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Apple

Retrocomputing Enthusiast Explores 28-Year-Old Powerbook G3: 'Apple's Hope For Redemption' (youtube.com) 56

Posted by EditorDavid from the why-1997-didn't-happen dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader Shayde once restored a 1986 DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, and even ran Turbo Pascal on a 40-year-old Apple II clone.

Now he's exploring a 27-year-old Macintosh PowerBook G3 — with 64 megabytes memory and 4 gigabytes of disk space. "The year is 1997, and Apple is in big trouble." (Apple's market share had dropped from 16% in 1980 to somewhere below 4%...) Turns out this was one of the first machines able to run OS X, and was built during the transition period for Apple after Steve Jobs came back in to rescue the company from bankruptcy.
It's clearly old technology. There's even a SCSI connector, PCMCIA sockets, a modem port for your phone/landline cable, and a CD-ROM drive. There's also Apple's proprietary ports for LocalTalk and an Apple Desktop Bus port ("used for keyboards, mice, and stuff like that"). And its lithium-ion batteries "were meant to be replaced and moved around, so you could carry spare batteries with you."

So what's it like using a 27-year-old laptop? "The first thing I had to note was this thing weighs a ton! This thing could be used as a projectile weapon! I can't imagine hauling these things around doing business..." And it's a good thing it had vents, because "This thing runs hot!" (The moment he plugs it in he can hear its ancient fan running...) It seems to take more than two minutes to boot up. ("The drive is rattling away...") But soon he's looking at a glorious desktop from 1998 desktop. ("Applications installed... Oh look! Adobe Acrobat Reader! I betcha that's going to need an update...")

After plugging in a network cable, a pop-up prompts him to "Set up your .Mac membership." ("I have so little interest in doing this.") He does find an old version of Safari, but it refuses to launch-- though "While puttering around in the application folder, I did notice that we had Internet Explorer installed. But that pretty much went as well as expected." In the end it seems like he ends up "on the network, but we have no browser." Although at least he does find a Terminal program — and successfully pings Google.

The thing that would drive me crazy is when opening the laptop, Apple's logo is upside-down!

Retrocomputing Enthusiast Explores 28-Year-Old Powerbook G3: 'Apple's Hope For Redemption' More | Reply

Retrocomputing Enthusiast Explores 28-Year-Old Powerbook G3: 'Apple's Hope For Redemption'

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  • I suppose he could find an old version of Firefox, but Firefox 1.0 came out in 2004 (!!!). And I'm not sure anyone would suggest using Mozilla from the 90s on the modern web.

    Some machines just should be used stand-alone or with just network access to some soft of network file system.

    Gotta say, it's fun reading stories like this to show how much things have advanced in the last 25+ years.

    • Netscape Navigator would be the browser to download on this thing during its time. Internet Explorer for Mac shipped with it as part of the deal with Microsoft to help Apple's resurgence. That lasted until around 2003-2004 when Firebird aka Firefox made its debut.

      Anyway, even if you did download a browser from that time on it, the WWW of 2025 won't work on it thanks to all the 'advances' we've made in JavaScript and HTML5 since then. Tim Berners-Lee just let out a sigh.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        It's the TLS/SSL that'll be the big limitation. With more ram, perhaps tenfourfox would run, which would at least display some pages such as this.

      • Cragislist probably still works. It still looks the same, I don't think there's much there that requires anything new.

    • I was thinking iCab as an option. There must be an archive somewhere on the internet to find it.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I remember these (Score:4, Interesting)

    by haxor.dk ( 463614 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @01:52PM (#65153829)

    The Apple PowerBooks that came after the PBn400 (1400,2400,3400) series were super sexy for their time. They came in three releases (Wall Street, Lombard, Pismo) before Apple designed the PowerBook G4, you know the one in the titanium.enclosure, which was technically nice but reverted to straight edges and flat surfaces again. They were curvy (hence the Lombard name) and had some very pleasant keyboard tactiles. I believe Pismo even had a brownish, semi translucent keycaps.

    The industrial designers that worked at Apple back then really put their heart into their work.

    Today it's just thin it down, flat surfaces, and add a new colour. The recipe hasn't changed the past 15 years.

    • I remember the G4, at least the aluminium model. Removable cover on the bottom for RAM upgrades, slot-loading DVD drive, and quick change batteries with built-in charge indicators. Press a button on the battery and it showed you how full it was. I think they moved that to the side of the laptop when they first switched to built-in batteries. And the clever latch system where the hooks only came out when you closed it because the bottom cover had a magnet in it.

      But yes, those things ran hot, especially where

      • Yes, the Alu version came after the Ti version because Titanium was deemed too expensive. And yes, the RAM compartment was not ventilated, which means that the heat buildup from prolonged usage would cause circuitry failures.

