PowerBook Model: PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze Keyboard) - A.K.A 101 or Lombard (M5343 )

Began :

333 mhz: 5/1/1999

400 mhz: 5/7/1999

Original Price: $2,499 (333 Mhz) & $3,499 (400 Mhz)

Specs

• PPC 750 G3 333 or 400 Mhz
• FPU & PMMU integrated
• Data Path: 64-bit @ bus speed of 66 Mhz
• 64K L1 cache. L2 cache: 512K (333) or 1MB (400)
• Ports, inputs/outputs: 1 Type II PC card slot, 2 USB, 1 HDI-15 video, 1 SCSI HDI-30, 1 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port, 1 56K V.90 fax modem, 1 built in 16-bit Plain Talk mic, 2 16- bit stereo speakers, 1 IRDA (4 mbps) and sound in and out ports (mic or headphones/speakers)
• Memory: 2 slots (SO-DIMM) 64MB min and max @ 384 MB (512MB with low profile RAM). RAM sizes: 64, 128 and 256 MB
• Shipped with a 4, 6 or 10 GB IDE HD and a 24x cd-rom (2x DVD-ROM optional with a PC card decoder - standard on 400 MHz)
• 14.1" TFT active matrix screen displaying millions of colors (32-bit 1024 x 768 capable of 640 x 480 & 800 x 600) with 8 MB VRAM ATI Rage LT Pro
• ROM: 4 MB
• Gestalt ID: N/A
• Electrical: 45 watts max, 1.2 Amps, 153.9 Btu per hour, 100-240 volts, 50-60 Hz (Freq Range) and a 50 Wh Lithium Ion battery (softpower)
• 5.9 Ibs @ 12.7 H x 10.4 W x 1.7 D
• 8.6 through to X supported*

*According to Apple Computers Inc®. Earlier and/or later OS' may be supported.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Can I upgrade the processor?
2. How large of a hard drive will the PowerBook G3 hold?
3. What other upgrade options to I have?
4. What is the most functional and effiecient OS to run on the PowerBook G3?
5. Buying advice.
6. Any defects?

1. Processor Upgrades?

Yes. PowerLogix offers a PowerPC® BlueChip LS G4 at 500 mhz (7410 Alti-Vec processing) with 1 mb of L2 cache for $399. Check OWC to purchase one.

I am not sure about the following two options, but here is a suggestion. (1) Take a 400 MHz G3 Lombard processor and install it into your 333. It should work (soildering required). If you have done the latter, email me. (2) Take a Pismo G3 500 MHz processor and install it in your Lombard. You would doubtless have to copy over the ROM from your old Lombard processor to the Pismo's. No idea if this would work. Let me know if you have done it or tried and failed miserably.

Lastly, you could overclock the chip, but I do not recommend it. Click here for instructions.

2. HD Upgrades?

One can easily upgrade the PowerBook G3's HD to a larger ATA/IDE drive, and a faster one too (5400 rpm or maybe a 7200 rpm drive). Any 2.5" x <=12.7 mm drive will work. One nice thing about having a large hard drive is you can use your PowerBook as a backup for files or even a server. Check OWC for HD upgrades. I suggest a 5400 or faster HD with lots of cache (8 MB would be desirable). With a drive such as the latter, you will experience a marked performance increase compared to the stock 4200 rpm drives that shipped with the PowerBook G3's. IBM Travelstars are the going trend in laptop HD's. Click here for detailed instructions on how to upgrade the HD.

VST Expansion Bay HD: VST makes HD's for the PowerBook G3's expansion bay. The casings house large HD's that are "swappable" (i.e. standard IDE/ATA laptop HD's can be installed in the VST casing, resulting in expandable HD capacity). These drives are both bootable and hot swappable. Also, the the VST expansion bay HD takes advantage of DMA (direct memory access) for faster data transfers.

See the PC Card section and Expansion Bay section for more storage options.

