u/RoboticGunner

Hello all! I've received a VGA video cable for my iBook, hoping to use it as a desktop machine until I can get the screen fixed.

As I've found out, it's not easy to get one of these things to display a boot menu or open firmware on an external monitor, so I still can't see what I'm doing.

I just need to get a Gentoo USB drive booted so I can get started. Any way I could work around this?

Many thanks!

Hello all! I've been making a lot of progress getting my iBook up and running again. Recently replaced the hard drive with an SD card adapter and have a backlight inverter board on the way. If that fails, I intend to replace the backlight with an LED conversion kit.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about what software I want to run on this thing. I have settled on the two OSes I want to run. I want to set up a dualboot between OS10.4 and Gentoo Linux.

I've been looking online for games I would like to have on the MacOS side, and have found that a few Popcap games are supported! Bejeweled 2, Zuma and Peggle.

One non-popcap game I'm happy to see as well is Luxor. I'm a big fan of those old marble based match three games lol

I'm a little less familiar with the productivity side of MacOS in general, let alone older Mac software. It might not be necessary, but I think it would be fun to see what it was like trying to use it as a proper productivity machine when it was still new.

Any suggestions for games and software? Any must haves?

Many thanks!

Hello all! I've recently gotten my hands on an iBook G3 700MHz with the 512 megabyte RAM upgrade. I've been messing around with it, trying to get it working properly again. Just needs a new backlight.

In the meantime, I've been thinking of what operating systems I want to load on this. I definitely want at least one version of MacOS installed, and I would like to have a more modern OS installed alongside it.

I've been thinking Adélie linux, as it seems to be the easiest, if not only, linux distro available for the G3.

However, I have also been meaning to give some flavour of BSD a shot in general, and I noticed that various BSDs support PPC, including this one. I thought it might be a fun way to give it a go.

I don't intend this machine to do much. On the MacOS side I just want to load it with a bunch of Mac software, see what that experience was like. For the more modern side, all I really need is some sort of word processor, some kind of XMPP client, and maybe a web browser for very light browsing, assuming this machine can still pull that off at all lol.

I'm wondering, does anyone here have any experience running FreeBSD on their PPC machines? Would you recommend it, or would I perhaps be better off looking for a different BSD?

Many thanks!

Hello all! I've recently been looking around on eBay for a few old machines, thinkpads, IBMs, Commodores, anything to add to my hoard.

Well, last night, I have found a killer deal. For around $70 I managed to place an order for a 12 inch white iBook G3 in pretty good condition. It's just dirty and perhaps a little scratched up. Other then that, it works perfectly fine.

Except for one major issue, that being a non-functional backlight. I figured it wouldn't be too big an issue, I just considered myself lucky to find such an otherwise functional machine within my price range. I thought it wouldn't be too hard to find a replacement backlight for it.

Unfortunately I've been having a bit of trouble actually finding a replacement light or inverter for it. Plenty of guides on how to do it, but nothing about the parts themselves.

Perhaps I haven't looked deep enough to find one yet, I'm still searching as I make this post. I was hoping I could ask for a little advice here on how I can get some parts, some things I should do before the machine gets here, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Slight hiccups aside, I'm very excited for my first experience with anything Apple related, aside from an iPod lol.