Advice for a Long-Term Lurker

[Rocks_PPC]

Some years ago picked up a PowerBook G4 12", A1104 (PowerBook 6,8), whose primary purpose in life at present is watching DVDs.

Naturally the battery has long-since stopped working, and this presents the continuous bother of the clock being set to 1/1/1970, 10:00am every time the system loses mains power (I don't leave this computer plugged in while unattended, nor my daily 2011 MBP anymore). Ideally, I'd possess the skills to put new cells in the battery that was supplied with the machine - but I don't, so that's that. I'm not even sure if a professional outfit exists that would service the battery (I note the popular "BatteryWorld" chain here says on their website they'll only repack Ni-Mh or Ni-Cad batteries).

As a workaround something I'd like to do, is have some sort of script run automatically at startup that resets the clock to within cooee of the present date, so the wireless network will connect and a Time & Date server do the rest. Booting with a wired network connection could negate the need for such a workaround, but I haven't tried that yet. this thread certainly seems promising, although (again) I've not tried it yet. Being from 2013, I can only hope that Leopard could manage such a command.
My other brainwave was trying to use SafeSleep in the hopes the OS time wouldn't be overriden by the hardware, but my PBG4 misbehaves - either it goes into a loop where it will immediately return to hibernation when awoken (this also occurs with conventional sleep if the lid is closed), or you can unlock the system, but the trackpad is unresponsive. So there went that idea.

The other bothers concern Operating System, and Browsers, of which I know most choices are hopelessly antiquated and not ideal for any productive use, although some pointers and suggestions here would be welcome about the current state of opinion, or what other members are having the most luck with. Lurking on and off over the years, I've heard of things like "TenFiveTube", the "TenFourFox Boxes", "TenFourFox7420" (all of which reside in some capacity on the PBG4), not to mention Sorbet Leopard, the Tiger vs Leopard arguments, and so on. I used to use NoScript a lot when browsing, which while it nuked the functionality of most websites (including the anti-adblock prompts!), it at least allowed browsing and reading of most - a pity this addon wouldn't work with the few semi-modern browsers available on Leopard.

Hopefully that's not a completely overwhelming first post... Thanks for anyone who can offer their time, and insights.

As an aside, this ain't my first rodeo as far as "flogging a dead operating system horse" is concerned. The Late-2011 MBP I'm writing on ran Snow Leopard (however unofficially) for about five years, until the start of 2020, when I begrudgingly upgraded to Sierra. I certainly miss its snappy, lightweight performance, but of course the worsening situation with browsers (Chrome increasingly-antiquated, and ArcticFox, like any Firefox derivative of the time, seemed prone to just using more and more memory until the system ground to a halt) and a particular piece of software I needed at the time shelved that. Ultimately I think my next stop is Linux, given where Windows and OS X "macOS" have wound up.

 

[doctor_dog]

Welcome to the forum (officially)! Trying to figure out the best course of action here, is your issue really that the date and time resets or that you are losing your stored WiFi connection details?

What are you wanting to do with your browser? My best advice re:browsers is to search this forum for recent posts with "youtube" and "browsers" in your keywords, there have been a smattering of posts on the topic but I don't think it's all in one place. For example, posts from Dronecatcher will likely net you some good info on how to watch YT vids.

FWIW, I use a combination of AquaWeb Micro, Links (the X11 variant from Macports), and ArcticFox. I do not try to use the modern web on my PPC machine because as you pointed out, it is hopelessly antiquated. If you just want to use your PPC for what I like to call "read-only" (browsing forums, news articles, the occasional YT video, etc.) then it's fine. Any sort of modern productivity web apps, forget about it.

That said, if you want to use a PPC and access the modern web, you will need a modern OS like Linux (obviously free) or MorphOS (not free).

 

[Rocks_PPC]

Trying to figure out the best course of action here, is your issue really that the date and time resets or that you are losing your stored WiFi connection details?

