G3 PISMO QUESTIONS

Question

Hello everyone,
I purchased a G3 Pismo for $50 dollars of of E-BAY "untested" and it didn't have a power adapter, so I used the adapter from the wallstreet. It wouldn't start, so I unplugged the PRAM battery underneath the keyboard and BONGGGG it fired right up. My questions are. Much to my delight, there was an internal airport card installed as well as a battery that holds a 3+ hour charge!!!!!
1.Is using the Wallstreet adapter safe?
2.The battery says it was made in 2000, it doesn't look like the cells inside were replaced, the computer itself seems to not been turned on since 2002. I'm assuming thats when the PRAM battery died, HOW IS A 9 YEAROLD BATTERY ABLE TO HOLD A FULL CHARGE? AND WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP MAINTAIN IT FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE?
3.Youtube videos, no go right? I only got 256 megs of ram running os x 10.2.8, what would be the benefits of upgrading this machine to tiger and more ram? I only am going to use it for downloading, web surfing and networking, playing movies and music. Would 1 GB of ram or a processor upgrade allow me to play streaming video?
4.Is it bad to run this computer without a PRAM battery, what does it really do besides hold the date and time?
LOVE THIS COMPUTER, FEEL LIKE I GOT A BIG STEAL WITH AIRPORT,FULL BATTERY AND DVD DRIVE FOR ONLY $50.

Answer 1

Thanks for the replies guys!
KMac,
You pretty much confirmed what I suspected, that it is the graphics card. How is there no way to upgrade this? I'll make a freakin chip to stick in the thing if I have to, this is ridiculous and a major limitation
rarely do notebooks ever have sockets with chips that can be replaced. this is why they have gotten lighter, thinner & much faster over the years. almost nobody else does either.
if not the only limitation on these old books besides the processor speed(which can be upgraded). Streaming video isn't THAT important to me and I'll just download the videos in their entirity, but why isn't there a solution or some kind of upgrade to this problem.
That machine will not play the content back without dropping frames, period. even if downloaded because it takes a lot to decode the underlaying h.264. it will never play any of the modern streaming video sites or content from itunes, no matter how many upgrades you throw at it. sorry...
And why aren't there any other processor upgrades for this machine, they seem very hard to find. I really like this machine, I think it is one of the best laptops ever made in my opinion.
That machine sold for less than a year, feb 2000 to jan 2001.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbookg3/stats/powerbook_g3_500fw.html
there was upgrades, for a time. these parts can only stay in production for so long before the mass market moves on & it's not viable to keep the lines open. There is either a saturation point, or simply people didn't want to buy the upgrades anymore. For the cost of some of the PPC upgrades, you can almost pay for or have a big chunk of cask towards a new(er) system. a single 2.0 Ghz upgrade for my G4 sawtooth is $399. a new Mini with a dual 2.0 ghz with modern RAM & graphics is $599
I read you can even put a blu-ray drive in this thing, and you CANT put blu-ray drives in a mac book pro???IS THIS TRUE?
No - what would a pismo be able to do with a blu-ray drive? It won't be able to play back movies, even if it could, as there isn't any software.
& the system couldn't feed it enough data fast enough to even burn a disc.
You got a $50 laptop! It's a 9 year old spare machine to tinker with. It's not going to be a substitute for a modern Mac.