Restoring Apple's Most Upgradable Laptop - PowerBook G3 Pismo - The M1 Mac I Wanted To See...
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- Опубліковано 11 гру 2020
- Things are becoming harder to repair as we progress further into a throwaway society. This laptop is a good reminder on how things used to be and they should still be.
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Crazy to see how this was designed to be worked on, like a different company.
When apple actually made good products at a genuine price
Yeah I agree. Companies believe in this “the future is now and ports don’t matter so we’re giving you two usBc ports and a headphone jack “
Not a different company, differen’t times! Computers work a lot defferently now! You can’t have todays laptop performance and desing, and repairability...!
@@ignaciogarrido2865, Wtf? Definetly going to report you for: “unwanted commercial content or spam”
@Preston Newcomb then why did they fail without him lol
I bet that when this laptop was unveiled, Apple hyped it as a modular and upgradable masterpiece. Look at them now
look at the others now - they also cried how anti consumer apple was (as they began to glue/solder batteries in notebooks and so)....but in the end they did exactly the same, only 1-3 years later.
I remember when samsung advertised any of their phones with a replacable battery (to counter apples "non replacable" ones), the next generation was already with a fixed battery and not much better than their older version xD Isnt it sad if someone is crying about something only to do the same later too? If i cry about any wrong decision of the "enemy", the last thing to do is doing the same then....
But what im talking, Apple will always be for the mass the overpriced anti consumer company, even if others have exactly the same plans.
@@harrison00xXx you are right but apple is the one to come with new ways to tease consumers. At the end all the company's wants you to pay more not less. So no need to fight over samsung and apple all the company's need money.
@@harrison00xXx Lol dich kenne ich
sad
@@harrison00xXx the backs may be sealed but thats for water resistance. They still allow you to change the battery unlike Apple who pairs it to the phone to make you have to pay more to get it fixed.
That inverted apple logo must have driven Steve Jobs crazy.
He actually designed that, apparently he wanted it to look good for the consumer instead of others
Pop
Jonny Ive Made Steve Jobs to turn it upside down 😉
That’s why he fixed it
You really think Steve Jobs didn't absolutely go over every single detail on that device pre-launch and made sure he was okay with it?
It's a shame that nowadays everything is built in such a way that you are almost forced to throw it away.
RIP resources 😕
Your video was very good as usual, keep it up 👍
One of probable reason why there's chip shortage
@@aspopulvera9130 probably the reason. but if it didnt it could have contributed to it by alot
@@chloramine_gas4842 the main reason is tjat all Laptop Manufacturers are TOO GREEDY
Damn lucky bastard's probably playing Sims 1 as we speak
???
I had this exact laptop. Loved it. The modular battery/drive bays were awesome. Could put in two batteries, Zip drives, etc. Could pop off the keyboard in seconds. When the power plug eventually broke, the power card was a separate small board and I changed it myself. Same thing when one of the screen hinges cracked. For all the BS that Apple, and other companies, say they "care for the environment", in reality, it's all about selling product. If they truly cared about the environment, they would make their products repairable, including by third parties, and keep them useful as long as possible. Sad state of affairs.
Apple: We're gonna pretend we didn't make that
Apple: tell the legal dept to sue this guy and confiscate all of his-... OUR stocks.
@@zaph2580 Haha "OUR StOcKs" ....
The red display reminds me of a CRT display I used to have which would would wake from sleep red. So I set the desktop picture to a nice nature scene so waking up made it look like dawn rising. :)
Hugh, after you wet sand you need a polishing compound to get it to shine again. The idea of sand paper is to make the scratches extremely fine scratches so that it can later be buffed out, wet sanding alone won’t restore the finish. Look for headlight polish, it works fantastic in restoring scratched electronics when used properly.
I have a PowerBook g3 pismo 500ms that I found being recycled it was in almost perfect condition and it worked well I love to play around with it
“this machine can support up to a *whopping* 1 gig of ram” 😂
That was still more than Mac OS 9 could generally handle without becoming unstable.
@@leonkernan Dead right. You could manage with as little as 32 MB of RAM.
Man, back then when 1 gig could do so much😭😭
that was a lot for the time
I have around 1gb or ram on my phone
The same company is now selling their "Headphones without Headphone Jack" called "AirPods Max" .
