help re: hardware upgrade vs. new computer; also airport express

Howdy folks

I tossed this up on the Apple support pages, but figured I’d throw it here as well for the resident mac geeks. Though there’re (hopefully) some factual answers involved, it ain’t quite a GQ, so I’m putting it in here.

Here’s my story…

I have a PowerBook G3 Wallstreet 233 MHz with a 2 gig Toshiba HD and 64 Mb RAM built-in (32x2). A bit old, and wholly un-tinkered-with, but it’s done it for me so far.

A combination of things (getting a PDA, wanting wireless connectivity, plain old tech envy) is steadily driving me towards getting a new computer. I’d love to have the portability of a wireless laptop, but the power/price ratio for a desktop is a little more in my line right now. Ideally, I’ve decided, I’d like to have both (and a pony, too, but that’s another story). So I’ve developed a cunning plan - the problem is, I have no idea if it’s feasible or not - hence my coming here.

My trusty laptop is currently wired and a bit slow. From what I can gather I could successfully cut the wires as is, but I’d still be stuck helplessly dreaming of a world beyond Classic, so I’d like to go whole hog - to whit, a hardware upgrade. But I’ve got a niggling notion that the PowerBook case might put some limitations on what kind of upgrade is possible. Which brings me (finally) to my question, multipart, as you can see…

  1. Am I correct in believing I could go wireless with an old Orinoco PCMCIA card?
  2. Can my case handle a hardware upgrade sufficient to bring me into OSX world?
  3. How 'bout sufficient to let me play in OSX world for a while yet? In other words, would I be able to upgrade past the bare minimum (all that’d be really necessary, but it might be nice to upgrade further and put off getting the desktop for a bit longer).
  4. Assuming it’s possible, is it smart? Or would it be so pricey that I’d just be better off buying new?

The addendum to my title is pretty much just a “hey, cool!” notice. Anybody got one yet? My computer and stereo are currently physically divorced, so I’ve been unable to listen to .mp3s on anything other than headphones recently. As a side note, why the hell hasn’t the Airport base station price come down yet? Doesn’t Apple realize how much cheaper every other brand of wireless router is?

Anyhoo…thanks in advance for the help.

-ellis

I do believe so, unless the card/drivers/software require heftier system requirements than what you’ve got.

Few laptops have many options for upgrades. Maybe a few sticks of RAM, or something, but your best bet would be to look into getting one of the later-model G3 or a lower-end G4.

I’d say buy something new. If you had a desktop, I would say upgrade, because you have far more options at far less cost. With a laptop, however, you don’t have much flexibility.

I was suspecting that the case would probably limit me, but it seems such a shame to let a perfectly good 14" screen (which I imagine chews up a fair amount of the cost of a new laptop) go to waste. Would your recommendation then be to get a used laptop of a slightly more powerful nature rather than to spring for the current generation?

Thanks for the input

-ellis

Spoofe{

Untrue for this particular laptop. You can upgrade damn near everything on the WallStreet except the RagePro videocard and the 10baseT ethernet. My WallStreet currently sports a 500 MHz G4 processor, 512 MB RAM, has Panther (MacOS X 10.3.4) booted right now on one of its two fast 60 gig TravelStar drives (Jaguar is on the other, along with several flavors of 9 and 8); aftermarket better-than-stock screen hinges; and I’m staring at a big Sony Trin with the WallStreet’s built-in TFT off to the left as 2nd monitor / extended Desktop thanks to the VTBook card that gives me full use of a second display. The external 60gig is hooked up via FireWire thanks to a generic FireWire card which also works under OS 9. I have a USB card for this still-viable relic as well. MCE CD-RW drive in the right bay, VST Zip drive in the left.

OK, so it doesn’t kick the butt of the fastest 15" PowerBook you can buy today, but it’ll hold me nicely until a G5 PowerBook makes its debut.

Others have reported good luck with the Orinoco card; I didn’t but going wireless was just a passing geek-fantasy for me anyhow. Buffalo Technologies and Asante were the other ones I looked at.

