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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / General => Topic started by: odin on July 27, 2005, 10:20:45 PM
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I'm looking into buying a secondhand PowerBook (WallStreet). I was wondering if anyone here has experienced using such a machine and how usable they still are in this day and age for some webbrowsing, typing and MP3 playing using OS X. Are they dog slow or is it still quite pleasant to use one of these beasts?
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I dunno how they compare in hardware terms but OSX (10.2) was a total pain on the old 400MHz G3 iMac thing I had to use at work before.
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Hmmm, but aren't you a bit prejudiced being the world's biggest mac-hater? ;-).
Seriously though, was this MHz related or more a matter of (RAM)size?
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odin wrote:
Hmmm, but aren't you a bit prejudiced being the world's biggest mac-hater? ;-).
Seems to be a reputation I'm getting :lol:
Seriously though, was this MHz related or more a matter of (RAM)size?
I reckon the RAM size personally, 128MB only. A quick look at top in the bash console showed the system was hitting the VM a lot once you start doing anything.
However, the user interface was quite heavy going on that machine, which didn't have the greatest GPU / VRAM resources ever. Seeing 10.3 on a G4 with a 32MB video card was startling in comparison.
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One of the guys at work still uses an old G3 350 iBook with 384MB RAM, running OS 10.3 it seems quite pleasant to use.
edit...Sorry, make that 320MB RAM, either way, its still quite pleasant to use.
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Is OS X very tweakable in the sense that graphical hoohaa can be turned off to make is speedier/less hungry for memory?
On another note...how crap is OS 9.x exactly?
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odin wrote:
Is OS X very tweakable in the sense that graphical hoohaa can be turned off to make is speedier/less hungry for memory?
You best wait for Karlos to respond to that one :lol:
On another note...how crap is OS 9.x exactly?
Very!!!
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I installed MacOS 9 over the weekend on my PowerWave. It seemed pretty useable, but amazingly similar to Windows
/ducks
I'm trying to install Fedora Core 4 PPC on it at the moment
I would def consider a nice more generic PPC OS, rather than Mac OS. There are 15 linux distros available for PPC (according to linux.org), including SuSE, YDL, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian... they should run nicely on a G3
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Cyberus wrote:
I installed MacOS 9 over the weekend on my PowerWave. It seemed pretty useable, but amazingly similar to Windows
/ducks
I'm trying to install Fedora Core 4 PPC on it at the moment
I would def consider a nice more generic PPC OS, rather than Mac OS. There are 15 linux distros available for PPC (according to linux.org), including SuSE, YDL, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian... they should run nicely on a G3
Funny you should mention Linux, on the above G3 iBook, we tried both Debian and Ubuntu on it and OS X performed better than them both, just a thought.
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I've actually got into Macs recently. It all started when I got two PowerBook G3 Lombard's for $10 each! They have PPC G3 333MHz, one 384MB, 256MB on the other. Mac OS X on one and I installed Mac OS 9.2.2 on the other. X runs pretty good, but I am very partial to 9! I just like it. The 1024X768 screens on these are awesome! I liked the Macs so much I just bought a new PowerBook G4 15" 1.67GHz with Superdrive.
With the Wallstreet you can install both 9 and X. Get a nice 10GB+ HD and you are all set.
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odin wrote:
I'm looking into buying a secondhand PowerBook (WallStreet). I was wondering if anyone here has experienced using such a machine and how usable they still are in this day and age for some webbrowsing, typing and MP3 playing using OS X. Are they dog slow or is it still quite pleasant to use one of these beasts?
I would say my only concern with any mac is lack of CPU grunt. I would personally avoid a G3... I have a Via C3 800Mhz (mini-itx) which runs photoshop faster than my cousins G3 iMac.
If you just want to do day to day stuff though... I'll bet the G3 will cope.
On another note...how crap is OS 9.x exactly?
Until MacOS X 1.4 (AKA Tiger), MacOS was not as useful as WindowsXP for me.
