PowerBook G4 12" Club

[B S Magnet]

necro
Received @z970mp's 12" PowerBook from his post here today, making me the newest member of Club 12. Currently receiving core applications from its new bigger brother.

I ordered some keys as the parts keyboard it came with is either for a 15" or 17" (pretty sure it's for a 17) and the switches and caps are ever so slightly different between the 12 and the 15/17 (least I think so. I checked my 15 and the key-switch mechanics are the same). There's also the DC-in issue that I'm investigating.

Expect a star soon.

Yah they’re identical keys and scissor mechanicals. I’ve used keys from my donor 12-inch on my 17- and 15-inch PowerBooks.

 

[Doq]

Yah they’re identical keys and scissor mechanicals. I’ve used keys from my donor 12-inch on my 17- and 15-inch PowerBooks.

That's really odd. I went to switch keys around and they wouldn't fit. I know there are different variations of the Aluminium keyboard. It might not be size-dependent, though. 🤔

 

[wur10]

There are at least two different suppliers of these keyboards that use slightly different scissor mechanisms. At first sight they look the same but the mounting tabs are slightly off.

 

[marcosfisica]

I took my 12" to work this week. Why not? In my work I basically use text documents and presentations (iWork 08). With Webkit I was even able to open some shared google sheets with my team. Obviously I can't use WhatsApp, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc, whats turns out to be a good thing since I could focus on work! I also couldn't connect to the wifi network, but the ethernet cable works fine. When connected to an external 22" monitor the small 12"screen of the PB is not a problem, and man, that keyboard feels amazing!!! I love my little 12"!

 

[barracuda156]

View attachment 893447

I hope this qualifies me for this club. 😉

I have 5 x Powerbook G4 12inches. These are made up of 3 x 1.5GHz (two work perfectly, the third has graphics and power issues, and stinks, and only boots up properly occasionally), one battered 857MHz that was badly damaged in the post but which works, and finally a 1.33GHz (centre front), which also works but is a bit battered too - I was a tad too enthusiastic with the hammer when trying to flatten out the kinks in the case.

For your interest, this is what I paid (including postage) for them - all have been bought in the past couple of years on UK Ebay.

£10.00 - 1.5GHz. Sold for parts but works perfectly. Even includes a 140GB HD

£16.49 - 1.33GHz. Sold for parts with box. Just needed a HD installed

£25.00 - 1.5GHz. Works perfectly but ram area is a bit battered

£16.69 - 1.5GHz. Boxed. But has graphics and power issues.

£18.50 - 867Mhz. Seller packaged it terribly. And it got bent in the post. But works

You can definitely still pick these up for cheap, if you are patient, and don't need an absolutely perfect specimen.

Personally, I love the look of the 12inch. But the build quality is terrible. The cases are far too fragile, much more so than the iBook 12inches. The metal unibody Mac laptops of today are so much more robust.

These are awesome prices! Congrats!

I have recently got 1.33 GHz one from Japan for about 30 USD but without HDD, battery and charger – still cannot try it even, waiting for charger to arrive. And ordered 1.5 GHz couple of weeks ago for about 50 USD. Should be in proper working order, judging from photos. Usually Japanese are very honest with listings. Will take a while to ship though, everything is dead here for CNY.

 

[barracuda156]

Okay apparently HDD is missing altogether (not seen by Disk Utility) and CPU is slower than I hoped. But otherwise it seems functional. I booted from MacMini in Target mode.
Weirdly, I do not see Airport in settings, even though System profiler shows it, but this may be a 10A190 problem. Will check later with 10.5.8.

Couple of questions to owners:

1. Which SDD gonna work in it?

2. Should I consider installing Tiger or Panther? I am afraid Leo or Snow Leo will be a pain on 1 GHz with 768 MB.

 

[Amethyst1]

1. Which SDD gonna work in it?

An mSATA or m.2 in an mSATA/m.2-to-IDE adapter. Stay away from native PATA SSDs, they’re old and slow garbage.

2. Should I consider installing Tiger or Panther? I am afraid Leo or Snow Leo will be a pain on 1 GHz with 768 MB.

No point bothering with Panther IMO. With these specs Tiger (plus optimisations) would be my favourite, but others will favour Leopard nonetheless. In any case, consider upgrading to 1.25 GB RAM.