        • And yes, the RAM compartment was not ventilated, which means that the heat buildup from prolonged usage would cause circuitry failures.

          I forgot about that. I had to swap out two RAM sticks for one larger one because one of the slots died.

      • I loved my Aluminum Powerbook G4. Previously I'd had a Dell Inspiron 3800, which I'd been running Red Hat 7 on (that was my "I'm so done with Windows" transition machine). With the Powerbook, I did miss my Enlightenment desktop*... but overall everything seemed to "just work" (ha! remember when Apple could actually say that?) and I felt like it gave me the best of both worlds.

        By today's standards, it did weigh a lot... but it was significantly lighter and easier to pack around than the Dell - especially if

    • I bought a Lombard specifically to run the Yellow Dog Linux distribution on. (This was before Mac OS X.) It worked really well. Even WiFi via a PCMCIA card was supported.

    • Today it's just thin it down, flat surfaces, and add a new colour. The recipe hasn't changed the past 15 years.

      Probably because it "just works".

      I remember a near fight breaking out with my brother because I wanted a new laptop for university classes and he was willing to give me his old laptop. I checked the system requirements for the software I'd need to run for a class and it called for a 1920 x 1080 (or something similar) screen resolution while the laptop my brother offered for free had only 1280 x 720 (or whatever in that ballpark). In addition to having an insufficient screen resolution it was quite "chunky

    • I had one through work for a little while. They were quite stylish compared to the other computers at the time. As I recall, you could get a third-party faster CPU for them as well.

  • Not as old, but i have a 2013 Thinkpad I got an external floppy running on and can run Turbo pascal 1.0 on DOS 3.3 from floppies (3.5" though)

  • Up until the PowerPC partnership with IBM, Motorola made highly orthogonal CISC processors, such as the 680x0 series, inspired from the DEC PDP systems. Motorola knew CISC well, going back to 6809, While their fab was under-performing, they might still be in the CPU fray if they did not change horses midstream.

    That stated, adding the vector processing functionality was a good idea. Oddly, the 68000 is back in production from Rochester Electronics.
    .
    I wonder what would happen if a 4Ghz 680x0 entered the

    • Didn't they continue that, sort of, with the ColdFire chip line?

    • It would be roughly the same as a 4GHz 80486, and that wouldn't compete well against a modern CPU, with superscalar execution, multiple cores, huge caches, SIMD instructions and whatnot.

      • At only a few Dollars retail, it would not have to compete with AMD, Intel, or even MicroChip. to be profitable. It would compete with Arm.
      • BTW, apparently Slashdot did not want me to monitor my thread. I like reading Slashdot, yet, my Karma is Excellent, but it's not fun when posts are automatically lowered by a point--in a speed that no human could accomplish, just a few hundred milliseconds. Now, I don't trust anything Slashdot does, sadly.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          What are talking about? A glitch in your experience? All your posts are at 2 including the karma bonus

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by otuz ( 85014 )

        It'd be more analog to a 4GHz 386SX. A 4GHz 68030 would be like a 4GHz 486. A 4GHz 68040 would be like a 8GHz 486.

    • It's been a minute since I had to think of computing on such a low level so I'm probably going to get something wrong, but here goes...

      The CISC instruction set was the norm when 8-bit and 16-bit processors were pushing around 7-bit and 8-bit ASCII characters and primitive text and grayscale video. With 16-bit a processor could at least have a full byte to carry an ASCII character, pixel color or shade, or cache address in addition to an 8-bit instruction. The instruction set could be simplified to what wo

    • A classic CISC processor was a dying technology. All modern processors (since Itanic sank) are internally RISCy, feature microcode, and execute single-cycle micro-ops internally. Motorola had experience with RISC with the m88k, which had very good performance. It was expensive, and they botched the marketing. By the time they fixed the cost, it wasn't particularly fast any more. Then they had to join in with PowerPC, which was only relevant for a short time until PC processors caught up, and now nobody but

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      There is an FPGA implementation of a much newer 68k cpu, including SIMD and other features, while retaining compatibility with the 68000:
      https://www.apollo-computer.co... [apollo-computer.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by otuz ( 85014 )

        It's more of some retrofuturistic Amiga SoC thing on a FPGA, not just a 68k CPU on that FPGA. I have one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Yeah the primary target is an updated amiga, but the 68k core is also a big part of that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Motorola had the 68060. The problem was, after the 68040, they started lagging well behind the x86. The 68060 was supposed to be fast, but in the Pentium era, it wasn't. So much so that few people ended up buying it, and Motorola went with PowerPC where they had far less problems scaling up the speed and staying competitive with x86.