3. Other upgrade options?

Max out the physical RAM. Try The PowerBook Guy or check RamSeeker for all your RAM needs to find RAM for your PowerBook. The PowerBook G3 can house up to 512 MB of RAM with 2 144-pin 100 MHz 10ns SO-DIMM chips, (expandable to 512 MB using low profile DIMMs in both slots - upper and lower). Click here for detailed instructions on how to upgrade the RAM.

RAM Disk: Load the operating system onto a Ram disk (bootable) to increase both the speed and efficiency of your PowerBook.  It also results in longer battery life, as the hard drive is not constantly spinning.  Check the help section within your Operating System for instructions on setting up a RAM Disk. RAM disks are particularly important to have in case your computer crashes. Upon restart, it will boot from the RAM Disk and you can diagnose problems with the HD from there, provided you included both a system folder and a copy of Norton Disk Doctor on it.

Add a Compact Flash Card: Compact flash cards are used in order for owners of digital camera’s to load their files onto their computers. However, as these cards insert into the pcmcia slot (pc card slot), they can also act as a second hard drive (when formatted as a mac volume). Flash cards come in sizes of 6 MB to 1 GB and higher. 128 MB card goes for about $50US. Also, Compact flash cards, acting like a hard drive in your computer, can be used to increase the amount of available ram that your computer has (using VM). In addition, store a system folder on it and boot from it (when formatted as a mac volume).
The benefits of the latter are silent operation, longer battery life (no hard drive spinning) and a faster computer. (Please note, with the speed of newer laptop hard drives reaching 7200 rpm’s, a flash card might actually slow the computer down. However, on older laptops, this is not the case, as the original hard drives in these machines are significantly slower than the newer, faster drives). You will need: (1) Compact Flash Card (2) A PC card slot or USB (3) An adapter for the Compact Flash Card if necessary. Flash card speeds peak at about 4.2 Mbps and write at about 2.2 Mbps. Make sure to get one of the faster cards.
 
Battery Information: Replace the battery via BTI. Need more power on the road? Buy that second battery from BTI and install it in the expansion bay, giving you two batteries to work with. Further, buy more batteries as spares or try an external 7.2 volt NiCad battery pack (approx 5 hours running time under heavy usage). Try Lind to purchase one. Want even more portable power or don’t want to use a battery? A solar panel solution called the “Sun Catcher Professional” made by Power Quest might work. You must have your PB plugged in to boot, however.

If you are having battery troubles (i.e. battery does not hold a charge or is losing power), your ac adapter is not recognized or your computer does not wake from sleep, and the like, try the following method first to remedy the problem:

Reset the Power Manager:

1. If the computer is on, turn it off.
2. Press and release the reset button on the rear of the computer. The reset button is located between the external video and modem (RJ-11) ports.
3. Wait 5 seconds.
4. Press the Power button to restart the PowerBook computer.

Note: When you reset the power manager, wait at least 5 seconds before pressing the power button to start up the computer. If you do not wait at least 5 seconds, the reset procedure may fail. (If you suspect that the reset procedure has failed, press and release the reset button again and wait 5 seconds before pressing the Power button.)

Expansion Bay Options: (1) BURN DVD's! with the MCE DVD R/RW Superdrive (1x DVD R/RW - bootable) (1) MCE Xcarét Pro 2000 16x10x24x Expansion Bay CDRW Drive. (2) MCE Xcarét Pro 2000 8x8x8x24 Expansion Bay DVD/CDRW Combo Drive. (3) MCE Xcarét Pro - 99 Expansion Bay Hard Drive (20GB - 60 GB Sizes). (3) MCE Xcarét Pro - 99 Expansion Bay Hard Drive Kit (add HD). Below is a picture of the MCE expansion bay HD for Lombard or Pismo.

(4) MCE Portable AC Power Adapter (see picture below)

(5) Add DVD support via an MCE DVD decoder card and one of MCE's DVD drives.

Check MCE for to purchase the latter products.

(5) VST Zip drives (100 MB/250 MB zip disks) or SuperDrives which can read 1.44 floppies and 120 MB super disks (see picture below of zip drive that reads 100 or 250 MB zip disks).