The former leads to the latter, as it were... The system doesn't forget the WiFi connection details, only because it's a secured network, the inconsistency with the date and time means it won't connect. If I boot into Open Firmware and set the time there when starting the system, all is well (but it's not conducive to booting the computer, and walking away to do something while I wait).

 

[doctor_dog]

Hmm, ok I perhaps have not been paying attention to the order of operations when I have to cold-boot a PPC machine. I thought I had been connecting to WiFi and then letting the machine auto-update date and time. Let me have a think on how you'd fix this, I have no idea what the acceptable margin of error with respect to date and time is for a system to still connect to a network.

 

[B S Magnet]

As an aside, this ain't my first rodeo as far as "flogging a dead operating system horse" is concerned. The Late-2011 MBP I'm writing on ran Snow Leopard (however unofficially) for about five years, until the start of 2020, when I begrudgingly upgraded to Sierra. I certainly miss its snappy, lightweight performance, but of course the worsening situation with browsers (Chrome increasingly-antiquated, and ArcticFox, like any Firefox derivative of the time, seemed prone to just using more and more memory until the system ground to a halt) and a particular piece of software I needed at the time shelved that. Ultimately I think my next stop is Linux, given where Windows and OS X "macOS" have wound up.

Welcome to the PowerPC (and Early Intel Macs) forums!

I’m still a daily user of the late 2011 MBP 13-inch. It is still remarkably versatile and a delight to use. (The scope of this falls in the Early Intel Macs camp, but you’ll find a lot of the same faces on both of these forums.)

Like you, running Snow Leopard on it has long been a treat, even as support for browsers became more limited. But I also upgraded (now running a dosdude1-patched Mojave on it.) Through a project called the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, one can also upgrade the late 2011 MBP to Sonoma.

I didn’t give up on Snow Leopard, though. Rather, there are two discrete partitions on my system, and the version of Snow Leopard I still use has an unbroken lineage to OS X 10.6.0 (as bundled by Apple on a mid 2009 MBP, whose volume was migrated to an early 2011 MBP, whose volume was migrated to this late 2011 MBP). The utility of having that around still, even if used with less frequency, cannot be overstated, especially for specific tasks for which connected peripherals work best, such as with an older midi-based devices for making music or a dedicated film scanner (and custom scanning/colour profiles) for photography. Snow Leopard is also wonderful for writing software, without either interruptions or using a lot of CPU cycles.

Over on the Early Intel Macs forum, you’ll also find a currently supported Mozilla browser for Snow Leopard called Nightly55, which I’m finding works remarkably well on the modern web. This is all to say you don’t have to give up on Snow Leopard for those specific things for which you do the best in Snow Leopard, whilst having a more current macOS build living right alongside it.

* * *

As for the the question on maintaining date info on the system in absence of a PRAM battery, I lack a definitive solution for it and, generally, haven’t felt impelled enough to find a patch or fix around that.

Generally, all the Macs I still run without a working battery, including one iBook G3, are ethernet-connected and self-correct when booting after being unplugged. (In the rare cases they don’t, I’ll open the Date & Time prefPane, plug-in some date somewhat close to today, and then click the checkbox to automatically retrieve date & time from the nntp server, as getting the date closer to the present tends to make the system be less cranky than when waking up to “31 December 1969” or “1 January 1970”.)

 

[za9ra22]

I tried experimenting with my G4 PowerBook 867 - the original model - running 10.4, but it has a good battery, so reconnected to wifi and maintained correct time.

I dug out my 17-inch G4 PB instead, which has a dead battery, and on booting, it reconnected to wifi immediately, but even though time is set to sync online, and it is connected, it won't reset from Wednesday December 31 1969 to today unless I open the Date & Time preference pane. When I do that, the time syncs automatically after about 15 seconds.

On edit: Sorry, that was to comment on wifi connectivity and lack of time sync, not the question of how to do that automatically.