That time apple was really good even it cost more but it has some thing unique but after steve jobs death the company is falling in terms of innovations
Looks like they lost their innovation
Look stop writing this where ever you go, no one cares about a headphone jack anymore as we have moved on. The future is wireless and your clearly stuck in the past.
@@NeedToBike some people use headphone jack like audiophiles so stfu headphone jack is still better then wireless dumbass
But it has a headphone jack....,
Apple Engineers back there were a different breed xD
send this cat and andrew, he would definitely find a way to max it out.
ABSOLUTELY
Yeah
Yep
Ya!
and paint it... 🤢🤮
To solder the batteries, you can solder them with a common soldering iron, the magic is in sanding the surface to be soldered a little, so that the roughness holds the tin. Also use flux for soldering.
Next, try the G3 "Clamshell" as those things need to be fully assembled to replace the hard drive. See how that "engineering marvel" feels while repairing.
"This machine can support up to a whopping 1 gigabyte of ram" Thats insane
For 2000 that’s actually a lot of ram .
@@lasarith2 dam that powerBook is older than me
@@lukaskrapukaitis9030 probably like having 32GB of ram today .
1GB of ram is painfully slow! My Macbook air m1 has more than 300GB of ram. And i love it! Its so fast by doing daily tasks on it.
@@jxcobblox6169 you’re confusing ram with storage , the maximum the M1 can have is 16GB which is on the SOC itself.
I got a working one of these for 7€ 6 months ago. It‘s in pretty good condition except of missing rubber feet. I‘ll have to rebuild the battery pack and it will work as good as new!
I had one but it was from 1999, it was a 333 Lombard. Very similar to the Pismo except for the back ports(Pismo had firewire). I had upgraded the CPU to the 400 G3 PPC and you could also upgrade them to the G4 like the Pismo at the time from the aftermarket. Had both the right bay and the battery bay (left) with two batteries and got something like 8-9 hours back then. That was an awesome laptop. Thanks for the memory lane. :)
i used to have one of these!!! i STILL miss it. when i reached the end of my applecare warranty with it, i remember taking it in to the genius bar to get some small things that had always bothered me, fixed (eg. IIRC the screen had a couple dead pixels, that sorta thing.) back then the genius bar was a different place. when i came back to pick it up, they were like, oh yeah so we noticed your logic board had some issues, and also something something hard drive, so we replaced both of them.... they basically gave me back a BRAND NEW MACHINE. amazing!
it was later stolen when i was in grad school a few years later, forcing me to enter the world of aluminum powerbooks, which i was sooooo bummed about. (and also was the start along the path towards reduced upgradeability/ repairability! boo.)
Cold try a nail manicure buffing stick on the scratches
I had one of these and loved the translucent keys haha. I thought it was so cool.
Wow, you have excellent vintage computer repair skills. Of all the vintage Apple laptops in my collection this is the only one that, I call "My Baby". I picked up my used Power Book G3 (Fire-wire) Pismo around 2003. Also, because spare parts have become harder to find, I obtained a second one on Ebay about 8-years ago. In my opinion this model is the best designed laptop Apple ever made for several reasons which include: 1) A great selection of ports two USB, two Fire-wire 400, Ethernet, 56K modem, IR, PCMA, S-video, headphone, and Sound in, port; 2) Right and Left side "hot swapable" bays (for things like an extra battery, extra memory, floppy drive, 120 MB super-disk drive, 100 MB Zip drive, DVD player, etc.); and 3) Easy to upgrade and repair. During the 2010's thought that, I would have to retire this model but with the expanded use of USB thumb drives my Power Book G3 has continued to have life running both classic OS 9.2 and OS X 10.4 Tiger.
This brought back memories! I had one of these, and it was a workhorse. I'm amazed they are still around!
I had been waiting for the video of this laptop for months
A time where apple wasn't such a greedy company and wasn't trying to stop you from repairing or upgrading apple products.
I'm just curious in how you think because I think ur clueless as many apple haters. If their computers are faster with a SiP and integrated components, should they offer their speed and integration for a bulkier more modular approach? How often do you even repair computers?
bootlicker
@@globalko apple actively try to make their products unupgradable, far beyond any quality of life improvements. There are countless examples of how they screw consumers over just to be able to sell customers newer devices that they do not need. You are the clueless, delusional one here.
