My old PowerBook G3 crashed during a presentation last week and I lost everything

I was showing off my vintage laptop collection at a small tech meetup in Portland, and my 1998 PowerBook G3 just froze up right in the middle of booting System 9. The hard drive started making this grinding noise that I hadn't heard in years, and now it won't power on at all. I had some old game saves and photos on there from high school that I can't get back. Has anyone else had a classic machine die on them during a demonstration?

3 comments

3 Comments

dylan_brown301mo ago

That "grinding noise" thing gave me chills. Buddy of mine had a similar disaster at a retro computing fair back in 2019. He was showing off his loaded iMac G3, the blue one, and the screen just went to a sad Mac icon mid-demo. Crowd went quiet, real awkward. He spent months trying to pull data off that drive with no luck. Those old IDE drives are ticking time bombs honestly.

sean_green441mo ago

Laughing at @dylan_brown30 's buddy trying to freeze that drive like it's a leftover TV dinner. That trick works MAYBE 10% of the time and the other 90% you just end up with a wet, frozen brick of regret. Those old iMacs are beautiful but yeah, their drives are basically ticking time bombs with a colorful shell.

sage_moore371mo ago

Did you try freezing the drive in a ziplock bag overnight? Heard that trick can get old IDE drives spinning one last time if its a bearing issue.