Resolved PowerBook G4 network compatibility issues?

[Ann Arcana]

I have the weirdest problem and I don't understand how it's possible.

I recently picked up a 15" PowerBook G4/1.67 (this one). Whenever it is at home, if I connect it to my home router/modem (this one) either to my WiFi or by Ethernet, it will, after a few minutes but up to maybe half an hour, inevitably stall out. Everything stops responding, I get the spinning beach ball, and the only way out is to forcibly power off the laptop and restart it.

It works fine otherwise. And it worked great on the office wifi as well; I was able to poke around with it all day, installing TenFourFox, Tigerbrew, etc. But as soon as I got it home, after about a half an hour connected to the home wifi, it stalled out, and then kept doing it within a few minutes after that until I turned off the WiFi.

For whatever reason, it seems my PBG4 just hates my home router despite working fine with other wifi sources. I also had similar problems with my departed iBook G4.

Suggestions? Anyone encountered this before?

 

[Dronecatcher]

It seems your router has extra features (G.vectoring and Remote provisioning and management) - is is possible to turn all these features off?

 

[Hughmac]

Older Macs tend to like channels 6 or 11. Try setting your router to one of these.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[1042686]

If the above solutions don’t work, I recommend running a second 2.4ghz network via a cheap airport express a1408 router. You can find these all day long onnthe goodwill website for $10-15 bucks, connect it to your modem/router via Ethernet & set it up via airport app in Leopard & you’re good to go. This is the set up I have at my home & is what I connect most of my geriatric PowerBooks to w/o issue.

Subsequently the a1408 functions also as NAS with a 4T Samsung drive connected to it - effectively a repository for back ups & various OSX image clones.

 

[eyoungren]

If the above solutions don’t work, I recommend running a second 2.4ghz network via a cheap airport express a1408 router. You can find these all day long onnthe goodwill website for $10-15 bucks, connect it to your modem/router via Ethernet & set it up via airport app in Leopard & you’re good to go. This is the set up I have at my home & is what I connect most of my geriatric PowerBooks to w/o issue.

Subsequently the a1408 functions also as NAS with a 4T Samsung drive connected to it - effectively a repository for back ups & various OSX image clones.

I'm using an ASUS RT-AC3200. Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band wireless (2.4/5).

None of my Macs using Airport Extreme cards have ever had any difficulty connecting or staying connected, so I'm betting it's probably some setting in OP's router that is causing issues. Additionally, my thermostat and my home control panel use 2.4 and have zero issues maintaining a connection to it.

If OP had a Windows PC, I might be able to help as I've seen this problem in Windows. It requires repairing the internet connection, but it can also mean a crappy router - which is why I suspect the router here.

 

[1042686]

I'm using an ASUS RT-AC3200. Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band wireless (2.4/5).

None of my Macs using Airport Extreme cards have ever had any difficulty connecting or staying connected, so I'm betting it's probably some setting in OP's router that is causing issues. Additionally, my thermostat and my home control panel use 2.4 and have zero issues maintaining a connection to it.

If OP had a Windows PC, I might be able to help as I've seen this problem in Windows. It requires repairing the internet connection, but it can also mean a crappy router - which is why I suspect the router here.

Certainly don’t disagree with any of this but if op is unprepared or not capable of going down that rabbit hole, a simple $10-15 hardware fix is ideal.

 

[eyoungren]

Certainly don’t disagree with any of this but if op is unprepared or not capable of going down that rabbit hole, a simple $10-15 hardware fix is ideal.

Oh, I don't disagree.

My experience with Airport routers though is non-existent. I've always avoided them because I didn't want to get into a situation where Apple had locked me in. Also, at the time I was looking for routers they were expensive while D-Link, Netgear, Linksys and others were not. I ran my home network off a $50 refurb D-Link from 2004 to 2018.

Any old crappy router you can find on the shelf at the Goodwill can serve to do this.

Please do not infer that I am criticizing your suggestion or dismissing it - I'm not. What I am trying to say is that your idea is a good workaround, but that you don't need to use an Airport Express for it, even if they are much cheaper now.

 

[Ann Arcana]

It seems your router has extra features (G.vectoring and Remote provisioning and management) - is is possible to turn all these features off?

The only one of these I can even find anywhere in the settings is the Remote management, which just sets what protocols and ports the admin panel are available through. Don't want to turn that completely off, obviously.

Older Macs tend to like channels 6 or 11. Try setting your router to one of these.

Cheers

Hugh

Unfortunately, I tried this, even turning the dual-band off to make sure it was only going through one channel, and no luck. Still freezes.

If the above solutions don’t work, I recommend running a second 2.4ghz network via a cheap airport express a1408 router.

Yes, I fear that's the conclusion I'm coming to as well. There's several cheap older Airports in my local eqv. to Craigslist (I'm in Finland so availability of stuff is a little different here), I even found one of those Express powerplug units for like 10€.

It really does seem to just be my router, which is so very strange. I took it with me to the mall this afternoon, and again was able to connect to the internet just fine via the free wifi in a random new theatre, no freezes or nothing.

