PowerBook G3 Kanga: Apple's Shortest-Lived Mac Laptop 

"I guess Apple's engineers thought differently" well played sir

The best solution is not just superglue, but superglue mixed with baking soda. The exothermic reaction is potent enough to fuse the plastic parts together, creating an even stronger bond. Superglue alone won't guarantee a permanent fix, I'm learning that the hard way with many modern laptops reliant on such standoffs to keep their lids and screens in place.

Do the PowerBook G3 Pismo next!

An iBook G4 12 inch thingy circa 2004 was my first Apple computer purchase ... for Unix stuff at University. That hunk of plastic was so much better than what preceded it, but I was also a C64 nerd, Atari 1040STE musician, and SGI Indigo weather lackey. This old stuff is laughable today. $0.02 Thanks for the geek-love.

It always stuns me how absurdly expensive these top of the line laptops were. $5700 in 1998 is nearly $10k in 2021 dollars. Meanwhile a new MacBook Pro 16" is a "measly" $2,799.

This is one if my absolute grail machines. Beautiful!

If I'm removing a rechargeable clock battery like that, I like to leave a note in that space with the battery specs [voltage, capacity, chemistry, dimensions, model number if possible], maybe also with the JST connector cut from the original in case I want to replace it later.

I remember buying "All About Chemistry" at Best Buy when I was in high school. I don't know if every song on it stands the test of time, but I still enjoy it on occasion.

While watching „volcano“ (1997) Today ,I saw an apple mac g3 in that movie. Very funny. Keep up the good work. Stay safe.

Thank you for rescuing the Kanga. I have one working in about the same condition, works great. Only problem I have it's picky with the power adapter that I use with it. I've found the later power adapter work better. The power adapter that came with my Bronze powerbook g3 seems to work the best with it. Other than that it is a great machine!

No PRAM battery also means not having to constantly zap the PRAM for your first troubleshooting step. That was the bane of my existence when I was the administrator of a computing lab in the 90s.

I didn't even know this existed. I thought the wallstreet/pismo style was the first.

I have the same one only with a PowerPC 603ev running at 180mhz. Mine came with nearly maxed out ram ( a 120mb module ). I replaced the hard drive with msata SSD (64 GB) in an IDE enclosure. Machine became very snappy. Has OS9 on it now will do the final upgrade to 9.1 soon I was to busy with turning my Powemac MDD in to an absolute beast. .

How nice to see Apple hardware that assemble using no glue, only one screw type all parts are easily removed. Now think about modern MacBook's, what do you need to change battery or keyboard.

Always excited when I see a new video from you. Thanks for the awesome content!

Your videos are so good! Keep up the good work

I learn a lot about electronic history on this channel. Thanks Colin.

It's always wonderful to see ya in my notifications. 😊 Great vid, as usual.

So much nostalgia in this video... I remember wanting a PowerBook 3400c when I was 13 in 1997, but I never got one because it was too expensive. I never used an OG PowerBook G3, but it's cool seeing how it came to be! Thanks for this video, Colin!

I absolutely love this machine, wish I had a newly re-celled battery for it though. Watched Beverly Hills Cop on VCD with it being connected to a 120" wall projector using the very handy VGA port and the Kanga speakers acted as a proper drive-in like speakerbox to complete the experience lol I remember trying so hard to track down a 3400c because of the RocketBook article only to acquire a dead one and then learn that the G3 was housed in the same case. Found one and have been rocking it sense! Found it interesting that they used them in You've Got Mail movie as well. Those book store owners were rich! $5,700 for a laptop would've been inconceivable for me at the time and most likely even to this day lol Thanks for pointing out SoundJam! I'm going to have to load that up...

Fantastic video as always!

great work... would have loved some more background information as I enjoy deep dives

Those DAMN plastic standoffs. The curse of all Powerbooks from the 90s.

I always liked the Kanga. Other than the obvious processor upgrade, there were two major improvements over the 3400: increased bus speed (50 vs 40MHz) and larger, faster L2 cache (512k @ 100MHz vs 256k @ 40MHz). Everything else was minor but did add to the experience: there was a small bump in the graphics chip (Chips 65555 vs. 65550), more base RAM, larger HDs, faster CDROMs (up to 20X), and slightly better batteries. Sadly, like the 3400, these don't officially support CardBus (you need to hack/replace the card cage to get it), which is limiting since they can't use USB or FW without it, though you can still get 802.11a/b WiFi cards for it. I have a couple of these but one has a problem where it just... stopped booting. Powers up and chimes, then sits there blankly, sometimes with the breaking-glass error chord usually indicative of a hard crash early in the boot process. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon thing, either, but no amount of standard troubleshooting brought it back, which has also been experienced by other people and so far nobody seems to know the exact cause or a solution. I put it on the shelf for now; maybe one day I'll figure it out.

I could really use that parts machine palm rest, the clips on my 5300 broke long ago.. :(

Good memories are bubbling up. This was my first Mac and my first laptop ever. I got an amazing deal for a fully decked out machine on what would become ebay Germany. It sported 96 MB or RAM when my classmates had at most 32 MB in their tower PCs. It was also stupendously fast at the time, I really loved the machine. Unfortunately, the mainboard died and I had to replace it. The only “limitation” was that this was the only G3-based Mac I am aware of that was not supported by MacOS X.

