Mac users, what can I do with a Lombard G3 Powerbook?

[RedBeard]

I just picked up this PowerBook here: eBay Pretty good deal?

I know it already comes with Mac OS X and 9. Will it run Mac Office 2004? How do I pick what operating system I want to boot up? Are there any games that it will play? Will it run OS X well or should I just stick with 9? Any recommended software? If it doesn't come with the oringal installation discs for Mac OS, does it have a license?

I have used a few Macs here and there but I wanted to pick one up on the cheap and play around with it. Also, are there any tips/tricks you want to pass on me? I am a Mac newbie. I don't have it yet but it is in the mail.

Thanks --

 

[drag]

I know it already comes with Mac OS X and 9. Will it run Mac Office 2004?

If it does it will run poorly. The 300mhz cpu isn't a powerhouse. It'll be about equivelent to a 500-600 mhz pentium3

How do I pick what operating system I want to boot up?

You can select it from the one of the dialog boxes. It uses openfirmware which can interact directly with the host operating system. There is no bios settings or bootloader (at least not like x86) otherwise to mess with.

But you don't ever want to boot up in OS 9. OS 9 does bad things to OS X's partitions. If you need to run OS 9 you should have it on a seperate partition.

But you don't need to reboot to run OS 9 apps anyways. They will run in 'classic' mode, which is basicly OS 9 running inside of OS X

If it doesn't come with the oringal installation discs for Mac OS, does it have a license?

A upgrade to a newer OS will cost you a around a hundred bucks. But you would have to pay close attention to hardware compatability and you will probably loose the ability to run classic mode. I think that there is probably a good reason why this person hasn't upgraded past 10.3, but I don't know for certain anymore. It's been a long time since I worked with macs.

 

[RedBeard]

Thanks for the post! That answered a few of my questions >>

 

[chcarnage]

OS 9 alone didn't mess with OS X in my case and I boot both on the same machine for years. But Norton Antivirus for OS 9 once really messed up an OS X installation here.

My two favorite utilities: MenuMeters and TinkerTool.

Some other programs:
SnapNDrag Screenshot utility
VLC Video player
DeLocalizer Language packet remover

On the game front, well you can of course play games like Starcraft and Heroes of Might and Magic III and depending on your pain tolerance even Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 (8 MB VRAM) A collection of abandonware can be found at the-underdogs (formerly the-underdogs.org). More recent freeware and shareware games are on Versiontracker, which is a good source for other types of software as well.

Also notice that you can't install OS X 10.4 on Lombard PowerBooks.

 

[RedBeard]

More good links! Thanks >>

I looked at this article here >> Lowendmac And I guess it is possible to run OS X 10.4 on a lombard, but is it worth it?

I see the install DVD's floating around on eBay pretty cheap. Do you need key to install them?

 

[drag]

I do not beleive macs use keys.

Each mac has a special firmware or item in the firmware or something like that that OS X looks for. If you try to install it on a non-apple computer then it won't work.

 

[n0cmonkey]

No keys. In fact, Apple generally looks the other way if you use the same disc to install on multiple machines. They also released a $199 family pack of 5(?) licenses though, so there is no real reason to pirate copies.