I could not resist. I had one of these machines last year, but I fried the boot ROM upon installing the HD somehow. It was a 400mhz/64mb/6gb machine. Since my iBook's backlight has been flaking out, I decided to get another pismo, since it was so reliable. I found a nice one, the listing was a little misprinted, so I got it very cheap.
The specs in the auction were 500mhz/128mb/12gb, the high end config (revision A, non BTO version). However, this machine held a few surprises. First, the RAM was doubled to 256mb, 2x128mb. Second, and perhaps the biggest, was it has an airport card!! I was gonna swap in the one from my iBook, but now I have a spare
A fresh install of 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 later, and I have a nice machine that is actually FASTER than the iBook, because of the faster bus. I also missed the 2 extra inches of screen space, even though I gained no extra pixels. I spent the whole day ripping apart my iBook to harvest the 512mb RAM stick and 80gb HD, and I combined that with the 256mb stick off a wallstreet CPU card, and I am rocking a 500mhz G3 with 768mb RAM, an 80gb 5400 RPM HD, and wifi.
Oh, the firmware was also out of date. It was the first time I had to update the firmware on a mac, but it did not take long, and was easy. I also found and downloaded the AHT 1.2.3 image (if you want the link to an apple hosted page of AHT images, ask), and ran it. It passed all tests. About the only thing I have not checked out is playing a DVD, but I assume it works, since I used the drive to install tiger off my CD set. Also, the battery seems a bit shot. First time I charged it up, it died with 80% left on it according to OS X. Second time around, and it died at 70%, so I think I am bringing it back to life or something. PRAM battery seems OK, since it keeps the time. But for some reason, the battery menubar thing is stuck at "calculating" for the battery time, so it may need to be completely calibrated for it to work. Correct me if I am wrong.
The keyboard also feels nicer on this machine
Now I just need to figure out what to fill the cardbus slot with, a 4 port USB 2.0 card, or a AT&T cellular 3G card. I am also considering getting a bookendz dock, because they still sell them for $50, which is excellent.
-digital
The specs in the auction were 500mhz/128mb/12gb, the high end config (revision A, non BTO version). However, this machine held a few surprises. First, the RAM was doubled to 256mb, 2x128mb. Second, and perhaps the biggest, was it has an airport card!! I was gonna swap in the one from my iBook, but now I have a spare
A fresh install of 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 later, and I have a nice machine that is actually FASTER than the iBook, because of the faster bus. I also missed the 2 extra inches of screen space, even though I gained no extra pixels. I spent the whole day ripping apart my iBook to harvest the 512mb RAM stick and 80gb HD, and I combined that with the 256mb stick off a wallstreet CPU card, and I am rocking a 500mhz G3 with 768mb RAM, an 80gb 5400 RPM HD, and wifi.
Oh, the firmware was also out of date. It was the first time I had to update the firmware on a mac, but it did not take long, and was easy. I also found and downloaded the AHT 1.2.3 image (if you want the link to an apple hosted page of AHT images, ask), and ran it. It passed all tests. About the only thing I have not checked out is playing a DVD, but I assume it works, since I used the drive to install tiger off my CD set. Also, the battery seems a bit shot. First time I charged it up, it died with 80% left on it according to OS X. Second time around, and it died at 70%, so I think I am bringing it back to life or something. PRAM battery seems OK, since it keeps the time. But for some reason, the battery menubar thing is stuck at "calculating" for the battery time, so it may need to be completely calibrated for it to work. Correct me if I am wrong.
The keyboard also feels nicer on this machine
Now I just need to figure out what to fill the cardbus slot with, a 4 port USB 2.0 card, or a AT&T cellular 3G card. I am also considering getting a bookendz dock, because they still sell them for $50, which is excellent.
-digital