@@123Jeenie na U are clueless . Apple devices dont need an upgrade
@@wizzard_aks8675 but what if they need repair? Even the most brain-dead apple drone must know that the devices are not indestructible (in fact it is quite easy to break things like screens) and the you have no ability to repair it, and apple overcharge you so much for repairs
Amazing. You sure know your way around these units. I’ve never seen the inside of any of my Mac stuff but I always snooped Windows equipment.
one of my favourite vintage powerbooks...I bought one of these new back around 2000 (still have the original box too!), and use it occasionally as a “bridge” between vintage macs (1984-1999) and Mac OS X - it just has so much connectivity. Have the same PRAM issue, but no big deal.... Great video Hugh!
Its amazing that early apple MacBook was one of the most modular and repairable of all times, now becomes the almost unrepairable laptop sealed with hard glue
Old, but still gold. Back when Apple listened, and actually cared about their customers, more then they did money.
You will agree that all Laptop Manufacturers are just too greedy these days which is why they make modern Laptops totally non-replaceable.
I have a Lombard, the G3 Powerbook just before the Pismo, and I love it. It's my favourite computer, and I've had a lot of fun upgrading it over the years.
My Lombardhas a 400 Mhz processor (upgraded from its original 333 Mhz processor), 512 MBs of RAM (the maximum for this model), a 128GB Compact Flash card "SSD", modern silver thermal paste, a Firewire 400 PCMCIA card, and a slot-loading optical drive taken from a G5 iMac.
I use my Lombard for music and replaying childhood games.
Absolutely LOVED the Pismo!
Next time we should do a teardown of the MacBook Air with the M1 chip
And... YOU WILL GONNA BEG APPLE TO REPAIR AND THEN BEING IGNORED
@@baoquoc3710 😂😭
Kids in 2050: what’s a headphone jack?
“What is a laptop?”
2020*
what's a headphone
what’s a computer?
I really appreciate the hard work that you've put in
Great video Hugh, was really cool to see this as i just picked up a PowerBoob "Wall Street" and a Pismo for myself recently. These machines are awesome and you really take it to the next level of preservation. Keep it up!
u mean powerbook
Companies nowadays will charge you extra for this kind of modularity haha. Good video though, really interesting laptop.
Really? Other than the CPU I can replace all parts on my 2019 laptop.
@@josedasilva8924 But how easy is it?
Louis Rossman would love and hate this.
why hate?
Nostalgia! This was my 2nd Mac ever. First one was a PowerBook G3 Wallstreet which I ended up fixing up myself due to a broken hinge. I was 15 years old and it constituted more than a year worth of savings from my job cleaning an auto garage.
The best thing i like in technology is repairing and restoring the things designed and created by someone else. And this channel shows the best of it.
Nice!
6GB HDD. The good ol' days.
I love your videos Hugh!
Excellent effort Hugh. It’s a beautiful machine in usual Apple fashion.
The headphone jack: finally, for years, i now got sound stablization
Hugh- doing so much work for a headphone jack
every phone manufacturer- sike
great video Hugh. I have been watching for years and love the videos.
I love the sound effects.
Please subtitle your videos to Brazilian Portuguese, your content is incredible and I’ll follow you from here! 🇧🇷
This thing is an insult to Apple's work method and thinking of today.
More like the other way around..
@@gabitzakissy 100% agree
You are a very confused young “man”? Should I call you mister?
@@gabitzakissy you can say that too.
This is awesome!! Love you videos mate and hope your doing well.
absolutely love working with that kind of hardware
High Hugh nice that your restoring this old laptop I'm proud :)
Hi Steve
@Anand Raj I know, he’s dead I’m just joking
Yessir
I had the Lombard model. I loved it. Great computer and very versatile.
I have one of these that I bought new. In addition to all the wonderful qualities you mentioned, they were also very durable. Also, with an external battery charger, battery life was only limited by the number of batteries you owned. Fantastic machine, although it was barely capable of running os X. Apple used to really care about the entire user experience. Even the 2011 macbook pro that I use daily is fully repairable and I have performed many repairs and upgrades to it.
Apple:Sees this video
Also Apple:Ahh old memories!
More like dead memories in my heart
Haha 😂
Same I wish this was the M1 Mac’s upgradability and try to see if you can upgrade the os from Mac OS 9 to Cheetah
Nice one man keep up the great work! The Pismo is a really cool collectors item.
