The POWER in PowerBook

[Gamer9430]

As some of you may or may not be aware, I accidentally murdered my 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 15in. Since then, I have wished for a new 15in since I loved that one so much. The 15in screen size is perfect to me, and thanks to that PowerBook, it made me change my views on larger screen laptops. Anyway, after months of coming up dry on eBay and from fellow members, I found a replacement 1.25GHz board on eBay for $1. So I figured what the hell and bought it. Sadly, that didn't work either... Finally, a good friend of mine offered me his PowerBook G4. So I finally got it today, and...

ITS A DLSD! When he told me about it, he said it was a DLSD so I immediately took him up on his offer. A few weeks later, it's finally in my possession. It had a 40GB HDD, 1GB RAM, and a worn top case. I took it apart, upgraded the HDD to a 120GB HDD, 2GB RAM, and transplanted the keyboard into a less beat up top case. It's still not perfect (the metal is peeling up and I'm currently using tape to keep it down), but its definitely visually nicer looking. Ideally, I'd love to get a better top case for it, as well as a brand new battery. In my brief testing, everything worked perfectly, even the battery (appears to) hold a charge for about 2+ hours! I'm currently restoring my 17in to it and it should be done in just under 2hrs, and afterwards I really be able to feel the POWER in the 1.67GHz G4, or the PERFORMANCE from the ATI Radeon 9700 with 128MB VRAM and 1440x960 Hi-Res screen as well as the 2GB of DDR2 RAM (Drooling yet? ). In all seriousness, extremely excited to have a working 15in PowerBook G4 Aluminum again after several months (since December).

Pictures to come as always

 

[128keaton]

As some of you may or may not be aware, I accidentally murdered my 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 15in. Since then, I have wished for a new 15in since I loved that one so much. The 15in screen size is perfect to me, and thanks to that PowerBook, it made me change my views on larger screen laptops. Anyway, after months of coming up dry on eBay and from fellow members, I found a replacement 1.25GHz board on eBay for $1. So I figured what the hell and bought it. Sadly, that didn't work either... Finally, a good friend of mine offered me his PowerBook G4. So I finally got it today, and...

ITS A DLSD! When he told me about it, he said it was a DLSD so I immediately took him up on his offer. A few weeks later, it's finally in my possession. It had a 40GB HDD, 1GB RAM, and a worn top case. I took it apart, upgraded the HDD to a 120GB HDD, 2GB RAM, and transplanted the keyboard into a less beat up top case. It's still not perfect (the metal is peeling up and I'm currently using tape to keep it down), but its definitely visually nicer looking. Ideally, I'd love to get a better top case for it, as well as a brand new battery. In my brief testing, everything worked perfectly, even the battery (appears to) hold a charge for about 2+ hours! I'm currently restoring my 17in to it and it should be done in just under 2hrs, and afterwards I really be able to feel the POWER in the 1.67GHz G4, or the PERFORMANCE from the ATI Radeon 9700 with 128MB VRAM and 1440x960 Hi-Res screen as well as the 2GB of DDR2 RAM (Drooling yet? ). In all seriousness, extremely excited to have a working 15in PowerBook G4 Aluminum again after several months (since December).

Pictures to come as always

Lucky duck!! Then again, I received a Tangerine iBook today. All of my 15" Laptops are MBPS, the 1,1 and the 4,1

 

[Gamer9430]

Leopard is done, now I'm cloning over my Cube's Tiger install. This DLSD is shaping up to be loaded with software!

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm glad that you're enjoying the computer.

I've said before that I could still use a DLSD as a main computer if I needed to(and in fact did use one when we did the PPC Challenge last year). They are among the most "peppy" feeling PPC Macs I've used when used for modern tasks(i.e. surfing the internet), and are only really surpassed by higher end G5 towers.

They definitely were a great end to Apple's PowerPC relationship.

 

[Gamer9430]

I'm glad that you're enjoying the computer.

I've said before that I could still use a DLSD as a main computer if I needed to(and in fact did use one when we did the PPC Challenge last year). They are among the most "peppy" feeling PPC Macs I've used when used for modern tasks(i.e. surfing the internet), and are only really surpassed by higher end G5 towers.

They definitely were a great end to Apple's PowerPC relationship.

PowerPC challenge? I must not have been around yet (came around in November 2014). Amazing that in less than 2 years I have 15 PCs and 28 Macs, coming from my 1 Mac and 4 PCs

 

[beanboy89]

Congrats. Those are really nice laptops. They're definitely the pinnacle of the PowerPC era.

 

[MacCubed]

PowerPC challenge? I must not have been around yet (came around in November 2014). Amazing that in less than 2 years I have 15 PCs and 28 Macs, coming from my 1 Mac and 4 PCs

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-challenge.1879235/ I think you were here for it!

 

[macgeek18]

I need to put a new battery connector in my 15". It won't run on battery at all even with a new battery. They are wonderful machines. I have a 1.67 17" and 15".

