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Powerbook G4 Quartet Complete

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,391
6,565
Kentucky
Just a few minutes ago, I made an Ebay purchase of the last Powerbook G4 I was missing-a 17" in some form or fashion. I was able to find an A1139-the last generation, double layer super drive version-to go with my 15" A1138.

This gives me Aluminum Powerbooks in 12", 15" and 17"(all last generation models), and an 867mhz TiBook.

I have to wait for it to get here from Canada, but the condition appears to be really good and the price wasn't terribly out of line. Shipping wasn't terrible, either.
 
Cool! make sure to put up pics! I my self want to get either a PB G4 or a iBook G4. However it is the lowest priority on my list ATM. I look from Time to time but when the few chances to come around to get a iBook or a PowerBook i dont have the money to get it. I dont care for prefection long as it works!
 
catzilla said:
Great, now you really need a 1Ghz Ti...
Just like I do...
Click to expand...

If only...

There's one on Craigslist locally(listed as an iBook) but the guy wants $140 for it. He won't budge on the price, and also won't send me pictures of the top(even though he claims it's "perfect"). I'll find one sometime, although admittedly it's not an incredibly high priority.

I wouldn't think the extra 133mhz would make that much of a difference, but expect that the extra VRAM would probably help at least in Leopard. Still, though, I want one just to have the last and best of the model.
 
I just happened to remember that-as it so happens-I have an OEM 17" battery kicking around in the backseat of my car somewhere.

When I bought my TiBook off Craigslist last summer, the guy told me over the phone that he had two batteries for it(he had several Apple laptops, but the Ti was the last one). When he got there, he pulled the 17" battery out of his coat pocket, looked at it, and realized he'd grabbed the wrong battery. He offered it to me anyway, and I took it since-as I said-"I'll probably have a 17" one of these days." I just hope last August with some 100º days, and this month with some 0º days, didn't kill it. If it weren't snowing now, I'd go out and get it.

Hopefully it has some life in it too-the one coming with the computer will supposedly last about an hour.
 
Well, the 1ghz Ti came yesterday, and I just picked up the 17" a little while ago.

So far so good...I realized after the Ti arrived that I was out of 512mb PC-133 SO-DIMMs, so I ordered another half dozen-it will have to wait until they arrive from Hong Kong for a memory upgrade. I've already put 2gb in the 17". I'm going to tear it down this evening for a good internal cleaning and swap in an SSD before I put a lot of effort into installing software on it-as of now it's not overly useful with 10.4.6.

It's really quite surprising how large it is...I've seen my fair share of 17" MBPs "in the flesh", but I have to say the size really takes you by surprise when you're staring at the screen. I think calling them a "laptop" is probably pushing it, although admittedly I think it weighs less than my ancient 12" Compaq Armada.
 
Alright, I promised pictures, so here they are.

Left to right-in the pictures so arranged-is a 12" Powerbook(1.5ghz, early '05), 1ghz Ti Book, DLSD 15" Powerbook(1.67ghz late '05, A1138), and a DLSD 17' Powerbook(1.67ghz late '05, A1139).

In the stack picture, the 17" is on the bottom, followed by the 15" DLSD, 1ghz Ti, and 12" on top.

As can be seen, all are running OS X Leopard.

Member California recently sent me a couple of boxes of iBook and Powerbook parts for the cost of shipping(they are slowly trickling in). In one of the boxes was a stripped down A1138, along with two top cases(less keyboards) for the same. The right palmrest on my A1138 was badly chipped(almost to the point where I was afraid to show it off here). The better of the two top cases California sent me was pretty decent looking, with only a few scuffs, so I transplanted it to my A1138. Surprisingly enough, getting the keyboard seated correctly was a lot more work than I'd anticipated, but I did finally get it done. The computer works perfectly, and looks a whole lot better. The next thing to tackle will be the display-the one on my A1138 is dim, but I don't want to replace it until I get the one in the parts computer hooked up to see if it's any brighter and make sure it doesn't have any other serious problems. That's a project for another rainy(or snowy) day.

As I said earlier, it's hard to appreciate just how big the 17" is until it's staring you in the face.
 

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