 

[B S Magnet]

I tried experimenting with my G4 PowerBook 867 - the original model - running 10.4, but it has a good battery, so reconnected to wifi and maintained correct time.

I dug out my 17-inch G4 PB instead, which has a dead battery, and on booting, it reconnected to wifi immediately, but even though time is set to sync online, and it is connected, it won't reset from Wednesday December 31 1969 to today unless I open the Date & Time preference pane. When I do that, the time sycs automatically after about 15 seconds.

Yup.

This is one case in which a physical ethernet connection tends to handle better at start-up than wifi, as trying the same task via wifi often returns a self-assigned IP address (e.g., 169.x.x.x) — one which won’t self-resolve until after the date & time are updated manually and I can click the “renew the DHCP lease” button.

 

[za9ra22]

Yup.

This is one case in which a physical ehternet connection tends to handle better at start-up than wifi, as trying the same task via wifi often returns a self-assigned IP address (e.g., 169.x.x.x) — one which won’t self-resolve until after the date & time are updated manually and I can click the “renew the DHCP lease” button.

That makes sense, thanks!

I don't need to manually renew DHCP though - just opening the Date/Time panel initiates the sync, but the 15 second delay does hint it may be renewing the lease in the background first. That said, if Date/Time isn't opened, the original default setting doesn't update at all - other than beginning to count up from there.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I'd say use Leopard Webkit where you can and InterWebPPC/InTheBox - either way, load a mobile device user agent to strip out some of the clutter and speed things along.

 

[G5isAlive]

backs out of the thread very very slowly... the title sucked me in, my advice was going to be 'stay lurking.' I am impressed though with the level of arcane details you guys know. Once upon a time I used to dig into system level details because I had no choice. Then the original Mac 128 k came out and I was relieved I could let Apple worry about such things and I worry about what I wanted to study, which at the time was biochemistry.

 

[erikkfi]

As a workaround something I'd like to do, is have some sort of script run automatically at startup that resets the clock to within cooee of the present date, so the wireless network will connect and a Time & Date server do the rest.

Nice suggestion and you've just answered why my Snow Leopard MacBook Pro never connects to wireless when I start it up.

 

[eyoungren]

As OP states, the problem with WiFi is that because of the date resetting, it won't connect. Periodically, when I reboot my 17" PB I have to reset the clock as well in order to get connectivity again. Primarily this is because the battery now simply serves to fill the hole that would be there if I removed it.

Anyway, the 'procedure' for me anyway, is to simply shut off WiFi. Open System Preferences>Date & Time, uncheck the box to get time from the time server and then just type in the current year. The exact date/time doesn't matter right then.

At that point, I turn on WiFi again - because now we have a current year, it'll connect. THEN, I check the box to get time from the time server. That auto-forces the system to recognize the correct date and time. Then I just close out System Preferences.

@Rocks_PPC. There is most likely a way to do what I just described (which would solve your problem) with Applescript. But it'd involve some diving into things. Normally, you'd have to have the script simply set settings. But with System Preferences, it doesn't work that way. You need to go hand over hand with it, telling the script to tell System Preferences "Open, go here, select this radio button, turn off this option…" etc.

Once, long ago, my son and I would go to Starbucks. Him with his iBook G3 and me with my 17" PowerBook. His iBook had a broken antenna, so it relied on my PowerBook for internet sharing of the WiFi connection at Starbucks. It was extremely frustrating to have to open System Preferences and turn on Internet Sharing every time I went in and then turn it off before I left.

So. I automated it. When I opened the lid at Starbucks a location app would recognize that my BSSID had changed and it triggered my Applescript. The AS told System Preferences, "Open, Switch to Network Settings and connect to the Starbucks BSSID, then open Sharing and turn on Internet Sharing, then quit.

When I got home, same thing, only it shut off Internet Sharing when the location app recognized my home BSSID. But to do all that I had to experiment by making the callouts for all the various settings in System Preferences.

But if that can be automated, then the procedure I use manually to reset the date and time can too.

