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[MigMac]

It wasn't planned for I didn't intend to take the plunge and move to real hardware before next year. For a rather long time my experience with OS9 was limited to emulators: Sheepshaver and all its bugs, UTM (Qemu based) which has many shortcomings and more recently the nicely built MacOS9 App, Sheepshaver based but a tad more stable and loaded with nice add-ons...

On eBay I stumbled upon a seller who sold a Pismo 400 and as I had heard about it being an excellent G3 laptop, I took the chance and purchased it.

It is in (very) good condition: a little scratch on the upper lid (fixed with some black paint), all ports working, passed different tests (Apple Hardware, Techtool Pro...)1Go RAM, HD 40 Go, dual boot with MacOS 9.2.1 and Tiger (OSX 10.14)

I had to struggle a bit with a Iomega external drive (Firewire and USB) I think I probably screwed it up years ago via formatting on Sierra or Mojave (idr)

Now that I have acquired a working LaCie ext drive (250 Go), I've treated myself building a nice little vintage station:

Pismo HD vol1: a basic Mac OS 9.2.1
Pismo HD vol2: Tiger + MacOS 9.2.1, loaded with apps (a successful transfer from UTM)

FW Vol1: MacTron rescue disk
FW Vol2: MacOS 9.2.2 (from MacOS9 Lives)
FW Vol3: storage (backups, software...)
FW Vol4: storage (comics, music, Cd-roms etc...)

My computer skills ain't great and my needs rather limited: a bit of graphics, writing, surely some sound editing and tinkering, old style surfing (BBS, Gopher, KDX, Hotline...). Therefore that beautiful Pismo is perfect for the job.

Actually the main satisfaction is nostalgia, of the times when I had a blue iMac 25 years ago. For lots of reasons, they were the best years of my life.

[Greystash]

Congrats! The PowerBook Pismo is fantastic, they're solid machines! I haven't had any issues with mine over the many years I've owned it and it's probably been one of the most reliable Macs I've owned. They were true workhorses back in the day, I remember using mine for study around 2010 and it could still keep up and play YouTube etc. under Tiger without issues.

Sounds like you've got a great setup! They're also great for gaming with the 4:3 LCD 

[refinery]

I love my Pismo (got a Daystar 550mhz g4 installed decades ago) but the LCD got cracked a few years ago in a move. I gotta get around to replacing that while I still can.

[Greystash]

@refinery I've been purchasing LCDs recently trying to find the best replacement for the Pismo and have come across several good models. I'll list them all when I get a chance to go through everything again. There's a few more I want to try but the model UB141X03 B141XN04 (you can search this on eBay) is a good replacement with excellent brightness.

Make sure you purchase LCDs with the 20-pin connector

And I don't recommend buying from the eBay seller overnightcomputers. They give false descriptions and posted me a destroyed (and clearly used) LCD that was listed as new/unused.

[Bolkonskij]

It's so cool you got real hardware too. Congrats! We need to do a "Pismo owner talk" next time we meet / chat on Hotline :-)

[smilesdavis]

I love my Pismo (got a Daystar 550mhz g4 installed decades ago) but the LCD got cracked a few years ago in a move. I gotta get around to replacing that while I still can.

super jealous

[MigMac]

Though I'm still tuning and customizing my "Pismo station", I'm nearly all done with installing software and utilities.

Next steps? Transfer protocols OS9 <-> MacOS. I can use a USB key for small files and my spare Iomega FW drive for big files (but just one way: MacOS -> OS9) but that's a boring process, therefore: I will work and try FTP first then NFS and possibly Hotline.

Second challenge is to find a workaround for reading DVDs region-free: some harmless hack, DVD external drive etc... don't want to use a firmware crack for the moment.

[MigMac]

Direct file transfer ok now with two options:

1) NFS: extension on OS9, a little config with NFS Manager on MacOS, easy => works perfectly.

2) FTP proved to be more difficult. Took some time (and user VYacob's precious help + a little tip on a forum ) to get the right settings for Filezilla on Sonoma. But it works fine now with Fetch or Transmit on OS9.

2 indirect options (USB key + FW disk), 2 direct options (NFS + FTP). Plenty enough.

NB: I'll consider a Hotline Server at some point in the future.