CURRENT most reliable Powerbook?

[just.in.time]

A little late but I’m going to add my two cents. Whatever 68k PowerBook you do get, open the display only once! Get it to a comfortable viewing angle and never close it again. The opening/closing cycles on the old hinges and brittle plastic is what generally destroys these things. I keep all my PowerBooks and Clamshell iBook open on a couple display shelves I bought from IKEA. If you buy one that looks to be in decent shape it should survive one opening. With any of these, make sure they are in working order before buying and that there aren’t any battery leakage/corrosion issues.

As for specific machine to buy, I’d say the 180c, 540c, or 190cs. To my knowledge the tunneling issue doesn’t really happen on color active matrix panels or any of the passive matrix panels.

The 180c should be decently reliable and the pinnacle of the original PowerBook design. 68030, FPU, and a RAM ceiling of (I believe) 12mb. In theory this machine should be great on 7.5.5. But I’ve never owned one

For a machine I do own, the 540c. Hands down one of the most beautiful displays of the era... I’d argue even more pop in 2019 than the panel of my 5300ce (which is in great shape as well). Plus it has stereo speakers, Ethernet, a high enough RAM ceiling to run OS 8.1 confidently, and the first trackpad. The weakest point (remember, you bought one with good plastics and ONLY opened it once and never closed it again) will probably be the power supply. I hear they are a PITA to open, but are fixable.

Finally, the 190cs. Honestly, it’s reliability will be primarily because it was the newest 68k PowerBook available. It has color, but only passive matrix. Will definitely appear washed out and slow to refresh compared to the 540c (and probably even the 180c’s panel). BUT it does have onboard PC Card slots. No nead for expensive cages (looking at you 5xx series). It’s weakest point will probably be the DC jack (shared with the 5300). However, it seems to be an easy fix of just resoldering it down. I had to do it for my 5300cs way back in the day and now I need to do it for a 5300ce I’m restoring.

 

[Franklinstein]

Snag a 9.5" active matrix grayscale LCD from a 5300 and that would be another of my hybrid dreams  .  .  .  with WiFi!

The base 5300's grayscale screen is passive, not active, just like the base 190. It did support up to 16 grays though, or you could set the Monitors control panel to "color" and it would switch from using the solid black Apple in the menu bar to a 16-gray version of the rainbow.

The grayscale screen wasn't as thick as the color variants, which resulted in the base 5300/190 models being the thinnest of the series. They also had a unique pattern on the back of the display housing.

 

[Franklinstein]

If you want a 5x0 series, keep in mind that the 520 models are both passive matrix screens where the 540 has both active matrix screens (and the 550c of course only offers the larger active color screen).

 

[just.in.time]

I had a 540 (not the 540c) suffer the tunneling effect. I thing every grayscale active matrix display was affected :/  if going active matrix I’d shoot for color.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The base 5300's grayscale screen is passive, not active, just like the base 190. It did support up to 16 grays though, or you could set the Monitors control panel to "color" and it would switch from using the solid black Apple in the menu bar to a 16-gray version of the rainbow.

The grayscale screen wasn't as thick as the color variants, which resulted in the base 5300/190 models being the thinnest of the series. They also had a unique pattern on the back of the display housing.

Discrepancy:

LEM  -   640 x 480 9.5″ 85 ppi grayscale active matrix with 16 shade

everymac  -  9.5" grayscale dual-scan (4-bit, 16 grays) LCD.

Looks like LEM has another boo-boo and another dream machine bites the dust. :/


 


 

 

[Franklinstein]

Discrepancy:

LEM  -   640 x 480 9.5″ 85 ppi grayscale active matrix with 16 shade

everymac  -  9.5" grayscale dual-scan (4-bit, 16 grays) LCD.

Looks like LEM has another boo-boo and another dream machine bites the dust. :/


 


 

Yeah it wouldn't be the first time. I have some printed reference material (the PowerBook 2400c Perfect Guide, most recently) even that has a spot of bad info. It's hard to keep this stuff straight sometimes. But you could still try to use the 540's active screen in a 5300, assuming they're similar physically and electrically. I don't have a working version of either currently on hand so I can't help on that front.

