Powerbook G3 PDQ added to the herd

[Lastic]

After a lot of nagging, I received the first Mac of a friend, his Powerbook G3 PDQ since it was sitting in storage not doing anything usefull.

From what I can tell it's this model :

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerbook_g3_233_pdq.html

However when I plug in the YoYo charger (battery plugged/removed) , it boots for 2 seconds,fans start to spin and then it stops ?

My friend did tell me that the CMOS battery was gone, could this be the reason why it won't start or should I look at a different charger ?

Apart from that since I'm not accustomed to a G3 or Tiger , what are my options ?

• Tiger install via XpostFacto (do I need to have MacOS 9 installed to do this ?)
• Macports (but from what I remember from SMTube there were not a lot of ports)
• Tigerbrew ?
• TenfourKit ? Tenfourfox ? or is there another Webkit/Roccat browser
• Ubuntu ? I checked OpenBSD but it doesn't seem to run on this G3 (OldWorldRom)
• Video playback ? VLC , Mplayer ? 360p/720p ?
• Is it worthwhile to purchase a second battery ?

 

[Dronecatcher]

I can say that Tiger on my 300Mhz Clamshell was fairly clunky - I'd imagine it'd struggle at 233Mhz.
Under Tiger my only workable video option was Mplayer and 360P h264 was out - it played quality 3gp files great though.
OS 8.6 might be the optimal fit for this?
Bear in mind no Airport, Firewire or USB so PCMCIA cards would be required to fill those gaps.

 

[weckart]

The 300MHz was available with a DVD drive and you could get a Magi decoder PCMCIA card to use it as a DVD video player but that was it for the PDQs. The GPU wasn't up to much.

 

[Lastic]

Anybody has a clue how I can solve this first ?

When I plug in the YoYo charger (battery plugged/removed) , it boots for 2 seconds,fans start to spin and then it stops ?

My friend told me that the CMOS battery was gone, could this be the reason why it won't start or should I look at a different charger ?

 

[AphoticD]

Have you tried unplugging the PRAM battery from the logic board? I know a flat PRAM battery caused boot problems with the PowerBook G3 Pismo, so maybe it's the same on the PDQ.

 

[weckart]

Have you tried unplugging the PRAM battery from the logic board? I know a flat PRAM battery caused boot problems with the PowerBook G3 Pismo, so maybe it's the same on the PDQ.

It's not. It will boot with a dead PRAM battery.

Could be a number of things. RAM, CPU, logicboard. Only way to find out is to open it up and look for loose connections etc. It does look to be CPU related if the fans are spinning. Power is getting through.

 

[zappaesque]

The fans spinning when you plug it in is normal when the pram battery is dead on a Wallstreet. Once it stops, press the power button and it should boot/chime. The Wallstreet makes a nice satisfying sort of click/pop when it fires up. It'll take a good 30 seconds for the screen to light up when the pram battery is dead, though, so be patient.

One thing to check, if you're getting nothing when you press the power button, is to make sure that the CPU card is secure in the slot and that the memory is also secure in the card. It may have gotten jostled loose, especially if you got the machine from a tinkerer and they haven't replaced the screws that secure the CPU card and shield. You can check the hard drive caddy at the same time. Wallstreets are nice, easy machines to work on.

EDIT: weckart beat me to the punch on the loose connections suggestion, and I missed it

 

[galgot]

Hi, Wallstreets are my fav.
As for OSs to try on these, Mac OS 1.2 aka Rhapsody runs very well. I have one running Debian 7 too, with Windowmaker as VM.

 

[weckart]

The fans spinning when you plug it in is normal when the pram battery is dead on a Wallstreet. Once it stops, press the power button and it should boot/chime. The Wallstreet makes a nice satisfying sort of click/pop when it fires up. It'll take a good 30 seconds for the screen to light up when the pram battery is dead, though, so be patient.

This is a very good point I missed. I am currently going through my collection trying to catalogue what I actually have and booting everything up to check for battery life and/or leakage and had just tested a PDQ when I came to read this. I will only add that after the initial whoosh of the fans when you put the power cord in, there is absolute silence for something more like 45 seconds before the display light starts to kick in and you hear the tinkling of the old hard drive, assuming that hasn't been upgraded to something bigger and newer in the past. Those old hard drives were quite noisy.

Even with a working PRAM battery, it takes a good while for the Wallstreets and PDQ to get going.