Powerbook G3 "Wallstreet"

When I grew up, Macs were the ultimate computer mystery to me. In waiting rooms where glossy magazines were on display, I occasionally found an issue of MacWorld and stared at the hypnotic designs bearing Apple's logo. This was the 1990s, before the iPhones and even iPods, a time when Apple was struggling for its very survival. Macintosh computers, as they were often still called back then, were as far as I knew intended for connaisseurs, people working in graphic design and possibly authors. I had never even though of getting one. To someone who had just started to get acquainted with PCs and Windows, the Apple computers were as alien as they were fascinating. The prohibitive cost of getting one ruled them out, I was still stuck with my 486, constantly trying to find new ways to squeeze more out of that old workhorse.

Many years later, I had discovered Linux and tinkered with more PCs than I could possibly remember. The PC hardware had become very familiar, and I had often gone to electronic waste bins to dig up old computers and scavenge all the working parts I could find. Having worked so many hours with the cheap and common components and standards, I started to feel an attraction to the high-end stuff I only knew by name, things bearing designations like SCSI and Firewire. The Macs still had a completely different type of processor back in those days, called PowerPC. The PowerPC processors were based on RISC technology, which in turn was even more mysterious, the stuff of supercomputers and high-powered servers. That was something very different from the Intel-based processors I knew so well. I decided that I had to have one.

Finally, in 2007, I bought my very first Mac in an online auction. It was a Powerbook G3 "Wallstreet" from 1998 (the Powerbooks in the G3 series have different codenames to distinguish the models. Kanga was the first, followed by Wallstreet I, Wallstreet II, Bronze Keyboard and finally Pismo). It was cheap and it looked gorgeous in the pictures. A 233 Mhz G3 (PowerPC 750) processor, 64 MB of RAM and a 4GB hard drive. When it arrived in the mail, the imbecile seller had wrapped in nothing more than brown paper. I gasped in horror as I took the parcel in my hands. How could anyone treat a computer with such negligence? I carried my prize home with gentle hands, assuring it that it had would henceforth be taken care of with more affection. I was almost trembling with excitement as I plugged it in. Hours later, I was overcome with disappointment. The machine I had bought had several serious hardware defects. Unwilling to part with my Powerbook so soon, I decided to fix it.

I still think that the combination of rubber and plastic, separated by gentle curves, along with the subtle roundness of the case, is one of the best-looking laptop designs of all time.

There's something about how the display curves inward that just feel perfect, it's like it stretches out to embrace one's eyes. The splash of color in the Apple logo makes for a nice contrast while the exquisite font used for the designation is just perfect.

 The months that followed were probably the demanding computer repair I have ever undertook. Had it been any other machine, I would have discarded it after a week. But not this one. It was too beautiful in its black case, with the gorgeous font for the model designation and the amazingly inviting keyboard. Painstakingly diagnosing all the things that had to be fixed, I concluded that the hard drive was on the verge of giving up (and that parts of the operating system was corrupt), that the built-in Ethernet port was completely ruined, and that the CD-ROM drive only worked intermittently (as I recall, about 10-20% of all attempts to boot from the drive worked). In addition, the display cable was damaged, leading to an annoying flickering across the whole screen at certain angles.

The flickering screen today.

The numerous dents and marks on the bottom bear witness to the wear this machine has seen.

 I first bought a new hard drive and installed it. Efforts to find a new display cable turned out nothing. Then I had managed to get a hold of a CD with Mac OS 8 on it. It took a long time just to get the machine to boot from the disc due to the faulty CD-ROM. But I did it, patiently trying to get it to read the disc, rebooting over and over again. Then I had a working operating system, and I rejoiced. I bought an Ethernet adapter in PC Card format, but it didn't work. After doing more research, I could conclude that it was incompatible with my particular Mac. I tried to get a new CD-ROM but it was difficult to find that kind of old hardware. When I finally did locate a DVD-ROM drive for Powerbook G3s and bought it, I again noticed that it was incompatible with my Wallstreet I (it would have worked with any of the later models of the Powerbook G3). Not being one to give up, I still managed to install a few games on the machine, upgrade to Mac OS 9, and get WordPerfect and MS Office 2001 to run on it. That's when I could actually start to use it.

View from the side showing the CD-ROM drive and fan exhaust.

The hardware design has several clever aspects, in typical Apple fashion. For example, the CD-ROM drive can be replaced with an extra battery. Of course I had to get one of those. I even bought a white single-button ADB mouse for it.  I was a student at the time, and I proudly brought my Powerbook G3 to group working sessions in cafés. To everyone else, it was archaic, dented and unwieldy. To me, it was the most beautiful computer in the whole world. And it worked, thanks to my untiring efforts. The keyboard was so smooth, each key being perfectly rounded. I liked my Powerbook so much that I bought a new processor for it, a 250 Mhz version with L2 cache and 128 MB of RAM, something that promised to boost performance noticeably. I installed the hardware upgrade and was happier than ever. A few days later, the processor broke down mysteriously, forcing me to go back to the old one. Little did I know that this was only the first backlash. A few weeks later, the whole machine started to act up. A couple of months later, I could no longer boot it up. Faced with the daunting prospect of once again having to struggle with that dysfunctional CD-ROM drive, that had only gotten worse with time, I decided that enough was enough. The Powerbook G3 went into long-term storage.

This is all I get from this machine these days.

View of the rear, with the port cover open, showing the printed reset instructions (a nice touch) and the archaic ADB port.

Close-up of the font and Apple logo.

The touchpad and single button, from an era when Apple stubbornly refused to have more than one button on any mouse.

The rounded keys of one of my all-time favorite keyboards.

The extra battery drive I bought, which for a time extended the battery time considerably.

When I dug the machine up from storage to take a few pictures, I was almost tempted to try to fix it. But then I remembered the pain of having to work with its obsolete "Old World ROM" that makes it excruciatingly difficult to boot anything but Mac OS 7/8/9 discs. So, I won't fix it. But I can't throw it away either, it means too much to me for that. So after this post, it goes back to long-term storage. Maybe some day in the future I'll have time to spare and the determination required to get it up and running again. Still, we had a good run and I'll never forget the short months when I was the proud owner of a beautiful matte black Powerbook G3.