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Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2019-02-06, 12:33

So I was at my grandmother's house and went into a closet to get some stuffed animals for my kids when I see a PowerBook G4 just sitting there. Pretty cool. I take it down, plug it in, and fire it up. Starts right up!

It hasn't been used in years so she lets me take it home. Now I'm the owner of a Titanium PowerBook G4, 800 MHz DVI model. Battery still seems to work (it had two batteries but one is likely dead), and it also had a portable FireWire hard drive. OS X 10.3.7 is installed.

Biggest problem is the backlight stops working almost immediately. First time I started it up, it had probably been sitting in that closet for 5-10 years, the screen stayed on for about 5 minutes before shutting off. Closing and reopening the lid got the screen to turn on again, but only for a couple minutes, and getting shorter each time. Now it flashes on for less than a second before dying. I can still use the screen if I shine a flashlight on it, and I hooked up an external monitor so I can actually use the thing now. From what I've read, this could possibly be fixed by replacing the inverter board, but it might be the screen itself.

As a side note, it's too bad there's no option to use only the external screen without closing the lid. I can use mirroring, but that makes my 1280x1024 monitor run at 1280x854 instead. I can extend the desktop, but then I have a black unusable screen that stuff can get stuck on. And if I close the lid, I don't have access to the keyboard or trackpad.

My current plan is to make a backup of the internal hard drive onto the external with SuperDuper, then wipe the internal and install OS 9. I'll use FTP to transfer files to it across my local network, because holy cow the browser is NOT suited for the modern web. Even getting it connected to the internet required me to make a guest network without security, since the built-in wifi doesn't support WPA2.

I don't expect I'll use it for much other than playing old games. It was neat to get to use old OS X again, even if it's very slow. Modern computers have spoiled me.

Should be able to post some pictures tonight.
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