Powerbook G3 (Pismo) & OSX Tiger

Bob,

Of course Tiger supports the G3...I would have a talk with the manager of that Apple Store and have him straighten out this guy.

Since you apparently have no hardware issues, it is possible the DVD-ROM drive is failing, a common problem on the Pismos. I am assuming it is the DVD disk itself that will not boot?

- To cover all bases, have you reset the PRAM?

- Will the drive play a DVD movie?

- Do you have access to another Pismo or a Lombard with a DVD-ROM drive (this is usually a 400MHz Lombard)?

- Do you have access to a FireWire DVD burner? Most will boot a Tiger DVD when using the 'option key' startup.

- You might also try installing via FireWire Target disk Mode from another Mac that supports Tiger.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

- There is also the remote possibility the Tiger DVD is bad...this does happen.

SpottyFox:

Have no fear. Your Pismo 500 will run Tiger. You have enough RAM and your new internal HDD will perform well with Tiger. I would suggest running Disk Utility > Repair Disk to be sure everything is in order, and of course, Repair Disk Permissions before and after installation. Your Pismo is a wonderful computer, and is quite up to Tiger.

Good luck.

cornelius

PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

SpottyFox:

I loved Panther and thought I would never upgrade to Tiger, especially after all the horror stories I read on these pages. I had the software disk sitting around for months, then I decided I'd take the risk. Actually, I bought a Pismo 500 on eBay for my wife and it came loaded with Tiger. No sweat, I thought, and went for it.

I have since upgraded my processor to G4/550 and that makes this baby even more beautiful. Tiger is great. I still have a lot to learn about it, but by the time I know enough to hold my own there'll be a new OS to wonder about installing.

In any case, you'll love it.

Good luck.

cornelius

PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

I have heard a lot of people running Tiger on their Pismo without any problem. But I think there'd still be a speed issue. I use an iMac G5 at work and there's always a lag when I go to Dashboard (I only have about 6 widgets on). I think it might be a good idea to install Tiger on an external hard drive first and try it with your Pismo to see if you really like it.

By the way, Tiger's Automator is amazing! But I don't really like Spotlight. Search-as-you-type is kinda awkward (in my opinion). I still like the old way.

powerbook g3 firewire Mac OS X (10.3.9) XLR8 G4 upgraded

xmer2:

The Pismo is obviously slower than a G5. At only 400/500 or 550 with the G4 processor upgrade, it will run slower than higher speed processors. However, Pismo users are used to the speed of their machines. With sufficient RAM (up to 1 GB) and a replacement internal HDD (5400 to 7200 rpms) the performance is remarkably enhanced. Although it runs quite decently with the original HDD and 512 MB RAM, I should add.

I have been running Tiger for several months and can't say I notice it being slower than running Panther, or Jaguar for that matter.

Pismo users have no apologies to make for their machines. It is still one of the finest products Apple has made.

cornelius

PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

Yah, love my Pismo too~ 🙂 Just sharing the Dashboard issue I see on the iMac G5 at work. When I go to Dashboard, it always goes like this: screen dims and widgets move in from the edge of the screen but freeze halfway for 2 seconds or so. Don't know how it's like on a Pismo G4. I'm not upgrading to Tiger because a certain language input method is missing in it. So I don't have first-hand experience on the speed of Dashboard on Pismo. Maybe it's just that the iMac I use at work is slow with Dashboard. I've heard that Pismo's start-up speed is the fastest of all Apple laptops, even compared with MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.16 GHz (first-hand experience by 2 guys at the other forum). I guess different configuration causes this. Hope Barry is getting along with his new Tiger~ 🙂

powerbook g3 firewire Mac OS X (10.3.9) XLR8 G4 upgraded

xmerz:

I'm not upgrading to Tiger because a certain language input method is missing in it.

Not sure what you mean by this. What you mind expanding a bit.

cornelius

PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

Hey, Guys:

I upgraded this 400 mhz Pismo to 768 MB RAM and an 80 gig hard drive about a month and a half ago. Then I installed Tiger. The new OS runs great on this machine. Previously, I had only a 10 gig hard drive and 356 MB RAM, and Panther ran a little slow on it. But the upgrade in RAM and storage has made all the difference. I would not worry at all about installing Tiger on a Pismo, especially if you have upgraded the RAM and the hard drive.


Pismo 400 mhz Mac OS X (10.4.6) 768 MB RAM; 80 GB Hardrive

Same here, just put Tiger on my PowerBook G3/500 and it's running just great. The only problem is Google Earth which doesn't work well on this video card.

Tiger sped up my 15" Aluminum G4 startup time to 35 seconds, and sped up this Pismo startup time to 1 minute. So far it's acting like every major OS X update so far (10.2, 10.3, 10.4): each is faster than the last, and of course faster is more valuable for old hardware than new.

cornelius, Apple took out Zhuyin (a Traditional Chinese input method) in Tiger which I use everyday. There's a similar input method (Hanin) but not as convenient to me (and to a lot of Chinese users actually). A solution is a 3rd-party input method called OpenVanilla. But Panther has been working well with me, so I'll stick with it for now.

powerbook g3 firewire Mac OS X (10.3.9) XLR8 G4 upgraded

I am currently running OSX Panther and would like to free up some more space on my 11GB hard-drive. Is it possible for me to delete "Applcations (Mac OS9)" and "System Folder (9.2)" since I am no longer using OS9? Would this cause any problems in running Panther? Thank you

Panther does not need those OS 9 folders if you aren't running Classic.

However, they don't save much space in an OS X world where large temp files are regularly created. You might actually save more space by running a delocalizer.

Then again, a 40GB drive is now as cheap as USD$80; you will find it more productive to buy a larger hard drive rather than spending a lot of time looking and looking for relatively small files to delete safely. Especially since the hard drive is so easy to replace in these models.

Mihir:

Welcome to Apple Discussions.

Just as a reminder, you really should start a new topic when you have a new question. Threadjacking is frowned upon in these Forums. When there are multiple questions running simultaneously in the same thread it detracts from both questions and is confusing to follow.

If you need help in posting a topic click on Help & Terms of Use in the sidebar on the right.

Good luck.

cornelius

xmerz:

Thanks for explaining the language issue. Not something most US users would notice. However, Panther is an excellent OS, very stable and works well with most macs. Glad you have the option for your language input in it.

Good luck.

cornelius