There's a couple of iBook G4s near me going very very cheap. Worth messing with? Unsure of exact specs, one 12" and one 14", the pair plus chargers and sundries for £15...
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Possibly dipping a toe into PPC?
- Thread starter DCBassman
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Fifteen quid for the lot? If they're working and in decent condition, go for it!
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Replacing the HDD isn’t for the faint of heart. They’re fun little machines though — for OS 9 (unofficially) too depending on the specs.
This an important point that I should've mentioned. I gave up after reaching halfway with dismantling my 500Mhz iBook and bought another one.
Be careful. I saw a PowerBook G4 a few years ago at a surplus store and thought "oh yeah, I'd love to have a relic of this architecture". Little did past Doc know that present Doc would own every size of PBG4 and several desktop machines.
Woops.
Woops.
I think these are cheap, small and fun entry points into PPC. Yep, if you pull one apart, they creak and complain but patience, ifixit and a collection of spudgers/guitar picks will get you through. I swapped out the old spinner in mine for an SSD.
15 quid converts to about $20 USD for two iBooks. Assuming they work and are in ok condition, I'd run not walk. Can't beat that price if you're at all interested and want to kick around PPC linux, Sorbet or old OSX. Plus you have so little in them I doubt you'd have zero issue offloading them to one of us (on that side of the pond of course) if you decided PPC wasn't your thing LOL
15 quid converts to about $20 USD for two iBooks. Assuming they work and are in ok condition, I'd run not walk. Can't beat that price if you're at all interested and want to kick around PPC linux, Sorbet or old OSX. Plus you have so little in them I doubt you'd have zero issue offloading them to one of us (on that side of the pond of course) if you decided PPC wasn't your thing LOL
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It's annoying when that happens. Hopefully they'll get back to you sooner rather than later.
As if “Sorbet” is not old OSX and as if 10.6 with the best among macOS software support on PPC does not exist…
Or MorphOS. Tried it and it ran fine in iBook G4. The trial version needs to be rebooted every 30min though. And the license is expensive (79€) and for 1 machine only, not transferable to another machine.
BTW. what Linux is easily installable to PPC-Macs these days? Few years ago it was quite difficult as Grub installation failed (known problem at the time) with all I tried and after several months I gave up as no fix was made.
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Or Morph OS. Tried it and it ran fine in iBook G4. The trial version needs to be rebooted every 30min though. And the license is expensive (79€) and for 1 machine only, not transferable to another machine.
![Morphos-i-Book-G4.jpg]()
BTW. what Linux is easily installable to PPC-Macs these days? Few years ago it was quite difficult as Grub installation failed (known problem at the time) with all I tried and after several months I gave up as no fix was made.
Why would you want Linux, when there is BSD
Which version are you using and to the unawares, what are the benefits?
Or MorphOS. Tried it and it ran fine in iBook G4. The trial version needs to be rebooted every 30min though. And the license is expensive (79€) and for 1 machine only, not transferable to another machine.
That definitely put me off...
I am familiar with Linux. I am 0% familiar with BSD (other than remembering that OSX is based or somehow related to it?). So, please tell some key points about it. Thanks!
They have made it so that the OS slows down after 30min. You can reset the timer by rebooting.
I would buy a license immediately if I could install it to multiple machines. I use only one at a time anyway. And its not like MorphOS would be any kind of daily OS for me so there is no point in investing that kind of money for something I would toy around sometimes.
And if the machine with the MorphOS breaks down, it seems to be too much hassle to get it transferred to another vintage machine - which can break too. They say they might ask proof that the machine is really dead. I wonder how that is proven? I am not interested in being at their mercy.
So, I end up running Amiga stuff on real hardware and/or emulation.
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I would just add in support of this that swapping out drives merits very careful attention to the HDD connector on the logicboard. If one is not careful, it can be torn from the LB.
Some years ago, @RedCroissant (since suspended) gave me an iBook G4. He was sufficiently skilled in taking iBooks apart, but unknown to him had torn up a corner of the connector on this iBook. I only found out because it kept freezing when trying to install Leopard.
Other members have described this.
Even an hour is too much for them to give us! Honestly.
What's your personal appraisal of the web browsers or its word processor, for that matter? When I used Linux as a desktop OS, I was able to undertake productivity tasks - if I can't do that with paid software that costs 79 Euros, per machine, that's not exactly an attractive prospect. Open Office is provided for free to use on PPC Macs.
Again, not an attractive prospect. I understand that the people behind this project are a small team but that licencing model seems somewhat flawed.
None yet, didn't feel like exploring too far with the trial version to form any kind of opinion on the matter. I am sure its great but I think 95% of interested users will never find out because of the licensing scheme. Me included and I am usually ready to try many things.
Yeah you're not wrong. Notice I did not say Sorbet itself was new nor did I imply that any of these options are supported, rather Sorbet is the newest community effort of very old and unsupported OSX. I don't think anyone here would openly say that any of these OSs are supported because they aren't.
To your point, you'd have to go BSD or Paid MorphOS.
So Op, as I am sure you are very aware, none of these operating systems I've mentioned are in any way shape or form supported. Still if you want to kick em around and give PowerPC a shot or enjoy OSX circa early 2ks, those iBooks are a great entry point. Good luck.
Especially the iBook G4 as it has USB 2.0 and its Airport card can connect to current Wi-Fi standards.
And the very last model adds a Core Image-capable GPU which makes a difference in OS X, at the expense of losing unofficial OS 9.
That's an acceptable loss in my opinion for that benefit. There's scores of Macs that can run OS 9.
Interesting. So, my iBook G4 14" 1.42GHz would be one of those?
Like this one: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/specs/ibook_g4_1.42_14.html
Mine is very little used and in great condition. The original battery has 35 load cycles. Only thing is that it has a company logo engraved to the display cover, maybe I'll swap a pristine cover some day if I find one.
It actually feels surprisingly fast with period software. 👍
Ps. to DCBassman: if you can, get them. You can always sell them to the next one if you don't feel like its your thing.
Note the firewire sound out:
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I found Adelie Linux to be pretty straightforward; the only pitfall I'm aware of is sometimes the installer has issues with disk partitioning. I wrote a quick and dirty guide to work around this in this post but it might not be applicable depending on the Mac.