Testing a 1998 Apple Macintosh PowerBook G3

This lovely M7109LL/A machine was very kindly donated to LGR recently. 233MHz PowerPC 750 CPU, 32MB PC100 RAM, 4MB of video memory, and a whopping 2GB hard drive. Let's see what it can do!

[@LGRBlerbs]

Seems the power adapters for these were recalled, so that's fun www.macworld.com/article/1018310/adapter.html

[@jorno1994]

put it in one of those fire proof bags for lipo batteries and call it good enough :)

[@JohnMiller-mmuldoor]

🤔

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Naturally it has a recall it is a apple product after all 😉

[@laptop006]

Repeatedly, the iBook UFO chargers were a thing for a while but got recalled too.

[@Finallybianca]

Consider it a space heater not a defect

[@CodyShell]

Clint! I was the one who donated you this laptop! Glad to see it go to a new home and getting the attention it rightfully deserves!

[@temporaryscars]

Nicely done, Cody.

[@RickSanchez-rc1rg]

Thats really cool dude!

[@kevindie]

*_Ignored._*

[@TylerScottMillaway]

Liar! Im the one who sent in the laptop!

[@randombrokeperson]

@@TylerScottMillaway So who is telling the truth? Who is the imposter?

[@kefkafloyd]

This machine is what we call a "Wallstreet," I have one of them in my collection. The hotswap bays originated with the Powerbook 500 as dual battery bays, which you could swap out a PC Card cage for a battery. They improved them a lot since then. These machines had CD-ROMs, batteries, floppies, ZIP, and LS-120 drives that you could swap into the bays. And yeah, the backlights on these screens weren't great back in the day, and age has only made them dimmer.

[@SuperTed.]

Dumass question maybe but Why were they called a wallstreet?

[@kefkafloyd]

@@SuperTed. Apple products had internal code names until the mid-aughts, Wallstreet is the code name for this model. It was preceded by the Kanga (PowerBook G3 Series) and replaced by the Lombard (PowerBook G3 Bronze Keyboard). Even within the Wallstreets the revision B speedbump versions are named PDQ (Pretty Damn Quick) whose differentiation is having a 66MHz bus speed.

[@joeconti2396]

I must've owned four of these things back in the early 2000's. They were so cheap. Lombard and Pismos to this day are difficult to find at a good price though.

[@LGRBlerbs]

More specifically, this is a M7109LL/A, which I believe is a late 1998 PDQ machine :)

[@donfurioso3566]

Wasn’t it called Pismo ¿

[@MyMyMicah32]

This exact model got me interested in old computers. It was the first laptop I ever got to play with as a kid. So many memories flooding back watching this

[@BoyAditya]

Yo Clint. Don't forget to upload LGR food... We need that new sandwich videos 😜🤤

[@Poopie420]

In 1998 I picked up one of these for my CEO boss at my first job from a local Mac shop in NYC. I set it up for him, etc. Was the only time I got to handle it and I was blown away how fast it was. The company paid $3899 for that laptop.

[@vatsalgupta4557]

BTW,liked the Eye Bee M 😀 Great work Clint!

[@souta95]

That machine could probably render the RAVE hardware acceleration of Quake

[@desther7975]

@@slightlyevolved nVidia or not, RAVE works on ATI GPUs. It was the API to use before OpenGL took over. Unreal Tournament for Mac also uses RAVE, and it would be fun to see that running on that PowerBook.

[@Scioneer]

@@desther7975 It will run fine. I have a Clamshell iBook 366mhz with the same amount of vram and a Rage Mobility, likely the same GPU as this Powerbook. It runs UT 99 with RAVE quite well.

[@desepticon4]

@@desther7975 UT ran very nicely on the Lombard and Pismo on highest settings so I think the WallStreet could handle it ok.

[@snethss]

This is my absolutely favorite laptop series if all time. it deserves a full LGR. I'm still getting utility from it, though parts are getting harder to find.

[@BrokenCircus]

You may have spotted this in the edit, but when you tried to change resolution on Quake, it said "Not enough memory for video mode".

[@LGRBlerbs]

Welp, that answers that. Thank you! I wrongly assumed 4MB would be enough to at least _attempt_ running Quake at 256-color XGA resolution, even if it performed badly.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Also fairly accurate. the original 4mb voodoos were designed to tie the resolution to about 640 x 480 IIRC, and we can probably assume whatever passes for an accelerator in this thing is about that ballpark. Unfortunately also it's got that early 2000's laptop LCD panel behavior of not scaling up. Run on an external LCD, you should be able to get full screen 640x480 out of it, I guess.

