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.