haplain's never-ending quest

[Anonymous Freak]

Some thoughts regarding the possibility of it being a PowerBook G5...

1. It must not be a standard PowerBook G4 motherboard. The G5 used a completely different chip set, thus if it even smells like a G4 board, the idea of it having a G5 is right out.

2. The power curve seems a little low, but might be in the realm of possibility. The 17" MacBook Pros came with a 60W power supply, so if the whole point of the G5 not being in a notebook is that it was power hungry, having "only" a 45W PSU seems low. (For comparison, my 12" PowerBook G4 came with a 45W power supply. The slowest released G5 was 1.6 GHz, and the 17" iMac at that speed had a whopping 180W power supply. (It had to drive a desktop HD and higher-power graphics chip, but that's still quite a difference. *BUT* power usage is an exponential curve. It is entirely possible that Apple+IBM developed a lower-power chipset, and that by running the processor as slow as the apparent 1.1 GHz might have given just enough to allow it in a mobile form-factor. (That said, I would have to assume this was a very early "feasibility study" prototype, and that it likely had a very short battery life, with the thought that they would improve it by production-time.)

 

[Anonymous Freak]

She's no clear portable...

If it's what we think it is - it's 10x a clear Portable. If it's what we think it is, it's approaching "mint condition unmodified Lisa" in "historical worth". It could very well be in the neighborhood of an Apple I.

 

[Goftrey]

It all adds up - dates, codenames, power consumption. You've got me extremely excited now!

 

[TheMacGuy]

The 17" MacBook Pros came with a 60W power supply, so if the whole point of the G5 not being in a notebook is that it was power hungry, having "only" a 45W PSU seems low.

at the time the G4 Powerbook 1.5ghz was 21 watts

The 45W is not talking about the PSU. The 45W is how much power the processor its self is pulling. This means that the G5 in the PowerBook would be pulling 2x the watts of the G4 (thanks for the watts uni!). I'm willing to bet that the PSU is rated at 85+ watts, but hap would need to confirm, and thats if it has any markings at all.

 

[haplain]

From what I saw the PSU is entirely unmarked. I mean even the way the power chord from the wall plugs in is slight different than ANY mac charger. I mention that because I'd assume they wanted to make sure that no one would accidentally plug in this massive power brick into the.

The computer clearly says Q51 on it and the engineer said they it wasn't released because of terrible battery life and a massive power brick. It's a really cool find indeed. If it is a G5, hold onto your butts

 

[uniserver]

i thought i was just talking about cpu power consumption.

well maybe there is all kinds of cool diagnostic utilities on the hd that shows individual component power consumptions… that would be bad ass!

 

[TheMacGuy]

If it is a G5, I would say it is a one of a kind. No other G5 PowerBooks have surfaced in the past and its probably more rare then the Twiggy Mac!

 

[unity]

And if it is a G5, while a bit late to the party, MANY forum users (MacRumors, etc) are gonna be eating their words! Remember when a PowerBook G5 was the butt end of jokes for so long? Even after the first Intel desktops came out.

 

[redrouteone]

Holy cow. I'm not at all surprised that Apple built a G5 PowerBook prototype, but seeing as how this is the first glimpse of one they clearly did not get very far with it.

Tell you what, in this hobby it is not very often that we get "new" stuff. If I had this I might check with Lloyd of London on having it insured.

 

[mcdermd]

I received a copy of "Iconic" for Christmas and they have some photos of a first-gen MacBook (Pro? I think it's just a MacBook) Prototype that is quite similar to Hap's acrylic rig here. Not the same but the engineering prototype rigging is of the same type.

 

[haplain]

I know the guy who owns that. He's a really nice fella, you should see what else he's got. His works and is an Intel Core Duo that never shipped in the MacBooks. It's a nice piece indeed. I was going to post a pic of that myself but thanks mcdermd. That again confirms Apple still uses clear/transparent shots to this day. It's not the same as the older ones that the whole machine was actually plastic but just to get all the pieces together to evaluate.

I've got another example I'll post tonight of extremely recent clear shot stuff

 

[mcdermd]

I figured this just accentuates the differences between EVT and DVT prototypes.

 

[haplain]

Here's a really recent example of some more clear shot stuff...

 

[haplain]

For me its really blurry, so the only that can confirm would be hap.

Here's that sticker for you all to see

 

[unity]

Assembled in Taiwan? Weird. One would think it would have been assembled in the US at Apple HQ.

 

[techfury90]

Found this:

http://www.elvikom.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?p=86420

Edit: I'll let this forum draw their conclusions from this schematic, but I already know what it means...

 

[unity]

Well that answers that. So the same processor and southbridge as in the iMac.

 

[mcdermd]

Assembled in Taiwan? Weird. One would think it would have been assembled in the US at Apple HQ.

I'm sure it means that the logic board was assembled by Foxconn in Taiwan, not the entire test rig.

 

[TheMacGuy]

His works and is an Intel Core Duo that never shipped in the MacBooks.

I know for sure the first black and white 1,1 MacBooks shipped with 1.83 and 2.0GHz processors as my brother has one. They were 32-bit only and stuck on Snow Leopard. Its clear though so thats cool!

Here's that sticker for you all to see

Ok so its probably going to have a 1.1GHz G5. It might have a faster one, since nothing was checked off.

Also notice how everything denoting it as a Q51 machine has been crossed out. I might (and there is a slim chance of this) be one of the first "Plan B" PowerBooks, as in it has an Intel processor (maybe a Pentium 4 like the Developer machines in the G5 case?). The engineer you bought it from did say it was never released, so I'm still in the G5 group.

 

[haplain]

I got it to boot once into 10.4 so that mean's it's a PPC machine right? Fixed the backlight so there's large victory but need to get a screen shot of the System Specs. I didn't check the System Specs when it loaded to 10.4 since I didn't think about it. I can get it to boot into Open Firmware at anytime. Does anyone know a command to have the machine list its specs in Open Firmware? That will solve this once and for all.