See above. You need RAM, OS X likes at least 256 and prefers the 512 which maxes out the WallStreet. You don’t need but would benefit greatly from forking over for the Sonnet G4 daughtercard, but keep your stock one if you do that. Ultimately when it comes right down to it, you can run OS X on exactly what you’ve got, but 64 MB of RAM is slicing it to the point that you’re gonna thrash your disk to death every time you switch apps. Hard-disk wise, you can get a much bigger disk cheaply and just copy over all your stuff. The entirety of your existing 2 gig disk can exist as a folder on a higher-capacity disk. If you choose to go with a 60 like I did, be aware that you have to do some cute things to keep the huge honking magnets on those drives from making the WallStreet’s lid-closure-sensing-magnet think you’ve got the lid closed — which means sleep mode on a WallStreet and which therefore will make your WallStreet politely refrain from booting. (I just taped a pair of single-edge razor blades where the referenced jpg says to put a brass sheet).

I have no complaints about the speed with my current setup, with two exceptions: VirtualPC is a dog compared to how it runs under MacOS 9, and the new FileMaker 7 is sluggish as well. Gamers and video editing folks would notice the inferiority of the RagePro graphics subsystem on this thing, and there are times when the slowness of 10baseT is apparent in a network-intensive situation, but mostly it compares decently well to a more modern G4 PowerBook, quite a bit less so to a maxxed-out G5 tower or XServe of course.

The 512 MB RAM, which is the item you need the most, cost me $45 plus shipping and handling. A 20 gig HD is pretty darn cheap, whereas a 7200 RPM 60 gig TravelStar is down to the high $300s if you shop for it. You could redeploy the HD in a later computer. The G4 Sonnet card would run you a short handful of hundreds… ::checks sonnettech.com:: $349, maybe cheaper if you shop a bit.

Keep in mind that PowerBooks have been sitting semi-stagnant in G4-land while the Mac Desktop world is seeing liquid-cooled G5s that breathe fire. If you’re thinking you might want to upgrade to a desktop, this could be a good time, but I’m guessing that you might be happy to upgrade your WallStreet and get another 9-12 months’ good use out of it and then snag yourself a G5 PowerBook. Or even ::drool:: a dual G5 PowerBook.

At the time, I was trying to get a card that would work under both MacOS 9 and MacOS X, as I was still switchbooting a lot back then. I picked up an older Orinoco specifically because of its OS 9 compatibility. Newer cards which support 802.11g (Airport Extreme) are generally reported to “just plain work” under OS X but they don’t do diddly under OS 9 because no one writes drivers for them.

If your Orinoco card were equally old and turned out not to do the trick there are newer cards that will, at least under OS X.

You guess correctly. I’ve also developed a bit of an attachment here, and would get a kick out of keeping it around for a while longer. So if I read you correctly, I can plug in 512 Mb RAM, 20-60 gigs of HD and a 500 MHz G4, at which point a 802.11g will work fine with my spiffy new OS. All for summat in the neighborhood of $700 for the hardware and the pound of flesh nearest my heart for the software. Sweet.

Thanks for the (most) useful info. A couple more questions for you (and the rest of the TM, natch) if I may…

  1. How can I get the data from my current HD to a new one?

  2. Sonnet a fave? I’ll be rolling back through my home state of VT soon, which will bring me close to smalldog, which also might have some impact on…

  3. I’ve never cracked the case on this sucker - is this all something I can do myself as a neophyte? Or should I seek physical assistance?

Much thanks

-ellis

How to get info off your old HD onto your new one:

a) You could just burn the files and applications you care about to CDROM, copy them to Zip disk, or otherwise copy the files to any kind of media you’re able to copy to. Then once you’ve got the new HD installed, you just pop the CD or Zip cart into the drive and copy them over to their new home.

Alternatively, you can keep your old hard disk and use it as an external, and use the files on it without copying them at all:

b) Other World Computing makes some kickass FireWire enclosures of the “bring your own drive” kind. Or alternatively you could buy your new intended hard disk in one of those enclosures, thereby buying one item instead of two.

c) Alternatively, MCE sells a WallStreet expansion bay hard drive kit that’s also a bring your own drive, as well as selling expansion bay modules with a hard disk already in them (thereby once again allowing you to buy one item instead of two if you go that route).

The advantage of going with the FireWire solution is that you can easily, effortlessly, hook up that entire drive to any other modern Mac, including your future Mac that you’ll eventually purchase. That’s not true of the Expansion Bay module which is only useful in a WallStreet. The advantage of the Expansion Bay module is that you can boot MacOS 9 from an expansion bay hard disk (but not MacOS X). So if you’re using MacOS 9 (or 8 for that matter) now, you’d just put your entire existing HD in the expansion bay and whenever you want to boot MacOS 9, you can do so and you’ve got the world as you know it now right there in front of you. Meanwhile, your document files and whatnot would be available even when booted in MacOS X.


