Spare Pismo question

[beachycove]

How well does a Pismo function under X? I have two Pismo parts machines and am pondering spending some money ($100 or so) on a battery and memory to make a single low-end (probably X.3) portable out of the two.

I hesitate because, for a couple hundred dollars more, I could probably get a G4/ 1.33GHz 12" iBook/ PowerBook or some such. Smaller, lighter, faster, better graphics, etc.

Anyone steeped in the Pismo lore care to comment? I have never seen or used one running OSX, and the only G3 I have running OSX is a Beige MiniTower, which is a poor model for the OSX potential of a Pismo because of system bus speed differences, etc.

I'd be grateful for any and all advice.

 

[phreakout]

Beachycove,

I have a Pismo (see signature) running OS X 10.4.11 perfectly fine. It performs quite well with Tiger, although I'm planning on dropping it down to Panther (10.3.x) due to the smaller RAM consumption (footprint) and slightly faster speed. If I really tune the Pismo, it will boot Tiger fully in about 30 seconds. But if I run Panther instead, it won't require me to do so much fine tuning (cleaning out the caches, optimizing the hard drive, erasing the temporary files, etc.).

The only downside is that mine has 6 megabytes (max) of video RAM (vram) and I'd be looking into adding a PC Card external video accelerator card, if they still exist. The last one I saw had about 32 megabytes of vram, but only worked under OS X, not OS 9 or under. Why do you ask? Well, I do watch Youtube videos a lot and the extra vram comes in handy with todays HD content and fast frame rates. For me to watch the latest videos at a reasonable speed, I have to save the Youtube videos from a 3rd party site as .flv files and then open them up using VLC. The program plays back every Youtube video at the speed it's built for.

I hope this helps.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[J English Smith]

My just-new one with 512k RAM and a 400ghz processor runs Tiger quite nicely. Only trouble I've had is with Word 98 running in classic mode - had to get something to word process in X. The video ram is what it is. Not very good for streaming video at all. I didn't plan to watch a lot of video on the Pismo, so that's ok with me.

 

[J English Smith]

My just-new one with 512k RAM and a 400ghz processor runs Tiger quite nicely. Only trouble I've had is with Word 98 running in classic mode - had to get something to word process in X. The video ram is what it is. Not very good for streaming video at all. I didn't plan to watch a lot of video on the Pismo, so that's ok with me.

 

[Strimkind]

I have a 400mhz pismo with 512MB RAM also and is running 10.4.11. It is quite quick all things considered. For net surfing I had to dump safari as it was too slow compared to firefox.

If you plan to spend money on it, instead of a battery go for a wireless card. The only batteries you can get are the crap Chinese brands of which I have one here. It was new but refuses to charge so it is just a paper weight and the original battery charges sometimes.

Even better is if you can avoid spending money. I'm sure you can at least get 256MB RAM from both parts units and install 10.3. That would be the most optimal and you can save your money for a newer unit like a G4 iBook...just a thought.

 

[beachycove]

I can scrounge up 384MB of RAM. You think 256MB to be enough for X.3?

 

[phreakout]

256MB RAM is the minimum requirement for Panther (10.3). If I were you, I'd just max it out to 1 GB. You'll have plenty of space to run OSX and more leg room for everything else.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[beachycove]

256MB RAM is the minimum requirement for Panther (10.3). If I were you, I'd just max it out to 1 GB. You'll have plenty of space to run OSX and more leg room for everything else.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

I noticed that your report of good performance was with 1GB RAM, but in my case, I would need to buy such RAM, and at around $100-125 for 2x512MB chips, plus $60+ for a battery, that takes me rather too far into the serious money category for my comfort. Better, as has been said, to save my pennies for something newer.

I also see on closer inspection that all I seem to have is 256MB (where is that spare 256MB chip, or was I dreaming?!), so making-do with what I have is apparently not going to be an option. Ho hum.

 

[J English Smith]

I've seen cheaper RAM prices on eBay...just fyi...I think you don't have to pay that much. Heck, I just bought my whole used rig with 512k for $145 shipped. You could even buy a non-working Pis with RAM and then have extra parts.

