fitting 8-32 GB CF-Card.

 

[Amethyst1]

Booting from CF-Card/PCMCIA-Adapter is a silent alternative to the rattling internal drive.

I think that doesn’t have DMA, so it’ll be very slow and cause heavy CPU load.

 

[AphoticD]

So, as I mentioned in another recent Pismo thread, the 32GB KingSpec mSATA SSD in my Pismo has failed - it just stopped booting or even mounting in Disk Utility. I removed it and tried connecting to other systems via a few different adapters (mSATA -> PATA, then mSATA -> SATA) and no luck. So I stuck an old 30GB spinner from an iBook G3 G4 into the Pismo and installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X 10.4, updated to 10.4.11, and began setting everything back up as before.

I left the Pismo running to install Xcode over the network because it was going to take more than an hour, when I came back to it in the morning at about 7:30 it had frozen some time after the installation (6:17 AM according to the stuck clock), and had been cooking itself in an unresponsive state. It was way too hot, and it got me thinking that I have never heard the cooling fan kick over in this Mac. Maybe the fan is faulty? I powered it off and left it for a few hours...

Later in the afternoon, a quick search for "powerbook g3 pismo fan control" revealed this article on manually setting the fan to run full speed via an Open Firmware property;

Mac Classic

Tips and tricks to help keep your Mac OS 9/Early Mac OS computers usable today. Software downloads, guides, hacks and news.

mac-classic.com

I rebooted and the fan kicked on straight away. It's great to know it's not actually faulty, but as I said, it has never spun before, even times when the CPU had overheated and locked up - which should no longer happen.

It would be good to try a few different int values for the thermal ceiling, rather than setting it to match the floor value so it can ramp up as needed rather than just spin full blast.

Gauge Pro in Mac OS 9.2.2 says it is now running at 28°C, which I feel is probably a bit off.

Any Pismo owners notice their fan fail to ever turn over? Maybe mine has a failed thermal sensor?

 

[weckart]

Any Pismo owners notice their fan fail to ever turn over? Maybe mine has a failed thermal sensor?

To be honest, I have never really heard mine go off as my Pismos don't really get warm and the Clamshell iBooks around that time didn't even bother with them. It would probably be more of an issue for those with G4 upgrades. I heard those do run noticeably hotter. I have heard one whoosh quite impressively in my PDQ, so it's not as if Apple used silent fans back then.

 

[Amethyst1]

Given the availability of 14.1" LCDs with 1400×1500 (common) and 1600×1200 (rare) resolution: Any thoughts on upgrading a Pismo's LCD?