PC Card Slot (PCMCIA): Ethernet cards and modem cards will work as well as a compact flash card (see above). The PC Card Slot's on the PowerBook G3 series are CardBus compliant (32-bit data path capable). Thus, firewire cards, USB cards, SCSI cards and video cards are compatible.

More HD Uprgade options via PC Card slot: One can add a PC card that accepts external HD's. Just obtain an enclosure for a HD or a complete external HD compatible with a PC Card HD acceptor, plug in the HD, and you are ready to go. Alternatively, you can buy PC Card HD's (Type III) with a Type II-III adapter.

Add Zoomed Video: To add Zoomed video, you will need the correct PC Card. Look for them at OWC. The appropriate software is free from Apple.

Add Wireless: Click here to find out how you can get your PowerBook wirelessly connected to a wireless network for web surfing, wireless file transfer, and more.

Goodies to Add on: The PowerBook G3 is ready to be furnished with all sorts of peripheral devices and will also support external monitors (dual desktop in addition to video mirroring). 
 
The PowerBook G3 will support external zip drives, scanners, printers, cd-roms, cd-r's, floppy drives, digital cameras, etc. If they are SCSI drives, an HDI-30 SCSI adapter is required. Use an HDI-30 SCSI peripheral cable when connecting your PowerBook to external SCSI devices of the aforementioned sort. Laserwriters may use the serial port for a Localtalk connection. You also have the option of USB and firewire peripherals if you have upgraded with the appropriate PC Cards. Check out MCE or OWC for tons of USB and peripheral products available (i.e. Lacie CD-RW's, Lacie DVD-RW's, External firewire HD's, etc.).

Internet/Networking
 
Add a Faster Internal Ethernet: See the tips section on speeding up browsing to improve the PowerBooks Internet performance (or any mac for that matter). I am not sure, but an ethernet PCI with at 10/100/1000 baseT may be available and compatible (note that the stock ethernet on a PowerBook G3 is 10/100 baseT).
 
Ethernet/Networking:  It is possible to connect PowerBook G3 to an Ethernet network.  To achieve the latter, try one of the following: (1) Simply use the built-in Ethernet to connect to an Ethernet network or other Ethernet compatible computer. If your Ethernet/modem is not operational (i.e. broken), you have lots of other options to try. (2) Use a pc ethernet card and insert it into one of your PC card bays. Simply connect the ethernet cord to another ethernet equipped mac or ethernet network. (3) Dayna and Asante make SCSI-Ethernet adapters (RJ-45 connectors).  (4) Use another macintosh to connect to an Ethernet network and then connect the PowerBook G3 series to the latter computer. To connect to another computer via Asante's SCSI-Ethernet method, make sure you have the required Asante driver.

(5) One can also connect to another SCSI equipped mac by using a SCSI HDI-30 docking cable. (6) Connect to another modem equipped computer via the modem cable. (7) Use the wireless data transfer window to share files with another wireless equipped device.Connecting to another Mac is also useful if you want to install software from a CD but your PowerBook lacks a CD-ROM or you lack the software CD-ROM but the software is on another computer. Simply connect to another CD-ROM equipped Mac by trying one of the aforementioned ways , mount the disc image on your PowerBooks desktop (or drag installers over to your desktop), and install the software. Ok, Ok.... enough options.

4. Best OS?

OS 9.2.2 runs very well (super fast) on this machine and I highly recommend it. OS 8.6 is rock solid and fast, which should also be a consideration. Can't decide? Partition your HD if it is large enough and throw on multiple OS' (i.e. One partition with OS 8.6, and the other with OS 9.2.2 and all its features and yet another partition with OS X if you so desire).

Well, not really....

The Lombard and OS X Essential Information:

Quick subjective blurb. From having used both the Wallstreet (with and without a processor upgrade) and a 333 MHz Lombard in OS X right from its initial release, I can attest to their being little difference between the two machines in OS X in terms of performance. The latter is based on the feel of both machines with a processor upgrade inside the Wallstreet (PL G3 500). Without the upgrade and stock G3 300 MHz, the Lombard is faster. What is my point? Do not expect super fast OS X performance with a Lombard 333 MHz. The 400 MHz with its 1 MB cache will doubtless perform better in OS X but is still not that quick in the X realm. However, both make pretty good OS X machines, especially when the following tips are completed.

