PowerBook 3400c repair

Last weekend I worked on PowerBook 3400s from the large lot of computers I’ve mentioned in a previous bLog article. I’ve had one of these since last fall, I was fortunate to find it on Craigslist at a reasonable price, but that computer has been having display problems, the display gets brighter and dimmer at random.  I suspect that the backlight or inverter board  is failing so I was excited about getting some new screen components for this computer I already had.

There were three of these machines in the large lot of computers in April, and despite my initial skepticism I was able to get one running computer out of this lot.  This is a nice 3400c with the fastest 240 MHz processor.  I was super excited when I saw that one of these three machines was the 240 MHz machine, I’ve been interesting in the fastest machine in the line ever since watching Colin from This Does Not Compute’s episode about this machine.

There isn't much RAM in this machine, but since this is nicer than my Craigslist 3400c I’ll be moving the expansion RAM over too this machine and using this as my primary 3400c.  I have been using this machine as a Portable Bridge Machine for moving data around and making floppies since it has a lot of connectivity options, including a VST ZIP Drive for the expansion drive bay.

There is more hope for further repair on the Craigslist 3400c as well, since it’s likely that one or more of the backlight and inverter boards in the smashed screens are still working, but taking these display modules apart will be a tedious task, so that’s a project for another day.

PowerBook 1400s are Great!

I've been repairing my way through a huge pile of laptops I bought from my friend John @ Roadkill, Inc.  It's been alot of fun since I got to start in with the actual repairs.  I'm not just cleaning and organizing them anymore.

I've been moving up in age from oldest to youngest.  Last time, I blogged about the 5300s.  This next lot of computers I had was 1400 machines...

I brought 4 machines into this round of the project.  These, like the 5300s have been really great to work on.  I already have a 3400, a follow up machine to this machine, which I have worked on a bit.  These are from the pre iFixit era, there are not detailed tear-downs for these machines at that site, which I usually prefer over videos when I'm working a project like this, but having watched a few relevant YouTube videos, and with a bit of experience from the 3400, I started in.

I was able to get two machines running out of the four.  The first is a 1400cs with a passive matrix color screen...

This passive matrix screen is easier to use and has better viewing angles than many I've used.  It's still not great, but I think it's "best in class" for passive matrix.

By combining RAM modules from the various machines, I was able to bring this up to 52MB RAM.  It's IDE HDD was dead, so I replaced it with a larger drive from another machine.  As you can see, the speaker grill is missing, so I've got that on the wish list for later.

I purchased an HDI 30 Pin SCSI adapter on eBay so that I could use a ZIP drive with my old portable Macintosh computers.  It's fantastic to have access to Bootable SCSI Zip drives on everything from my PowerBook 145B up to the G3 PowerBooks that were the last to have SCSI Built in.  Taking a page from Adrian Black's book, I've setup a series of bootable ZIP disks with various versions of Mac OS on them...

I can take a non bootable system with a functioning HDD, boot off the Zip drive, format the HDD, and copy over a working system disk with very little effort.  Building this library has been a timesaver for this project and will be a great tool to have going forward.  This is especially important for the 1400s and earlier machines, because these laptops don't come with an Internal CD-ROM option.

But, back to the 1400s.  The second running system I got was a 1400c, with an Active Matrix screen...

This machine has the faster 133 Mhz processor and 56 MB RAM, the original HDD still works, so it's only a 750 MB drive, but more than enough for my purposes.

I put Mac OS 8.1 on both of these machines, and they run great.  They really are a significant step up from the 5300 in terms of quality, it was noticeable in doing the repairs.  They just look and feel alot better than the 5300, even after just a few hours of use doing Mac OS installs.  I'm quite pleased to have these in the collection and I plan to clean them up a bit more as they still have some of the scuffs and scratches on the outside of the case.

These are the first of the PowerBooks that I have which use the larger 9mm Barrel Jack Power Supply.  These 24V power supplies were used up through the Clamshell G3 iBooks, so these 1400 machines could be powered using the early Yo-Yo power adapters.  Although the 1400 originally shipped with a lower capacity Power Supply, the M4896 Power Supply is the correct color, and a bit more flexible since it provides 45 Watts.  I was able to get a couple of these from a friend of mine that volunteers at Free Geek Twin Cities, so I'm a bit closer to the goal of having one Power Supply for every working computer.  These are becoming more and more expensive on Fleabay, so I may have to resort to a hack like this.  Stay tuned, I've already started on the Wallstreet G3s, and after I get the Pismos up on the workbench then I'll have a better handle on how many power supplies I need to find.