 

[marcosfisica]

View attachment 1955633

Okay apparently HDD is missing altogether (not seen by Disk Utility) and CPU is slower than I hoped. But otherwise it seems functional. I booted from MacMini in Target mode.
Weirdly, I do not see Airport in settings, even though System profiler shows it, but this may be a 10A190 problem. Will check later with 10.5.8.

Couple of questions to owners:

1. Which SDD gonna work in it?

2. Should I consider installing Tiger or Panther? I am afraid Leo or Snow Leo will be a pain on 1 GHz with 768 MB.

I used this adapter on mine: https://shopee.com.br/-Withbetter-M...de-Adaptador-Conversor-i.252081964.7835159396

I think the most importat thing is that these adapters do not work (or may have problems) with modern Msata discs that uses high current. So, be carefull with this. Use and Msata that requires low current. See in the photo that mine works with 0,45 A. I believe that the moderns drives uses 1A or more. Try to find an old Msata drive.

 

[barracuda156]

An mSATA or m.2 in an mSATA/m.2-to-IDE adapter.

Any particular one is known to work fine? Or doesn’t matter?

P. S. I will probably install Tiger on FW HDD and compare with 10A190. Leo doesn’t give any advantage on 32 bit CPU anyway. If I have Tiger installed, I can try building ports on it too. At least in theory 10.4 is supported on Macports.

 

[barracuda156]

I used this adapter on mine: https://shopee.com.br/-Withbetter-M...de-Adaptador-Conversor-i.252081964.7835159396

I think the most importat thing is that these adapters do not work (or may have problems) with modern Msata discs that uses high current. So, be carefull with this. Use and Msata that requires low current. See in the photo that mine works with 0,45 A. I believe that the moderns drives uses 1A or more. Try to find an old Msata drive.

Thank you, helpful tip.

 

[B S Magnet]

View attachment 1955633

Okay apparently HDD is missing altogether (not seen by Disk Utility) and CPU is slower than I hoped. But otherwise it seems functional. I booted from MacMini in Target mode.
Weirdly, I do not see Airport in settings, even though System profiler shows it, but this may be a 10A190 problem. Will check later with 10.5.8.

Couple of questions to owners:

1. Which SDD gonna work in it?

Generally, get a 2.5"-PATA-to-m.2-SATA adapter. I (and others on here) can attest that SATA m.2s as varied as WD Blue, Dogfish, and Zheino will work for this use.

The adapter, aside from setting the correct main/secondary (né, “master”/“slave”) jumper pins, will make the m.2 appear to be a plain-jane PATA HDD to the PowerBook. This is the solution I use on my two PowerBook G4s.

Also, a Japanese keyboard. Nice! That’s pretty neat. 🙂

2. Should I consider installing Tiger or Panther? I am afraid Leo or Snow Leo will be a pain on 1 GHz with 768 MB.

Tiger should work pretty well. If you can, look into bumping up that RAM to its 1.25GB limit. With that cap, you ought to be even better off with Tiger, and Leopard, after making optimizations (as those on the bottom of this wikipost), ought to do well on there.

Panther, if you insist on using it, might be useful for earlier-purpose experimenting, but you will be confined to one current browser (Links2). Following the install of an SSD solution, it could be worth installing Panther as a secondary partition whilst leaving the main partition running something like Tiger or Leopard. Or, heck, partition it three ways and add Leopard, Tiger, and Panther on there. 🙂

 

[B S Magnet]

I used this adapter on mine: https://shopee.com.br/-Withbetter-M...de-Adaptador-Conversor-i.252081964.7835159396

I think the most importat thing is that these adapters do not work (or may have problems) with modern Msata discs that uses high current. So, be carefull with this. Use and Msata that requires low current. See in the photo that mine works with 0,45 A. I believe that the moderns drives uses 1A or more. Try to find an old Msata drive.
View attachment 1955673

I used one of these PATA-to-mSATA adapters initially in my clamshell iBook G3 and ran into problems almost immediately with the quality control of its construction — only to learn manufacturing quality issues with this particular design tends to be fairly common. After briefly detecting a drive (but couldn’t format it), the adapter failed altogether. In the end, I found at least one place where factory solder had even bridged two pins on the main IC (i.e., where the “Q.C. PASSED” sticker is on your example):

Seeing as I couldn’t use it, I bought a slightly more spendy adapter (whose board is red, not green):

This second adapter (and its mSATA SSD, seen above in blue) has functioned flawlessly ever since. The brand of mSATA I used was from iRecdata.