OS 9 is worse than AmigaOS 3.1 :-D
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My only concern is the lack of USB on these ancient G3 Powerbooks, but I guess that can easily be solved with some elcheapo PCMCIA card....or not?
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odin wrote:
My only concern is the lack of USB on these ancient G3 Powerbooks, but I guess that can easily be solved with some elcheapo PCMCIA card....or not?
I guess so, I got a usb2 pcmcia card on my old pentium 233 laptop, wich works very nice :-)
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I've been considering getting an old G3 to stream audio to from my PowerBook. Seems better than spending money on an airport base when I already have a perfectly adequate internet router.
I wouldn't mind knowing where on Earth people are finding these machines for $10 each. ;-) eBay prices are at least 10 times that...
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NoFastMem wrote:
I've been considering getting an old G3 to stream audio to from my PowerBook. Seems better than spending money on an airport base when I already have a perfectly adequate internet router.
I wouldn't mind knowing where on Earth people are finding these machines for $10 each. ;-) eBay prices are at least 10 times that...
This is pretty chep... but then I wouldn't want it :-D
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223687863&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223774352&rd=1
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adz wrote:
odin wrote:
Is OS X very tweakable in the sense that graphical hoohaa can be turned off to make is speedier/less hungry for memory?
You best wait for Karlos to respond to that one :lol:
If you are prepared to get into the plists and edit them, you can reduce the eye candy a little, but it makes no real difference. There are lots of nice 3rd party skins available however, but this doesn't really solve the main issue.
OSX relies on quartz extreme for the GUI rendering. This in turn uses OpenGL and each window's surface is effectively a texturemap applied to a rectangle.
If you have a 32-bit 1024x768 display, a few open windows will quickly consume all the available resources and things start paging in and out of normal memory.
If your graphics hardware is not so hot (as in the case of the old iMac), it struggles a lot. Quite good fun with the expose feature. I presently have 3 bbedit windows and 2 firefox windows open here on this eMac. Expose basically jerks the windows out of view unless I close a few.
Unfortunately, you really don't have much option to reduce the amount it hammers the video hardware since it is fundamentally down to the way it works. You need video ram (texture memory especially) and lots of it for 10.3 to work well IMHO.
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bloodline wrote:
OS 9 is worse than AmigaOS 3.1 :-D
[translation]
Aros is better...
[/translation]
I had to use OS9 at work a few years back, mostly for using Photoshop and Illustrator and it bugged the crap outta me...although it never drove me to physically attack the computer like Windows did.
Stupid things really, like saving the work at the end of the day, coming back the next morning to have Photoshop say it doesn't have enough memory to load it back again... :pissed:
Can't remember what else peeved me, but I do remember being cheered up by watching the Epson printer go wrong and start jumping around the desk and then fall off the edge. I reckon it had enough of OS9 and committed suicide :lol:
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Doobrey wrote:
Can't remember what else peeved me, but I do remember being cheered up by watching the Epson printer go wrong and start jumping around the desk and then fall off the edge. I reckon it had enough of OS9 and committed suicide :lol:
:roflmao:
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Right, I've offloaded 200EUR for a 400MHz G3 with USB on EBay. Sadly only 6GB HD and 128MB RAM. But that can be easily solved.
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odin wrote:
Right, I've offloaded 200EUR for a 400MHz G3 with USB on EBay. Sadly only 6GB HD and 128MB RAM. But that can be easily solved.
Can you send a link?
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Upgrading te HD in a PowerBook requires a degree in Apple design...
http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/
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Clickety-click (http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5224402891&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1)
I'm fairly satisfied with what I got, only minor niggle is that the screen does have a dead pixel or two.
It only has IE5 on it.....:nervous:.
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bloodline wrote:
NoFastMem wrote:
I've been considering getting an old G3 to stream audio to from my PowerBook. Seems better than spending money on an airport base when I already have a perfectly adequate internet router.
