general Lombard questions

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Level 1

100 points

general Lombard questions

I have a Lombard that was collecting dust due to a bad logic board. I have recently decided to repair it and upgrade everything for maximum performance. This leads me to ask a few questions. I have searched the boards and haven't found any definite answers.
I have ordered the 400 mhz logic board with the DVD decoder. I have read somewhere that the DVD player only works with OS 9 and not with OSX. Is this true? I currently have 10.3 installed but would like to upgrade to 10.4 with XPostFacto if they haven't found a way to install 10.5. Is Tiger really better than Leopard? The next thing on the list is memory. You can install a max of 512mb on this board. Somewhere I heard that only 384mb will be accessed. Another post on this board stated a guy had 768 mb installed but had problems with iTunes. What is the max amount of memory I can install? I think my hard drive is about to die. It is currently an ATA/IDE drive with 4200rpm. What type of hard drive can I use and is there a max gigabyte amount that I can install? I have a third party wireless card that works fairly well. Any other tips for max performance?

PowerMac G5 Dual-Core 2.0; PB G3 Lombard, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 26, 2007 10:24 AM

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Answer 1

jpl

Level 7

28,285 points

Dec 27, 2007 8:03 PM in response to Quincy Minor

Quincy,

Yes, the Wallstreet and Lombard use hardware to decode DVDs and no version of OSX supports this feature. The only way to watch quality, full-screen DVDs is to boot into 9.x...third-party software DVD players for OSX offer a very poor picture.

You can install Tiger/10.4 two ways: If 9.x and/or any version of OSX up through 10.3.9 is installed, use XPostFacto to boot the Tiger DVD and install 10.4; or remove the Lombard's HD, place it in a USB or FireWire enclosure, connect it to a Mac that boots Tiger, then install to the HD. You do not need XPostFacto to run Tiger on the Lombard, only to boot the Tiger DVD on the Lombard.

Leopard/10.5 will never run on a G3 CPU according to folks who have investigated this question; the code is incompatible. Only upgrading to a G4 microprocessor card offers a solution but a poor one at that. Those who have tried this on the Pismo are still having problems.

With the limitations of a G3 400 MHz CPU, 8MB of videoRAM, and 512MB of memory, Tiger will run fine, but these black G3s are at the end of the line for OSX.

I would max out the RAM at 512MB (2x256) but it must be memory designed for the Wallstreet, Lombard, and early iMac.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iBooks-PowerBooks/G3-Lombard/

Your greatest performance increase will come from a faster HD and max RAM. The largest ATA internal HD this older hardware will access is 128GB, so go with a 120GB running at 5400rpms...I don't think the 7200rpm drives are worth the dollars for the nominal speed bump.

Beyond the mentioned items above, I would not put another dollar in this machine albeit still a very nice powerbook.

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Answer 2

Quincy Minor Author

Level 1

100 points

Dec 28, 2007 9:23 PM in response to jpl

Thanks jpl! That was a lot of info and I'm glad you responded. Now I can get to work

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