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Tibook power management: OS X vs. OS 9

paws

Well-known member
I bought myself a very nice 867 MHz Titanium Powerbook to run OS 9. It came with Leopard installed and I used it for a short while before I swapped the spinning drive for an SSD and installed OS 9 by mounting it as a Firewire Target Disk and copying the OS 9.2.2 installation over from my G4 tower.

I notice that it runs much, much hotter in OS 9, and the fan seems to spin constantly. Is this expected behaviour? I have the Energy Saver control panel, but is there something else I need to have installed in order to keep things cool? I don't have the original installation media, but as far as I know there's no difference between installations except for extensions and control panels, is there? 9.2.2 is 9.2.2, right?
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
I think mine is an 867 as well. I don't notice the fans come on unless I have a few things open in Photoshop, and it stays warmish, never hot. Mine only has OS 9 on it.
 

paws

Well-known member
OK, so it is possible! Do you have anything special in extensions or control panel, beyond Energy Saver? Nothing like a Powerbook Extras extension or something?
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
All I know is that I used the original PB G4 OS 9 install CD. Not sure what other secrets it installed. Maybe there's a lot of dust inside? I think mine is running 9.0 or 9.1, not 9.2.2.
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Maybe there's a lot of dust inside?

I've a PB Ti 1Ghz, and I don't think I ever heard the fan come on unless I was playing a demanding 3D game.

You could safely assume power management features of OS 9 are much simpler compared to OS X with minimal throttling; as Johnny suggests clean the fan, and thermal paste on the CPU will be dust if never touched before. Not much fun getting into the PB Ti, but once done with good thermal paste you won't be going back for a decade!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
my 667’s fan comes on a lot after it’s been running for a while, it gets nice and toasty, but I’ve really got to repaste it so I’m sure that will help. Never had it running on OS 9 long enough to see, but I probably would have noticed if it was always running. I used a universal 9.2.2 image to get 9 on mine.
 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
In my experience, back in the day, OS 9 and OS X were similar in terms of heat, noise, and longevity. My guess is that there's some driver or configuration oriented toward this machine that's not in the other installs.

If you haven't yet, I recommend finding an 867/1000MHz OS 9 install disc. Unfortunately, you will need to install OS X first and set up your disk partitioning correctly for OS 9 up front because the OS 9 installation for these machines was delivered as an OS X software installer.

Today I use the eMac'03 install on my second TiBook/1000 (same platform) but I don't even have a battery and haven't ever put OS X on that machine, so I can't really make any comments there.

"universal" installs, adapted installs, and the eMac'03 CD do work, but the original install is the one that was verified as working when the machine was new.
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
If you absolutely need that disc and can't find the specific version online, I suppose I could always upload mine.
 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
If you have a chance and it's not already on archive.org, macgarden, or similar.

Max1zzz had an archive a number of years ago but I never thought to look there. Unfortunately, I don't know or remember the part number and don't know if there's an accurate collection of the part numbers, otherwise you could put the 69x-xxxx number into archive.org, see also: https://archive.org/details/software?query=powerbook+g4

One of the things I'd like to start assembling (and I have a draft off-site at https://doku.stenoweb.net/doku.php?id=macdex:os9-cds ) is a list of which specific CDs went with which machines, and what machines work well with the eMac'03 CD (and what the caveats are, such as my note about USB in beige G3s which came from SomePerson in the IRC channel.)
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Looks like I've got a variety. Got the original G4 OS X gray 10.1.4 CD, colored OS X 10.2 CD set, gray OS X 10.2 Developer Tools, gray 10.1.4 and 9.2.2 software restore set, gray G4 application CD, official G4 hardware test CD, and the original gray 9.2.2 CD (Thought it was earlier!). I'll check out what's not online, and if anyone has requests, let me know.

Cory, my 9.2.2 disc says nothing about installing OS X first for drivers. Apple gave users three options it seems, from what I have: 9.2.2, dual boot 9 and OS X, and OS X. From what I remember, I did not have to do anything special to install 9.2.2, but I've only ever used this CD.

Also, my bad, mines 666mhz. Still, don't think the special OS 9 only CD is anything special mhz wise and should work for yours. I can't seem to find it anywhere online, so Ill definitely get that done first.
 
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Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
The TiBook 867/1000 should have a gray 10.2.x CD set (colored X is probably retail) and a gray OS 9 CD that's not actually a bootable disc, it's an OS X PKG file that lays the default OS loadout onto the machine.

I would be highly interested if there were multiple bundles for the TiBook/1000 and one of them has a traditional style OS 9 boot-and-install CD, and I suspect a lot of people would be, because, well, to be honest I don't really want to use OS X on mine. (This is part of why I'm just using the eMac'03's install CD on mine, even though I'm confident it'd handle "portability" worse than the original CD.)
 

paws

Well-known member
There's a person on the Garden that uploaded a system folder containing the 9.2.2 installation from the restore disc from my machine, and it doesn't include any extensions that look relevant. So I don't think it's drivers or anything like that.

Having spent some more time with the machine tonight, I think it's more likely to in fact be dust or the cooling paste that needs to be changed. The fan only comes on after a while, and I may not have been in OS X long enough for it to heat up. I had the back off to change the HD, and it didn't strike me as particularly dusty. I'll have to look at the cooling paste, I suppose. Thankfully there's an iFixIt guide.
 
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