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Powerbook G4 867MHz upgrade advice

millar876 said:
incidently, anyone know where (in the UK) i can get a bus powered Firewire enclosure for the old 40 GB Hard drive, I can only seem to find USB2 ones and as the powerbook only has USB1 I'd rather avoid using USB.
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Firewire laptop drive caddies are not easy to find but this looks fine

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-5-ATA-IDE-TO-USB-2-0-Firewire-1394a-enclosure-Caddy_W0QQitemZ310077484273QQihZ021QQcategoryZ86758QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

even located in the UK which is even more unusual and £15 delivered seems a reasonable price - its USB and Firewire and even comes with a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable so should be bus powered though you might want to check that with them ! Some caddies need the USB cable connected to provide the power to the drive - but not always. The listing seems a bit vague on whether it is powered through the firewire connection but since it is 6 pin then it probably is.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Well, as the owner and operator of two G4s (a PowerBook and PowerMac), I would say that your plans are sound - except for the choice of OS. I have avoided upgrading to 10.5 because of other people experiencing slower performance than 10.4 on G4s.

I would recommend installing Tiger unless you absolutely must have the new features that come with Leopard.
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Agreed, I just downgraded my PowerBook G4 to Tiger, runs almost twice as fast as Leopard. I'm not sure what to blame, either the G4 is getting weak or Leopard demands too much from the older systems to make it a worthwhile upgrade.

G5's and Intels are the ones that should be running Leopard, G4's only if necessary.
 
just an update for all those that are interested. The PowerBook is running great on leopard, wireless reception is a bit scetchy at times and as expected with it's age it sucks at the ocasional iPod video encode. I'm running word and powerpoint 2004 and excel and entourage 2008, I have iLife 08 and iWork 08 ok there aswell.

Only conscern is the battery, the origional owner left the PowerBook with the battery atatched and fully discharged for just omer 1 year, and coconut battery gels me it's only done 60 load cycles in it's 62 month life. Also it says that;

current battery charge - 6155mAh
Maximum battery charge - 6160mAh

Current battery capacity - 6160mAh
Origional battery capacity - 4200mAh

model no. Is A1002, and it randomly switges off at about 42% remaining charge.

I think the battery went bad during it's year of non use? Or dose anyone have any other ideas
 
FF_productions said:
Agreed, I just downgraded my PowerBook G4 to Tiger, runs almost twice as fast as Leopard. I'm not sure what to blame, either the G4 is getting weak or Leopard demands too much from the older systems to make it a worthwhile upgrade.

G5's and Intels are the ones that should be running Leopard, G4's only if necessary.
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I have not run Tiger on my G4 PB 1.5Gzh. I went from 10.3.9 straight to 10.5. Leopard seems faster on my machine than Panther was and it is certainly very usable.
 
1. Someone said in this thread they used a PATA 160gb 7200rpm drive?

I didn't know they made PATA drives in that speed and that size.

2. On my 12" 1.5ghz 1.25gb Powerbook, I had to disable Dashboard even in Tiger for faster performance. Have it disabled in Leopard, too. It makes a difference...

3. OP will do well with an 80gb 7200 drive in that 867mhz Powerbook.

4. Someone said they had an 867mhz iBook? Didn't know they made them that speed either.
 
Regarding OS 9... the PowerBook in question can run OS 9 apps in Classic mode, but only in 10.3 and 10.4. Leopard got rid of Classic for good.

As for the battery: yes, it's time for a new one, but consider replacing it with a third-party battery. At least from the reviews on the Apple Store, the first-party replacement battery seems to be nothing but trouble.

Congrats to the OP for rehabilitating a nice Mac that has stood the test of time. I have a friend who still uses this model as a primary computer. I have to admit I miss my 12" PB from time to time.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
I wrote my masters thesis on my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 w/ 1.25GB memory. By the end I had a nearly 200-page document with pictures (should have broken it up into one doc per chapter :rolleyes:), but at that size Word flipped out and I had to do the final editing and formatting on a G5 tower.
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For that type of work always use LaTeX ;)
 
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