Category: PowerPC

Apple Macintosh Computers with a PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 Processor

Lisa OS & OS X Lion 10.7

In 1983, Apple released the Lisa computer system. It ran on it’s own operating system called the Lisa OS. Fast forward to 2011 and Apple is preparing OS X 10.7 Lion for release.

So what else is new in OS X Lion? Marketing materials tout a new feature called Resume that allows applications to resume as it were when you last closed it. Another feature is Auto Save which automatically saves your work solving those annoying situations where a power failure causes data loss on open files.

These features are actually available 28 years ago with Lisa OS. Pressing the power button does not turn off the electricity to the Lisa. It instead sends a signal to the Lisa OS to save and close all applications and position of the desktop before going into a low power mode much like sleep mode on modern day Macs. Turning the computer on again, users are greeted with the same screen just as where they had left it.

It’s interesting how far technology has seemingly progressed. Monochrome screen to millions of colours, megahertz to gigahertz, kilobytes to terabytes and yet fuctionality remains largely unchanged.

Dell 2709w 27 inch LCD Monitor

After getting  a new 2010 unibody Mac Mini Server, it was time to look for an LCD monitor.

Having a matching Apple LED or Cinema Display would have been nice. The 24inch LED display has been discontinued as of 26th July 2010 and is available while stocks last. So has the monstor 30inch Cinema Display. Apple currently only offers a 27in LED display.

Due to a limited budget with the purchase of the Mac Mini, a Dell LCD monitor was considered. The are many rave reviews of the Ultrasharp U2410 24 inch LCD display which uses an IPS panel. There is also a cheaper 23 inch model U2311H.

When about to place the order for the 23 inch display, a good deal on the bigger 27inch 2009 model 2709w was found online.

With a resolution of 1920 x 1200, it is similar to the 24 inch U2410 and lower than the newer U2711 of 2560 x 1440. However, it is still higher than full HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixals.

The plus point of this LCD monitor over the 23 inch are the plethora of ports. Almost any vintage of computers that are in use can be hooked up to this display from VGA, DVI, HDMI to DisplayPort.

It also includes a useful media card reader on the left side supporting CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Secure Digital (SD), MultiMedia Card (MMC), SmartMedia and xD Picture Card. Located below this are two usb ports perfect for plugging in flash drives and other peripherals.

After using it for a month, I have to say there are no regrets. The extra screen real estate allows multiple documents, webpages and pdfs to be open at the same time and is a huge step up from a 13 inch MacBook. As my desk is quite deep, the similar resolution of this 27 inch to a 24 inch makes it easy for my eyes during extended periods of use.

Moving to a new home

At present, all the Macs are scattered everyone. A few of them are displayed on a shelf while the rest are tucked in the store room and around the house.

The metal framing of the shelf was bought from ikea and the timber shelves salvaged from a shop that closed down.

As we are moving to a new place, it’s time to create a nicer display and work area. New white laminated timber shelves have been ordered and there’s now a small room approximately 1.5m x 2.8m to display the collection. 

(Photo Coming Soon…)

Behind the frosted glass is the kitchen. Initially we wanted to have it as clear glass so the Macs were viewed from the kitchen. But knowing that it might get pretty messy at times with Macs taken apart for repairs we decided to keep the glass frosted so that all the mess is contained within the room.

The frost is just a sticker and we intend to remove the frosted sticker over the little window on the right to place an LCD monitor for viewing recipes and catching up on the news or weather from the kitchen. Now if only I could find a cheap Apple Cinema Display.

(Photo Coming Soon…)

While the renovation works are going on, the Macs have been stored in the guest room. The wardrobe is filled with Macs. There’s the two Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh.

iBook G3 Clamshell- Weird Problem

The iBook has been giving some trouble after a year in service as a wireless base station. 

First the airport card started failing as the coverage of the wifi network started getting smaller. It is detected in the system profile and can be accessed from the system preferences pane except for not having any wifi output. The airport card finally stopped working over time.

The iBook also recently started freezing frequently. After spending the afternoon taking the iBook apart, the hard drive was tested and found to be working perfectly. The memory is working fine as it was swapped and tested with other spare memory chips.

I guess the logic board is causing the problems.

Using a Macintosh to Share Wireless Internet

My wireless router was faulty and it was the middle of the month. Pay day was still two weeks away. Instead of buying a new airport base station, I decided to use an iBook G3 clamshell to share the internet connection.

Almost all new macs come with an airport card. Even older hardware like G3 iBooks and iMacs are able to accept the original 802.11b airport card with a transfer speed of 11 mbps. Most broadband connections today average 2 mbps to 12 mbps. There are providers offering up to 100mbps but home users will never fully utilise it.

I tried to do a clean install of OS X Panther 10.3 but the CD-Rom drive was a little fussy and refused to read the disk properly. Not willing to give up, I decided to push on. The iBook G3 I had was the non firewire model. Thus it was impossible to reinstall the OS from another mac.  I took the iBook apart to extract the hard drive. A copy of OS X Tiger 10.4 was installed and the hard drive replaced.

After putting everything back together, the iBook booted up with that familiar sounding chime. In system preferences, there is an icon for sharing. Once in that preference pane, select share my connection from ethernet to airport. Click on the options to create a name for the wireless network and set a password. Next, start the interet sharing service and you will be surfing online from all the other computers around the house or office.

The iBook may be old but it is still serving a useful purpose acting as a wireless base station.