Mac OS 9 Lives

Classic Mac OS Hardware => Storage => Topic started by: ceratophyllum on October 01, 2022, 07:02:11 AM

Title: Pismo/Lombard/Titanium Powerbook the only PPC laptops with easy-replace HDs?
Post by: ceratophyllum on October 01, 2022, 07:02:11 AM
I am thinking of just selling all of my iBooks and replacing them with more, err, sustainable G3/G4 models that don't take all day, a steady hand, and a bit of luck to replace the hard disk.

Were any of the 15" and 17" PowerBook G4s easy to open for hard drive replacing?
Title: Re: Pismo/Lombard/Titanium Powerbook the only PPC laptops with easy-replace HDs?
Post by: teroyk on October 01, 2022, 12:57:03 PM
I am thinking of just selling all of my iBooks and replacing them with more, err, sustainable G3/G4 models that don't take all day, a steady hand, and a bit of luck to replace the hard disk.

Were any of the 15" and 17" PowerBook G4s easy to open for hard drive replacing?

I cannot answer your question, but I have question to you, if you have many iBooks, what model is has least fan noise? and what most?
Title: Re: Pismo/Lombard/Titanium Powerbook the only PPC laptops with easy-replace HDs?
Post by: refinery on October 01, 2022, 02:18:37 PM
The aluminum 15 and 17s were more similar to the iBooks in how hard drives are upgraded, involving the removal of the entire top case. Not as bad as an ibook, but still pretty cumbersome.

The titanium Powerbooks we're the easiest to upgrade, hands down.
Title: Re: Pismo/Lombard/Titanium Powerbook the only PPC laptops with easy-replace HDs?
Post by: ceratophyllum on October 03, 2022, 05:52:30 AM
Quote
I cannot answer your question, but I have question to you, if you have many iBooks, what model is has least fan noise? and what most?

I have a few 12" 1.33GHz and 14" 1.42GHz iBooks. Not all of them work. I got a bunch of them "For Parts" and it seems like the 12" are worse for noise, although both are much quieter most of the time  than my Titanium Powerbook 15". (The hard drive was a significant source of heat and noise in my Ti Powerbook 15: putting an msata+IDE adapter was a huge QoL improvement.)

It depends more on how you use them, though: I remember compiling big stuff (like KDE desktop env) on Gentoo Linux back in 2002 on my Pismo and that normally super-quiet laptop fan got really loud.  I think these PowerBook G3 and iBook G4 laptop were not much for heavy computation even in their day: in the (admittedly beaten to death) automotive metaphor, they're dinky little economy cars, not monster trucks of computing.

Every Apple laptop I got after the Pismo  was a disappointment one way or another.  Nowadays, I only dabble in i-/power- books because they're cheap and, thanks to the software and information at macos9lives, finally starting to suck less.

I guess, if you are prepared for the hassle of replacing the 20+ year old disk when it fails, get the 14" iBook for low noise. I probably won't do it until mine fails.
Title: Re: Pismo/Lombard/Titanium Powerbook the only PPC laptops with easy-replace HDs?
Post by: smilesdavis on October 10, 2022, 08:15:32 PM
my pb ti is dead silent until i pop a cdrom in there which... i may remove the cdrom possibly anyway for better airflow inside