[@LGRBlerbs]

@@TheTurnipKing Good point. I think my 3dfx experience is what's throwing me off actually, since I can play Quake at higher resolutions on a Voodoo 1 card no problem. Although mine was a 6MB card now that I think about it, so there'd be a bit more to play with for frame buffering and textures.

[@92greenz34]

Interestingly I have a very similar but a bit later, PowerBook G3 mine is the 333mhz the Lombard model with an 8mb rage pro lt. It runs quake very well although there’s actually an issue with the quake Mac soft 1.0 where it doesn’t fully support all of the resolutions you need to install a patch to make it work properly. Once you do that it actually becomes a quite enjoyable way to play the game

[@TheTurnipKing]

@@LGRBlerbs Perhaps I should say that 640 x 480 was the normal default for the voodoo 1 with the Glide API, and since that was about double what you'd realistically be able to get with software rendering, many were happy to leave it at that.

[@ZONEsama]

I was able to install Rhapsody on one of these as they are from that era where Apple was starting to ship out developer previews of Rhapsody & OS X. Might be a fun idea for you!

[@nonsensicalfox]

Wow I didn't expect you to be here, but that's pretty neat

[@Alf_Pacino]

LGR now understands he is more famous than he thought he was

[@Gadgetman1989]

Glad to see you here 😊

[@Theonixco]

Oh the people you'll see on LGR.

[@eccremocarpusscaber5159]

ZONE TOONS if it’s the model I had, which I think it is, even then it was too low in power to run it.

[@rawstarmusic]

I had one of these babies. 10 years from 1997 to 2007 when the light was weak. 6 GB HD music production, lot’s of CD’s. Software Cubase 3.5

[@EposVox]

I ordered the Quake vinyl but got sent the vinyl for The Social Network. Still waiting to hear from their store support...

[@CaveyMoth]

Oh, yeah, playing Quake with just the keyboard like an OG. Lol, Jazz Jackrabbit is one of your "fur-vorites." Of course.

[@rich1051414]

Quake was designed for mouse input. Gamers didn't know how to use mice in games yet, though. (That and mice were unreliable and always skipping around).

[@NoobixCube]

Richard Smith Even Doom was designed with mouse input in mind. Just they hadn’t worked out, then, that we only wanted to look and turn with the mouse, not move with it. If you watch any of the demos play back in a vanilla compatible source port, like Chocolate, you can definitely see the variable turn speed and fine grained motion only possible with a mouse.

[@rich1051414]

@@NoobixCube Vertical mouse look was definitely not 'a thing' yet, with 'mouse look' moved to a button you had to hold. That can be seen with the perspective abnormalities if you modify the game to force mouse look always on.

[@NoobixCube]

Richard Smith I assume you mean in Quake when you say that, because vertical aiming isn’t something that can be done in vanilla Doom at all. The game compensates for you if you’re in line horizontally and far enough back. Doom looks 3D, but it’s impossible for things to overlap in the vanilla game. I meant turning horizontally with the mouse was part of the originally intended control scheme, but the way mouse input works in Doom, forward and backward movement of the mouse moves the player forward and backward, too.

[@rich1051414]

@@NoobixCube Actually I think I am thinking of Duke3d now that I really think about it. Getting it all mixed up :) The 'fake 3d' a lot of the early first person shooters did, however, was subject to perspective distortion when looking up and down though. That game also did the up/down aiming for you, but you could still look up and down, but it was never intended for you to move and look up and down at the same time. Doing this will make you go cross eyed on the original game.

[@o_o-_-8639]

It’s been a while that you didn’t review a Mac. Lovely ☺️

[@NotJustBikes]

This definitely brings back memories! I had one of these "Wallstreet" laptops, the first Mac I ever bought (but I bought it used in 2000). I used this to design rave flyers and do all sorts of other fun Photoshop stuff. I also remember installing the first early betas of OS X on this machine. It was also the last Apple laptop I ever bought that didn't have a tonne of hardware issues that made me switch back to PCs. This was either the last, or one of the last, to have the Apple logo "upside down" when it's open. Anyhow, these were really great machines. And I believe the screen brightness issue you were having was related to age, because I rmemeber the screen being brighter than most other laptops at the time.

[@desther7975]

I took one of these old things with me when I studied abroad... in 2008! I ended up buying an iBook while I was there and I still have both machines hanging around. Since I bought the iBook overseas, it has a foreign keyboard!

