400Mhz Pismo

[coius]

Oops, yeah, that's right. It's just "PowerBook"

Anyways, been a long time since I had a Pismo, so I forgot about that until I received the machine. I went on the fact that the guy listed it with a 100Mhz FSB. I know the Lombard had 66Mhz, so I thought I scored a really nice machine. Which I really did. DVD Decoder built-in, 400Mhz, 256MB + 64MB, DVD-ROM, 8MB VRAM, HDD was original, but the battery gives me 2-3 hours (almost like it's brand new!)

The original power adapter was included. Those were kind of neat. Wish apple went back to that kind. I can get pics if anyone wants. I will be posting pics of the machine in a bit, I have them I just forgot to post them

 

[coius]

These are the pics.



the machine is in really nice condition. It shipped with little to no scratches. Battery lasts 2-3 hour and charges all the way. Took 6 hours to charge initially



The logo. Should've noticed this as it was in the pic on eBay, but it wasn't a clear picture. Oh well. It's still a very nice machine. I only paid $60. It came out relatively cheap for a PowerBook G3 this nice.



and the AC Adapter. Cool looking adapter, but the AC Cord comes out really easily. So just moving it can cause it to come out.

All in all I guess I am satisfied. the SCSI bus hit's 10MB/s consistently with an external 9GB Ultra2 SCSI drive (68-pin 40MB/s) on an adapter in an external case.

One issue I have is that the DVD-ROM drive, while it works on other discs, won't read either my Tiger disc, or DVD+R's (expected on the DVD+R)

It will play/read other DVDs and CDs very well. it's just not liking my Tiger Disc.

So I had to hit the net and source the CD version of Tiger to install it. Then with XPostFacto, it slipped right on.

the extra RAM is out in the mail right now. I will have it shortly (probably around noon when the post man comes) and I will install it.

Does anyone know if the video chip on this is on a 33Mhz or 66Mhz internal PCI bus? if it's 66Mhz, it would be a lot better and rival close to AGP 1x or 2x. That would make it faster than PCI 33Mhz/32-bit

 

[coius]

RAM just got here and is now installed. It saw half of it (like expected) and now I am cruising with 512MB RAM

I installed 10.4 on the machine. I haven't booted into it yet, but as it was, I was hitting swap file HARD with 360MB RAM. 512MB should help that...

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

VM hack for the rest? }

 

[coius]

you mean virtual memory?

not needed under OS 9. it would be more helpful under OS X really. I might bump it down to 10.3 since Tiger just CONSUMES RAM. Even with 512MB I am hitting swap shortly after booting.

Does anyone happen to know what the typical running RAM usage under Mac OS 10.3.9 is?

I don't want to do 10.2, but I could run Classilla under 10.3 TenFourFox is right out. It's too slow mainly due to the process/bus speed, but I think with 10.3, Classilla would work bettery. It might be significantly faster too.

I found 10.4 slow on even a G5. but 10.5 fixed that. So I think I will probably bump it down.

 

[theos911]

From my experienced 512mb is the bare-bottom for 10.4 . For 10.4 to really be anything near "snappy" on 512mb you need a fast HDD(7200/SSD) and a dual-core of some sort. Otherwise, I would recommended 768+(but I don't think you can on a lombard). I believe 10.4 had a recommended 512 and 10.3 had a recommended 256mb.

One thing to consider when going down to 10.3 is the loss of wpa2 support. It isn't a big issue, but it is one of those make-or-break issues depending on your home network.(I have a nice netgear router that has a setting to accept both wpa and wpa2 at the same time)

I can't imagine the performance on the early iBooks that shipped with 10.4 and only 256mb of RAM. YUCK!

As for browsers, there is also camino you could try. Lastly, if it turns out to be unuseable take a look at Crux or MintPPC, I haven't used them myself except in emulators(on the school's iBooks.... ) but I've heard wonderful things about them.

 

[coius]

Yes, Linux certainly is an option. Does anyone know if these are true New-World machines, or did that start with the Pismo. I mean, how similar is this to the Gossamer/Beige G3. It seems to carry the Gossamer chipset (as noted when starting OS X) but the question relates on how new this machine is in firmware.

The wallstreets aren't even something I would consider new-world due to being extemely close to the Beige G3 in hardware.

But I know that the Lombard has USB, and it has SCSI, but it also will boot 10.3 natively, something the Beige didn't do.

So can I just pop in a Linux CD, or do I have to use a Boot Loader like the older classic macs?

 

[theos911]

There are several success stories for Lombards on the MintPPC forums. I gotta run, but I'll see if I can find some specifics for you later. Oh yah, there is also NetBSD.