Also worth mentioning again that it's not just the wifi that's the problem: it does this if I use the ethernet connection too. And yet my 1ghz eMac is hooked to the same Ethernet and it's just fine.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Also worth mentioning again that it's not just the wifi that's the problem: it does this if I use the ethernet connection too. And yet my 1ghz eMac is hooked to the same Ethernet and it's just fine.

Yes, the Ethernet being affected too does throw things off immensely. Does the eMac have Airport as well as Ethernet? Do you leave the Airport active on the Powerbook even when connected with Ethernet?

 

[Ann Arcana]

Yes, the Ethernet being affected too does throw things off immensely. Does the eMac have Airport as well as Ethernet? Do you leave the Airport active on the Powerbook even when connected with Ethernet?

Sadly the eMac only has Ethernet. As for the PowerBook, when I tried the Ethernet I actually first turned off the Airport, and it still did the same thing.

 

[z970]

Why not a new, replacement router?

 

[Ann Arcana]

Why not a new, replacement router?

Mostly? Because it works fine with everything else, a new router would be more expensive with no guarantee it'd be compatible either, and anyway the current router is ISP provided and I have to use it to connect to my internet anyway.

 

[bobesch]

Maybe switching-off "IPv6" on the PB and a manual IP-address might help ...

 

[2984839]

I would try ethernet again but with wifi and DHCP turned off. Assign an IP address manually. Maybe even clear all the IP addresses stored in the router too and make clients ask for new ones.

My wild guess (having virtually no knowledge of OS X or that particular router) is that there is some sort of IP address conflict or other DHCP witchcraft going on within the router and your PowerBook locks up because its DHCP client continually asks for an IP address.

 

[Ann Arcana]

Well, I found a solution: I got one of the original generation Airport Express wall plug units for 20€ with the original CD.

It didn't work in bridge mode, had the same crash issue as it does directly connected, which isn't surprising. But switching it over to being it's own NAT between the modem and the Airport seems to be working great. Was able to download Fallout 1 & 2 and I'm currently building the Racket compiler in a terminal, all with no crashes so far.

Running in NAT mode does mean you lose the ability to configure it without actually connecting to it, but that's how most routers work anyway, so that's not a huge deal.

There's also the problem that it's new enough that the Mac utility requires Leopard, and I'm running Tiger, so I have to configure it from my Windows PC instead, though thankfully the software still runs just fine on Windows (mostly, I did have an issue at first connecting after I reset it).

Kinda tempting me further to upgrade to Leopard in the future, as I might want to pack the Airport with me on future journeys in case I similarly need it to act as a buffer between PowerBook and a network it doesn't like. I was hoping to stick with Tiger for Classic support, but it seems getting Classic onto a PowerBook G4 is a huge pain, so I might just leave the classic stuff to my eMac.

 

[eyoungren]

I was hoping to stick with Tiger for Classic support, but it seems getting Classic onto a PowerBook G4 is a huge pain, so I might just leave the classic stuff to my eMac.

That's actually fairly easy with Tiger.

Just copy over a known good OS 9 installation (System Folder, Applications folder, etc) directly to the Tiger Mac's hard drive.

The Classic preference pane will become available in System Preferences and you can then run Classic inside OS X.

 

[Ann Arcana]

That's actually fairly easy with Tiger.

Just copy over a known good OS 9 installation (System Folder, Applications folder, etc) directly to the Tiger Mac's hard drive.

The Classic preference pane will become available in System Preferences and you can then run Classic inside OS X.

Well, that's the problem. The only OS 9 installation I have access to is the one on my eMac, and it's all in Finnish. XD

And you can't just copy from the 9.2.2 Universal CD directly, you do it seems need to actually do the installation, which won't boot on a 2005 PBG4. That said, maybe I can just reinstall 9.2.2 on the eMac and then copy that System Folder over. Haven't tried that route yet.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, that's the problem. The only OS 9 installation I have access to is the one on my eMac, and it's all in Finnish. XD

And you can't just copy from the 9.2.2 Universal CD directly, you do it seems need to actually do the installation, which won't boot on a 2005 PBG4. That said, maybe I can just reinstall 9.2.2 on the eMac and then copy that System Folder over. Haven't tried that route yet.

I just assumed you had a good working copy on the eMac. And yes, you're right about the install CD. That's not a valid OS9 installation for this purpose.

However, I did say a "known good OS9 installation" in my original comment. If there isn't one currently on your eMac you'll have to install one.

 

[Dronecatcher]

And you can't just copy from the 9.2.2 Universal CD directly, you do it seems need to actually do the installation, which won't boot on a 2005 PBG4. That said, maybe I can just reinstall 9.2.2 on the eMac and then copy that System Folder over. Haven't tried that route yet.

The answer you seek is here

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1192?locale=en_US

No need for full installation, just copy across.

 

[Ann Arcana]

I just did a reinstall of OS 9 on the eMac and copied the System Folder to a USB stick to transfer over. Seems to work great, other than it whining about the old Quicktime version. Suppose I'll fix that at some point. Might be why Starship Creator wasn't working on my eMac actually, come to think of it.

Thanks for all the advice folks! Was really helpful.

 

[1042686]

Glad it worked out.

 

[Ann Arcana]

It seems you don't necessarily need Leopard after all to do some basic management on the A1264 Airport Express.

Airport Utility 5.4.2 will run on Tiger and will talk to this model, however the Admin Utility won't.