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G3 Lombard to wireless?

I've dusted off my old PowerBook G3 (Lombard) running the original OS 8.6


I want to be able to connect wirelessly to the internet.


Suggestions on how to do this -- memory and OS upgrades?


One suggestion I received was to use a PCI card, which meant upgrading the OS to 10.3. Is this upgrade from 8.6 to 10.3 possible?


Other suggestions or routes to take to make this change?


Here are the specs that I pulled off the system profiler (I'm a rookie, so if there's more info that is helpful let me know.)


Disk Cache 7.98MB

Virtual memory 321 MB

Built-in memory 320 MB

Backside L2 cache 512K

Machine ID 406

Machine Speed 333 MHz


kind regards,

PowerBook, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, Lombard

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 8:56 AM

Reply
4 replies

Dec 14, 2011 9:16 AM in response to CeleryRoot

Please forgive this slightly flippant reply - I'm sure the techs will be along any minute with the nut and bolt answer.

However my response would be - why would you bother? There will be so little you can accomplish even if you do get connected. I am a man for a project myself but this is analagous to trying to take a bi-plane into space!

Good luck anyway.

Dec 16, 2011 11:33 AM in response to Braby

That "bi-plane" is one of the first that actually could hook up wirelessly. The other was the original iBook G3. That said, getting it there requires a bit of forsight of what one may run into:


1. A PCMCIA card which has 802.11g is hard to find that also has Mac OS X drivers.


2. A wireless ethernet bridge can be attached to your built-in ethernet port with no extra drivers.


3. Mac OS 9 browsers don't offer much in the way of current video compatibility. 10.3.9 barely more so. The irony is, the Powerbook G3/233 was able to show Sorenson based video movie trailers in Quicktime without any lag. Sadly the Youtubes of this world did not choose the less processor hungry algorithms to write their video encoding technology.


4. The Lombard's DVD drive wasn't that compatible with Mac OS X or higher.


5. Having no built-in Firewire and only one PCMCIA slot meant that any powered Firewire devices may have a hard time to connecting, making backing up to current hard drives very difficult


6. the 29/30 pin SCSI adapters are hard to find for the Lombard.


7. Some of these machines had a CPU that actually was not able to allow any Mac OS X installation whatsoever, and you only learned about it after the fact.


If you don't mind the exploration of getting it up to speed, it can certainly be worth your while. My FAQ*:


http://www.macmaps.com/macosxnative.html


has several links which may help you get to where you want to go.


Good luck!

Dec 17, 2011 1:25 AM in response to a brody

Well done a brody - and Tom - I knew help would arrive!

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the "getting there" its what can be done on arrival that will prove to be the problem,

This by the way from someone who hangs onto many bits of kit that no longer really have a purpose.

As the mountaineer said when asked "why?" - "because its there".....

G3 Lombard to wireless?

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