 

[jruschme]

I've run NetBSD on my Lombard with no problems. The biggest problem, IIRC, was getting X11 configured.

A Lombard is fully NewWorld, but is about the portable equivalent of a B&W G3 in terms of firmware.

 

[coius]

One more question. What is the max speed (in MB/s) of the ATA bus. I see ATA-2, but that doesn't tell me much. Is that 16MB/s or 33MB/s?

 

[coius]

Something doesn't add up. I see specs that it is ATA-2, but ATAPI Support didn't come out till ATA-3, which supports 33MB/s, and the DVD-ROM on this is ATAPI. Did apple modify their controller to do custom things?

Also I think this system reported SMART status on the hard drive I have in it. if that's true, it HAS to be ATA-3, as that was when it was introduced.

it's a bummer that Seagate won't RMA a drive I found that would otherwise be in warranty. They say I have to go through the OEM (which would be dell) but Dell won't warrant it. if it was sold specifically by Seagate, it would have been in warranty. Never had this issue on WD or Hitachi (Have replaced several OEM drives through them when they died. I usually came out with a spare drive when I swapped them out)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Interesting, if inapplicable (?) lowendmac Pismo ATA warning.

Here's the referenced Road Warrior article.

edit: PBG3 series + ATA6 = borked . . . :-/

. . . so I guess it was applicable after all. :

 

[Gorgonops]

Something doesn't add up. I see specs that it is ATA-2, but ATAPI Support didn't come out till ATA-3, which supports 33MB/s, and the DVD-ROM on this is ATAPI...

ATAPI is a software/command syntax protocol that uses IDE as the physical transport medium. Technically it wasn't even developed by the same industry consortium that maintained the IDE/ATA standards until the two merged with *ATA/ATAPI-4*. With the appropriate driver you can speak to ATAPI devices over any controller adhering to the ATA-2 standard or better. (And it *may* work over some vendor-specific "EIDE" variations that were coming out prior to the ATA-2 standard being ratified.) And that said... ATA-3 and ATA-2 are essentially the same thing. ATA-3 was a minor revision that added SMART as a "standard feature" and changed some implementation requirements to solve some reliability issues with faster transfer modes. It didn't add any new modes so a controller designed for ATA-2 could be trivially made to behave as an ATA-3 controller with little more than a BIOS tweak or driver change. 33MB/s UDMA modes are ATA-4.

The Lombard uses essentially the same drive controller as the Beige G3. ATA-3 wasn't ratified until 1997 so that controller was undoubtedly designed under the ATA-2 specifications, which might explain why whatever specs you're looking at call it that. (It's very possible that it doesn't strictly meet some "letter of the law" ATA-3 requirement with regards to physical implementation.) But being "ATA-2" doesn't prevent it from doing "ATA-3" things.

 

[coius]

So I installed Linux Mint PPC. thanks so much for suggesting it. it runs better than OS X, gives me a modern OS and it runs very nicely. Now I just gotta wait till that 44-pin IDE -> LIF/ZIF adapter gets here. Then I will be rocking with Solid State.

Btw, the battery in this is all screwed up. After using it the first time and it lasted 3 hours, I charged it up and when I went to use it, it was at 4 lights for 5 minutes, then it instantly went to 1 blinking light and the machine shut off. I think there is a shorted cell. Before you ask, yes I did try Battery Reset 2.0. It didn't do a darn thing for it.

I got a BRAND NEW 6500mah battery going for it. The cells are brand new, not NOS. So that will be nice. I bought it on eBay, but it cost like $45 + $10 shipping, so kind of expensive. I am just building this up to be a relatively decked-out laptop. I am trying to reduce my vintage computing bulk by moving to laptops rather than desktops. the SCSI port on this came in handy, but I would rather have had FireWire on a Pismo (And the ATA-66MB/s would have helped too!)

Linux Mint runs very nice. I am typing this under it right now in IceWeasel. Took me a bit to figure out how to get my bookmarks to show up on the toolbar. But I got it.

Question: trying to get the one button mouse to simulate two buttons. Is there a modifier I press? I also would like to turn off the tap-to-click. It's annoying as hell having it register clicks when I barely put my finger on the trackpad. I have the plug in for the moue emulation, but i can't access the feature or tune it rather.

Thanks guys! the laptop is turning out nicely (oh and wifi has been upgraded to a D-Link DWL-G650 802.11g PC Card that does WPA2 ) and it's plenty fast enough.

