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PowerBook Pismo

TSE

TSE

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
4,040
3,570
St. Paul, Minnesota
Just pulled my old PowerBook Pismo again and am experiencing nostalgia again. It really was a beautiful device. Interesting industrial design of taking Apple’s 90’s organic and curvy form exploration with business matte black.

And wow is this keyboard actually pretty good! Lots of travel and very, very strong pleasant sensation behind every keystroke.

One of my favorite apple devices of all time. I have a good model - 500mhz G3, 1GB RAM, 20GB HD, Airport installed. Amazing!

Any other Pismo fans or owners? What are your guys thoughts on this classic?
[doublepost=1556815660][/doublepost]
TSE said:
Just pulled my old PowerBook Pismo again and am experiencing nostalgia again. It really was a beautiful device. Interesting industrial design of taking Apple’s 90’s organic and curvy form exploration with business matte black.

And wow is this keyboard actually pretty good! Lots of travel and very, very strong pleasant sensation behind every keystroke.

One of my favorite apple devices of all time. I have a good model - 500mhz G3, 1GB RAM, 20GB HD, Airport installed. Amazing!

Any other Pismo fans or owners? What are your guys thoughts on this classic?
Click to expand...
 

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I used a Pismo around 2005-2007 when I was in middle school that I got from my dad, as my first "modern" computer. It was running 10.3 for a lot of the time I used it but eventually convinced my dad to let me upgrade to 10.4. It really was a pleasure to type on, and mine had AirPort and a DVD drive so I used it to sit on the couch and browse the web, play games, watch LOST, and manage my iTunes library.

I wish I still had it.
 
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I agree as it is the best of my Powerbooks

Pismo 400mhz, 1gig RAM, 100Gig HD
 

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They're beautiful machines! I used to tinker & trade quite a bit, and three Pismos have crossed my hands. Used one as a daily driver for most of 2007-08, but by that time the G3 was really showing its age. I might still have one if I ever could have seen my way to buying a G4 upgrade, but those have always been a bit too pricey for me. Too easy and cost-effective to trade up to the TiBooks & eventually AlBooks.

I did enjoy typing on that keyboard. I just wish Apple had offered it in something other than brown...ahem, “bronze.”
 
TSE said:
Just pulled my old PowerBook Pismo again and am experiencing nostalgia again. It really was a beautiful device. Interesting industrial design of taking Apple’s 90’s organic and curvy form exploration with business matte black.

And wow is this keyboard actually pretty good! Lots of travel and very, very strong pleasant sensation behind every keystroke.

One of my favorite apple devices of all time. I have a good model - 500mhz G3, 1GB RAM, 20GB HD, Airport installed. Amazing!

Any other Pismo fans or owners? What are your guys thoughts on this classic?
[doublepost=1556815660][/doublepost]
Click to expand...

yeah theres a few Pismo owners here

unhappy with how rare and expensive Pismo G4 upgrades are, I made my own :D https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/making-a-g4-pismo-upgrade-at-home.2019269/
 
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Raging Dufus said:
They're beautiful machines! I used to tinker & trade quite a bit, and three Pismos have crossed my hands. Used one as a daily driver for most of 2007-08, but by that time the G3 was really showing its age. I might still have one if I ever could have seen my way to buying a G4 upgrade, but those have always been a bit too pricey for me. Too easy and cost-effective to trade up to the TiBooks & eventually AlBooks.

I did enjoy typing on that keyboard. I just wish Apple had offered it in something other than brown...ahem, “bronze.”
Click to expand...
The bronze keyboard was the Lombard, not the Pismo.
 
One Pismo user right here, in fact I'm typing on it. I own about 3-4, one of which is my main and the others are fully working but kept for spares etc. I fell in love with the Pismo around 2004, when they were still going for quite a packet. I managed to bag myself a Lombard and while it was a nice laptop, it was never a Pismo. I wouldn't get one until 2008, when I was given one to repair. The DC power board died and after swapping it out, my friend told me to keep the laptop.