[@erikt211]

What program did you use to design the rave posters? I was a DJ at the time and always wondered what people were using to make those cool 3D looking designs!

[@kinghock]

I've owned four Apple laptops since 2008, must say the only one that gave me trouble was the polycarbonate White MacBook, that was very flimsy. Any of the unibody aluminium MacBook Pro's (have had a 13" and 2x 15"s) have been very solid and reliable.

[@connorPiper0]

As a kid I loved playing with KidPix. It was an art software that included some pretty strange sound effects. I know it was often free through Macintosh magazines in the 90s.

[@Jagerbomber]

Yup, our school had KidPix and SimTower.... until they banned SimTower after 9/11 due to the bomb threat in it. They threw out the iMacs after 1 year anyways.

[@Richard.Linder]

That sound is surprisingly loud and full, for a laptop. Try Quake with 512 x 384 and with "Double Pixels" checked. This is exactly half the width and height of 1024 x 768, so it should scale perfectly and fit that screen's XGA native resolution. Also maybe try doing the "Easy" install option and see if it detects and utilises the laptop's 3D capabilities. Or choose "Custom" and check "Quake with 3D Hardware Acceleration". Maybe it supports RAVE. Would love to see how it looks, even if it's just double scaled 512 x 384 in software. That would fill the entire screen with perfect 2:1 integer scaling, and should look really good. :)

[@crylune]

Even modern MacBooks have such good speakers...

[@Richard.Linder]

@@crylune Yes, they do have really good sound for laptops.

[@EnjoySynthSounds]

Arrghh. Joy! Powermac computing and a brilliantly efficient operating system unlike today's bloated behemoths. I used to play Dark Forces on powermac, a doom style Star Wars game, Quake 2 and others. It's a strange thing- in England full powermac desktops of the G3 era are harder to source with keyboard, monitor, mouse. And don't get me started on sourcing the VGA adaptors. Dang! So expensive. I love the Powermac 6100 Dos but again it's incredibly hard to source in a complete package. I feel Apple messed up going to Os X. They can never replace the genius of these slimline operating systems. My modern iMac needs 8 gig ram for it to run smoothly, but back in the day less than 1 gig could have you in retro heaven. Dang. The only issue for me was the ADB port, which really was useless. Macintosh Garden here we come ;)

[@bustedbenz]

I was 9 in ‘98 and man did I want one of these. It might have been a year or two later when I really got into them because I wanted the Pismo which is a bit newer, but still. The 90’s and early 00’s generation of Macs will always be special to me. Computers were exciting then. They weren’t just slightly tweaked variations on a tired theme... every new generation was really “different”. Our family didn’t choose to spend money on tech upgrades very often but I would go through the Macmall catalog for hours thinking about what I’d get if I could. Thanks for the memory trip.

[@MudPuppit]

As for Macintosh software bundles, yes! There was lots. Super maze wars, descent, Eric's solitaire, casualty kid, peter pan and lemmings if u where lucky! Soo many good memories, be sure to check out Macintosh Garden as well :v

[@TwoToTheSix]

I remember the Performa (probably a few years before this) we had when I was a kid came with a big plastic book/wallet thing full of CD-ROM games and art programs. I still remember the distinct smell of that wallet, and the feeling of peeling its pages apart to get the Kid Pix CD out

[@MudPuppit]

@@TwoToTheSix yes, yes and yes! Other games to mention. Crystal Caliburn pinball, marathon trilogy, spectre challenge, oxyd and spin doctor. Bonus's: prime target and damage incorporated.

[@PriestsandParamedics]

The reason it wouldn't display in full screen at the higher resolution is because it says at 14:58 "Not enough memory for video mode".

[@unnamedchannel1237]

He should just plug in a USB then instant memory to save to

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@unnamedchannel1237 🤣🤣🤣 I thought that was a PC only life hack?

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@blitzwing1 🤣🤣🤣

[@desepticon4]

Back then you had to manually allocate extra memory to it from the "Get Info..." panel. This laptop should have no problem running quake (or QIII Arena for that matter.)

[@Saiman_Hussaini]

Wow! I didn’t have vintage laptops like this before, the MacBook Air 2013 was the very first laptop I got to store documents and play games and do my homework on it. So many memories flooding back watching this

[@JoseYuri]

I drooled over this computer after seeing in on Sex and The City with the glowing logo! This is still a beautiful device! I hope they bring it back - an updated design would easily fit into Apple's design family this decade.