      Which, at the time, also went RISC - just internally. (The Pentium Pro was the first CPU to feature the inner RISC core. But the way it was designed, sub-register accesses (e.g.

    • "I wonder what would happen if a 4Ghz 680x0 entered the market?" Those of us still running Amiga can get a taste of that via the pistorm accelerator, The Pi cpu is used to replace the 68xxx. Sysinfo screenshot. results differ with different Pi configurations. But the speed is certainly impressive even among the slower Pi models. https://external-content.duckd... [duckduckgo.com]

  • It had USB? I recall they did not. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @03:11PM (#65153933)

    There was a mention of seeing USB in the list of hardware in some utility used in the video. I'm pretty sure that there was no USB on PowerBooks of that era, that would come about a year later with the iMac and similarly "candy colored" Apple computers. Even then the presence of USB didn't mean complete abandonment of ADB, the tower format desktop G3 computers had a single ADB port (versus two ADB ports on previous "beige" G3 Macs), and PowerBooks retained an internal ADB bus for the keyboard and trackpad.

    The MacOSX utility used to show hardware capability for the laptop would have a section for USB since it was an OS built to run on computers that had USB. Had he looked closer the entry should have indicated an absence of USB. The "Old World" Macs could have USB ports added with a PCMCIA or PCI card. The PCMCIA slots had a power limit, as I recall, that would make USB adapters technically non-compliant with the USB spec but still useful for most USB devices, just don't expect the port to charge your iPod. With a "New World" ROM Macs could boot from USB devices, and if the computer had a "New World" ROM then it would have USB ports and not need that "double boot" process seen in the video to get to MacOSX.

    The "high density" SCSI port on PowerBooks of that era were interesting. They allowed for not only connecting SCSI peripherals but "SCSI disk mode", which allowed the laptop to act as an external hard drive for fast file transfer and diagnosis of a non-booting laptop. This feature was renamed "Target Disk Mode" when this feature later included other connection types like FireWire, USB-C, and Thunderbolt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    The LocalTalk capable serial port was nice for a quick and easy network connection with older and same generation Macs. All that was required was a serial cable, the kind that could be borrowed from a printer. If people wanted a small LAN then "phone-net" adapters were common and inexpensive, they used common telephone cables to daisychain computers, printers, and maybe other devices. Direct connection to same generation and newer Macs could be similarly done with an Ethernet cable, and I believe the port was "smart" enough to not need a crossover cable for this to work. I expect most readers would know that an Ethernet LAN would be easy, though not exactly cheap at the time, with a hub. WiFi could have been added around about 2000 with a PCMCIA card and an OS update.

    The modem was 56K, still relatively new at the time. I don't recall which 56K standards it supported but any 56K modem supported 33.6K, and 33.6K was about the best people could expect unless on a shiny new phone line to a major dial-up ISP. The modem was fax compatible, and as I recall that was about all they'd be useful for in a few years as Ethernet, WiFi, and so on, gained in popularity quite quickly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shayde ( 189538 )
      Yeah I saw the USB support there, but there were no physical ports. I'm assuming if I had socketed in a USB PCMCIA card it would have worked. Someone in the comments section noted to me that there were rapid-fire versions of this laptop about the same time, and the version that didn't have USB had a very short run.

      • Yeah I saw the USB support there, but there were no physical ports. I'm assuming if I had socketed in a USB PCMCIA card it would have worked.

        I recall that USB PCMCIA and PCI cards were a popular add-on for the time so they must have worked. Also popular were FireWire adapters for computers of this era to get a few more years of life from 1990s computers into the early part of the 2000 decade. Again, power to the port would be a limitation for PCMCIA, as well as PCI if there wasn't power from a Molex power connection directly to the power supply.

        Data rates would be limited to USB 1.1, USB 2.0, and FireWire 400 because of the bandwidth available

    • There were a couple iterations of this PowerBook form factor, and the last one (Pismo), which I still have and still works, has two USB ports and two Firewire 400 ports in lieu of the old ADB and SCSI ports. The model prior to Pismo (Lombard) also had USB, but it was SCSI instead of Firewire. Both of those models had semi-transparent bronze keycaps. The prior Wall Street models with ADB and SCSI, and no USB or Firewire, had opaque black keycaps.

  • I hope he has an appreciation for how much that thing cost new.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shayde ( 189538 )
      At about the 1minute mark the specs display shows it was $2300 new ($4300 in todays dollars).

