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[ssp3]

@vectrex, to be sure, always check the data transfer integrity with this tool. ATTO speed test is not enough..

[smilesdavis]

As of September 15–16, 2026, the forum has just reached a major milestone on the 17" Aluminum PowerBook G4 PowerBook5,1: a patched Mac OS ROM now brings its Texas Instruments PCI1510 CardBus controller to life under Mac OS 9. The SeriTek CardBus SATA card is already talking to disks, and the tester reports successful disk transfers.

So there are really three answers:

Question   PowerBook
Fastest PowerBook with CardBus, period   17" PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz Hi-Res/DLSD, PowerBook5,9 (2005)
Fastest officially OS 9-bootable CardBus PowerBook   Titanium G4 1 GHz, PowerBook3,5
Fastest currently demonstrated on MacOS9Lives with working unsupported-OS9 CardBus   17" AlBook 1 GHz, PowerBook5,1

The MacOS9Lives result is extremely recent. On September 15, 2026, UnexpectedBomb reported that the patched ROM made CardBus appear under OS 9 for the first time. Shortly afterward, vectrex demonstrated a SeriTek 2-port eSATA CardBus card actually communicating with and transferring data to an SSD.

Can the new AlBook CardBus ROM patch be made to work on PowerBook5,8 / 5,9, especially the 1.67 GHz 15"/17" DLSD?

If yes, the 1.67 GHz 17" PowerBook5,9 could become the fastest Mac OS 9 PowerBook with functional CardBus, substantially faster than your 1 GHz TiBook. But I have not found a MacOS9Lives verification yet for 5,8/5,9, so I would not call that working yet.

And importantly, the forum is now testing real PCI/CardBus devices, not merely getting the OS to boot.

I’d target the PowerBook5,9 1.67 GHz 17" next and check whether its CardBus controller/chipset matches closely enough for this new ROM patch.

[UnexpectedBomb]

Now for a really crazy thing. I wanted to test an unknown card to see if that worked so I installed drivers for my RME Hammerfall DSP Cardbus card, installed OMS, plugged DC power into it's Multiface box and viola! *IT WORKS WITH THE CARDBUS SLOT*!!!

BOOM! We did it!! That's the best confirmation we could have gotten: a brand new contender card enters the fray and immediately starts working. Feels good to finally solve this one.

Something I've been pondering is if it's possible to boot the AlBook from the SeriTek... and also how the AlBook responds to sleep/wake commands with a card inserted. Sleep seems like it's broken across the board on unsupported G4's. I might have to fix Sleep on the FW800 MDD first (because I actually have one to test on, haha) and then come back to the AlBook later for a similar solution.

[vectrex]

@UnexpectedBomb - Willing to test more, let me know! Really glad to have this milestone completed thanks again!

Would be great to figure out how to get rid of the USB device prompt (or get it working) on each boot (bluetooth i think someone said?).

Did we sort out system sound on the 17" PB? I think it works when plugging in headphones, dont think it works out of onboard speakers, but TBH i am always using ASIO drivers (via usb pre cardbus). Will verify what is going on my machine when im at it next.

@SSP3, thanks for the tip!

[UnexpectedBomb]

@UnexpectedBomb - Willing to test more, let me know! Really glad to have this milestone completed thanks again!

Would be great to figure out how to get rid of the USB device prompt (or get it working) on each boot (bluetooth i think someone said?).

My pleasure! I'll keep that in mind. I just so happened to have been working on an OS 9 Bluetooth driver prior to taking up the AlBook CardBus pursuit in parallel... I think I am over halfway there. My FW800 MDD was giving a similar USB message after I installed the internal A1044 Bluetooth module, and I've since gotten that message to go away. So we'll not only eliminate that same pesky USB device prompt on the AlBook, we will soon be pairing real keyboards and mice in OS 9 

[vectrex]

@UnexpectedBomb - Willing to test more, let me know! Really glad to have this milestone completed thanks again!

Would be great to figure out how to get rid of the USB device prompt (or get it working) on each boot (bluetooth i think someone said?).

My pleasure! I'll keep that in mind. I just so happened to have been working on an OS 9 Bluetooth driver prior to taking up the AlBook CardBus pursuit in parallel... I think I am over halfway there. My FW800 MDD was giving a similar USB message after I installed the internal A1044 Bluetooth module, and I've since gotten that message to go away. So we'll not only eliminate that same pesky USB device prompt on the AlBook, we will soon be pairing real keyboards and mice in OS 9 

Incredible! Looking forward to it!

[LarsG5]

Sooo... I can confirm my USB Cardbus card WORKS!

It was the EHCI driver that was blocking it the last time. After I deleted the extension, it works like a charm!

