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The Road Warrior Mailbag - July 30, 2007

iPhone to Pismo?
Pismo Trackpad
Re: Pismo question
PowerBook Temps
Consumer Electronics Upgrade Addiction vs. Your Retirement Security
Problem with Pismo trackpad

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iPhone to Pismo?

From Sam

Dear Charles,

I am a proud user and owner of the unmatchable G3 PowerBook Pismo. I have enjoyed and appreciate your articles on the Pismo for many years. I too agree that it is one of the best Apple laptops ever.

This weekend I purchased an iPhone and quickly learned it requires a feature absent on my Pismo, a USB 2.0 port.

I have searched the internet and have not found any solution for connecting the two. There is still a good size PowerBook-without-USB-2.0 community out there, so this seems like a great opportunity for an article, discussion, and product.

Is there such a thing as a cable that converts Firewire to USB 2.0? Do you know of a solution to connect an iPhone to a G3 PowerBook (or G4 Cube or G4 Quicksilver or G3 iBook)?

Thank you.

Yours,
Sam

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Hi Sam;

You need a USB 2.0 CardBus adapter.

Please see my column: "USB 2.0 For Older CardBus PowerBooks" from last january:
http://www.macopinion.com/index.php/site/more/usb_20_for_older_cardbus_powerbooks/

Should tell you what you need to know.

Charles

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Pismo Trackpad

From Tyler

Hey Charles!

I bought a Pismo off of eBay about 6 months ago as a backup machine to my MacBook. First of all, what a great machine! I have read your articles since about 2001, and I know you are a big Pismo fan.

Anyway, it was working great until about a week ago. I had used the machine for about an hour, surfing the web and listening to music. I then put the machine to sleep, and didn't use it for a few days. When I woke it up, the trackpad wouldn't respond. Plugging in a USB mouse works, but the PowerBook not longer recognizes the trackpad in the Apple System Profiler, so I believe the trackpad has failed. I zapped the PRAM, and zeroed out the hard drive and did a complete reinstall of Mac OS X, and still no trackpad. I also have a PowerBook G3 (Lombard) that I don't use anymore, and I was wondering if it would be possible to take the upper case (which contains the trackpad) from the Lombard and put it on the Pismo. Do you know if this is possible?

Thanks for your help and keep up the great work! I read most of your work on AppleLinks, MacOpinion, Low End Mac, and PowerBook Central!

Tyler

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Hi Tyler;

Interesting. I had never heard of a Pismo trackpad failure before another reader reported one last week.

The cases of the Pismo and Lombard are near-identical, so the Lombard trackpad would have a good chance of fitting the space physically, however the two machines have completely different motherboard designs, so where you might run into trouble would be with the connection of the Lombard trackpad to the Pismo motherboard.

Frankly, I don't know. One suggestion; go to iFixIt.com and compare the respective teardown guides for the two machines. Their illustrations are very good, and it might be discernable as to whether a swap looks doable.

Thanks for the kind words.

Charles

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Re: Pismo Trackpad

From Tyler

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the reply. I went ahead and stripped down the Lombard and the Pismo. I turns out there are subtle differences in the top case that make the two incompatible. The two main things where the ribbon cable for the trackpad, and the fact that the Pismo has its AirPort carriage mounted on the top case. That probably wouldn't be a problem if I didn't use AirPort, but I use it everday, so that didn't work out. i went ahead and ordered a new top case off of eBay, so that should hopefully fix it, unless it is a motherboard problem.

Thanks again for your help!

Tyler

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Hi Tyler;

I was apprehensive about something like that. For two machines that appear to be almost identical, the Lombard and Pismo are vastly different under the skin.

Hope the eBay part works out for you.

Charles

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Re: Pismo Trackpad

From Tyler

Well, this story has a sort of a sad ending. I got the new top case today, and unfortunately, it did not solve the problem. I suppose I could order a new motherboard and see if that fixes it, but I am leaning towards buying a stripped down Pismo off of eBay (with no processor, RAM, hard drive, keyboard, airport, Optical drive, or battery). I would probably just give up on the Pismo altogether, but I have a NewerTech extended life battery for it, as well as a slot loading combo drive. Maybe I will sell it off in pieces and then purchase a first generation 15 inch AlBook for my "extra" laptop.

Thanks for your help!

Tyler

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Hi Tyler;

Dreadfully sorry to hear that the replacement trackpad didn't fix the problem. It's looking like a mobo issue.

I don't blame you for being frustrated with Pismos right now, but this sort of trouble is atypical. I think that buying a stripper and swapping your existing bits in is a good approach.

An option to consider is buying one of the batch of Pismos Wegener Media has right now. You could query them as to discounts for leaving components off.

