[fisherKing]

hmmm...
was planning a 12" pb, but some financial mischief wreaks havoc on that plan.

so wanted to see what options exist to upgrade my pismo. (400/768ram/20G hd); running 10.2.8 exclusively (no classic or 9)

there's the:
daystar 550/G4
fastmac 550/G4
powerlogix 900/G3

any thoughts?
i use apps like reason a lot (which stutters & smears a lot when pushed hard on my pb)

logic, indesign, safari (a lot)

opinions & user info would be greatly appreciated!

[fisherKing]

*bump*
(just this one...)

any pismo users left??

[powerduck]

I have been using a pismo/osx.2 with the powerlogix g4/500 upgrade for somewhat over a year now. For my purposes, the machine is very usable and snappy enough. You will need to take some pleasure in spinning beach balls though...

On the downside, there is a heat issue (processor intensive tasks will now cause the fan to kick in - sounds like a plane is about to take off) and battery life is dismal (but this is still my original pismo battery, a new battery might help)

pismo g4/500/1024/40(5400)/x.2.6

[Hairllama]

This is my first post, but I've been lurking for a while. Regarding the G4/500 Pismo. I have been using my G4/500 Powerlogix upgrade for about 6 months. I noticed no additional heat or battery issues. My battery life has recently decreased, but I assume that's due to a 3 year old battery. It still gets over 3 hours on a charge. I can't wait to get a new high capacity battery to add to the second bay. The only time my fan turns on is when running SETI@Home for hours at a time. My Pismo does pretty well to keep pace with my G4/867 Quicksilver tower in everything except Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Keep in mind that mine also has a 5400 RPM HD in addition to the G4/500. The only limitation of the great Pismo is the video card, but if you don't play 3D games it's a non issue.

Long Live the PIsmo!

[fisherKing]

thanx, hairllama...welcome to the forums!

been doing a day of research (vs work, don't tell anyone).

the daystar G4 upgrade looks good, but...
the G3/900 seems to run a lot faster (but hot);
still not sure what i will do.



btw i DID upgrade to a 5400rpm drive, but at the same time as moving to osx, so hard to see what diff it made...(i'm sure it helps, and 768meg ram)


then there's the iBooks...



hmmmm

[desillusion.com]

no experience with pismos myself, but my suggestion would be to rather invest in something new, than putting money into something as old as the pismo (no offense, it's a wonderful machine, but still, its old technology - no warranty anymore, think about all the parts that could break)

depending on how much money you want to spend, you might also consider getting a 15" ti-book, which you can find rather cheap now, as the Al are hitting the stores. then you would get the G4 cpu, which is definitely better than the ibook's G3.

[sinebubble]

btw i DID upgrade to a 5400rpm drive, but at the same time as moving to osx, so hard to see what diff it made...(i'm sure it helps, and 768meg ram)

After I put my 5400rpm drive in, I was very impressed by the speed-up. I also have 768MB of RAM and a DVD/CDR drive in my Pismo. I'm debating the 900MHz upgrade. I'm not worried about the $350, but I'm concerned about the heat. If someone would find an XVGA+ LCD panel that would work with the Pismo, I would buy that, too!

Ti books seem to keep their value very well. In the bay area, it's typical to find used ones only a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than new, if you are lucky.

Say what you will, I think the Pismo is a better lookin' machine than any Ti book. And after 4 years, it still holds up pretty well.

[SEkker]

A 5400 rpm HD made a huge difference in OS X for my 400 MHz G3 Pismo. It also added 20 GB of storage space...

I was planning on going for a 900 MHz G3 upgrade, but the hinge is starting to act up.

So I think I'm going to wait for an iBook or 12" G4 upgrade instead.

[bmhome1]

Finally got my 900 upgrade for my Pismo and am VERY impressed! I had prepared myself for disappointing speed increases, but it has been quite the opposite. "Snappier" has been often used to decribe the effect, and besides being a cliche now, it DOES accurately verbalize results. Every application is noticeably faster (especially the CPU hogs) with Photoshop having a "right now" effect, VPC with a dramatic speed increase, actually everything, including even surfing and web page scrolling. For me, there's no question about the value of the upgrade. It feels like twice the speed, and XBench score doubled from 26 to 48 overall (with CPU intensive test segments more than doubling, sometimes tripled). Let1kWindowsBloom went from 206 seconds to 93 seconds.

I chose to purchase my 900 from PowerBookMedic.com as a drop-in processor already modified, for several reasons. First, although at a small premium from buying a processor card on ebay plus the upgrade, Bradley at PowerBookMedic really impressed me with his service, answering every call personally, immediately. He also includes a 30 day service warranty (+90 days available for $29), so any issues are dealt with directly with him. Additionally, the same card complete, is frequently auctioned at eBay by him under the seller id "wallachee." Past winning bids have been as low as $445. But for me, having the 900 card less than 48 hours after ordering convinced me of the choice.

Little did I know how wise that was. My 900 card arrived DOA after trying for hours to boot up swapping RAM, zapping PRAM, etc. Late that afternoon I called him and he responded to not worry, he would overnight a replacement and for me to return the bad card at my leisure. It was his first bad card he's sold. Couldn't possibly ask for more assistance with a problem than that. Next morning I had my replacement card installed in less than three minutes and booting up without issue, never having to try to contact Powerlogix ever in the whole process.

I had been using a CyberCooler 3 fan USB cooling base with my Pismo for awhile with very effective results (with the 400 card averaging CPU temps of 104� F to 126�, F tops) and now by using that combined with another device for cooling, a PCMCIA card fan that directly blows filtered air at the CPU (lucky design of Pismo), my 900 doesn't even get warm. Just pulled the keyboard after hours of web surfing, and the heat shield plate is cool to the touch even. There's no sensation of heat anywhere on the case. The 900 doesn't support CPU temp readings, so results can be descriptive only.

Unfortunately for others, those PCMCIA card fans are nearly impossible to locate anymore (Just Cooler, model NB-100, discontinued, used to widely available at retail).

Now, using two cooling devices may not be the ideal heat solution, but it does allow me to enjoy my purchase, heat-free all the time, for now. Certainly a viable choice for cool running during CPU intensive tasks, like DVD playback (both devices run nearly inaudible).

I did substitute Artic Silver's Ceramique thermal compound for the generic supllied paste. Ceramique performs nearly as well as AS3 specs, yet with 100% non-conductivity. AS3 DOES conduct enough to destroy a CPU, if paste bridges circuit traces. The 900 chip has caps very close to the CPU face, so it would be VERY unwise to use AS3, IMHO. BTW, the 900 chip is considerably smaller than the 400/500 original CPU. It come mounted on a minature circuit board adaptor to fit over the original CPU traces. Very impressive engineering.

Having the dead 900 card overnight gave me the chance to experiment with placing the original heat pipe/heatsink back over it, and to my amazement, it does fit, with only a slight bulge of the heat shield when screwed down and an even slighter bulge of the keyboard directly above. Its a very small amount at the upper center of the keyboard, not enough to be a potential problem. All three keyboard clips engage.

The heat pipe would then both transfer heat along the tube to the finned heatsink while still transferring heat additionally directly up to the heat shield (removing the pink insulation layer and adding thermal transfer paste) as the Powerlogix copper piece currently does, so it seems it could only benefit heat distribution positively. The heat pipe centers on the 900 CPU well, secure when screwed down, leaving a very clear impression of proper paste "image" on the mating surfaces, so it may be entirely possible to work. I'll leave that for others to try, so far I'm very happy with mine as installed, as it is working well.