 

[Dronecatcher]

The last of the Powerbooks really are great machines - I can still easily use my 17" as a desktop replacement, though for the web, whilst Safari/Webkit is fast, compatibility issues do arise - then it's over to TFF which is slower but still workable.
The enhanced GPU makes short work of the Core Image demands and the desktop is super fluid.

 

[bunnspecial]

The enhanced GPU makes short work of the Core Image demands and the desktop is super fluid.

I think that the 9700 in these is a lot of what makes them feel so fast.

I have the rare desktop Mac edition 9700(which was BTO in the FW800 MDD) and would love to use it in my Quicksilver-it's significantly faster than the 9600XT in there now. Unfortunately, my 9700 has what I think is a VRAM problem, and is only capable of outputting modern art rather than an actual usable image

 

[Gamer9430]

Well, in a stress test I did today in school, the battery died in about 10 minutes, even though it was reporting 1+hrs remaining. Upon charging it later, it's time until completion kept climbing Until it hit the dreaded 10hrs. Luckily, unlike my old 15in and 17in's batteries, it actually reports the percentage properly (I don't know how accurate it is, but it isn't stuck at 100% or 0%). I'm hoping it just needed a bit of a recalibration since I don't think it's been used in awhile. Another thing to note, in battery info, it shows the cycle count as 0 and the capacity is 4080 of 4082 or something like that, whatever it is, it's extremely close. I'm hoping it resolves itself and I can use it without being tethered to a wall each time, if not, it looks like I'll need a new battery!

Also, I was having some wifi issues, but after repairing permissions and resetting PRAM, it works fine now. Also, I'm in love with the beautiful resolution on the screen and the smoothness of the graphics

 

[Dronecatcher]

Sometimes, dormant batteries need a few cycles before you can see their true capacity - and some after market batteries, even when new, seem to have a mind of their own!

 

[Gamer9430]

Sometimes, dormant batteries need a few cycles before you can see their true capacity - and some after market batteries, even when new, seem to have a mind of their own!

Yeah I definitely think that's the issue. So later on after I wrote that, I began to redrain the battery since I charged it up slightly. Sure enough to, it was lasting for a really long time on around 20%. I then killed it and let it charge up. It again slowly climbed to 10hrs and the battery itself was slowly charging as well. I walked away for about and hour or 2 and returned to find it done, even though when I left it had 10:00hrs and was only on 20%. I'm not sure yet if it's going to work, but it's apparently charged. Also, the cycle count and accurate maximum charge capacity returned, it's 38xx maximum and 119 cycles.

 

[ziggy29]

Very nice! I just lucked into a nice 1 GHz TiBook for quite cheap, and the battery (an actual Apple battery, not a cheap modern knockoff, shows 60 cycles) still holds a full charge and lasts more than four hours! I just threw in a 250 GB SSD (mSATA with IDE adapter) and this thing is really nice -- triple booting OS 9.2.2, Tiger and Leopard. Apart from a few scuffs on the top of the case it's almost flawless in all other respects.

Like you I like the 15" as a tradeoff between screen real estate and portability. And as an aside, this is the first I've really played with a TiBook and I never realized how much titanium feels like plastic.

 

[Gamer9430]

Very nice! I just lucked into a nice 1 GHz TiBook for quite cheap, and the battery (an actual Apple battery, not a cheap modern knockoff, shows 60 cycles) still holds a full charge and lasts more than four hours! I just threw in a 250 GB SSD (mSATA with IDE adapter) and this thing is really nice -- triple booting OS 9.2.2, Tiger and Leopard. Apart from a few scuffs on the top of the case it's almost flawless in all other respects.

Like you I like the 15" as a tradeoff between screen real estate and portability. And as an aside, this is the first I've really played with a TiBook and I never realized how much titanium feels like plastic.

I have a GigaTi as well, but my battery is damaged beyond even the 10hr syndrome, so even if it's inserted it doesn't show up. As @LightBulbFun discovered, if no battery is inserted in the 1GHz, it throttles down to 667MHz. I wasn't happy with using it because I felt it was so slow even though it was 1GHz, so it all made sense after LBF discovered that and informed me about it. Now I have to find a new battery! I need a new battery for all my PowerBooks except for the 12in (1.5GHz).

 

[ziggy29]

I have a GigaTi as well, but my battery is damaged beyond even the 10hr syndrome, so even if it's inserted it doesn't show up. As @LightBulbFun discovered, if no battery is inserted in the 1GHz, it throttles down to 667MHz. I wasn't happy with using it because I felt it was so slow even though it was 1GHz, so it all made sense after LBF discovered that and informed me about it. Now I have to find a new battery! I need a new battery for all my PowerBooks except for the 12in (1.5GHz).

I didn't know that about the battery. I can see that making quite a difference, yeah, but it seems odd it would do that. I should bench this one side be side with my 1.33 GHz 12" AlBook, because the TiBook actually feels slightly faster. It's probably not, and won't bench higher, but for some reason it feels faster. Maybe it's the "honeymoon".

I got the whole thing for about what you'd pay for a new, decent-brand aftermarket battery by itself, so I'm pretty happy.