Is the PowerBook 5300 the worst Macintosh Laptop of All Time?

 As I've mentioned in a previous post, I got a large number of laptops from a friend in April.  I've been slowly working through the stack, sorting, categorizing and organizing.

There are several types of PowerBooks that I've never seen or worked on before, including PowerBook 500 series and PowerBook 190 and 5300 series machines.  I didn't even have a Power Adapter for the 190 / 5300 series machines, so although there were 9 total machines in the lot, I could not do power on testing.  I was able to find an original Power Adapter on eBay for a reasonable price, and so I purchased it knowing that having the ability to work on and test the machines (even one at a time) would justify the expense.  Also, I was hoping to reverse engineer it a bit to see how to make a cheaper power adapter from parts since these are of a type and vintage that's getting harder to find.

When the power supply arrived, I started doing intake on these machines.  It was exciting to go through all the machines and see how many would start and what kind of condition they were in.  To make a long story short I was able to get 3 working PowerBook 5300s and one working PowerBook 190 out of this lot.  There are also several more functional screens and some housing parts, but not enough parts to build another working computer.

It's been fun to work with these machines.  I find that the "last of" machines are often as interesting as the "first of".  In this case the PowerBook 190 is the last of the 68K Macintosh PowerBooks, and the 5300 is the first PowerPC based PowerBook.  The 190 didn't have an active matrix LCD so that makes for a compromised experience, but I've quite enjoyed working on the 5300s as these are all Active Matrix screens.  I know the 5300 has a reputation for being the worst Macintosh Laptop computer ever released, but I really enjoyed working with them, perhaps because of my lowered expectations.

Perhaps one of my favorite things about these machines is how easy it is to service them.  These really were designed with service in mind, and it doesn't take that long to strip one down to parts.  For two of the four machines, I had to do a main logic board swap because the metal frames had been broken and it really didn't take that much time.

The PowerBook 190 / 5300 machines use a standard 24V supply with less than 2A draw.  They also use a small barrel jack which is center positive.  The barrel jack has a 3.8 mm OD, which appears to be a standard size but it's recessed into the body of the laptop in a hole that has only a 6.6 mm diameter. All of the field replaceable barrel jacks that I can find online have an 8 or 9 mm housing for the wires that will not fit inside the recessed hole on the Macintosh.  I have not been able to find an off the shelf connector that will work.  I looked through my stash of saved adapters and cut off adapter ends, and I found only one over-molded connector with the right jack dimensions, but I had to shave down the outside of the connector with a razor knife before it would fit in the recessed hole.  Let me know if you are aware of another work around, or a source of inexpensive 190/5300 compatible power adapters?

The next unresolved challenge is the battery compartment.  I certainly don't want to put used batteries back into the machine, but all of these machines have a gaping hole were the battery is supposed to go in.  One of the things that I like about the PowerBook 1xx series is that the battery door can be removed from the cells and replaced on the machine to create a finished look without batteries present in the machine.  This battery pack lacks that feature.  I did test the one 3400 series battery that I have and it fits in the case.  I think the best solution here would be to 3D scan the housing of that battery and 3D print an empty shell of this size to fit, just like the "Weight Saving Device" for later machines.  Unfortunately, I do not have access to a 3D scanner.  Any other ideas?  Let me know in the comments below, and in the meantime, it's off to the 68KMLA forums for me to do some reading!

I Bought More Than 100 Laptops

John from Roadkill Inc is someone that I’ve gotten to know over the last few months.  He lives here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area and we share a love of Retro Computing.  See his YouTube channel here...  I've been doing repairs (and attempted repairs) for John in exchange for broken retro computers, at least one of which has already been featured on my bLog, the Orange Clamshell Trash to Treasure article.

John is downsizing his collection, and he offered various portions of his collection of low-grade machines in order to avoid having to move them.  He offered me a deal I couldn't refuse, thanks John!  I purchased 118 laptops, and used my minivan to move them...

If you've watched John's channel before, you'll know that these have all been recovered out of the eWaste stream at a recycler.  Some of the machines he gets are in good shape, but these are all C and D grade machines, so until I've had a chance to clean each one and try to power it up and evaluate, hauling them like this isn't going to cause significant additional damage.