[@rebibotic]

I have 2 of these, they were top of the line in thier day, only the rich account executives had these. I had to recreate the PRAM battery an make a new one from scratch because I couldnt find one. also if you put in a bigger hard drive the magnetic pull will put the computer in sleep mode and not wake up. it is a cool vintage machine.thanks for the share

[@PashPaw]

It's Happy Mac time! Also: That PowerBook G3 is a very early one. It still has the Rainbow Apple. Since you have a MBP according to your statements, use Mactracker to determine the exact model. And my iMacs came with Bugdom!

[@domdecosa]

That laptop should have an ATI chipset that supports RAVE 3D acceleration.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

^^^ "RAVE" was ATI's early 3d accelerator API, much like how Glide was 3dfx's. Since Apple used ATI for a long time in the early 3d era, nearly all Mac games supported RAVE (until Mac OS X made OpenGL standard.) Many *ALSO* supported 3dfx for desktop Macs with add-in Voodoo cards.

[@domdecosa]

@@AnonymousFreakYT RAVE was part of QuickDraw 3D, which was made by Apple.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

@@domdecosa D-oh! What's the ATI one I'm thinking of?!

[@jackedup447]

@@AnonymousFreakYT ATI's CIF render? Dunno the actual name ive only ever seen it in a few videos.

[@domdecosa]

@Alyxx Parke Clint's model (PDQ) has the ATI Rage Pro LT. The later Pismo models had the Rage Pro 128.

[@Ryodakun]

LGR and Druaga1 had a baby, and out came LGR Blerbs.

[@Damaniel3]

"Hey smokers, LGR here..."

[@thepirategamerboy12]

LGR Blerbs actually kinda reminds me of some of his older main channel videos, and that's not a bad thing at all.

[@livvy94]

My dad had one of these for his job at the local library, it was one of the first computers I ever used. Lots of memories of dialing into the library's collection of useful links, going to PBS Kids' website for the ZOOM community (anyone remember that?) and Cyberchase, and playing that crappy Magic School Bus shockwave game where you're driving around a map and it's totally not pacman 😂 EDIT: Oh, and going to Apple's website and checking out the brand-new QuickTime VR panoramas of various famous locations!

[@scruffythejanitor1969]

Believe it or not, Cyberchase is still being made.

[@SimonQuigley]

@@scruffythejanitor1969 I had completely forgotten about cyberchase, and I don't remember hearing about it since about 1995

[@xsychoreese9877]

cyberchase premiered in 2002

[@desepticon4]

Quicktime VR was an amazing tech. I had the Encarta CD-ROM, and would spend hours looking at all the different locations.

[@kathrynradonich3982]

I love this design so much I miss my PowerBook pismo

[@porkwilliam]

I bought an Apple PowerBook G3 Pismo for £75 ($96) from eBay last week. Absolutely immaculate condition and fully working. I wanted one back in 2000 but couldn’t afford it at the time, so I’m so glad that after 20 years, I finally get to own one! These were outstanding laptops for the time, and everything (ram, processor, hard drive) except for the video card were upgradeable. I think the Pismo can run OSX Tiger, but I’m sticking with OS 9.2.2; brings back memories!

[@twocvbloke]

"Proto-Siri", just as useful as ever, guess it runs in the family... :P

[@guspaz]

They're quite upgradable, these things. CPU can go up to a G4, RAM can go up to 512MB, HDD can be replaced with an SSD. Sadly there doesn't seem to be an upgrade option for the videocard.

[@julien2983]

This takes me back to highschool playing Bugdom, Nanosaur, and Cro-mag Racing.

[@connors3356]

Julien i loved cro mag racing! No one ever talks about how fun that game was

[@desepticon4]

My highscool was all about Reckless Drivin' (and Kaleidescope themes)

[@lewislauricella1416]

I just picked a 12.1 inch Mainstreet G3 PowerBook out of my works eWaste dumpster Yesterday ( had been sitting out in rain, hail and +30°c weather over the Christmas break), and against all odds, it booted first try (after a good teardown and clean that is). Downgraded from 10.2 to 9.2.2, and it's working unbelievably well - So glad to have saved it from landfill 👍

[@MaxOakland]

I love the way these look. They’re gorgeous

[@BilisNegra]

50K views in like 19-20 hours? Not shabby for a "little insignificant" side-channel at all! Would like to see that happen with the LGR Foods one, which I dearly wish you have not abandoned.