What an interesting machine, at least it was a good upgrade spec wise and not just a completely rebadged model.

I purchased a Kanga new when they came out. I eventually replaced with with the first version of the Powerbook G4 Titanium. I really wish I'd held onto that Kanga. It was a powerhouse of a machine at the time.

1:02 - Somehow the back panel of my laptop (my personal one) is separating from the main unibody shell. I dropped it twice with it in a travel suitcase on accident (by unclipping it from my backpack and not catching it in time) and used it a lot for school so then I just installed linux on my school laptop and used that

3:20 …I kinda regret watching this while eating lunch lmao

OMG, YOU VOIDED THE WARRANTY!!!!

So relaxing!

Spudger is such a fun word to say.

3:04 Free spider included 😁

I have been waiting for a video featuring the Kanga... I have two functional Kangas as well as a G4 Pismo in my collection. I have found that the older these laptop get, the more brittle the plastic parts tend to be... watch out when you let the legs out on the Kangas... I did what you did in the video and cracked the casing... I will have to address this with super glue at some time...

Well put vidro

I really want to get a hold of an "Old world" G3 PowerBook one of these days, a decked out Kanga would be awesome but a Wallstreet would do too lol

I came here after watching You’ve Got Mail and got curious about the laptop used by Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox to message eachother. I think it was a product placement.

The PowerBook G3 Wall Street was always called Wall Street to Mac consumers, the product names are too similar so even advertisements used the code names to promote the 'newness' of the revised Powerbook G3. The two models were called 'Wall Street' and 'Main Street' in magazines and among users. I still have a G3/292 14.1" here, it was my first laptop at Apple.

PRAM does the clock and the OBP settings.

Please do a video with the G3 Wallstreet!!

The PowerBook Kanga was mostly a stopgap laptop model, since Steve Jobs was trimming the overall PowerBook lineup. At least that computer kind of helped Apple to hold people over before they launched the iMac and PowerBook G3 series lineup.

well that's an interesting look at the first of the G3 series/last of the 3xxx series laptops.

God I loved the PowerBook G3 keyboards.

I still want a Kanga. I have my original 3400c that I had to restore using a parts machine.

I had one of those that I upgraded with a G4 chip.

Without a PRAM battery it may set the date to a weird date which will cause boot issues. I suggest you replace the PRAM battery.

"Oh sweet, I finally saved up enough money to buy my first ever laptop! This is gonna be $5,700 dollars well spent". *_five months later_* "....DAMNIT!!"

cool laptop

hello 👋 a new video 📹 ☺

Timely. I suspect they just built the world’s fastest laptop again.

Can the VRAM be swapped out with one from a 3400c ?

When I saw the title, I thought of Winnie the Pooh.

At $5,700 I think most people back then were like uh no thank you.

Yeah, the "subwoofer" speakers behind the display sounded more like lower-midrange speakers to my ears (I had a used 3400c/200 years ago). It was always mystifying to me why Apple soldered the CPU to the motherboard in these machines, given how much they cost.

damn they should have called the new ones G3X.

7:45 Add baking soda to super glue and it will be much stronger. If you need, you can do multiple layers

Well, it's another PowerBook. How could for sure it's gonna happen...

I'd be more interested in getting some of these old machines myself if I didn't have to buy two of them to assemble a decent unit 🤣

TDNC the 100$ macbook challenge when❓

What do you do with machines like this?

You gotta show off some software and games my dude.

Can this thing run Mac OS X

But... can you play Crysis on it? ;-)

Did you guys know that "kanga" is hindi language for "comb" . ps: i did not translate it , i just understand hindi being from india

and they did it again in 2020 with M1 chip

I still can’t believe the Kanga got a 250mhz chip while the Wallstreet only got a 233Mhz chip. Why the downgrade?

Be considered slow today 😴

"Apple made the most powerful laptop... And the next year they did it again" Put the word arm powered behind that and looks like you have the same exact scenario that happened recently

A moment of silence for the 3400, managed to survive for decades, to end up as a donor. Such, is life.

Ha putahe pehle esehi circuit aati thi

Thicc af

it has better ipc that's why the speed isn't that much faster the performance is..xD

Every one of your sentences has the same cadence.

👍🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱😏😊😎😎👍

UwU

100th comment?

7:35 you arent aware of instant glue and baking powder mix? just try it and you can repair any plastic housing, it solidifies instantly and is hard as a rock and can be shaped with a dremmel tool - stop "gluing" and start repairing the right way :D

There was no G3 macbook that was the world's fastest laptop. That never happened.,

Was that thing used as a cat bed or something? Shit, it was gross.

Or dude, you put out a few grands and go buy yourself a 3d printer that can do aluminum cnc print?

To save you time the dude chats shit and bounces about different laptops like it's going out of style if you want a restoration video this is not it

Gororila glue is better for what your doing