Recent content by dan.dem

Wow, @DJ68K , that sounds about as complicated as getting my Office 2011 copy activated by Microsoft :) , really! But this could be a hint that the PowerBook may indeed become usable by sacrificing the content of the hard disk - likely not a big loss. Reinitializing the disk with Silverlining or...

I faintly remember seeing such a password box on my PB 5300, kind of a predecessor to the 3400. And I faintly remember it was a disk based protection system or at least has something to do with some disk sectors. So, likely not firmware related (or whatever pre boot technology Apple used at that...

For me the conclusion is: Gigabit-series Titanium Powerbooks G4 have a moderate (roughly 15%) speed penalty relative to their processor and bus speed compared to other G4 Powerbooks. This is most likely caused by their small L2 cache which is not compensated by a level 3 cache like in the later...

If you compare processor and bus speeds with Geekbench scores you find that all but 2 Ti-Book variations scale their performance scores quite well along the two determinants (less than 3.5% error in my simple linear model). Only the 550 and 667 MHz Gigabit Tis show 18% and 16% lower GB2 scores...

@3lectr1cPPC : Thank you for testing! It is actually only less than 7% lower than reported in everymac. Probably Tiger taxes the little Ti quite a lot. E.g. my 300 MHz iBook should have a score of 155, but achives only 140 under Tiger (unsupported, but enough RAM: 544MB). 10 to 15 percent...

Too late today, too tired for comprehensive comments, sorry. Just one thing: @3lectr1cPPC : Links to Geekbench 2 software. Here are official downloads from Primatelabs website. I _guess_ they are PPC compatible (fat): http://www.primatelabs.com/blog/2011/11/geekbench-223/ Here is a cracked...

Oh yes, likely it's a cache issue. I will look into it. Thank you @herd for hinting me to Barefeats. The situation reminds me on clamshell iBooks: Their second generation tested slightly lower regardless of the higher processor speed because the backside cache was only half the previous size...

I am contemplating about getting a Titanium PowerBook. A friend has a 550 MHz, 2nd series Gigabit Ethernet, so pre-PCI. It is a decent device I know well since I helped him upgrading it in the 2000s. There is just one thing: Everymac.com, usually a very reliable source, shows for the 550 MHz...

I remember our rule of thumb: If the internal hard disk is IDE the Mac requires 32-bit addressing. The av-Quadras using an internal SCSI-disk are the exception of the rule. This may have something to do with av-Macs considered professional class Macs, and the simpler IDE controller puts more...

So, some people really got it running. Great work! Years ago I thought YDL is easier to install on Macs than other PPC-distros, but from what I've read recently it's probably not. I wanted to try it on an original iMac in 2009 but finally opted for Xubuntu (which worked ok but even in idle it...

Thank you, @bakkus, for hinting me to the NuBus Linux Project. What I also find particulary interesting is a link to an archived website about LTSP Clients. Reducing the burden on the little processors is a good way to make them longer useful. I used to think that thin clients are mostly about...

I was once the owner of a 6100. As many, I had big expectations of RISC machines. I had seen some nice Sun and Apollo workstations at university and was awaiting something similar powerful. Not surprisingly I was very disappointed about the performance of my 6100. Today I still like its looks ...

Cannot say about the DVD drive but the original iBook's CD-ROM drive was/is very picky about CD-Rs from new on. Industrial produced CDs all work properly but home-toasted CDs usually needed many slow re-reads or are often unreadable. Eventually I found a (slow 4x) CD-RW (or was it CD+RW?) media...

Oh, sorry, I misread this. Anyway, my hope is that a better understanding of the circuitry leads to recommended procedures for error tracing and repair. This PS isn't a too complicated, and doesn't need very expensive equipment to repair - like a logic board does. My hope is we can build up...

Thank you SuperSVGA this is a great step to successful repairs of the LC power supplies! While replacing the PS with a modern one is feasible, keeping the original ones working feels more satisfying to me. Please, can someone try to explain the function of the circuitry? This may hint about the...