It’s younger brother the powerbook g4 Titanium is too. It’s basically a widescreen version of this with a G4 and better graphics.
Amazing restoration as always Hugh ! But you should really deep clean/retrobrite the plastic components separately on those old devices, it'll make the restoration so much better. Happy holidays !
wow im early this time
Same asf broski
Nice!
nowadays MacBooks are literally slabs of aluminum with a few usb c ports. looks nice but man it it restrictive.
I loved my Pismo G3, in the the end I had a G4/500 accelerator card with 1GB RAM, Zip drive or battery in the right bay, which kept me going until I finally replaced it with a Powerbook Titanium 1GHz which is still my favorite Apple laptop of all time, closely followed by the Powerbook 2400c/240 in which I also had a G3/200Mhz accelerator card and a custom transparent case that I bought in Japan.
i miss this times.. I have a 2006 macbook, and how easy it was to to upgrade it and fix it... it's incredible.
I still don't understand why nobody in any review I've seen of the M1 Macs has been concerned about the future of these machines. In 10 or so years virtually all of them will be dead, beyond repair.
Why? Ram is a very common fault in computers, other than maybe the CMOS battery, it's what goes first. And without RAM, your fancy computer doesn't work. Can you imagine why having RAM built into the CPU is a major design flaw?
The CPU is a ball grid array chip, and a big one at that, meaning only a highly skilled professional repair technician with tools that cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars will be able to confidently replace it. And after all that a replacement CPU would be its own nightmare to source, apple will make sure of that.
Even if you couldn't care less about things 10 years down the line, the CPU embedded RAM is a design flaw for the here and now. When M1 Macs start becoming widespread, Im sure the RAM will fail in a good few people's machines, that's just how it is. And when it does those people will go to the good ol' genius bar asking for a repair. The geniuses will tell them it's unrepairable and that they need a replacement. Cool, whatever, the customer shows their Apple care junk and they walk out with a replacement unit. But what do you think happens with the one they brought in? Recycling at best, E-waste at worst. A perfectly good chipset, CPU, motherboard, screen, case, keyboard, and so much more, thrown out because the RAM had failed. Then Apple has the AUDACITY to say they are trying to be environmentally friendly with their designs.
And don't tell me it's all okay because the RAM speed is faster. Even a disaster has it's upsides.
After the death of Steve Jobs even Apple's Innovation is also Dead with him
.......😔
Now with M1 it’s impossible for apple to do it so now we can never get that feature
I still run my Pismo whenever I need to access some Classic Mac OS apps, or just for the fun of it. The backlight needs replacing, other than that, it runs just fine. It was a great machine.
I have one of these. Dual batteries was awesome. And. One of my widgets for the expansion slot was a "power brick" that could then use "international power" with an IEC connector. This one widget drops the brick itself, the power adapter, and can mean even the cord gets skipped (if you know where you're going.)
Ps5?
PS 5?!?!?
In 15 years
This is probably the precursor to the M1 chip, as one can clearly observe that there’s ram, graphics, and a CPU on one module, which is completely separate from the rest of the motherboard. one could locate boards similar to this conceptually in modern airplane avionics. I wonder if someone would be brave enough to attempt at producing a modern intel cpu module with ddr4/5 and high end graphics that can connect to this PowerBook… it would become the ultimate sleeper laptop… That person should walk into an Apple store and say that their PowerBook is having trouble with MacOS Monterrey…
This wasn't too uncommon in the day
The graphics are on the motherboard.
I did the exact same thing you did with your pismo, i fully restored the machine i own, it had a lot of problems, but i did it. It also had a red backlight problem but the red wouldn"t fully go away anymore, so i opened up the display assembly and i carefully replaced the cfl tube with a brand new one, the display now has a brighter strip on the bottom, but the display is nicely bright overall so i am not gonna fix that because when the bulb warms up, the whole display has a nice and even backlight, its a very difficult repair, but once its done your screen will look so much better. I also replaced all the cells in the battery with high quality ones and it lasts for around 4.5 hours, which is way better than 10 minutes offcourse. My laptop is as good as it ever going to get so i am happy with the result :)
Hope you read this, Hugh: Its wet sanding (2000) + Liquid Gloss Poly Wax to polish. It will look terrific!