I'll take a look at my old scripts later and see what may be useful here.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

When I first read your post, I thought "losing time/date and Wi-Fi info? Sounds like the PRAM battery died" and normally that's the first place I'd check after hearing these symptoms in a Mac of this vintage. I did some searching and sadly (or smartly?) it sounds like the PRAM depends on the main battery for power, rather than a separate PRAM battery. But that's okay, just get a new/refurbbed battery.

There are places where you can buy a battery for your PowerBook, like here. The battery pops right out for easy replacement so it should be an easy replacement if you want to go that route. Good luck!

 

[eyoungren]

Allright…looks like my kludge for doing stuff got refined at some point. I simply had the script using direct "do shell script" commands which loaded and unloaded the Internet plist daemon (which turned sharing on or off), depending on my location.

Had to dig around in my PowerBook backup. I found this, which I am guessing was the last kludgy version that worked before I improved the script.

tell application "GrowlHelperApp.app" <---HERE WE ARE CALLING GROWL TO DISPLAY A NOTIFICATION ABOUT INTERNET SHARING
	set the allNotificationsList to {"Notification 1", "Notification 2"}
	set the enabledNotificationsList to {"Notification 1", "Notification 2"}
	«event register» given «class appl»:¬
		"Starbucks_iShare", «class anot»:allNotificationsList ¬
		, «class dnot»:enabledNotificationsList ¬
		, «class iapp»:"System Preferences"
end tell

tell application "System Preferences" <-- OPENING SYSTEM PREFERENCES
	activate
	tell application "System Events" <-- WE HAVE TO TALK TO SYSTEM EVENTS, WHICH TALKS TO SYSTEM PREFERENCES
		tell process "System Preferences"
			click menu item "Sharing" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 <-- GO TO SHARING AND WAIT A SEC
			delay 2
			tell window "Sharing"
				if (value of checkbox 1 of row 10 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1) is equal to 0 then
					click checkbox 1 of row 10 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 <-- TURN SHARING ON OR OFF DEPENDING ON THE VALUE FOUND HERE
					tell application "GrowlHelperApp.app" <--NOTIFY GROWL
						«event notifygr» given «class name»:"Notification 1", «class titl»:"Starbucks Internet Sharing Enabled", «class desc»:"Internet Sharing for Starbucks is now enabled", «class appl»:"Starbucks_iShare"
					end tell
				else -- Deactivates Sharing if it is activated <--THIS DOES THE OPPOSITE IF WE ARE DEACTIVATING
					if (value of checkbox 1 of row 10 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1) is equal to 1 then
						tell application "System Preferences" <--HEY SYSTEM PREFERENCES, QUIT!!!!
							quit
						end tell
						tell application "GrowlHelperApp.app"
							«event notifygr» given «class name»:"Notification 2", «class titl»:"Starbucks Internet Sharing Enabled", «class desc»:"Starbucks Internet Sharing is already enabled", «class appl»:"Starbucks_iShare"
						end tell
						delay 1
					end if
				end if
				if (exists sheet 1) then <-- THIS IS WHERE WE ARE TURNING AIRPORT ON SO WE'RE CONNECTED
					if (exists button "Turn AirPort On" of sheet 1) then
						click button "Turn AirPort On" of sheet 1
						delay 1
					end if
					click button "Start" of sheet 1
				end if
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
	tell application "System Preferences"
		quit
	end tell
end tell

As you can see, we are being very specific here. There's probably a better way just to wrap 'do shell script' commands in an AS and call the settings directly.

*Note anything all in CAPS in the code block is me calling things out so the script makes sense.

The end result is all this code saved out from Script Editor as an app (making sure you set it so you can reopen it with all the code intact). Then you'd place that app in a safe folder on the Mac somewhere and add it to Startup Items. That way it triggers the app when you boot and the code executes.