If you run your computer with the sound muted, unmute it before doing stuff under the hood, so you can hear the absence or presence of the boot chime when you’re done.

To swap out the processor daughtercard for the Sonnet G4 and swap out the 2 gig HD for a nice big one, you need two tools: a small phillips head screwdriver and a special kind of screwdriver called a torx, specifically a size T8 torx. Pop out the battery and the CDROM drive or whatever it is you’ve got in your two expansion bays by pulling on the levers at far left front and far right front. Then reach inside them and feel for the clips that hold down the keyboard. They are overhead and pull forward. Once youv’e done that, the keyboard can be lifted up and out of the way and you’re looking down on a heat shield held in place by two phillips head screws.

Touch the heat shield to discharge any static electricity in your own bod then unplug the AC adapter.

Loosen them and lift the head shield out of the way. Processor daughtercard is pretty much dead center, with the upper RAM module visible. (There’s another RAM module on the underside). The hard disk is in a caddy and is on the right, held down by its own phillips head screw.

The hard disk caddy lifts out easily once you’ve loosened the phillips head screw (which stays permanently connected to the caddy). You need to take the drive out of the caddy and for that you need the torx screwdriver. Two screws hold the little circuit tab that connects the drive to the motherboard, and four more hold the caddy plate to the drive. If you got a 60, tape something like a boxcutter blade or an old fashioned single edge razor blade to the right top of the drive (right top as installed, that is) to shield the WallStreet magnet from the 60gig drive magnet. Then bolt it in place, pop the connector on the front and bolt it on, and insert it into its connector and tighten the phillips head to retain it.

If you’re installing the Sonnet G4 card, install MacOS X to the new hard disk first and then go back in to replace the stock G3 daughtercard with the G4 Sonnet card. Why? Because there’s a CD-booting bug in the Sonnet card, you can’t boot OS X from CD with the Sonnet card installed. So keep your stock card, you’ll need it every time you upgrade to a newer full CD-based version of OS X (like 10.4, Tiger, which is coming out soon). You can still boot MacOS 9 from CD without problem, though.

If you’re going to install Panther (10.3.x) or Tiger (10.4.x, which isn’t out yet), you’ll need to use a product called XPostFacto to perform the install because old relics like our WallStreets aren’t supported for these newer operating systems by Apple and the CD won’t install these operating systems on our machines without a bit of cheating. If you want to go with Jaguar (10.2.8), you can install without XPostFacto.

Sonnet’s accelerator ships with an actual instructional video on a CD, along with a software app that copies the ROM from the stock card to a file so it can be copied to the new card. The daughtercard itself is plugged into the motherboard and lifts out with a little L shaped tool, although you can also just insert a screwdriver gently under the lip of the daughtercard where it just clears the metal rim at far right, using that metal rim as a fulcrum and lifting and it pops out of its socket. If you use the L shaped tool, the bottom of the L slides under the lip of the daughercard and you just lift straight up. You’ll be putting new RAM on the new card so you don’t need to do anything with the old RAM, but you can see how there are two retaining clips left and right and if you pull them back out of the way the RAM chip pops up and you just lift it out of the socket. Your new RAM will go into the corresponding empty slots in the Sonnet daughercard, bottom end with the copper contacts in first then pivot down until those retaining clips snap into place to hold 'em in. Take the Sonnet card and align the two puzzle-piece tabs in back with the holes in the metal rim, then pivot it down so that the connector meets the connector socket — press down and you should feel it mesh smoothly and firmly.

Plug in the AC and hit the power button. If you get a boot chime, life is good. If you do not get a boot chime, something is probably not plugged in properly, is not properly seating in its connector. If you get an obviously intentional sound but other than the boot chime, that’s usually specific for the RAM and means you should check that the RAM chips are properly seated on the daughtercard.

For moving stuff from one Mac to another, there’s always Firewire Target Disk Mode:

  1. Attach both computers to each other with a Firewire cable.
  2. On one Mac, boot it up, then hold down the “T” key. Wait for the Firewire icon to appear on the screen.
  3. The second Mac will now recognize the first Mac as an external Firewire hard drive. Copy files as usual.