I bought one of these a couple of months ago, and it's in very nice shape.

http://www.wegenermedia.com/pismo4.htm

Charles

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Re: Pismo question

From Laurie

OK, so it worked fine for 8 hours.

After a while, the hard drive starts clicking continuously. Like a very loud ticking clock. Then the application hangs up and you can't even force quit. You have to shut down with the power button. Takes several attempts to restart (same loud ticking, hangs up either in grey screen or right after log-in), then when you finally get the desktop, the dock has reverted back to its original icons, except half of them are now question marks, and none of the folders (pictures, music etc,) have icons anymore. Just plain folders. It's OK for an hour or so and then the ticking starts again and... you know the rest.

I've been through this several times today and I'm worn out. I even tried updating Tiger, to no avail. I'm wondering if perhaps Tiger is just too much for the Pismo?

The hard drive is an IBM Travelstar 60GB, 5400RPM, it says "ATA/IDE." I'm on the old Pismo now and am just reading the label on the HD.

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Hi Laurie;

Sounds like you might have a defective hard drive. You could try swapping the hard drive from your other Pismo in as a diagnostic test.

I can assure you that Tiger purrs like a kitten on both of my Pismos - one a 500 MHz G3 and the other a 550 MHz G4.

If the hard drive is crapping out it can cause bizarre behavior. However, if it acts the same with another HD in situ, then we would have to begins suspecting bad RAM, a bad processor daughtercard, or even the motherboard, in that order. From what you;re f=describing, I strongly suspect a hardware issue.

Charles

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Re: Pismo question

From Laurie

Turns out the hard drive was defective. The seller replaced it with a fairly new 100GB job for $40, installed Tiger for me plus swapped out RAM from the previous Pismo and hooked me up with about $1000 worth of software (I never said that...) He was a doll about it.

So far so good... and now I know that a ticking hard drive means death.

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Hi Laurie;

Not always, but it's a sign something is amiss. Sometimes software issues can make a hard disk lose its composure, but your problem did sound like a bad HD. Delighted to hear that you got it sorted out. $40 is a decent price for a 100 GB HD.

Charles

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PowerBook Temps

From Neil Anderson

"130 degrees is definitely warm for a Pismo, but not off the charts. Actually, that's what my 17" G4 PowerBook is running right now."

My 15" G4 1GHz PowerBook is running at, according to the iStat Pro widget, 110°. Not bad for a central BC July day.

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Consumer Electronics Upgrade Addiction vs. Your Retirement Security

From Neil Anderson

Sobering numbers. With the average lifespan getting longer, most folks are going to have to work longer. Shouldn't be a problem — a lot of young folks have no compunction about not working.

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Problem with Pismo trackpad

From Jacek Rochacki

Dear Charles:

With regard to Pismo trackpad problem:

I wonder if the Pismo Hardware Test has been used/runned on this malfunctioning machine. I remember similar problem on one of Pismos at home, and the reason was of software nature.

Unfortunately Laurie didn't tell the version of OS. I presume that it is most probably one of Mac OS versions, but I have found this:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2001/02/msg00147.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2001/02/msg00148.html

Oh yes I know that Debian is LinuX, but LinuX and Mac OS X are constructed in somehow similar way. And I read there: ...The trackpad is an ADB mouse afaik...Pismo doesn't have the ADB port as such, so the mouse used by Laurie must be USB. Therefore fact that it works or not is not necessarily connected with the state of trackpad.

So the internal ADB "system" must be malfunctioning- software wise (OS, more precisely - trackpad driver - http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwinos-users/2002/May/msg00022.html

or something hardware wise, or just the trackpad is "broken" itself. The trackpad is removable: we can read on it here:
http://www.powerbookmedic.com/xcart1/files/Powerbook_G3_Pismo_Rep.pdf

I understand, that this:
http://lowendmac.com/pb2/pismo.shtml

Symptom: trackpad responds during boot, but not later.

Solution: disable Kensington Startup ADB extension. ... reading further: ...There is an incompatibility between the Kensington Startup ADB extension and the Trackpad control on the iBook with Mac OS 9.0.4. Symptom: trackpad responds during boot, but not later. Solution: disable Kensington Startup ADB extension. This may also apply to other USB portables and versions of the Mac OS.There is an incompatibility between the Kensington Startup ADB extension and the Trackpad control on the iBook with Mac OS 9.0.4. Symptom: trackpad responds during boot, but not later. Solution: disable Kensington Startup ADB extension. This may also apply to other USB portables and versions of the Mac OS. doesn't apply.

--

I appologize if all above doesn't apply to this case.

As always

Jacek in Poland

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Thanks for this Jacek;

I've forwarded your note to Laurie.

Charles

*** cmoore@macopinion.com

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