Then it wouldn’t be an SoC, don’t be silly :) Also it wouldn’t be so fast, but u know that already
Wow, something repairable?
From apple?
Impossible
This was a nice video for the end of 2020
My first laptop was the first generation Powerbook G3 “Wall Street” model, predecessor of both the “Lombard” and the “Pismo” - and I still have it. It looks exactly like this Pismo, but with a black keyboard. It no longer boots due to a “question mark” hard drive error, but I’ve kept it for sentimental reasons (and it’s in excellent condition). You’ve inspired me to pull it out and consider trying to get a replacement hard drive, since I’m pretty sure I still have the OS 9 install software disc for it in my box of miscellaneous Mac stuff 😃
Even better you could now replace with an SSD and get sparkling performance!
When Apple wasn't run by jackassess !
firstlol
I've been able to solder batteries with decent luck; you just need to scratch the surface up a bit and use a lot of flux. I've also found using a hotter setting on the soldering iron (400C vs 350C) and reducing the contact time yields better results.
Great job, and a beautiful machine
I had one long time ago. I miss it. One of the greatest Mac laptop out there.
I'd love to learn what you do, this stuff fascinates me!
To make the PRAM battery, use copper adhesive, check it in amazon. Cut the copper adhesive tape and put it over the cable on each side of the battery. It works better than soldering the battery.
The sound effects are pretty cool 😮
Taking apart laptops and cleaning/upgrading them is soooooooo therapeutic for me...
I'd forgotten what marvels of engineering Macs used to be such that almost everything was easily accessed for any kind of servicing. I still have a dual processor PowerMac G5 just because it's so nice to see the care that went into the design.
We've a pair of PowerBook Wallstreets. They were sleek-as machines in their day. Still recall having a squizz at one in the old Apple dealership in our area (before the Apple Store put them out of business).
Nice video as always Hugh! I plan on fixing my 2011 MacBook Pro’s keyboard.
Watching a repair I would never care or perform. Loving it
Very nice job Sir. Very nice.
I have two Pismos, one suffers from the initially-red screen, the other behaves normally. One has an internal fault I can't trace & won't boot from an internal drive. Instead, I use a pair of CF cards, one of 1 GB with Mac OS 9.2.2 & the other a 32 GB with Tiger installed. The CF cards connect via Firewire to a FW CF card reader.
I would love to see Apple release an affordable laptop like this one today!
I think that 2500 dollars wasn’t too affordable
I still have my Pismo in my collection and it has been updated with the G4 550MHz processor/1GB RAM/120GB HDD. I have Tiger 10.4.11 installed on this laptop and the PRAM battery removed. Fortunately I still don't have the "red" screen when booting my laptop up. It is a solid laptop and I sometimes take it out and take it to a coffee shop and fire it up... I sometimes get stares from people because of how big this laptop is compared to modern laptops... :)
I remember watching the 144p stream of this pismo powerbook being unveiled. Cost a whopping $3000 in 2000. Saved every penny I had to get one and still have it to this day, though the screen hinges is quite wobbly. Works amazing otherwise. It's also got a fastmac 7410 550MHz G4 daughterboard installed. Besides the titanium powerbooks, this is my all time favorite apple laptop.
Clear keyboard is beautiful
This is the first Apple laptop I owned. Loved the swappable bays for being able to quickly slide in a new battery. Feels chunky by today's standards but definitely has more character.
Nice job, mate
About the pram battery, you can buy batteries with tabs already welded so you only have to solder together the tabs, a way easier task
very satisfying!
This was the 2nd Apple laptop I ever owned or worked on. Repairability was as high as I have ever seen on any laptop of any company and the thing was built like a tank.
Had its predecessor (PB Wallstreet) and it felt like carrying a 6 lb piece of rock...Pismo is much lighter and thinner plus it had the light up Apple logo that the newer iBooks and Powerbooks of the 2000s era had.
Found em both in a basement in pieces and resurrected them to give to my SO at the time for her first laptop. At that time, there was a recall on the original chargers (black, rectangular) and Apple sent me the newer puck style that you have FOR FREE!!!
Wallstreet lasted a year, Pismo about 2.5 years until it was too slow running Mac OSX.
I think it was donated and may still be running today.
Apple of today would not even recognize this machine!