[@Nymunariya]

Apple used to bundle games and software with their macs. My 6500 (1997) came with Descent II and Mechwarrior 2. Both had little sticker art on the cds that there were supercharged for the 6500!

[@munnsie100]

What a great Wallstreet you have there! I was given one by a school friend’s parents when I was about 10 years old, he worked for a school and it was his old work laptop. I remember he also had a //e Platinum (with colour monitor), packed back into their original boxes in his garage.

[@wasteddesign1396]

I have to second the comment you responded to on the Ars thing about your videos being nicely calming. Thanks!

[@cwaldrip]

The PB3400 and the PBG3 were good little machines. I fondly remember mine...

[@AlexanderSiracusa]

I just got the exact same PowerBook G3 (a base model PDQ series) running OS 8.6 a couple of weeks ago. I find that it’s a good machine for transferring old Mac stuff to newer Macs. And I love how easy it is to take apart. Remove the optical drive/superdrive/battery/ and pull open the latches. The keyboard pops up and it can just be moved out of the way (but mind the ribbon cable). Get a screwdriver and remove the shield covering everything and, well, everything’s there.

[@little_forest]

Well, here is as good a place as any to mention it: I was watching some very old videos of LGR these days and it was quite nostalgic to hear Clint say things like „So, should you buy this old computer? The beard says yes!“ or „Woopdeedoo for nerdiness.“ ;) Not complaining about the professionalism of LGR nowadays, but still... nostalgia... and the progress of time, I guess... :)

[@arladds]

It's really great seeing this - I grew up using Macs of this era (my Dad worked in publishing), and it's really interesting to see someone "new" to the classic Mac OS system using it and being like "What's this for?" the same way I was 25-ish years ago! Btw the recalled adaptors were just replaced with iBook yoyo-style ones - they certainly used to be super easy to find on eBay.

[@EriolGaurhoth]

It's fun watching the absolute master of everything Windows and DOS amused by the OS 8 Control Strip. Classic macs are great to use; I still use my G3 Pismo with some regularity for my retro fix.

[@RGInquisitor]

Oh man! Seeing that Project Eden box in the background brings backs many memories! It was one of my first ever PS2 games besides MGS2, Kinetica and MX vs ATV.

[@HannahFortalezza]

Such a good game! The puzzles were fantastic

[@RGInquisitor]

@@HannahFortalezza Yes it was! It was frustrating for me at first because it was such a long game and I didn't have a memory card at that time, so turning off the Ps2 or swapping games meant I had to start over..

[@HannahFortalezza]

@@RGInquisitor PC for me so i didn't have such memory issues!

[@azershotgun]

This is quality content, definitely should be on main channel.

[@connors3356]

I remember these being referred to as the blackbird powerbook. My dad used this exact model of laptop while he was a graphic designer, I don’t remember him using it, since it was upgraded to a powermac g4 sawtooth by the time i was old enough to write to memory. But i found this computer in storage, and he mentioned how nice it was compared to other laptops at the time. He always spoke of fond memories playing quake after work. I’ll always love macs- just upgraded my mac pro to dual radeon rx 580s. I’m excited for what the switch to ARM processors will bring.

[@Dukefazon]

10:21 - YES! I got the vinyl ordered, I saw your tweet about it. Later I saw John Romero tweeting it was sold out 2 hours later. I have all the main albums on CD but I'd love to have them on vinyl, I love NIN.

[@TopHatJackStudios]

Oh, that startup ding brings back such memories. My first "modern" computer was a friend's Mac. I was so confused the first time I used a Windows machine.

[@SimonQuigley]

Memories from 1984? :-) I was given a macbook to use when I started a new job back in 2012, and found it ridiculous that it still had that sound on it. The macbook didn't last long, they are terrible for trying to run Linux on.

[@TopHatJackStudios]

@@SimonQuigley Well, my specific memories are from the late 90's, but I hear that sound has been a Mac staple for some time. Also, always nice to meet a fellow Linux aficionado.!

[@muttBunch]

I can’t stop staring at the big boxed games in the background. Last ones I found that I had were the original Police Quest series, 1 and 2 were on 5-1/4s, the TGA version. I regret throwing them out 20 years ago. I wanna go back :(

[@iCarlyfan4534]

Im so glad you made this channel, I love these laid back type videos

[@wdavid4]

Came for the old tech, but then I saw that copy of Sentinel Worlds I in the background... oh man, I loved that game. Also loved how presumptuous it was to put a "I" in the title.

