The PowerBook G3 Pismo was my first Mac, and I received it as a gift (used, but in good condition) … must have been around 2005. Apple products first caught my attention in 2002, when the original iPod appeared in german stores – Media Markt sold it at this time, along with the G4 iMac („iLamp“). I remember standing in front of these „products with the extraordinary price tag“ like a little child, looking with sparkling eyes on sweets at the local store. At this time, I couldn’t imagine owning such a thing myself one day.
Thats why I am sentimentally attached to this computer, I still keep it up and running until today. I even gave it a G4 550MHz processor upgrade, a procedure that required sending the CPU board to the US, where they soldered the new chip on. With a full 1GB of RAM and a PATA SSD it works quite decent for simple tasks like text editing and sending emails (oh I love typing on these keyboards, I prefer it much over the recent keyboards with that low stroke).
Besides all that, the design of this machine is really stunning, it’s organic lines just beautiful. No wonder that the Lombard / Pismo models have many appearances in big movies like Mission Impossible – to name just one.
I really want to keep this old-timer alive for some time, so I looked on eBay for some used machines as spare part donors. For small money I bought a Pismo (2000) and a Lombard (1999), both without hard disk and described as defect. It appeared that the Pismo indeed seems to have troubles, maybe the mainboard is faulty, but the housing and keyboard are in great shape.
The Lombard but was fully operational after plugging in my old Pismo hard disk with OS X 10.3 Panther on it. It’s just that it only boots correctly every second time I switch it on.
My biggest troubles now are the batteries, one is completely dead, the other is still working, though its not great after all the time. But that’s a story on its own … to be continued …