Here's another picture setup in the garage at home...

In the foreground, we have G4 White and Translucent iBooks from the early 2000s, mostly 12” machines, but some 15” iBooks.  The Aluminum machines are 15" Powerbook G4s from the early 2000s.  These machines are about 20 years old, and have just started to regain popularity as these are the last machines that can run Mac OS 9.2 in the "Classic" environment on Mac OS 10.  To the right, there are a bunch of PowerBook G3s, and behind on the table saw are the grey and black 68k and early PowerPC PowerBooks.

For intake, I’m cleaning the outside of each computer using water and a microfiber cloth to get most of the dirt off so that they can be stacked without causing additional scratches and damage to one another.  Then, I’m powering each machine up and writing a post it note about what I observe.  This is just a condition check, there is no significant troubleshooting happening at this stage, just trying to figure out how many of these have signs of life, how many good screens there are, and if there are groups of machines that should be combined to make one good machine.

Just this intake process alone has proven to be several weekends worth of work, but I got my car back in the garage, so it’s going well!  I’ll provide some highlights from the oldest machine in the lot too the youngest...

The oldest classic Mac in the lot is a PowerBook 150.  I’ve already fixed up and rescued a PowerBook 145B from John that I built up out of two recycled machines.  The screen is a bit weak and flickers on my 145B, so I was hoping to use the screen from the 150 if it was not smashed, but unfortunately, they are not compatible. However, I still may be able to use some of the case plastics off the 150 to improve my 145B.

There are two generations of PowerBooks for which I have no power supply, and can’t do power up testing.  The PowerBook 500 series, and the PowerBook 190 / 5300 series.  The four 500 series machines that I have are incomplete and I won’t be able to make one functioning machine out of them.  Also, this series has a bit of an odd 4 pin plug, so I may take a pass on this repair and trade these parts machines to another collector.  The PowerBook 190/5300 series machines use a 24VDC barrel jack, I will have to sort through my saved power supply drawer and see if I have something that can work for this.

There were four 1400 machines, and I was pleased to see three 3400s as well.  The 1400s are a gap in my collection and I think I’ll be able to get one or two running machines out of this lot, as there are two working screens here.  The 3400s are not complete machines, none of the three had a keyboard, so I could not do power on testing.  I already have a 3400 I got off Craigslist last year. That computer has a screen that works, but is a bit flickery (it probably needs a recap) Maybe there will be a screen here that I can use and I’ll certainly keep a parts machine.  So there are a couple of projects in this group of machines.

The G3 PowerBooks use the same power supply as the Clamshell G3 that I have.  These machines are in rough shape but there are machines that boot and there are good screens in the lot.  I will have to combine parts from 3 or maybe even 4 machines in order to get one running computer, so this will be a lot of work!  I’m hopeful that I may be able to get 2 working Wallstreet machines and 2 working Pismo machines out of this lot.  At this time, I don’t have any of these black G3 machines in the collection, and this is one of my favorite eras of Retro so these are the machines I’ll probably work on first when I do get through intake and into the process of actually fixing them.

There are 39 iBooks ranging from the translucent to the solid white ones.  Although I did not bLog about it, I've already repaired five of these white iBooks from a previous lot from John and I enjoy working on this generation of machines. These are considerably more repairable than the current offerings from Apple, who have adopted an Anti-Repair stance.  While I'm on my soapbox, have you signed the Minnesota Right to Repair petition yet?

I have completed intake on these machines and as expected they are be in better shape.  Yield on these should be about 2/3s of the machines, but again these are recycled machines, so there are no museum pieces here.  I will likely keep some of these machines, but if you live in the area, keep an eye on Craigslist as I plan to sell some of these off to fund further adventures in Retro Computing.

There are 43 15” Aluminum PowerBooks.  These are the last of the PowerBooks, and the last PowerPC laptops that Apple made.  After completing intake on these, I’m hoping to get about 1/2 of these machines working (given enough time for repairs).  The biggest challenge with these is that dents in the top cover of the laptop can cause dark spots on the display even if the display isn’t smashed.  If anyone has any tricks for pulling dents out of Aluminum PowerBooks please let me know in the comments.

Well, as you can see, this purchase has left me with projects that should last a good long while.  I’ll keep updating the bLog about these repairs as I go along.  Thanks for reading, and please do let me know in the comments if you have you any good memories of these machines, or if you have any suggestions for me about how to do the repairs?