About 5 years ago I bought a Pismo off fleabay, when I noticed it had a XLR8G4 sticker. I bagged the laptop for £10 and when it arrived, I quickly whipped the lid off to see if my suspicions would be confirmed. When I took the RF shield off, sure enough a nice tasty G4 550mhz CPU card.

Lightbulbfun, that is one epic mod! I dont think I'd dare try reflowing a cpu card like you, but would this be something you could pay a reflow center to do for you? I've three spare Pismo's, so could experiment and try making a 600mhz system
 
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Haemoglobin said:
One Pismo user right here, in fact I'm typing on it. I own about 3-4, one of which is my main and the others are fully working but kept for spares etc. I fell in love with the Pismo around 2004, when they were still going for quite a packet. I managed to bag myself a Lombard and while it was a nice laptop, it was never a Pismo. I wouldn't get one until 2008, when I was given one to repair. The DC power board died and after swapping it out, my friend told me to keep the laptop.


About 5 years ago I bought a Pismo off fleabay, when I noticed it had a XLR8G4 sticker. I bagged the laptop for £10 and when it arrived, I quickly whipped the lid off to see if my suspicions would be confirmed. When I took the RF shield off, sure enough a nice tasty G4 550mhz CPU card.

Lightbulbfun, that is one epic mod! I dont think I'd dare try reflowing a cpu card like you, but would this be something you could pay a reflow center to do for you? I've three spare Pismo's, so could experiment and try making a 600mhz system
Click to expand...

Amazing! The G4 Pismo is a fantastic computer!!! Is your Wifi working?
 
Haemoglobin said:
Lightbulbfun, that is one epic mod! I dont think I'd dare try reflowing a cpu card like you, but would this be something you could pay a reflow center to do for you? I've three spare Pismo's, so could experiment and try making a 600mhz system
Click to expand...

Could you recommend a UK based reflow center? I've got a few boards that need reflowing.

Also a daily Pismo user - I originally had a 400 Mhz one, but picked a 500 Mhz up about a decade ago and use it as a remote speaker (iTunes remote still works to control it from an iPhone, and the speakers are nice).
 
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Haemoglobin said:
One Pismo user right here, in fact I'm typing on it. I own about 3-4, one of which is my main and the others are fully working but kept for spares etc. I fell in love with the Pismo around 2004, when they were still going for quite a packet. I managed to bag myself a Lombard and while it was a nice laptop, it was never a Pismo. I wouldn't get one until 2008, when I was given one to repair. The DC power board died and after swapping it out, my friend told me to keep the laptop.


About 5 years ago I bought a Pismo off fleabay, when I noticed it had a XLR8G4 sticker. I bagged the laptop for £10 and when it arrived, I quickly whipped the lid off to see if my suspicions would be confirmed. When I took the RF shield off, sure enough a nice tasty G4 550mhz CPU card.

Lightbulbfun, that is one epic mod! I dont think I'd dare try reflowing a cpu card like you, but would this be something you could pay a reflow center to do for you? I've three spare Pismo's, so could experiment and try making a 600mhz system
Click to expand...

bobnugget said:
Could you recommend a UK based reflow center? I've got a few boards that need reflowing.

Also a daily Pismo user - I originally had a 400 Mhz one, but picked a 500 Mhz up about a decade ago and use it as a remote speaker (iTunes remote still works to control it from an iPhone, and the speakers are nice).
Click to expand...


I have a few enquiries into this :)

so heres a general post of sorts,

for those looking for a bit more info on how I did it I recommend you also read this thread here https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...iy-ibook-g3-clamshell-g4-cpu-upgrade.2105654/ as I go into a bit more detail on things then what I did in my Pismo thread

as for what G4 CPUs you need if your attempting to do it yourself I recommend these :) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322679142203

they clock well and come with solder balls pre applied so you dont have to worry about reballing things (change .co.uk to .com if your in the US)

if your looking to have someone else do the upgrade for you, im sure there are plenty of repair shops around the place that could BGA solder on a CPU for you, but as I do all that sort of work myself I cant name any id recommend sadly (unless your in the US then I recommend @dosdude1 :) )

but on that note if your UK based im happy to work something out with you and upgrade a Pismo card with a G4 for you :)

