A week of no internet with the antique Powerbook G4.

I have vivid memories of the Powerbook G4 Titanium. It was my first notebook ever and I bought it in 2001. To this day, it’s by far the most expensive computer I’ve ever owned. I paid 4,500 Swiss francs at the time. That was the student price (with a discount) and it was the cheaper version with 400-MHz clock rate. The other version with 500 MHz would have cost 6,000 Swiss francs with a student discount. But even with the cheap version I drew attention. When I opened my notebook at uni, complete strangers would come up to my desk and ask if they could touch it.

Yet the Powerbook G4 Titanium looks ordinary by today’s standards. Silvery, rather clunky and heavy. Back then, however, the Powerbook’s design was unusually slim and elegant. The other notebooks of that time were dark grey, clunky and looked like arduous work. You don’t see monstrosities like these today. The design of the Powerbook, on the other hand, has withstood the test of time.

A slightly newer, but identical looking version of my old Titanium Powerbook now sits on my desk. The cost this time round was that bit lower at just 80 Swiss francs. However, so were my expectations of the device.

First impressions

Even carrying it, I realise that my expectations are still too high. I remember the notebook being lighter, much lighter. It also takes an unusually long time to start up. How easy it is to forget how slow it was to load something before the days of SSDs. When I try turning up the screen brightness, I find that it’s already at maximum. The me today finds it way too dark. You can’t work like this! Back then it was absolutely fine to.

Opening the lid, also takes some getting used to because I have to press the button on the front at the same time. Plus the ports are not on the side, but at the back, and can be hidden with a cover.

My current one runs at a fantastic 667 MHz. I have Mac OS X 10.1 installed while my notebook from 2001 initially ran on OS 9.2.

Here comes the internet

The Titanium G4 can connect to the internet in two ways: via a network cable or via a telephone line. There’s no Wi-Fi.

So I connect the router to the Powerbook via Ethernet. I start Internet Explorer 5.1 since this is the web browser preinstalled on the system. Safari didn’t exist back then. I type in www.google.ch. It seems to work. I accept the fact that the display isn’t exactly right. After all, it’s Internet Explorer.

As soon as I click on a search hit, an error message appears. Either «Security error: The server’s response is invalid.» or «Security error: a secure connection could not be established.» prevents me from using the web.

The problem

My first thought was that it was because of Internet Explorer. It’s always been a bit special and I don’t really mean that in a positive sense. As a result, I start looking for alternative browsers. With Firefox I have to go back to the first version because even version 2 doesn’t run on my system. I have the same problem with Firefox and with iCab 3.0.5 as with Internet Explorer, although the error messages are slightly different. These two browsers display the Google page better than Internet Explorer, but only by a short mile.

Since the problem is security errors, I fiddle a bit with the certificates in Firefox without knowing what I’m doing exactly. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens. Eventually I come to realise that the problem is much more critical: the old browsers aren’t compatible with new security standards. They use the SSL encryption method, which no server now supports because it’s considered insecure. If the old browsers are using the more modern TLS then it must be an outdated version of it.

Unencrypted connections would still work, but they hardly exist anymore. If I enter «http://» instead of «https://», I’m usually redirected to an encrypted connection. Google is no exception.

The self-experiment

I found a workaround on the web, using my current computer, of course. It consists of setting up your own proxy server that receives the encrypted web connections and forwards them unencrypted to the Powerbook. Sounds daunting to me, since I’m anything but a network specialist. However, many years ago I once successfully installed a web server on a Raspberry Pi. So I blow the dust off my old Raspberry Pi from 2012 and install the web server software nginx on it.

When I first turn on the Raspi, I notice the system isn’t loading properly anymore. So I download the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS and reinstall the system.

Now I have two old devices in operation. The new system is unbearably slow on the old Pi. I have a lot of time to think about the absurdity of what I’m doing. Using a 10-year-old Raspberry Pi to connect a 20-year-old notebook to the internet? Sounds like a brilliant idea. At least Nginx is easy to install. It’s just one line in the terminal and that’s it.

Configuring the proxy on the Powerbook alone isn’t easy. At least for me. Since the proxy connection can be configured both in the system and in the browser, there are many ways for a proxy novice like me to go wrong.

