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This year was my 4th time at the VCF East Swap Meet in Wall, NJ. As usual, I left with a bunch of cheap vintage laptops to repair and enjoy! We'll start with the Macs: PowerBook G3 Pismo: Yep, finally got one. It's a 400MHz unit, HDD has been upgraded to 60GB. Seller says it works. Cosmetics...

Most of us know at this point that the PowerBook 1400 was based off of a generic laptop design by Quanta. While the 1400 was heavily modified by Apple, what I was curious about was what generic laptop the 1400 was based on. If you don't know, Quanta is what's known as an ODM (Original Design...

I'm writing a page on the Kanga for my website and I want to include a section on running OS X with XPostFacto. Documentation here specifies it can run at least 10.2: https://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=Compatibility.html But what about 10.3? I do know that...

I tried to rebuild two PowerBook 500 Series batteries. What could go wrong? Well, I didn't light anything on fire which is a good start, but I don't have working batteries either. I used pre-built 8-cell AA NiMH packs that @jmacz already used successfully on his own rebuilds. Both batteries...

Got myself in an LC III today. Needs a recap but hopefully that’s all. Board looks great. Caps leaked a bit but it’s all good after a clean. I test booted and it chimed (surprisingly), and began to boot off the HDD. The RAM wasn’t in properly though so I was booting with just the soldered RAM...

Spinning this one out from the 540c restoration thread to avoid going full off-topic. Basically, one of my 1400s, the /166 unit, had two separate internal PRAM batteries and I have no clue why. Anyone know? Everywhere else I’ve seen and my other units have one. Best photo I have is a still from...

I’ve got my PowerBook 540c running on a 320MB IBM hard drive and it’s running the install still from when I got it. I went recently to put a 7.1 system folder onto it, switched to it in system picker and then when I went to boot it gave an incompatibility error. So I went to get an enabler for...

Well my luck with my IIsi's PSU didn't last long. Had it on playing some games and it suddenly shut off. Now it does start if I disconnect the hard drive, but emanates a concerning high pitched noise, and it seems the 12v rail may be a bit low or weak. It's been recapped, so that shouldn't be a...

Currently I'm in the process of doing a lot of PowerBook 1400 repairs. Got a couple units at the recent swap meet - a 117MHz parts unit with a bad screen, and a 166MHz working unit with poor cosmetics. Here's a breakdown of what I'm going to be doing to make the most out of the parts I have: As...

I've just gotten a chance to properly check out the Mac IIsi that I got at the recent VCF East Swap Meet. It has had it's PSU and logic board recapped previously and the work they did looks good. It boots up fine into Mac OS, but has one issue I've seen - soft power isn't working. It instantly...

I've finally gone and broken my streak of mostly only collecting laptops, and I picked up my first two desktop Macs in a long while from the recent VCF East Swap Meet. Those two were a Mac IIsi, and a Power Macintosh 7100. Both were sold to me as working, and I got both pretty cheap ($35 for the...

I’ve got an original AEK with a bad left shift key. I took the assembly apart and noticed some corrosion in one area and I cleaned it up. Two traces are bad and I traced one of them back to said left shift key, great! The other leads to an option key. So I traced the trace all the way to a pin...

Perhaps I'm just being stupid but I'm having some real trouble getting the top cover of my IIsi to go back on properly. Does anyone have any tips or tricks about how to go about it? I can get it most of the way but it never clicks into place back all the way.

Just realized the IIsi I bought has no RAM SIMMS installed so it’s got the base 1MB. Would these modules from eBay work in it? https://www.ebay.com/itm/162289926468?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=X133MC0GSEu&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=mafwlsfqtva&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I'm working on getting cap reference values for various PowerBook Duo laptops for my website. The 270c is an 030 Duo so I assumed that it would have the same logic board as the 210/230/250 but I've seen conflicting info elsewhere, mainly, an older thread with some incomplete photos that shows...

My 1400c has had an extremely sensitive touchpad since I got the thing - it starts to freak out if your hands are anything less than bone dry. I’ve attached a video here detailing the issue. Anyone know what’s up?

Looking to rebuild my 1400c's battery at SOME point, would like to know what size cells they use. I remember seeing it somewhere before but I can't find it now. @LaPorta - do you know? You've rebuilt these before.

So this happened a while ago, just making a thread on it now. Any ideas on how to extract this? Can’t get any of my tools to grip it…

I’m trying to get my 1400 online! I’ve got several Ethernet PC Cards, found that one has an unofficial driver, set it up and the card is recognized. https://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/mac/enet3c589/#skyline_w It won’t access the internet though, it won’t even establish a link with my router as...

This doesn’t look very good. These two dots have appeared on my 5300. They are actually raised and you can feel a bump when running a finger over them, as if the hinge supports are somehow pushing up on the case??? Guess I’ll have to wait and see if this leads into stress cracking. Has anyone...