A few questions on my "new" PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz

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Level 1

15 points

A few questions on my "new" PowerBook G4 12" 1.5GHz

Bought a very nice PowerBook G4 on eBay last week and want to update it a bit. The seller only used it about 2.75 years. It came with all of the books (including Apple decals!), install disc and two different display adapters for $130! 🙂 The seller didn't pack the PB with enough packing and the power adapter hit the side and bent the medal above the optical drive slot a bit.😠 I certainly was not a happy camper when I saw that! She refunded me $15 on the dent. Thank goodness the PB works! Played a DVD and it works. The hard drive doesn't make any noise, thank goodness! From what I've seen on eBay, it looks like these aluminum PowerBooks can get bent or dented if one isn't very careful.

It's got a Toshiba MK8026GAX 80GB HD and CD/DVD burner (SuperDrive?). The model is PowerBook6, 8. It's got Tiger on it and I want to upgrade to Leopard (just got a retail full install of Leopard on eBay recently for it).

Have seen old posts on here about different brands of RAM to upgrade the 512MB to 1.25GB. What brand is still recommended for this PowerBook in 2013? Crucial or OWC or?? Crucial wants about $65 for 1GB and OWC wants about $32. I'd like to use OWC since it's cheaper if it would be ok.

The PB came with a 45W power adapter without the AC cord. Found an Apple KB HT1565 (dated 8/30/2012) that says my PB should have a 65W adapter. Found a brand new in the box 65W on eBay today for $18! 🙂

Would like to have wireless Internet to use the PB in the basement. Currently I have wired Internet for my Mac Mini and Internet TV box. Was thinking about getting an Airport Extreme base station to plug in one of the Ethernet cables and then hopefully could get Internet in the basement. My house is 83 years old, so don't know if that would cause any problems. The Airport Extreme Firmware version is 402.6 (3.90.34.0p13). Which generation of Airport Extreme base station can I use? All of this wireless stuff is confusing to me. I wouldn't be creating a network or anything fancy.

What brand of wireless mouse would you recommend? Don't care for the trackpad and am currently using a Dell wired mouse I have, but it doesn't want to scroll.

Thanks very much for your time.

silverado93

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.4.2), 12", 1.5 GHz G4, 512MB, 80GB HD

Posted on May 19, 2013 4:46 PM

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Answer 1

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,690 points

May 19, 2013 8:37 PM in response to silverado93

I'd like to use OWC since it's cheaper if it would be ok.

I've used OWC RAM exclusively in our Macs for over a decade--and we have 17 Macs in a famility of five! I say go for OWC.

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Answer 2

Network 23

Level 6

12,333 points

May 21, 2013 1:57 AM in response to silverado93

My old PowerBook G4 was very happy on Leopard.

I nearly always order RAM from OWC for my family and friends, but because OWC is not always the least expensive, I also trust Crucial and Transintl.com which I have ordered from in the past.

silverado93 wrote:

Would like to have wireless Internet to use the PB in the basement. Currently I have wired Internet for my Mac Mini and Internet TV box. Was thinking about getting an Airport Extreme base station to plug in one of the Ethernet cables and then hopefully could get Internet in the basement. My house is 83 years old, so don't know if that would cause any problems. The Airport Extreme Firmware version is 402.6 (3.90.34.0p13). Which generation of Airport Extreme base station can I use?

Probably any. I think your PowerBook supports 802.11b/g. While the wireless world is moving on to 802.11n, 802.11g is widely available and any wireless router that supports that or 802.11b will work with your PowerBook. If you had a very recent Airport base station, it will have an option to be set for 802.11n only or 802.11n, b, and g so you would only have to make sure you set it to the latter for backwards compatibility.

The very first AirPort base station supported 802.11b, so your PowerBook would even work with that, but that's going back so far you don't want one that old.

silverado93 wrote:

What brand of wireless mouse would you recommend? Don't care for the trackpad and am currently using a Dell wired mouse I have, but it doesn't want to scroll.

I use a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 and I love it. Not sure if the driver supports Leopard on a G4, but you can use the mouse well enough without the driver. It can be found much cheaper than the Microsoft link I posted there.

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