PowerBook 540c - Did a thing (OS 8.6)

[frontein1]

Although I like to stay true to my 68K roots, I recently acquired a PB 540c with the Apple 603e 100MHz upgrade card. So decided to take this up to OS 8.6, because why not?

 

[croissantking]

Although I don't have much interest in running PPC on a Blackbird, seeing 8.5+ on one always seems so exotic.
Why not try 9.0.4?
I'd be interested to see some benchmarks with Norton System Info 3.2, I guess performance is going to be even less than a PB5300/100 considering the 16MHz peripheral bus (vs the 5300's 25MHz).

 

[jmacz]

Yeah that looks pretty cool. I also finally got a PowerPC card but I am still running 7.6.1. I think I will always be a System 6/7 person.

 

[ArmorAlley]

Does the bus-speed make the PB540c noticeably slow? Try running Marathon and see how that goes.

 

[twelvetone12]

I had (and still have) a 520c with the nupowr 117, and boy it is slow with 8.5+! The original '040 with 8 feels way faster!

 

[croissantking]

Does the bus-speed make the PB540c noticeably slow? Try running Marathon and see how that goes.

It would be the same 33MHz CPU bus as on a PowerBook 5300, 1400 or Duo 2300. So RAM and ROM access should be identical clock for clock.

According to the Dev Notes for these models the 16-bit ‘030 peripheral bus runs slower on the 500 series (16MHz) vs on the PB190 or the above mentioned PPCs (25MHz). So, I’d expect Marathon to run slower than on a PB5300/100, for example, since it wouldn’t be able to push as many pixels out.

 

[frontein1]

I am interested in pushing this to 9.0.4 next. But can certainly say it is noticeably slow with 8.6, which isn't a surprise when considering the slow bus speeds.

I think maybe what I want to see is if it would be possible to watch a YouTube video somehow on a Blackbird. I haven't actually done much research to see if anyone has tried this with WowTube, or a more modern browser, etc. Anyone have experience with this?

 

[croissantking]

see is if it would be possible to watch a YouTube video somehow on a Blackbird

You’re bonkers! You’re off your rocker!

 

[frontein1]

always seems so exotic.
Why not try 9.0.4?

You’re bonkers! You’re off your rocker!

Yes and Yes to all this @croissantking! Here it is now with 9.0.4. Taking baby steps.

 

[jmacz]

 

[volvo242gt]

Next, take it to 9.1, then use OS 9 Helper to upgrade it to 9.2.2.

 

[adespoton]

Then sit it beside a Mac Mini running System 7.0!

 

[frontein1]

Next, take it to 9.1, then use OS 9 Helper to upgrade it to 9.2.2.

Yep one step at a time. Up to 9.1. Now moving on to 9.2.2. For no particular reason but the fun of it

 

[volvo242gt]

Yep one step at a time. Up to 9.1. Now moving on to 9.2.2. For no particular reason but the fun of it

View attachment 93418

Nice.

 

[tr3nch3d]

What kind of medium are you using to upgrade each time? All I had to upgrade from 7.5.5 to 8.0 was the built in Floppy drive and it was quite the headache .

 

[finkmac]

presumably scsi

 

[frontein1]

Yes 100%, go with BlueSCSI v2 if you can. Makes doing stuff like this just so much easier. Then on macintoshgarden.org, you can easily get all the install media up through OS 9.2.2.