 

[B S Magnet]

When I first read your post, I thought "losing time/date and Wi-Fi info? Sounds like the PRAM battery died" and normally that's the first place I'd check after hearing these symptoms in a Mac of this vintage. I did some searching and sadly (or smartly?) it sounds like the PRAM depends on the main battery for power, rather than a separate PRAM battery. But that's okay, just get a new/refurbbed battery.

There are places where you can buy a battery for your PowerBook, like here. The battery pops right out for easy replacement so it should be an easy replacement if you want to go that route. Good luck!

Yah. The iBook G4s and the PowerBook 12-inch models were not designed with a PRAM battery in mind. They do, as memory serves, appear in their immediate successor, the white/black MacBook A1181, as well as in all aluminium MBPs. Around the time of unibody Macs, these were phased out.

I don’t know for certain whether Apple superseded the need for a PRAM battery with more robust capacitors, coupled with the battery only seldom being removed (generally, for replacement), or just left this to the (nearly always) internal battery, even when shutting down after running out of charge. My experience is so long as the battery still can hold a charge, even if the system shut down because the battery dropped to one per cent, there’s still enough in reserve, at least for a short while (maybe several hours or even a couple of days) to hold the PRAM settings long enough for the laptop to return to being charged.

 

[eyoungren]

@Intell I want another cheese hat please!!!

 

[za9ra22]

As OP states, the problem with WiFi is that because of the date resetting, it won't connect. Periodically, when I reboot my 17" PB I have to reset the clock as well in order to get connectivity again. Primarily this is because the battery now simply serves to fill the hole that would be there if I removed it.

This is specifically why I tested my G4 PowerBooks, because my recollection was that they did reconnect to wifi when the date/time had been lost.

The 12-inch was no use for this because the battery is good, but even when removed and left for an hour, it still remembered the date/time. But the others - 2 each of 15 and 17-inch G4 PBs, all have bad batteries, no current date and time, but all reconnect automatically to wifi even with bad dates. They all then need the date & time preference pane opened, but no settings changed, to update to the present date/time.

My TiBook didn't ever automatically connect to wifi when it was still functional, once its battery had died.

Obviously this doesn't help the OP solve the problem since their PB doesn't auto-connect, but it does make me wonder why some do and some don't. All mine are running 10.4.11.

 

[eyoungren]

This is specifically why I tested my G4 PowerBooks, because my recollection was that they did reconnect to wifi when the date/time had been lost.

The 12-inch was no use for this because the battery is good, but even when removed and left for an hour, it still remembered the date/time. But the others - 2 each of 15 and 17-inch G4 PBs, all have bad batteries, no current date and time, but all reconnect automatically to wifi even with bad dates. They all then need the date & time preference pane opened, but no settings changed, to update to the present date/time.

My TiBook didn't ever automatically connect to wifi when it was still functional, once its battery had died.

Obviously this doesn't help the OP solve the problem since their PB doesn't auto-connect, but it does make me wonder why some do and some don't. All mine are running 10.4.11.

Well, my PB will reconnect automatically. The problem is that because of the bad date/time the password for access is rejected, so the Airport icon shows as grayed-out. Attempts to reconnect before fixing the date and time result in the password being rejected again and again - until that is fixed.

That's just my 17" PowerBook. I guess this is inconsistent between other owners it seems.

 

[Rocks_PPC]

Let's see if the old PBG4 can survive this whopper of a response! Thank-you everyone for some brilliant responses so far, it's great to see a discussion board that hasn't surrendered to the popularity of Facebook.

Over on the Early Intel Macs forum, you’ll also find a currently supported Mozilla browser for Snow Leopard called Nightly55, which I’m finding works remarkably well on the modern web. This is all to say you don’t have to give up on Snow Leopard for those specific things for which you do the best in Snow Leopard, whilst having a more current macOS build living right alongside it.

That's something I'll keep in mind. I still have the flash-drive with the vanilla 10.6.8 install (took several days of tinkering to get that made up, including with a SL VM!), even my old Time Machine backups, and would consider giving it a go. I know someone else that would benefit from it, too.