After trying what feels like all the wrong configurations, something happens. The web pages that were only showing error messages before started to load. However, a lot of pages still don’t open. Why? I have no clue. But the most important website in the world, digitec.ch, is responding. It works in the sense of «data is transferred». I can’t really use it.

The layout is unusable, both on IE and on Firefox and iCab. It’s missing basic elements such as images and links. When I disable CSS in Firefox, the images become visible but are way too big. I can’t change that either, because in the old browsers you can only change the font size. I’ll have to take the images as they are.

Conclusion: even with the proxy, I can’t properly use the internet on the Powerbook in 2023. The web has changed too much in the last 20 years and I completely underestimated that. That’s also where my memory has been playing tricks on me. I thought I had watched YouTube videos on the Powerbook but that can’t be right because YouTube has only been around since 2005.

I try working with it a little bit more

I still wanted to work on the Notebook so I decided to write this article you’re reading about it. Writing a text shouldn’t be difficult.

As long as the keycaps don’t break off at least. On my first notebook, the G key sprung off when I pressed the keys with a bit too much verve. Luckily, it didn’t cost much to get it glued back on. Even the full stop key on this one is loose.

I can avoid tinkering with it for the time being, since the key is still hanging on the edge and can be pressed back into the grid. But only because I don’t need to use the full stop a lot.

I’m writing in the app TextEdit which was already installed on the notebook. The app still exists today and has hardly changed in over twenty years. I like it. It’s often the case that things which are no longer developed are further «improved». But for the worse.

The data is stored on a USB stick, which I then plug into my modern Mac Mini. According to the Powerbook, the stick has the Macintosh PC-Exchange (MS-DOS) format, which means nothing other than FAT32.

It’s relaxing to work on a device that’s offline. There’s nothing distracting you. Writing would be even more pleasant with a modern external screen but I can’t connect one. The Powerbook doesn’t have an HDMI port yet and I’m missing the appropriate DVI adapter.

The battery is better than it makes out

On all old devices the battery is a weak point. It can be easily replaced in the Titanium G4: slide the cover back, remove battery, insert new battery. But getting an unused, powerful original battery nowadays seems impossible. These haven’t been manufactured in a long time. Replicas are hit and miss and they would cost me at least as much as the entire computer.

For some reason, the notebook doesn’t display the remaining battery level. So I test how long the battery lasts.

16:02 The battery is full (100%, according to the computer).

16:10 The battery is full.

16:10 After clicking on the battery menu: 8 per cent and the warning message: «You are now working with reserve battery power. Please connect your computer to a power supply.»

16:15 4%.

16:18 3%.

16:27 The notebook now suddenly shows me 54 minutes remaining instead of 3 minutes. Woohoo!

16:48 2% and apparently 35 minutes remaining.

17:17 1%.

17:17 0%, the device does at it says and shuts itself down.

If I don’t get concerned by the warning messages I can work for over an hour without a power supply. Not bad at all. What’s more of a problem are the capacity specifications – they’re useless for such an old battery. If I choose to display the remaining time instead of the percentage, after one minute the display jumps from full to «0h 0min». But I don’t need to be concerned.

A blast from the past

I can’t do an awful lot with the computer. I threw away all my games and programs from back then. I couldn’t have known in 2003 that twenty years later I would be sitting in front of the same notebook again. I also owned Black & White, a completely new game at the time, where you play a god and are free to be good or evil.

What I do still have is a self-burned CD disc from 2002. Yes it’s actually a CD, not a DVD. For backups I would burn CDs.

Amongst university work I find many thoughts in text form on the CD, most of them now unnecessary or embarrassing. The same goes for the old tape recordings, which make me wonder why I didn’t delete them in the first place.

Probably because it was the first time I ever had my own recordings in file form. I had to transfer them from the MiniDisc to the Titanium notebook to do this. Listening to them now on a Powerbook from back then makes me feel an equal amount of nostalgia and shame.

At least it’s comforting to know that I’ve become a better person over the last 20 years, and it’s not just the technology around me that’s improved. However, the notebooks have clearly made greater progress than I have.