 

[Amethyst1]

Or, heck, partition it three ways and add Leopard, Tiger, and Panther on there. 🙂

Why not go for at least five partitions? Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard 🙂

 

[B S Magnet]

Why not go for at least five partitions? Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard 🙂

LIVIN’ LARGE AND IN CHARGE, @Amethyst1. 😎

 

[Amethyst1]

Thread title updated according to @B S Magnet's request to more accurately reflect the kind of Mac featured here 🙂

 

[ahurst]

I have a beloved 1.33 GHz 12" PBG4 that served me pretty well as a portable from 2014 until 2016, when its LCD panel died a mysterious death:

Easily one of my favourite computers I've ever owned, with one of my all-time favourite laptop keyboards. Since 2016 it's been in pieces in my closet awaiting a replacement screen: I got an IPS LCD from a ThinkPad X61 Tablet to replace it with (the poor LCD colour/contrast was one of my few gripes with the 12"), but it requires modifying the panel to install and I've sadly never gotten around to it. I'm gonna make it a goal for this year to get it up and running again.

 

[barracuda156]

Is this likely to work in PB 12” A1010 1 GHz?

 

[smeisinger]

I recently had a random thought about how awesome those 12" Powerbooks were. I was born in 1985 and there was just no way I could afford one back then, so I never owned one.

So I decided to get one now and after some time I found a 1.5Ghz model for 70 Euros.

It came with Leopard installed and I spent at least 24 hours tinkering around to get it running as well as it can. I had no Tiger CD so I got it installed via OF from an USB drive. Then I discovered that Sorbet Leopard exists and installed that. Lots of time spent on macintoshrepository and all kind of places around the web to get all the software I wanted.

An SSD followed of course and while changing that I also applied new thermal paste and pads. It still needs a new battery, if somebody knows where to get one in the EU, let me know.

So here's a picture of my son (born in 2021) on my dream laptop from the early 2000s 😀 It makes absolutely no sense, but it makes me happy.

 

[Amethyst1]

It makes absolutely no sense, but it makes me happy.

It makes sense because of that. Congrats on your 12"! I assume you've maxed out the RAM to 1.25 GB as well?

 

[smeisinger]

yeah, sure, it already came with maxed out RAM 🙂

 

[InAWhiteRoom]

I was hoping to get some advice from the club. I really do love my 12 inch powerbooks, but they are HOT, and they are LOUD.

I have an 867Mhz, a 1GHz, and a 1.5Ghz, all with maxed ram, all with SSDs. Regardless of OS, they all pretty quickly start getting warm and spinning their fans up to the point that it sounds like I’m hoovering.

I was wondering about solutions. A radical idea was to remove the optical drive, but this looks like a hefty job, and on reading around I’m not totally sure it’ll make all that much difference - very old commentators seemed skeptical, way back when a similar question was asked in 2011:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/remove-optical-drive-to-save-weight-and-improve-cooling.1105838/

Has our pooled expertise found any better solutions? Or is this just a fact of life with compact PowerPC machines?

Thanks!

 

[Dronecatcher]

Has our pooled expertise found any better solutions? Or is this just a fact of life with compact PowerPC machines?

I run my 1.5Ghz 12" in Reduced mode (approx 800Mhz) - it's keeps the fan quiet until I can get a replacement and re-paste the CPU etc.

 

[InAWhiteRoom]

Thanks @Dronecatcher , I saw your post about the reduced power mode elsewhere and have adopted this strategy - it does seem to help, a bit.

 

[mectojic]

Thanks @Dronecatcher , I saw your post about the reduced power mode elsewhere and have adopted this strategy - it does seem to help, a bit.

Wow, never knew about this! I never needed the full 1.5GHz on my old one, I wish I'd known you can downclock. Where is that post?

 

[weckart]

I had to replace the logic board on a 1.5GHz 12" I bought to fix up. I just remember being pleasantly surprised at how cool and quietly it ran relative to expectations. Maybe a repaste and a clean up will help somewhat, although I didn't enjoy stripping the PowerBook.