[@tombarber8929]

some of the Macs did come bundled with trials of games. When I got my iMac G3 350mhz back in '99, it came with a trial of Bugdom and a couple of other games. There may be stuff in the OS or software discs that came with your machine. I believe OS8 also included a music video to The Old Apartment by Barenaked Ladies(and OS9 came with One Week by BNL). 90's Quicktime multimedia goodness man!

[@Vlad-1986]

I got the same laptop! some of your questions answered -That one is a Wallstreet G3 -I have the same washed out screen, so unless we got the same problems it is just a bit of a crappy screen. -It does support "tap to click", if you don't have the option under mouse options, you can just install standard 8.6 -It has some sort of Radeon graphics

[@rogero8443]

Seeing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 with such good animations in the intro really took me back to the old mac days. I would have been blown away by that, but somehow that game eluded me. Quake sure, Starcraft sure, but never heard of Jazz till way later. Nice.

[@darrennorniron]

Hey Clint. Love your work!

[@z3r0slugfm]

Good stuff. I missed out on the PowerBook G3’s but I have fond memories of working on my two G4’s back in the early 2000s.

[@cleanycloth]

The autoplaying Quake soundtrack instantly gave me nostalgia flashbacks to your 3DFX Voodoo card on a Macintosh video. Gooood times.

[@QUANTUMJOKER]

Apple definitely bundled games with their Macs in the nineties and early 2000s. My family's grey iMac and my various Powerbooks and iBooks all came pre-installed with Nanosaur, Bugdom and Cro-Mag Rally, with developer Pangea Software being a long-time Apple partner and Mac game developer. You can actually download several of Pangea's Mac OS games for free from Pangea's website. If you haven't played Bugdom yet, I strongly recommend it, as it's an endlessly imaginative, charming action-adventure and an iconic game for the Mac platform. Our LC 575, which was our first computer, came pre-installed with classics such as Sim City 2000, Spectre Challenger, Super Maze Wars and Spin Doctor. My Nana's Performa came with these games as well, but also had Glider Pro and ShadowWraith, which is an awesome top-down cyberpunk-themed arcade shooter. Our eMac came pre-installed with Deimos Rising (developed by Ambrosia Softworks, which was also a long-time Mac game developer) and - oddly enough - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.

[@stillnotscaredofspiders]

Ah, Super Maze Wars and Spin Doctor. I wish they did Mac OS 8 emulators like DOSBox.

[@MaddTheSane]

StillNotScaredOfSpiders MACE and Executor are the closest, I’d say. Problem is, Executor is pretty much abandoned, and MACE is closed-source and VERY early in development.

[@stillnotscaredofspiders]

@@MaddTheSane The ones I've tried so far are SheepShaver and Basilisk, and both are an absolute pain to get working on a Windows system.

[@MaddTheSane]

@@stillnotscaredofspiders SheepShaver and Basilisk II are difficult to get working on _any_ OS.

[@helloSanders]

I still have my wallstreet model ^-^ My favourite part of laptops from that era was the modular bays. You can stick batteries in both sides, or drives in either one while plugged into the wall. It's so cool.

[@dos4gwexe]

Wow, Wasteland in a sealed box! I just searched and found you did a review of the game all the way back in 2013, lol. That was the most important game in my life until Doom came along.

[@ThatConfused1]

I just like how the preview video for this on the list is nothing but you cleaning the keyboard and screen over and over again.

[@da_homunculus]

Awesome to see this, thanks! First computer I ever played around on was my dad's PowerBook G3 500 Pismo. Translucent keyboard, upgraded to OS 9, good stuff.

[@JohnMiller-mmuldoor]

Gotta love the “booooooooong!” Boot chime. Much feels

[@TanaraKuranov]

I used to use a similar model back in the day, but it was the Pismo model, so faster, but still in the same family. (Not my very first computer of my own, that was an old SE/30) Used the poor thing until the hinges were giving out and parts inside were dying. I miss those hotswap bays. At home? Plug in a CD and floppy drive. On the go? Slap in two batteries. That's some hardcore nostalgia, takes me back.

[@ActionRetro]

Now THAT'S a heckin' purdy machine!

[@Ralph-yn3gr]

I wish laptop manufacturers had taken those swappable bays further and created swappable processor and graphics modules so we could upgrade them. A laptop like that would be a real desktop killer. Also, I'm sure you know this by now, but just in case I think that thing has some variant of the ATI Rage II in there (holy moly there are so many different versions of that thing. it's like the P-40 of graphics cards).

[@pedrofelck]

Kinda difficult to put a GPU, memory, heatsink, fan and + in a swappable card.