 

[KGLlewellyn]

I’d say that the PowerBook 5xx are the best to go with in terms of 68k reliability. Plus with them having 680LC040 chips in them they can easily run Mac OS 8.1 if that’s your jam. I’ve got a PowerBook 540c which I love. Although it’s got an internal SCSI drive, so drive replacements are awkward (you can get the PowerBook SCSI2SD though). They also come with AAUI connectors, so you can get them on the internet reasonably easily. The holy grail would be a PowerBook 550c as it has a full 68040 processor with the FPU and just looks sexy as hell in the jet black rather than the grey plastic. But you’ll be hard pressed to find one as they were only sold in Japan.

If you want an easily replaceable drive, then a PowerBook 150 could be good as they have an internal IDE bus, the only one of that era to have it if I recall correctly. But be warned, that machine is seriously lacking in the I/O connectors department, it just has SCSI and a Printer Port.

I’ve had no-end of work I’ve had to do on PowerBook 1xx machines relating to issues with LCDs and caps. Stay away from PowerBook 180 B/W (risk of tunnel vision), PowerBook 100 (you’ll be lucky to find one in working condition) and many PowerBook 1xx laptops will need their LCDs recapped to even get an image to come up.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Plastics are high on the list of reliability characteristics for me. Blackbirds fail miserably in that regard from what I've seen. But even I would be sorely tempted by a 550c. ;-)

 

[dcr]

The 180c should be decently reliable and the pinnacle of the original PowerBook design. 68030, FPU, and a RAM ceiling of (I believe) 12mb. In theory this machine should be great on 7.5.5. But I’ve never owned one

I ran either 7.5.5 or 7.5.3 on mine.  It ran fine and was a real workhorse.

 

[KGLlewellyn]

Plastics are high on the list of reliability characteristics for me. Blackbirds fail miserably in that regard from what I've seen. But even I would be sorely tempted by a 550c. ;-)

Agreed with you there. Although I've found the plastics to be decaying very quickly on the PB 1xx series, things like screw holders splitting/detaching is very common. In comparison my 540c hasn't had any issues in that area yet, but I don't take that one apart as it just works!

Yeeeah, when money is no object to me I'll be scouting Yahoo JP Auctions for a 550c.

 

[Cory5412]

About ten years ago I picked up a pair of PowerBook 500 series from a university surplus store, they worked fine, they're nice, fast machines and onboard ethernet (although I didn't have a transciever at the time) is welcome. The batteries were able to be coaxed into some life and the machine uses them sensibly one, after the other, and you can hot swap them.

But, the hinges were extremely badly done in and every single one I've seen has been like that.

Which is super weird, because, like, my 840's plastics are perfect, my LC520's plastics are perfect, my Beige G3 (both a DT and an MT)'s plastics are perfect, I have an 8600 and a 7300 with perfect plastics, so I know I have a lot of machines where I've had very little degradation over time where everyone else's has long since just completely fallen apart.

Regarding tunnel vision and general plastics viability: I haven't taken it apart, but my 100's plastics seem great, the hinges don't seem like they're about to give out, I don't see any tell-tale cracks, etc. I know my 180 has had tunnel vision, but I live in Arizona and so last time I used it, it had no symptoms of it.

Though, I bought it a new ("new") battery at Batteries Plus in either 2014 or 2015 and that battery went bad and the machine won't run at all with it installed, so that's definitely something to look out for.

In my personal experience, and, yeah, a lot of this is informed by a long-standing preference for the desktop Macs anyway, there aren't any universally infallible PowerBooks. You might have to try a couple times to get a good one, and then you might have to baby it to make it stay that way.

If someone was looking for a machine to actually use, rather than just collect, an iBook G3 is probably one of the more durable things you can get in most scenarios (but even those have problem models.)

 

[CC_333]

an iBook G3 is probably one of the more durable things you can get in most scenarios (but even those have problem models.)

I can attest to this.

I had the original Clamshell (the first laptop I could call my own), and 11 year-old me was extremely careless with it. I must've dropped it at least half a dozen times. I even left it out in the rain once! Aside form some rust on a few screws and a bezel-less CD-ROM drive that woldn't stay closed after a particularly hard drop, it just kept on chugging (it finally met its demise when 16 year-old me tried to resolder (badly) the DC-in port, and tore the trackpad cable by mistake while reassembling).

TL;DR, the original Clamshell iBook, in particular, is extremely durable and can take quite a bit of abuse without crumbling to a pile of broken metal and plastic.

c

 

[OleLila]

I have  PB 160 and 520c  that, aside from the hinges, have been good.

found one non-working Duo about 2 years ago...now have gone down the rabbit hole and have a bin full of parts for duo's without a single working unit. Not recommended.