Hi guys,
It's been a while! Well anyway, just today I finally received my very first clamshell iBook, the tangerine one! I'm so stoked. I know there were higher performance models of it, but because of the anality of Apple not making all the colors available for every model, I went with what I thought looked the best. I knew from the start that the battery didn't charge before I bought it, but it was said to be in good condition, so I bought it.
I was both pleasantly surprised and a little disappointed. The surprise was that it had an AirPort card, and the auction page didn't even mention it, so I wasn't expecting one at all. The disappointment was that the CD-ROM doesn't work. It's weird...it knows a disc is in there, but it always wants you to initialize it. Wth?
Problem 1:I tried several CDs. A data cd and a music cd. Neither one mounted, and both times, it prompted me asking if I wanted to initialize them. I'm puzzled by this. It obviously knows a disc is in there, but it can't read it. How would it know one is in there if it couldn't read it? Does it for some reason need a format or codec (like UDF or Joliet on Windows)?
I'd like to figure it out so that I can put a larger hard drive in.
Problem 2:The AirPort card won't establish a connection with my router. Nothing I've tried worked. I tried changing the router to a combination of WPA2/WPA, and set the channels to "auto". I know the AirPort card wants to use an old security protocol, but I don't know if I can do it without totally dropping functionality with modern encryption algorithms as well. I've never used AirPort stuff before.
Oh, and it came with a 64 MB card in the slot, for a total of 128 MB. I took a 512 MB card out of my old Windows laptop, and boosted it to 576 MB.
Not too bad for $89.99.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-iBook-G3-Laptop-Tangerine-Clamshell-Great-Condition/142538308977?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649