 

[coius]

Now that's just curious (and wrong). The laptop has a 16.6MB/s bus on it, yet the drive they put in runs faster that than. ATA/33 and the internal transfer rate of the drive is up to 20MB/s. Why would Apple put a bus in a system that is slower than the drive, when the ATA/33 Specs were out, and so was the G3 Blue and white which had it. Why wouldn't they migrate it over (remember, the B&W came out in 1998, and the Lombard came out in 1999). So why would apple wait so long (2000) before putting ATA/xx on the system.

what's even more tragic, is if I had gotten the Pismo, Apple made the jump from ATA-2 up to ATA-5, which is 66MB/s. That's like a 6x increase. Doesn't make sense... If I had gotten the Pismo, I could have rocked out with that SSD I am going to put in the system a bit better.

Also, is it right to get consistantly only 10MB/s on a 16.6MB/s bus? usually from overhead there is a loss, but I didn't think it would be THAT much of a loss.

It might be my drive though. I am going to throw the old 6GB back in, and see what I get (I will do a test) and it will be interesting if the ATA-5 of the drive is causing that.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

How much cache is on the drive and what kind of test are you running?

 

[coius]

I just looked up the specs sheet. It's an IBM Travelstar and the transfer rate (internally, platters) is higher than the interface. Which strikes me odd that apple would not even redesign/use a different IDE Controller.

 

[coius]

After seeing a SMART error coming up while trying to load data onto the 20GB drive I have in the laptop, I decided to replace the drive. I found a 30GB in my stash, and when I went to format it, it says "Cannot Format - Locked" in Disk Utility... Weird...

What happened is the laptop I took it out of, the previous owner put a security password on the drive. Unfortunately, this means the laptop drive is useless unless you have the password...

Well, enter HDD Unlock This tool, for $5, I was able to brute-force the drive and cracked it. So now I have a 30GB HDD, and I am installing Mint PPC onto the drive. I can't get the old 20GB cloned over, so I have to completely reinstall. Oh well... I got time. I just hope the power doesn't go out in the middle (we have storms). And my battery is shot (after the initial run, the battery went to crap, I think a cell is shorted).

I got a brand new replacement battery coming. It cost $45 for it, and with a wifi card, USB 2.0 card, etc.. this will be a fully decked-out machine. it runs really nice under Mint with 512MB RAM. the DVD Decoder hasn't been used yet, but I am unsure if Linux can access it. It might so I will try it and see...

Anyways, if anyone has a locked drive, and they want the drive back (but not the data) that tool will work great. I think the max is $35 for up to 1TB. You purchase a 1 drive license to unlock one drive. You need Windows 2k/XP/Vista/7 to do it, and I would recommend using a tower. You can't use a FireWire or USB case as it won't pass the instructions to the chip for the ATA Lock command.

Anyways, glad I have a new drive. The 20GB is going to get taken apart for the rare earth magnets and probably used in one of my dad's projects.

 

[Gorgonops]

...Which strikes me odd that apple would not even redesign/use a different IDE Controller.

Apple's PowerPC chipsets were always a day late and a dollar short compared to the competition. For all of PowerPC's positive attributes Apple's sheer laziness/incompetence in designing system chipsets was a constant monkey on the platform's back.

Apple used the same motherboard chipset, the one designed for the Beige G3, for three years, with only one minor tweak. (The "Heathrow" IC was replaced with "Paddington", the difference being 10mbit vs. 100mb Ethernet PHY support.) It had an ATA2 controller and no USB. (Apple gets all this credit for being an "innovator" in USB, but the first Macs with USB technically didn't have built-in support for it. They used an accessory PCI controller chip.) By comparison the early 1997 Intel PIIX3 southbridge was fully ATA3 compliant and included a USB controller (although early versions were buggy and it was often disabled.) And by 1998 Intel boards shipped with the ATA4/USB equipped PIIX4 (which by that time was usually paired with an AGP-capable Northbridge), which was an excellent chip. (It was so well supported that VMware/Virtualbox emulate it by default to this day.)

That was a tough time for Apple. In an attempt to achieve "feature parity" with standard PCs the B&W G3 shipped with an (initially buggy) accessory ATA4 controller and an "overclocked" PCI slot for video, which goes a lot to explain why it's a notoriously buggy and unreliable computer. Apparently Apple decided in the case of the Lombard they could afford to squeeze a USB controller onto what's essentially same motherboard as the "Wallstreet" but an ATA controller was too much. So they just went with the "Paddington" IDE and hoped no one would notice. The Lombard is really just a stopgap machine, just like the trayload iMacs, B&W G3, "Original" (non-AGP) iBook, and "Yikes" G4s were. The Pismo is technically the first "Jobsian"-era Mac laptop in terms of chipsets.

(Which of course is full of its own sadness, such as *never* developing a chipset supporting G4s with a DDR frontside bus.)

 

[theos911]

Speaking of MintPPC, look what managed to make the Low End Mac news this week...