I wouldn't mind knowing where on Earth people are finding these machines for $10 each. ;-) eBay prices are at least 10 times that...
This is pretty chep... but then I wouldn't want it :-D
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223687863&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223774352&rd=1
No Firewire though... No Firewire, no Tiger, apparently. A bit of an odd stipulation to introduce around revision 4, IMO. Mac staple or no.
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NoFastMem wrote:
bloodline wrote:
NoFastMem wrote:
I've been considering getting an old G3 to stream audio to from my PowerBook. Seems better than spending money on an airport base when I already have a perfectly adequate internet router.
I wouldn't mind knowing where on Earth people are finding these machines for $10 each. ;-) eBay prices are at least 10 times that...
This is pretty chep... but then I wouldn't want it :-D
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223687863&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4606&item=5223774352&rd=1
No Firewire though... No Firewire, no Tiger, apparently. A bit of an odd stipulation to introduce around revision 4, IMO. Mac staple or no.
It was the full firewire port that first made me look at getting a Mac Laptop! I couldn't live without one, since no PC laptop has full firewire port I didn't really have a choice.
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odin wrote:
Clickety-click (http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5224402891&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1)
I'm fairly satisfied with what I got, only minor niggle is that the screen does have a dead pixel or two.
It only has IE5 on it.....:nervous:.
Not a bad price... any reason why you wanted a Mac?
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I don't think I would find use for a firewireport. Another thing on this PowerBook is that the DVD-ROM seems very choosy when it comes to reading CDs. Loads of audio CDs don't get recognised for some reason. The drive just keep trying to get revs and OS9 completely freezes.
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bloodline wrote:
Not a bad price... any reason why you wanted a Mac?
200EUR was my budget and well, for 200EUR you can get about a P3600 256MB PC laptop. With this macthing the useability is about the same for the same price and I've always been interested in trying out the more recent macs. My experience with macs doesnt extend beyond OS7 on a 030 powerbook and OS8 on ShapeShifter (which ate my HD thankyouverymuch...).
So basically this laptop does what I want it to do (web, MP3s, documents) and it has the added bonus of playing around with Macs.
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odin wrote:
So basically this laptop does what I want it to do (web, MP3s, documents) and it has the added bonus of playing around with Macs.
So you'll be using OS X then :banana: :banana: :banana:
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odin wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Not a bad price... any reason why you wanted a Mac?
200EUR was my budget and well, for 200EUR you can get about a P3600 256MB PC laptop. With this macthing the useability is about the same for the same price and I've always been interested in trying out the more recent macs. My experience with macs doesnt extend beyond OS7 on a 030 powerbook and OS8 on ShapeShifter (which ate my HD thankyouverymuch...).
So basically this laptop does what I want it to do (web, MP3s, documents) and it has the added bonus of playing around with Macs.
You really should get OS X on it ASAP... not sure if they will fit on the 6gig HD though :-/
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Victory! OS X.3, WLAN CardBus, 18 gig HD, 340MB RAM, CD-RW/DVD-ROM and a battery that runs for 3 hours! Can't seem to burn yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to fix it. No more deskbound computing for me!
I might start using Ubuntu as main OS though, not sure if I like X..
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:banana:
I can understand the 'victory' feeling, kinda have the same now :-D
I'm about to sell my peecee
And now I use the laptop as a desktop pc with a thingy and lots of usb, works fabulously, it uses little space and the space I gained I use for stuff like a scanner and a printer (wich I used to have in the attic). No fussing around anymore in lousy computer cases...
A silent, slim and mobile solution. :-)
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odin wrote:
Victory! OS X.3, WLAN CardBus, 18 gig HD, 340MB RAM, CD-RW/DVD-ROM and a battery that runs for 3 hours! Can't seem to burn yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to fix it. No more deskbound computing for me!
I might start using Ubuntu as main OS though, not sure if I like X..
I found OS X a bit annoying at first, but it grows on you...Then once I got OS X.4, I really started enjoying the experience.