Now I need to check my SlimSCSI 1480 card to confirm the Cardbus slot is fully operational as well as I'll try uploading some screenshots as soon as possible, but damn, this is HUGE!

[LarsG5]

2. After installing Silverlining my firewire port on the 17" powerbook now works!

The hardware always seemed fine and this is how i was target booting the 17" PB between my TiBook to swap roms.
Firewire in OS 9 refused to work with my base install of the Mac OS 922 UnsupportedG4.iso, now it works great once Silverlining was installed.
Pic attached of a larger Mb's file being transferred over firewire directly to the 17" PB and on to the Elite Pro (via Seritek).

By that do you mean the FW400 port or there was something wrong with your FW800 port which now started working?

[UnexpectedBomb]

Sooo... I can confirm my USB Cardbus card WORKS!

It was the EHCI driver that was blocking it the last time. After I deleted the extension, it works like a charm!

Now I need to check my SlimSCSI 1480 card to confirm the Cardbus slot is fully operational as well as I'll try uploading some screenshots as soon as possible, but damn, this is HUGE!

Glad to hear that both the modified ROM and your card have been exonerated here! So it's 100% my extension. I tried replicating your issue on my TiBook using USB 1.1 Apple devices (namely M2452 and M4848) plugged into my USB CardBus card, but was unable to. Can you look at Get Info on the EHCI extension you were using and tell me what version it was? The latest release version is 2.4i. If you were running an older version, that may explain the trouble you experienced, and if you were indeed running 2.4i then that means I still have some work to do!

[LarsG5]

Would you please be so kind and attach the newest version here? I cannot find it anywhere, the one on your site is from September 5th/6th and that's the one causing problems, thanks.

[UnexpectedBomb]

Would you please be so kind and attach the newest version here? I cannot find it anywhere, the one on your site is from September 5th/6th and that's the one causing problems, thanks.

Of course! Here is the final release build. I looked at the repo and discovered I was an idiot and had forgotten to update it; the repo still had v2.0, exactly as you said. My fault. Try this latest version and see if you have success; it has been fully vetted on my TiBook. Some testing questions I'd have for you once it's installed:

1) If you boot the AlBook with the USB card inserted but no devices attached to it, does it recognize your USB thumb stick as USB 2.0 once you plug it in? What about on your TiBook?
2) Does your wireless mouse receiver work on the TiBook in the card WITH the extension installed there?

Trying to determine the exact conditions that cause attached devices to die; maybe it's the mouse receiver specifically that doesn't like the extension, or maybe it truly is the extension itself. It's tough because I haven't been able to replicate on my TiBook. Let me know what various combos of devices and/or the extension on/off does for you. If USB 2.0 is working, you'll know it because it will give your mounted thumb stick a special USB 2.0 icon on the desktop.

[LarsG5]

Thanks for the file.

I have just tested the newest extension on my Al and well, no change whatsoever. My USB card works fine without the extension, but with the extension I get the message shown in the picture attached (Picture 3.png, "BEZ NAZWY" is the name of my thumb drive). If I then unplug my thumb drive from the card and plug it in again, the system shows nothing, as if there was no USB stick plugged into the USB Cardbus card. Stock USB ports work fine with the extension, although I don't see the USB 2.0 indicator you've mentioned.

The extension itself created 4 logs though, so I'm attaching those here - perhaps they might give us a clue, what causes it to have a conflict with the newest ROM.

Regarding testing the extension on a Ti, you'll have to give me a few days, I'll get to it as soon as possible and let you know the results.

Regardning my wireless mouse receiver, well, I think the problem is with the mouse itself, so I wouldn't pay much attention to it at the moment. It presents similar behaviour (sometimes working, sometimes not working, sometimes working only on a boot screen) even on stock USB ports under OS 9, so yeah...

As a final note, I'm also attaching a screenshot from the Apple System Profiler with no extension loaded and with my USB thumb stick plugged into the Cardbus card (Picture 1.png).

[UnexpectedBomb]

I have just tested the newest extension on my Al and well, no change whatsoever.

Thank you for the thorough testing. Your logs confirmed that this is indeed an existing bug in my extension. While our USB cards are mostly the same, it turns out there is one crucial difference: yours needs a small "handshake" before the OS will take it over, and my extension skips that handshake on these USB cards. My card (SIIG-brand) doesn't require the handshake, so that's why I never had a problem with it and couldn't replicate. I want this extension to be as robust and compatible as possible, so I'm glad to know that USB cards like yours are out there, otherwise I could never account for them.

This is where the TiBook comes in: with the same v2.4i extension and your same USB card inserted but on a different machine, if the same problem occurs then I know for a fact it's your card needing that handshake and I'll have a path forward for a solution. And thanks for the update on the mouse, that is helpful to eliminate from the equation.