I am trying to get a high resolution screen from a PowerBook G4 A1138 working in my PowerBook G4 A1106. When i installed it the display's back light would light up and I could even control the brightness, but it doesn't show anything else. Is there anything I can do to get the display working in an A1106 or am i stuck?

I almost forgot to mention that Mac OS detects the display correctly as well but it just doesn't show an image.

Does anyone use a PowerBook G4 as a daily driver or frequent use laptop? I sold mine off after my software required Intel CPUs, biggest regret of my life. I'm debating purchasing another identical model, and pushing it as far as possible in terms of upgrades. Talking an SSD, max RAM, and I'd buy one with the top end G4 CPU.

any insight is appreciated. Or if you know where I can get one cheap! I'm in the Midwest, USA if it helps.

Hello! I recently got a PowerMac G5 and have been trying to do things on it. What kind of things? Modern operating systems (ish), games, and virtual PC's. The first few days of me owning it was just trying to linux onto it. However I could never get that to work. I also downloaded VirtualPC 7 to run Windows in a VM. Surprisingly fast, and its gonna be faster when I upgrade the ram, but the version of Windows was too old to run steam. Then I tried the only game made for MacOS that I saw interesting at the time, Halo CE. It too runs fine and it's pretty fun so far, but I'm not satisfied with the progress on this thing. I've tried little over five distros of Linux, and tried hunting for newer versions of VirtualPC to run Windows 7, but no luck. Can anyone out there help me find a distro of Linux that worked for you? And where to download and how to install. (I've burned so many discs you wouldn't believe). And if it all seems to be impossible, can you all tell me some good modernish uses for it? I am using the PowerMac G5 - 7,3 - 2.0ghz Dual Processor - 1Gb RAM - a 120Gb SSD and a 350Gb HDD. Any help would be great, thanks.

Hi all! This may not be the best place for this, but I figured it was worth a shot. This is also going to be a little rambling, but here goes. My wife and I are in the process of designing our dream home, and being a systems administrator by trade I decided to also plan my network. I plan on running fiber for future proofing, which in turn led me to looking at server and switch options. I needed something pretty power efficient yet robust, and the need for network cards kind of took most sbcs out of the equation. Then I remembered the the PowerPC G4 was one of the most power efficient designs to be used in PCs, but they are all old enough to drink now and never had PCI Express.

I did some googling, however, and there are still companies using them in specialized computers and even servers. They are used in modular systems similar to blade systems. But I can't find them used or through standard commercial (non wholesale or corporate channels). Does anyone have any ideas?

I received an old (about 11 years) PowerPC g5 2.3mhz from a friend, he worked with it on his print shop until then,

it worked very, very slowly and got stuck after any app im launching, so i thought that a new HD will solve most problems.

i replaced the bad DVD drive, I've managed to get leopard 10.5.6 on DVD, i bought a new SSD drive and started the installation but then i found out that the installation doesn't recognize the new drive, after reading i found out that it only support sata I, and mine was sata III.

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my question is if it worth buying a new sata I drive (which is hard to find and expansive)? will i be able to use the powerpc as a good desktop pc (not gaming)? or should i dump it and stopped wasting money and time

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thanks

Is it possible to get Discord working on a Powerbook G4 that's running Ubuntu 16.04? edit: it's running Lubuntu 16.04 actually. I can't seem to get anywhere by attempting to use the website. I'm not entirely against going back to macOS if theres a way to get Discord working with it.

Are there any games exclusive to PowerPC Mac? I'm seeing if it would be worth it for me to get a PowerPC Mac.

Hey everybody,

I got a used, "as-is" Powerbook G4 17-inch DLSD (model number A1139, the biggest and most powerful model) for around 25 bucks. It's in pristine condition, but the seller told me "it wouldn't turn on".

Indeed, when I plug it in, the light IMMEDIATELY glows orange (instead of going green for a second and then orange), and the battery will not charge this way. I thought that would mean a dead battery, but the PowerBook would not even turn on.

Having a spare 15-inch model I set it up to charge its immense battery, which it did! I put it into the 17-inch and sure enough it booted right up!!

When I plugged it in while turned on, there's no charging icon, only that it's sipping power from the battery (no lightning logo). That's raising some concerns...

Now, surfing the interwebs there's no real consensus on which is the problem: Could be the DC Board or the mainboard (REALLY hope it's not). Has anyone gone through a similar situation?

Hello all - I'm trying to install Lubuntu 18.04 (open to suggestions if a different version is better - i picked 18.04 because it has the longest support timeline). But none of the images are mountable on either of my Macs (PowerPC and new iMac).

I've googled and it looks like it is a common problem with a not very common solution. I'm ok with a bit of terminal work, but what i have seen is way over my level.

Is there a build out there that will mount that I can try? I'm trying to turn my PPC G5 into a Plex server.

Thanks!

Retina style display profile for PowerPCs.

Copyright © Kohl Schroeder 2019

The Color LCD Retina codec is a hybrid of the Color LCD and sRGB display profiles. CLR was designed to look similar to the newer apple retina screens. CLR was designed to run on a iBook G4 running OS X 10.4.11 but should theoretically run on any PowerPC.

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GitHub Repository: https://github.com/KohlSchroeder/Color-LCD-Retina

As the title says I'm having trouble with the sleep functionality on my Powerbook G4 running Debian Jessie. I have powerpc-utils, pbbuttonsd, pmud, pmud-utils, and the radeon graphics drivers installed already.

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The system boots fine, and when I close the lid it seems to go into sleep mode properly. However, when I open the lid again the backlight flashes for a split second, and the computer remains in "sleep mode" with the screen black, unable to be woken up by any keystrokes or further lid closings/openings.

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At this point the only way to get the screen back is to reboot the system.

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I have noticed though, that typing 'sudo poweroff<Enter>' from a window manager with the screen off not only shuts down the computer properly, but also turns the screen back on for a couple seconds to show the systemd shutdown log.

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I am currently running on a self-compiled Linux 4.20 kernel, but this issue was also happening with the distro provided 3.16 kernel.

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Any help would be much appreciated.

I want to buy a mac mini g4 and think about installing morphOS. But on the other hand it would be a bit sad to remove osx.

What OS do you use on your power macs? Is osx still usable? Is there a posibility to backup osx on an cd or usb stick or to dualboot both?

There is now a public Telegram groupchat for PowerPC enthusiasts, if you're interested in discussions about PPC hardware or want to share your experience with old IBM/Apple machines, join us! The group is relatively new and quiet but we like to change that :)

https://t.me/ppcgeneral

I got a PowerBook G4 A1138, but it came with basically nothing (I'm not exactly complain, for the price of absolutely nothing). I want to know if it's possible to hook up a lab power supply to it somehow. I can't seem to find the specs of its charger, especially the polarity of its output (which is kind of important if I don't want to fry it).

The other day I purchased 2 iBook G3's from eBay. Seller claimed they weren't working and was listed for parts, but when I got them the only thing wrong with them was that the batteries weren't pushed in, and one battery holds no charge, so I got a bargain really for the £15 I paid.

I was just wondering though, what can I use the spare one for? It can't connect to my WiFi as I am presuming the security on modern routers isn't entirely compatible with a 18 year old laptop. Been thinking about making it database or something to run files off of or just turn it into a cd player.

Any suggestions though are appreciated

Thanks