I'd say use Leopard Webkit where you can and InterWebPPC/InTheBox - either way, load a mobile device user agent to strip out some of the clutter and speed things along.

InterWeb has definitely been the go-to. Can't remember if I tried Leopard Webkit, but it's worth a go, I suppose.

There are places where you can buy a battery for your PowerBook, like here. The battery pops right out for easy replacement so it should be an easy replacement if you want to go that route. Good luck!

That seemed so promising, until the page said "no stock". Any other leads you know of? I've found my search results get peppered with scam websites that claim to have batteries, but obviously only want one thing ... credit card numbers!

Allright…looks like my kludge for doing stuff got refined at some point. I simply had the script using direct "do shell script" commands which loaded and unloaded the Internet plist daemon (which turned sharing on or off), depending on my location.

Had to dig around in my PowerBook backup. I found this, which I am guessing was the last kludgy version that worked before I improved the script.

This is completely foreign to me, but, I'm not against learning on the run, and will see if I can make sense of the code you have there in the coming days.

Obviously this doesn't help the OP solve the problem since their PB doesn't auto-connect, but it does make me wonder why some do and some don't. All mine are running 10.4.11.

That's just my 17" PowerBook. I guess this is inconsistent between other owners it seems.

I'm on Leopard. Perhaps Tiger plays a bit more fast and loose with network connectivity? And what sort of subtle differences are there between different generation PB's, or even different specification machines of the same generation, for instance?

Alternatively, I wonder if the level of WiFi security, or even the networking hardware itself (routers, modems etc) has any bearing on the differing outcomes different posters have connecting with wrong time & date settings? Leaning more towards the latter given how flaky their onboard firmware can be. Years ago we had an ISP-supplied modem-router, whose web interface could easily be bypassed via Telnet; I found there were many options buried in there that the end user did not get to see, although playing around with that or its web interface too enthusiastically would practically guarantee a reboot. Certain options, when enabled, would reduce stability, or even cause a reboot loop.

 

[eyoungren]

This is completely foreign to me, but, I'm not against learning on the run, and will see if I can make sense of the code you have there in the coming days.

Don't go too deep, the code I posted is an example and does only what I mentioned (turns on Internet Sharing when an old Starbucks WiFi BSSID was detected). A solution for your particular issue (and my issue) would need to actually be coded.

Applescript itself can be complicated. A lot of what I did was trial and error and trying to re-engineer snippets of code I was able to copy off the internet. AS also has some limitations (deleting files off a server for instance).

I found it easier in the long run just to use AS as a wrapper for shell scripts. Shell scripts are bits of code that ordinarily you'd execute using Terminal. But AS can issue them and you can make your Applescript an app, so it was easier to do that then trying to figure out how to control everything just with Applescript code. It's also faster.

I'm no AS expert, I just beat my head against the wall long enough that it caused some cracks I could shove my hand through.

I'm on Leopard. Perhaps Tiger plays a bit more fast and loose with network connectivity? And what sort of subtle differences are there between different generation PB's, or even different specification machines of the same generation, for instance?

Alternatively, I wonder if the level of WiFi security, or even the networking hardware itself (routers, modems etc) has any bearing on the differing outcomes different posters have connecting with wrong time & date settings? Leaning more towards the latter given how flaky their onboard firmware can be. Years ago we had an ISP-supplied modem-router, whose web interface could easily be bypassed via Telnet; I found there were many options buried in there that the end user did not get to see, although playing around with that or its web interface too enthusiastically would practically guarantee a reboot. Certain options, when enabled, would reduce stability, or even cause a reboot loop.

No idea, but my 17" PowerBooks is also on Leopard.

 

[Intell]

@Intell I want another cheese hat please!!!

You've got like 5 so far, how many more do you want?

 

[eyoungren]

You've got like 5 so far, how many more do you want?

You NEVER said there was a limit?!!!!