I have a for sale advert here detailing things a bit more in that regard https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-upgrade-card-for-powerbook-g3-pismo.2121229/

(I actually have a surplus 550Mhz G4 Pismo CPU card ready to go if anyone is interested in buying that)

hopefully this helps :)
 
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Another Pismo user here, with:
550MHz G4
1GB RAM
IDE44 to dual CF adapter with 2 CF to uSD adapters
128GB endurance uSD card with MacOS 9.2.2
128GB endurance uSD card with MacOS 10.5.8
DVD-RW / ZIP250 / LS120
airport card
USB2 PC Card
 
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reukiodo said:
Another Pismo user here, with:
550MHz G4
1GB RAM
IDE44 to dual CF adapter with 2 CF to uSD adapters
128GB endurance uSD card with MacOS 9.2.2
128GB endurance uSD card with MacOS 10.5.8
DVD-RW / ZIP250 / LS120
airport card
USB2 PC Card
Click to expand...

Nice pimped up Pismo!

I’m curious about the performance of the CF/SD arrangement you’ve got there.

If you have the time, jump over to the “Post Your SSD/CF SATA/PATA PowerPC Benchmark Results” thread to pit it against my G3 Pismo with mSATA SSD here. :)
 
I didn't get the endurance cards for performance, but I'm pretty sure they aren't the weakest link in the I/O chain... I hope I can get some time this weekend to run performance tests for you on the other thread, but no promises because my time goes first to family and then home repairs.
 
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Haemoglobin said:
WiFi works fine on WPA but not WPA2, so I have to USB tether my Pismo to an android phone. Luckily I had an old HTC wildfire S hanging around which has now begun a new life as a network adapter for my Pismo :)
Click to expand...
If you don’t mind a PCMCIA WiFi Card, specific Belkin ones work for WPA2 with the built in drivers. I have one and can go and check the model number if you are interested in looking for one.
 
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I've actually just removed my Airport card and am now using a Buffalo 54G PCMCIA card (no drivers needed because it's Airport native), as my whole network had to be on WPA only and b/g for the internal card to connect.
Now I'm back on WPA2 and b/g/n with no problems.

The Belkin card mentioned above is also Airport native.

Cheers :)

Hugh
 
Hughmac said:
The Belkin card mentioned above is also Airport native.
Click to expand...
Yep, same chipset as an early airport extreme card. Unfortunately, there are multiple variants, and the newer ones used a cheaper chip, so don't work at all. It's an F5D7010 and up to v3 should work.
 
LightBulbFun said:
but on that note if your UK based im happy to work something out with you and upgrade a Pismo card with a G4 for you :)

I have a for sale advert here detailing things a bit more in that regard https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-upgrade-card-for-powerbook-g3-pismo.2121229/

(I actually have a surplus 550Mhz G4 Pismo CPU card ready to go if anyone is interested in buying that)

hopefully this helps :)
Click to expand...

Despite having been here for 10+ years, I'm not chatty enough to get into the marketplace yet.

I might be interested in a G4 card one day (especially as I have a spares Pismo for when bits of mine break) - would be interested to see how a 900 Mhz G3 handles nowadays though. Back in the mid 2000's, I remember reviews saying it was better than the G4 at some tasks, but got very hot. Never had one myself, though.
 
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bobnugget said:
Despite having been here for 10+ years, I'm not chatty enough to get into the marketplace yet.

I might be interested in a G4 card one day (especially as I have a spares Pismo for when bits of mine break) - would be interested to see how a 900 Mhz G3 handles nowadays though. Back in the mid 2000's, I remember reviews saying it was better than the G4 at some tasks, but got very hot. Never had one myself, though.
Click to expand...

you have a 900Mhz G3 Pismo upgrade?! Very cool!

id love to know more about your specific one, does it have the 750FX or 750GX CPU and do you have pictures of it in operation and pictures of the card itself? :)
 
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