100 hours in and 3x 12” PowerBook G4s...

[Hopfenholz]

Right so here’s where I am:

Machine 1 - 1GHz 12” PB G4.
- Got 9.2.2 up and running following the instructions on this site using some OF commands and the Unsupported G4 CD. I have thousands of colours, I have decent trackpad, in fact it’s a nice little system! Very fast.  Just a few problems: it won’t sleep, and most importantly the screen is just too dim (brightness keys do nothing, no brightness control in Monitors control panel). It’s just a bit too dim to do actual work on.

Machine 2 - 1.5GHz 12” PB G4.
Even faster! I have upgraded the HDD to a Dogfish 128GB MSATA drive in a cheapo eBay adapter and it seems to work. Again, using OF commands and then the same CD and restoring the MacOS 9 Lives image as above. Believe it or not I am currently dual booting 10.3.7 and 9.2.2. Note: the only way to boot into 9.2.2 is to hold down option at startup. Screen nice and bright. 256 colours only. Insanely fast system. I could live with 256 colours... the killer is: trackpad doesn’t work at all. Disable all USB drive extensions and trackpad works, but so slowly as to be unusable. Aargh! So close... if you plug a mouse in it works fine (even with no USB extensions loaded!). This simply must be a solvable problem...

And finally

Machine 3 - non-booting spares/repair PB G4 12” bought accidentally from eBay
Well, I pulled the HDD and replaced with the original 10.3.7 disk from the machine above, and this 12” PB booted right up. And guess what, it turns out that it’s an 867Mhz model! Well, I got excited when I saw that and immediately tried to follow the same path as above.

I ran into a weird blocker - the keyboard modifier appears to do absolutely nothing on startup. If I put the Unsupported G4 CD in the machine, it will *always* boot from that (and crash with error 102 because I haven’t issued the OF commands to spoof the machine type). If I eject the CD, it boots 10.3.7 from the HDD. No modifier key appears to do anything, whether cmd-opt-P-R or just opt, or cmd-opt-o-f. I’ve never seen this before!

So 2 things I could really do with help on:

1) how do I speed up the trackpad on machine 2? Going to try enabling some of those USB extensions and also going to try USB Overdrive

2) how the hell do I get machine 3 to boot into Open Firmware?

Cheers,

Joel

[DrNo7]

For machine 3, does the keyboard work once booted in Panther? And if you plug a usb keyboard, does the mac ignores it for key combos at boot too?

[Hopfenholz]

Yes, internal kB works in Panther. Have tried open firmware key combo from apple usb keyboard, and that doesn’t work.

[Hopfenholz]

PROGRESS UPDATE

I tore down all 3 machines at the same time so I could try swapping some components

Firstly I tried the trackpad from the 867MHz model with the 1.5GHz chassis. Oh, how clever I would have felt if that had worked! But it didn’t. Admittedly I didn’t try booting with USB extensions off but the chances of this making any difference are minimal. Interestingly someone on Reddit told me that the trackpad on the 1.5GHz G4 PB was the first one to support multi-touch so clearly it’s significantly different hardware.

Next thing I did was drop the SSD (with the Unsupported G4 system with modded ROM) from the successfully-booting (but unusably dim) 1GHz PowerBook into the 867MHz. Booted up first time, no OF commands necessary. Trackpad works great. Screen looks fantastic. Sleep doesn’t work, sound doesn’t work. Other than that it seems to be good. Just checked - sounds works if you plug anything into the headphone jack.

I get the screen glitches on shutdown. Damn, FW does not work, and no FW800 port so no high speed access basically. Still cool to have it working

More soon

Joel

[DieHard]

I tore down all 3 machines at the same time so I could try swapping some components

Firstly I tried the trackpad from the 867MHz model with the 1.5GHz chassis. Oh, how clever I would have felt if that had worked! But it didn’t. Admittedly I didn’t try booting with USB extensions off but the chances of this making any difference are minimal. Interestingly someone on Reddit told me that the trackpad on the 1.5GHz G4 PB was the first one to support multi-touch so clearly it’s significantly different hardware.

OMG, I feel your pain, I do this literally 2 to 3 times a week, I have plenty of new technology to work on, but inevitably I get at least 3 to 4 drop-offs of legacy mac stuff that needs repair every week, so it's time to start breaking down units and scavenging parts; at times I will have 3 or 4 of the same parts models open and it is a real pain in the you know what.  I use good old sheets of paper and scotch tape and make "screw maps" by taping screws in appropriate position since Apple hardware rarely uses the same screws on adjacent parts.  I make it a habbit of partially re-assembling stuff I do not use; If I don't, I end up with plastic crates of unknown crap

[Jetmoon]

Hi everybody...I'm new here
I would like to install os9 on my old powerbook 12 g4...but I don't know where to find instructions.
I've already downloaded the modified os9 for the previously unsupported machines but I really don't understand how to install it.
Actually I'm running osx 10.5 on that machine with no os9 classic support...
I burned the image on a cd, and now?
Thank you in advance for helping me

[Hopfenholz]

What exact model of PG G4 is it? ie Clock speed

[TheOdinnson]

Hey friend any update on this ? I just bought that exact PowerBook from eBay fully functional. My intentions are to use it solely for os9.
I’m building up an off grid os9 home intranet of sorts. I love these old macs!!!