 

[Cory5412]

My pismo was a 500MHz unit with 1mb of L2 cache and 512mb of memory and I noticed fairly acceptable performance under both Panther and Tiger. The difference is minimal, and I tended to want to go for Panther since (at the time, before the release of Firefox 3) everything ran under Panther anyway.

By the time that 10.4 became "mandatory" for the modern Internet (or the latest Safari and Firefox versions, at least), it was increasingly difficult to use the Pismo for much, especially as I had wanted to use Office 2008.

With 10.4 and modern Internet apps as well as newer apps like Adobe CS3 and/or Office 2008, it's definitely possible to get everything running, but don't expect to enjoy running more than one app at a time. However, if you just need a writing environment or an environment to check your e-mail, or whatever, then it should honestly be just fine.

My blue/white G3 desktop (450MHz, 1MB L2 cache) has like 320 or 384mb of memory and firefox2/office'04/creativesuite2 all under Panther ran fine on there, but that was even longer ago than my pismo. Although as with anything, more memory will make you more happy as you're using it, especially on a mobile computer with ostensibly limited battery life, or in a case where time may be critical.

I am tempted now to bust out my Power Mac G3 b/w and try 10.3 or 10.4 on it to see how it performs. I'll have to see how much memory I can stuff into it.

 

[Bunsen]

at around $100-125 for 2x512MB chips

Try around half that, with a warranty. Heck, get one 512 and a 256, that should be plenty.

 

[beachycove]

These are good prices, but shipping and border duties drive prices up, as does the differential on the dollar. My figure was in $CDN.

Am still pondering, but on a certain auction site at the moment, there are 1.33MHz 12" iBooks with the full 1.5GB of RAM available for $325 all in. That is pretty good.

 

[beachycove]

Will (just about) any low density PC100 or PC133 SODIMM work in a Pismo? I see that in fact is is not hard to find much cheaper ram if you leave "Apple" out of the eBay search.

I may yet rehabilitate a Pismo....

Sorry to pester.

 

[phreakout]

Yes. PC100 and PC133 are 100 percent compatible. The latter will throttle down to 100Mhz speed when mixed with PC100 or 100Mhz bus on the computer.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[J English Smith]

The Pismo is just such an elegant beast. It's a lovely lovely computer. I can see that this will supplant the 1400s as my main texting laptop. I think the fact that there are so many still doing fine after nearly 10 years is a testament to the build quality.

 

[beachycove]

Thanks for all the advice, which was nicely complemented yesterday by the appearance on lowendmac of a glowing series of testimonials to the viability of the Pismo as an OSX.3/X.4 machine.

That said, after a week of pondering the options, I just bought one of the aforementioned 12" 1.33GHz iBooks, which in the end suits the need better. The OSX Pismo can wait for another day, or maybe I'll put it together and sell it on to pay for some of the iBook purchase.

In fact I already have a working Pismo running OS9, but it does duty more or less 24/7 at the office, where it runs some bits of Classic software that work so well that I can't see the point of replacing either it or them; the other one was to be for home office use, where I presently need a spare and cheap OSX portable. I do not want to carry the working Pismo back and forth from/to the office, nor do I want to install OSX on it, since (as has been said) I don't have large enough PC100/133 SODIMMs at hand for OSX.

The youngsters and my wife tend to monopolize the other OSX portables in the house (MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook).

So I did not want a working Pismo for "collection" purposes. I wanted something that would be functional in X.3/X.4 and readily portable. A 12" machine trumps a Pismo on portability, and that, in the end, was what made the decision for me. The Pismo, like this infernal MacBook Pro on which I am writing just now, is just too big to count as genuinely portable in my book (I regret buying the MBP for this reason). If it's too big to carry conveniently, it isn't really a convenience, is it?

At the other end of the great chain of being, Netbooks do not appeal. They are certainly portable, but they are too cut-down for my tastes. I also don't want to get into the hacking racket. Hence the interest in the last of the 12 inchers.

What I may end up doing, however, is "recovering" my 12" 1.5GHz PowerBook from daughter #1 (which I had decanted to her earlier this year for Gr. 11 high school - and immediately regretted losing my "baby" to my baby) by giving her the 12" iBook instead. We'll see if it's shiny enough for that fate once it arrives. I suspect, however, that like most 16 year-olds, she would take the new and the shiny one over the old quite happily.