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Lombard & Tangerine

Bunsen

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
68040
Just picked up a Lombard 333 Powerbook and a Tangerine iBook 300 = $0.

The Lombard has 128MB/4G/CD -no DVD decoder- and the iBook 64MB/6G. Both in perfect working order.

I've given the iBook to a friend. The Lombard has just jumped to the front of the queue and become my new "best" laptop. The Wallstreet's I've been dicking around with repairing are by the by.

Gonna bump up the RAM/HD in the Lombard, put OS X and NetBSD on it, get a DVD drive, and think about maybe a G4 CPU from wegenermedia or macsales.com.

What're the chances of being able to play DVDs on the Lombard?

 
Nice score B! Our luck seems to be high this week, I scored a PB Ti 867 = $0. Given to me as "dead motherboard", two minutes later with my iBook adapter = 100% working Mac. It's now overclocked to 1067Mhz, 768MB/120GB courtesy of our friends at MSY. My best Mac too!

Without the DVD decoding 400Mhz motherboard, DVD playback isn't possible. Only possibility is if you come across a 400Mhz board. I had a Lombard 333 which amazingly overclocked to 433Mhz and even then it couldn't handle things, nor DivX playback. I think the PCI graphics card wasn't helping things much.

JB

 
Yeah. After looking at the specs on Lowendmac, I'm wondering how well I scored here.

only one PC Card slot, and no ADB port.
Although the 333 MHz Lombard has a faster clock speed than the 300 MHz PowerBook G3 Series II model it replaced, the older model sometimes outperforms it due to a larger (1 MB vs. 512 MB) and faster (2:1 vs. 2.5:1) Level 2 cache.
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Don't think I'll be plumping for the G4 upgrade on this. It's still only got a 66MHz bus, and it still needs low density ($) 256MB SO-DIMMs. Guess I'm still saving up for a Pismo after all.

ADB's no big loss, and SCSI is nice. The loss of one PC Card slot is made up for with built in USB. And I suppose I can burn my movies to VCD.

What player software did you try in yours?

New World ROMs will make life easier with Unix

And one thing it definitely has over my Wallstreets - it works ::)

 
I think of the Lombard as being the ultimate 'book suitable for use with old and new Macs - the inclusion of SCSI a big plus. I'm pretty sure the G4 upgrades are for Pismos only Bunsen - and wegenermedia seem to not have the greatest rep if you search for them online. I've been tempted to get the G4 Pismo upgrade, having bought a dead G3 900Mhz one some time back (got money back though), but am wary since we're so far away.

I tried VLC with all the post-processing turned off for DivX movies. Certainly some of the more older basic "single CD" movies worked OK, but as soon as the resolution crept up or it used higher quality sound, it choked.

Sadly ended up selling the Lombard as it had really loose hinges, and unsuitable for anything bar propping it against a wall to use.

Easy come each go tonight. My PB Ti is running silky smooth, but the 17" LCD on my Cube is crapping out.

JB

 
OK, I just realised I'm complaining about a free Lombard. I'm going to go find a large halibut so I can slap myself with it.

 
Heh. Multiple cash transfers to banks in Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, and the Channel Islands. People really should learn to zero their hard drives.

 
Damn you!! :p I *love* the G3 PowerBooks and clamshells, all that G3 awesomeness wrapped up in such gorgeous cases - how do you guys keep finding them for free when I can't find any laptops better than a 386?! > :(

 
Oh what the hell. I just ordered the 400MHz DVD playing logic board. $44 US inc shipping, and the $AU is 90c at the moment.

 
Oh crap. What's the key combo to force OS 9 on startup?
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On my G3 it's just hold Option as soon as you start it up until you see the blank grey screen come on that is not OS X's "grey apple" screen; presumably it's the same for all Macs.

 
Didn't work. Mind you it's got a Japanese keyboard and caps lock and control have swapped places, so I dunno. Meanwhile I've pulled the battery.

It booted into OS X with only 128MB of RAM. But there's a password-locked screensaver, and doofus here deleted the Applications folder, which contains useful things like the Startup Disk pref pane ::)

how do you guys keep finding them for free
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All will be revealed young grasshopper. Watch this space.

 
Oh what the hell. I just ordered the 400MHz DVD playing logic board. $44 US inc shipping, and the $AU is 90c at the moment.
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oerrr... you know that's just the logic board, right? Usually a 400MHz lombard proc runs $90-$110 (USD). Not sure how well a 333Mhz one would play DVDs.

 
Yes, the decoder is a chip on the mobo, but a 400MHz mobo isn't 400Mhz unless you have a 400Mhz processor module for it, and those things are _expensive_

A 333Mhz module on a 400Mhz board is likely not to play DVDs very well.

 
The Lombard 333 @ 433 was sheer luck; I tried it on a whim as 433 involves a least amount of resistor swappery, and it was always fine. Might as well try it Bunsen, and if not 400 should be right.

As noted he should be able to clock the CPU to at least 400Mhz, so no hassles with DVD playback (I reckon it'd be fine at 333Mhz too, as the hardware decoder is doing all the work - remember when lowly Pentium 1's could do the same with a PCI DVD decoder card!).

JB

 
Why do all that work when you can use a PCMCIA card to decode DVDs?

Or were you planning to go OSX all the way? I know that won't work on X, just OS9....

 
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