  • LocalTalk connector (Score:3)

    by Mendenhall ( 32321 ) on Sunday February 09, 2025 @03:25PM (#65153955)

    The LocalTalk connector was not proprietary at all. It was RS-422, on a mini-DIN 9 plug, which could therefore support plain old RS-232 by grounding one side of the differential RS-422 pair. However, RS-422 is much nicer, since it is differential, and even then the system could support greater than 1 Mb/second from the RS-422 driver, although LocalTalk ran at 250 kb/s. The protocol was derived from HDLC. It worked quite nicely, before everyone got ethernet.

    • The connector wasn't proprietary but I have a strong suspicion the LocalTalk protocol was proprietary.

      What I see as happening is that the RS-232 standard had so much inertia behind it that the highly similar RS-422 port didn't have much of a chance for adoption. A single ended serial line like that from RS-232 was fine over short distances such as commonly seen to connect modems, printers, and other peripherals. If RS-232 were applied to a LAN then it would be common to exceed the practical distance of RS

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        And almost no one used LocalTalk 9-pin. It was just too expensive.

        Instead, they used PhoneNet, which adapted the LocalTalk physical layer to use UTP cable - generally cat3 at the time. In fact, they used the outer 2 wires of RJ-11, making it possible to create a PhoneNet network everywhere you had regular telephone service.

        This was much cheaper to run in the end - you just had to make sure all 4 wires of the phone cable were connected to the RJ-11 jack and with a single splitter, connect both your Mac and y

        • And almost no one used LocalTalk 9-pin. It was just too expensive.

          The ports on the computer would be mini-DIN with 8 or 9 pins but the LocalTalk cables were 3-pin mini-DIN. It baffles me why they chose that, it's such an oddball connector when they could have used the far more common, and therefore cheaper, 4-pin mini-DIN used for S-video and ignore the extra pin.

          Instead, they used PhoneNet, which adapted the LocalTalk physical layer to use UTP cable - generally cat3 at the time. In fact, they used the outer 2 wires of RJ-11, making it possible to create a PhoneNet network everywhere you had regular telephone service.

          I remember that. I also remember adapter cables to allow a mix of PhoneNet and Apple's LocalTalk dongles. Especially useful if there's existing phone jacks in the wall wired for PhoneNet and there's a room wit

  • Keep up the good work, Shayde! Reading about your projects makes this place feel a bit more like the Old Slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shayde ( 189538 )
      Thank you! I really do love getting feedback. Even critical stuff is worth it. It's hard to make content and never hear anythig about it. Thanks!

    • I like how in the YouTube comments, there's someone bitching about "why is this niche stuff on Slashdot?"

      The comment may have moved to YouTube, but the bitching about things that absolutely belong on Slashdot not belonging on Slashdot never changes.

  • Tenfourfox [floodgap.com] is liklely to run on this machine. It is almost modern, last realse was 4 year ago. At least it can browse Slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      I think it was targeted at a G4 and for sure 64MB's of ram would not be enough to even start it up. Tenfourfox was forked from Firefox 45.

      • If you watch the video, osx system profiler says it has 384mb, so it must have been upgraded at some point.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          OK, that might run it, and it could be recompiled for a G3 if needed I'd assume, maybe have to disable the simd stuff (multimedia) too. I have FF45 running on a T42 (1.6Ghz Pentium M) with 1 GB of ram, takes forever to start but runs pretty well actually, just stay away from videos. The T42 could really use an SSD.

  • man, when i hear SCSI i STILL think speed.

  • What a lot of people don't realize or remember was how brutally expensive laptops were in the good ol' days. I remember being given my first Toshiba laptop around 1997 and it was like being given a gold bar - Both in terms of cost and weight.

    ...and of course Apple products were in another price league altogether. The PowerBook launched in 1997 at $5,700 - Equivalent to $11,000 today.

  • I could probably talk for hours about this computer if I was allowed to. It was SO far ahead of its time in so many ways. I can only wish my current computer was so far ahead of the curve, that'll never happen to me again.

    I got my "wallstreet" in December of 1998 iirc. It was maxed out with 96mb of ram, 8gb hdd, the fastest (300mhz) processor, and I got it with the DVD player option.

    Within a few years, it had 384MB of ram, a 23 (yeah, weird right?) GB hdd (double-height, it was a monster 18mm, but it fit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by v1 ( 525388 )

      sorry I forgot something important. It had a 13" active-TFT display. The biggest laptop display on the market at the time was 11", and most of them were passive (slow refresh) displays. (many were greyscales, this was 24 bit color, 1280x1024 iirc? might have been 1024x768) There were NO laptop bags it would fit in. I got a brenthaven deluxe bag that had cushions around the perimeter and removed them, and it barely fit. Beautiful screen. And yes, the color apple logo was upside-down when you closed t

  • First time I heard someome say "SCSI drive" I thought, scuzzy?! why doesn't he get a good one

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