The new PowerMacs introduced this week even include a utility that lets you migrate all your user settings from an earlier Mac to the new one, and uses Firewire Target Disk Mode to move the data over.

Well, you can’t use FireWire Target Mode on a WallStreet. You could use SCSI Target Mode, but even that wouldn’t be of much use if he’s only got the one computer, yes? The task was moving files from the old drive to a new bigger drive that would replace it, rather than one computer to another.

For moving files from one computer to another, yeah, Target Disk Mode is cool. You can also use a crossover cable and use AppleTalk file sharing. Again, though, not much use for transferring files from one disk to another for use in a single PowerBook.

Crunching the numbers has led me to believe that things will cost me upwards of $600 for the basic hardware (2x 256 RAM, 40 gig HD and g4 500 processor), which would still leave me shy an OS (presumably ~$200 for 10.4, though I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could snag Jaguar for only $30 or so), as well as external connectivity (firewire or USB PC card), wireless capability, or anything beyond a simple CD drive. In other words, it looks like turning my Wallstreet into anything truly able to function in the modern world will likely cost a grand or so. Which is also around the price (with educational discount) for a 1 GHz G4 iBook. Which rather defeats my whole purpose in trying to upgrade in the first place. This, in turn, generates some more questions for y’all…

  1. It seems that what I’ve laid out is the best upgrade package available, and presumably that will ever be possible (I can’t imagine that there’s too much of a market in developing new upgrades for a PowerBook more than a few generations old). So am I correct in believing that even the full upgrade would be effectively little more than a stop-gap measure for a few years at best, at which point I would once again be struggling with modern applications designed for G5 chips and ever-increasing amounts of RAM?

  2. Am I correct in believing that the only portion of the upgrade contemplated above that I could directly apply to a new computer would be the RAM? (Aside, that is, from the HD in an external fashion) Would RAM for the Wallstreet even work in a new mac?

  3. Other than nostalgia and maybe saving $100 or so, would there be any reason I’m not thinking of that would make upgrading preferable to buying new? In other words, any challenge to my basic assumption laid out above?

If everything that I’ve assumed above is correct, it seems that my best bet would be to hold out for 10.4 to prove itself stable, and then pick up an iBook with all the options that I’m hoping to upgrade to (plus, hopefully, a few more). So, unless I’ve made an error in judgement somewhere, I think the most valid question at the moment might well be…

  1. Given that my Wallstreet is merely struggling, rather than dying, what would be the best way to give it a little extra kick? Would throwing in 2x 128 RAM (the max without a Crescendo G4 upgrade, as I understand it) provide noticeable improvement? Or do I really need to upgrade the processor to get modern software to run at more functional speeds? All I’d really like to be able to do is browse the web and email without feeling like my computer is the weak link in the experience - in other words, I’m sorta wondering if my cable modem is justified by my current system.

Thanks so much for your help so far
-ellis

Oh, as for transferring my files, I found out that the only other mac user I know has an airport basestation, which we’re both pretty sure has an ethernet jack and could therefore function as a router to allow me to copy my HD to his for transfer purposes. Thanks for the tips though; the expansion bay enclosure is a rather neat little piece of tech.

You can upgrade to 512 MB of RAM without upgrading anything else. (Two 256 modules, the one on the bottom has to be low-profile). And you can run Jaguar (or Panther) on your stock G3-233. It’s far from being too slow or too old.

To put it into perspective, here’s someone who successfully put Panther (10.3.x) on the even-older “Kanga” G3 PowerBook with only 96 MB of RAM!

Would you benefit from the extra RAM? Hell yeah. On a price/performance grid, out of all the upgrades you could consider, maxing out your RAM will give you by far the most bang for the buck.

Would you see a major speed increase by also shelling out for the Sonnet G4 card and a bigger & faster hard drive? Definitely, but for that you pay more serious money. The hard drive would be reusable in later systems. The G4 card is harder to justify.

I was suspicious that the processor might be the dragging point, so it’s good to know that more RAM will provide a kick. From what I can tell, though, I’ll need a bigger HD to get 10.x to run - even 10.1 wants 1.5 gigs, which would provide little room for much else. In any case, I still have a few questions about the RAM…

  1. I’ve seen mention that to get 512, each 256 needs to be configured by the manufacturer to be read as 2x 128, and I somehow got the notion that even this capability was only possible with the sonnet - hence my question before. Just want to double-check on this one.