(1) The graphics chip (ATI Rage LT Pro) does not load (apparently) when booting into OS X (earlier than OS 10.2.4). The fix is as follows:

A hack described on xlr8yourmac actually enables the new drivers for ATI chipsets in a Lombard Powerbook G3 (333 MHz). My Lombard is noticably faster now; Finder is more usable (menus, list view, dragging windows around) and QuickTime playback is smooth, though still CPU hungry.
You can enable the driver by editing the info.plist file inside System -> Library -> Extensions -> ATIRagePro.kext (control-click to show package contents) -> Contents. Inside the plist file, move to the IOKitPersonalities -> ATIRagePRO -> IOPCIMatch entry. This contains the boards for which the driver will load. The Lombard's signature is 0x4c491002, and that signature is not listed. If you add this signature, the driver will load after you save and reboot. Editor's note: You'll probably need to edit this file as root in order to save your changes.
Keep a backup of the original Info.plist. Thanks to Luis Flores (no email address available) for finding this out, and check out xlr8yourmac.com for the full email from Luis, where he explains how to find the signature and how to prove whether the driver is or is not loading.

Note: According to reports, the latter hack is not needed if you are running OS 10.2.4 or later. Apparently, with OS 10.2.4 or later, the Graphics chip driver loads.

(2) Get a G4 processor upgrade, you will not look back.

(3) Max out the RAM.

(4) Get a faster HD (7200 rpm if possible).

(5) Reduce color bit depth to thousands of colors

5. Any Defects?

First off, the screen is prone to incurring key impressions because of the tight fit between the screen and the keyboard. This is a common problem and in many cases the keyboard marks do not come off the screen. Some have it worse than others. Solve the problem by buying a keyboard protector here. Also, the USB suffered problems under classic OS' as follows: From Apple Knoweldge Base Archive Article 58386 : When the PowerBook G3 wakes from sleep, the Password Security control panel is activated before the PowerBook has a chance to enable the USB bus. This results in any external USB keyboard not working. This happens only if Password Security is set to "ask when waking from sleep." The solution: use the built-in keyboard on the PowerBook to type the password. Also, you may experience choppy DVD playback in OS 9 (DVD playback on Lombards is not supported in OS X). Solution: Try some or more of the following:

• Turn off Virtual Memory
• Turn off Apple Talk
• Disconnect the PowerBook from a Network
• Reduce color bit depth to thousands of colors
• Quit other open applications
• Make sure you have the latest software (DVD player 1.3 is the latest for the Wallstreet)
• Dual layered discs can cause stuttering, avoid these discs if need be
• Turn off Speakable Items
• Make sure disc surface is clean

Lastly, the PowerBook G3 series gets extremely hot. Solution, try Road Tools' Cool Pad.As can be seen from the picture, it angles the computer in such a way that enables better heat dissipation, not to mention allowing for more comfortable typing on flat surfaces.

6. Buyers Guide.

The PowerBook Lombard is a great portable powerhouse with stock processing speeds reaching 400 MHz with 1 MB L2 cache, 2 USB ports built in, is light, has long battery life, sports a nice screen, is OS X compatible and is asethetically pleasing. As can be seen from the MacWorld Lab Test results on the left, and the MacBench scores on the right, the 400 Mhz is about 20% faster than the stock 333 MHz G3 low end Lombard. In fact, according to MacBench, the 333 faired not much better than a 300 MHz Wallstreet. It should be noted that the test is not completely comprehensive and does not reflect fully real world performance, but it gives one a good indication of raw processing power. Now the 333 Mhz Lombard as well as the 400 Mhz Lombard have twice the VRAM compared to the Wallstreet, something not tested in both of the above tests which does affect performance, viz. in OS X. If I was buying a Lombard, I would opt for the 400 MHz machine as it is significantly faster, but both are worth buying.