[@Alexlfm]

Upgrades were already possible with this generation of PowerBooks as you could actually swap the processor out fairly easily (it was on a daughter board) and with the sonnet cards one could even upgrade it to a G4 500 (although OSX support was spotty with those). Out of all the laptops made at this time this was one, if not the, most upgradable all things considered. Post G4/PIII I suspect the reason these types of upgrades went away were heat and power draw of newer chips along with more significant bus changes and integration of systems onto the chips. Things just started moving too fast.

[@Ralph-yn3gr]

@@pedrofelck You may be correct (I'm no expert), but it's not impossible. It's effectively what graphics cards for desktops already are, just in a different form factor, and if there was a standardized layout (sort of like PCMCIA) card manufacturers wouldn't have to worry about modules not fitting in certain machines and companies could design their laptop cases accordingly. It wouldn't work for all laptops like ultra-thin notebooks, tablets, or low cost ones since it'd probably be more expensive to implement, but if upgrading the GPU in the future is a selling point you're probably getting a bigger, more expensive gaming-type laptop anyways. (It would also make replacing dying fans easier, like the one in my laptop that sounds like an asthmatic jet engine) Come to think of it, I'm somewhat surprised Apple hasn't done that with the iMac. It would allow them to make extra money from people, and it would still give them a new planned obsolescence option, since they could change the interface and force people to buy a new iMac after a while.

[@JuffoWup78]

That actually kind of happened at least for a short time. Alienware used to sell laptops that had removeable gpu modules that you could swap in new ones as upgrade later on. I don't know how much of it was supported, but they did have it. This was before they got bought by dell.

[@Ralph-yn3gr]

@@JuffoWup78 Really? Huh. I wonder why it didn't catch on. I should look into those.

[@CryMoar_]

oh man hearing JJ2 again...!

[@Crow47]

I had one of these exact '98 powerbooks as my first hand-me-down computer ages ago. From experience, it will also play Unreal Tournament 99 very well, in addition to Starcraft.

[@Exelius]

I had a PowerBook G3 WallStreet when I was in college, very nice machine

[@joeblow5214]

Man that OS splash screen takes me back. My elementary school had one Mac and two Win98 machines and the Mac was the only one with SimCity 2000 on it so during recess it became my Mac lol.

[@Evgenii_Fedorovskii]

IT'S INCREDIBLE! This is the speed in Quake on a 98-year-old processor! P2 233 Klamath could not even dream of such a speed even in 640x480, but here you can play on Apple in 1024x768 !!! ... Although if I found out the price of this laptop in those years, I probably would understand why everything is so good =D

[@ReverendLinc]

That is a G3 Wallstreet. Great little laptops the were! Good looking machines.

[@andyrichter2714]

I’ve had that quake soundtrack on vinyl release notification set up for like 2 years... And I get notified by a LGR video.

[@kladewilson598]

That friggin Mac power up sound is awesome

[@reedreinfeld3737]

This is a 1998 Macintosh PowerBook G3 - Wallstreet model. Both bays are hot swappable and can run with two batteries. The floppy drive (Or anything that fits the form factor) can also be used on the left bay. I had the 12.1’ passive matrix model (courtesy of my high school)… The power supply that came with that model was actually recalled due to fire issues...

[@christurcotte4035]

Picked up a 1999 g3 clamshell from the school I work at with the yoyo charger and it runs like a dream.

[@monosagitario]

This was the first Powerbook that you can work in multimedia field. I have mine still working with the apple power adapter replacement.

[@camotech1314]

Never ever owned a Macintosh, so these videos are amazing thank you!!

[@WalmartMustacheMan]

So there are a few versions of the g3, the first is the PowerBook G3 Kanga/ PowerBook 3500(this was the worlds fastest laptop for a few months) it had a 250MHz G3 on a 50MHz Bus, it could go up to 160MB of Ram. This are extremely rare and in my opinion are the coolest PowerBooks ever, its essentially a PowerBook 3400 with a G3. Then there is the WallStreet which is what you own, it was completely redesigned and imchanged everything, it has a 233mhz G3 on a 65mhz bus and could go up to a gig of ram, then the wallstreet pdq which only has minor differences, then the Lombard which added the bronze keyboard, increased specs and changed the hot swappable bays. Then the final one, the Pismo, this has a 500mhz g3(there were slower models), this also went up to a gig of ram but was a much faster machine. And then the G4 Titanium was released

[@YouWille]

It was so much more cool than the Windows machines back then. I don`t know why, but it gave you privacy or the feeling of having one. I still have my PISMO and waiting on parts to have it run again.