  2. I know little about RAM (as is probably obvious by now), but the sort I’ve been looking at (PC100 SO-DIMM) seems to be about the least common out there, which is making me worry that perhaps it’s a physical format that will only be usable in WS. Basically, if I know that I’ll be able to swap all the RAM into a future computer, there’d be no reason not to get it, so I’d like to check on that. (Hmmm…if I can get the rational tightwad portion of my brain to classify the RAM as essentially free…)

Thanks, again and always - you’re being a great help.

-ellis

I got my paired 256’s from a company called Data Memory Systems. 1-800-662-7466 at least as of the time I dealt with them last.

The RAM limit is not a characteristic of the processor but of the motherboard and the data path it devotes to RAM addresses. If I understand correctly, the number of bytes reserved for addresses limits the addressable RAM to 512 MB.

At the time the WallStreet was introduced the maximum was 192 MB but that’s because no one was as of yet making 256 modules and for the smaller, low-profile bottom chip the largest capacity available then was a 64. Apple never updates their configuration information so official Apple info will still indicate 192 max. But soon after its introduction a low-profile 128 MB module became available and WallStreets could go to 265 MB; then 512 MB modules became available for the top; then finally even low-profile 256 chips started to be manufactured.

I paid $31 for my upper module and $56 for the low-profile lower chip.


Additional things you should know or keep in mind:

a) If you’re going to upgrade to Panther, try to get your hands on both a Jaguar and a Panther install. Installing Panther on a WallStreet HD that has never had any flavor of MacOS X installed to it is a messy proposition. Jaguar on the other hand installs without any funny business, and once Jaguar is installed upgrading to Panther is much easier. The back pages of MacAddict and MacWorld are full of 800 number ads for cheap surplus hardware and software including good deals on older OS X install CDs. eBay is also a good resource.

b) If you decide to get a bigger HD, if you go over 8 gigs you’ll have to partition it.. Because of a limitation intrinsic to these older machines the only way MacOS X will boot without a lot of extra additional cute tricks is for the MacOS X to be on an 8 gig or smaller volume, and if that volume is a partition of a larger disk it has to be within the first 8 gigs of the disk. My two 60 gig disks both start off with 7.97 gig partitions, created with Disk Tools. (You can put MacOS 8.6 or 9 on the other partitions with no problem though, the older OS’s will boot from any partition you want).

Good to know. I think I’ll probably just try to rustle up an 8 gig HD and stick Jaguar on it, while leaving the processor alone. In the meanwhile, I’m definitely going to throw some RAM at it; however, I’m still a little unclear on whether or not the modules that fit the WS would work on another computer in the future. If I get a low-profile 256, can I swap it into, say, a G5 iBook in the future?

Much thanks

-ellis

Dude enough. If you need a new machine, buy a new machine. It is a waste of time and energy worrying about what’s going to come next time. The current crop of Powerbooks are one of the best price/performance investments you can make.

The biggest mistake I made, was trying to force OSX on a machine that it simply wasn’t designed to work on, just because Apple built in backward compatibility and I could do it. I didn’t know when to let go, when i finally did it was too late.

It’s a sin to place OSX on a machine that simply wasn’t created from the ground up to run it…even if you can.

Worst case scenario and you do miss the G5, so what? You will STILL have an incredible piece of equipment to last you until the G6.

Sell the Wallstreet on eBay, take the money and invest it on a new PBook. You will NOT regret it or STAY at OS9 and enjoy using that to it’s full potential on a machine that can handle it, but don’t cripple OSX.

Relax there, friend. I’m just trying to fight a little ignorance here - my own. Sorry if you find my incessent questioning annoying, but a couple hundred bucks here and there has some financial significance to me, so I’m willing to take the time to sort out my best options. And fortunately for me, AHunter3 seems to have pretty inexhaustible stores of both knowledge and patience.

Now, I’m going to assume by the fact that you took the time to go ahead and throw in your own two cents that you’re willing to help me out, despite your exasperation, which I appreciate - and which appreciation I’m now going to express by tossing a few questions in your direction.

  1. What system were you trying to push and what issues did you run into? I understand that the G4 chips are designed to take advantage of OSX (or vice versa), so are you simply of the mindset that OSX and a G3 don’t mix?

  2. If that’s the case, and you feel that sticking with 9.2 is my best option, how would you advise pepping up the system I’ve got to get the best out of it?

Thanks

-ellis