[@DeadBaron]

I find it interesting how even going back to the early System versions, Mac OS was so similar for decades. I restored a Macintosh Plus recently and using 6.0.8 feels so similar to OS 9 and even the first OS X, all they did was add the dock.

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

I used machines of this era in primary school - would love to see Thinkin' Things et-al running. And oh man, S3M and Impulse Tracker music with Jazz Jackrabbit 2!

[@savagemadman2054]

It's so sleek looking. I've never owned or even used a Powerbook G3, but always wanted one. I also regret that I gave away my beige Powermac G3 tower ~12 years ago. From the early days of Steve Job's return to Apple, long before the reigns were handed to the corporate accountants who don't really seem to care about anything other than money. Apple's computers were still generally user upgradeable until about ~2012, one model year after Apple's current regime took power.

[@21dazzer]

Had one of these. WAY ahead of its time - the hot-swap design is unsurpassed even now.

[@will_it_work]

Wallstreet model. Last Macintosh with a LocalTalk port, Apple SuperDrive floppy (needed to make 400K/800K Macintosh floppies,), and the rainbow Apple logo. Can booth from CF in the PCMCIA slot. USB can be added in the other PCMCIA slot. Still has SCSI. Built-in Ethernet. The ultimate bridge computer for working with modern Macs and older, classic Macs from the 80's.

[@LGRBlerbs]

Didn't know about some of that, that's awesome. I do have an internal floppy drive on the way as that'll be super handy for writing things for my compact Macs!

[@Dosgamert]

Good old Jazz Jackrabbit (2). Even on a Mac it's great.

[@FrontSideBus]

Just the thing to watch while I format a 30gb 15k IBM scuzzi drive in preparation for a fresh install of Win98SE on it...

[@koshi6505]

Such a nostalgic computer. I remember playing so much Starcraft and snes roms on one of these.

[@flounder31]

WallStreet. Nice. Had one of those back in the day, that I rescued from my CompUSA store's tech shop, after I figured out what was wrong with it and fixed it. These machines were insanely easy to work on/upgrade - the first time I popped the keyboard out of one without tools, I thought the PC techs in the shop were going to shit themselves.

[@StevenSmyth]

PowerBook WallStreet, 2nd generation G3. The first gen was housed in a 3400 case, this was part of the new design language at Apple. You don’t have enough VRAM to run Quake at 1024x768, but I think it’ll run in 800x600 full screen. This Mac has both S-Video and VGA out on video mirroring, so you should be able to do your own capture of Yoot Tower and it will run no problem. I have a copy and it runs very well on my Strawberry iMac (333) and my Beige G3 Desktop (266). Apple says you can only put 192 MB of RAM in these, unofficially, you can install 512 no problem. Nice pickup.

[@stevebowbrick9024]

A breakthrough with this machine was the DVD-ROM module but, at least with the early models, the machine didn't actually have the horsepower to play back a DVD so, in addition to the optical drive, you also had to have an additional processor that plugged into the PC-card slot. I set it up on a plane once and watched a movie (or at least part of a movie, until the battery died) while crossing the Atlantic. People gathered around my aisle seat to watch in wonder.

[@kevwang0712]

Interesting to see that the box specifically advertised the CPU as a RISC processor. With Apple now transitioning back to RISC architecture with ARM processors, I'm curious to see if they're going to promote this fact again in their marketing.

[@ahandsomefridge]

12:25 Looks like you created your own industrial soundtrack right there

[@bexrayspex]

Great blurb! I haven’t been exposed to macs until later in life... how accessible (in terms of the hardware) everything used to be compared to now. And swappable bays? MWAH! 👩‍🍳 💋

[@davidrumming4734]

Being a 233, it’s one of the all new G3 laptops from that time....there was also a more expensive/faster 266 version. Both can run early versions of Mac OS X. The original G3 laptop featured a 250 g3 cpu (no other speed options) but the rest of the machine was really a warmed over older model which limited it to Mac OS 9 maximum.

[@clohre]

They bundled PowerPete and Nanosaur. PowerPete was wicked fun.

[@andrewmattera6205]

I feel like the things you post to blerbs would make for really fun and interesting livestreams

[@mortenborg]

I had one of those, a great machine! And back then all Apple laptops had easily replaceable batteries - so Apple actually know how to do it...

[@anonymeister123]

I'm just now finding this second channel? Goodbye, work day...