Just got a 1400cs - CD not recognised, ethernet not working

[sos_nz]

To go with my partway restored SE/30, I seem to have picked up some sort of retro mac bug.

Background:

I just picked up a used (obviously!) 1400cs. It's a fairly low spec'd machine - 133, only 16MB RAM, System 7.6.1.

It hasn't been used in a few years, apparently. Battery is totally dead, but runs fine off the AC adapter and boots successfully into the finder.

Problem #1:

It came with a Farallon ethernet PCMIA card - great. Trouble is, no internet. As it was as a student's laptop, it has IE 4.0 on it, and seems to have the correct drivers for the ethernet card. Therefore, I assume it's been internet-capable at some stage.

The TCP/IP control panel allows me to select 'alternate ethernet'. Using DHCP (and opentransport 1.1.1) the green light comes on when the Farallon is connected to my router (Linksys WRT54GL running tomato 1.28 firmware), but it doesn't receive an IP address and doesn't appear in my router's list of connected devices. Appletalk is set to 'inactive'.

Problem #2:

Won't recognise the CD-Drive module. The orange light blinks 4 or 5 times when I insert a disc, but nothing appears on the Finder desktop, and the CD drive isn't even selectable as a startup disc. The drive doesn't eject when pushing 'eject' in Apple CD Player, and it won't boot using the official 'Powerbook 1400' system setup CD that also came with the machine. I don't even hear it spinning the disc (unless it's the quietest CD drive in existence!).

I've reset the PRAM and Power Manager as per these instructions, to no avail. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1781. The floppy drive module works fine.

Thoughts? Bad CD module or M/B capacitors? Anything else to help diagnose the problem? I'd like to get OS 8.6 onto the machine if possible, but obviously that'll be difficult without the CD drive!

 

[Macdrone]

Caps are always a good bet these days but dead drive or dirty/loose contacts are also possible. Did you hold the C key with boot cd in the drive?

Internet is always a bit flaky on system 7. I used to use freeppp as it did everything needed for you. But it was all dial up back then.

Good luck.

 

[bibilit]

The cd drive can be fixed or replaced with a modern alternative:

http://www.techedgeezine.com/2004-0129_pb1400-upgrade3.htm

 

[ClassicHasClass]

The Farallon card sounds like it's operational. If you wanted to try something else, I maintain an EtherLink III driver here ( http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/mac/enet3c589/ ), but I actually suspect the problem is on the router side. Does your router work fine with other 10Mbps devices? Have you tried giving it a static IP from the DHCP range and seeing if it can get out? AppleTalk does not need to be active for this.

The 1400 is a fine notebook, one of the best keyboards on any laptop, and very hackable. I love mine to this day.

 

[sos_nz]

Thanks for the replies.

My plan is to get the CD module running then get OS 8.6 running. I'm hoping that'll get the internet issues sorted out.

I'll try to pick up a slimline CD replacement today - I've got the module apart and it looks v. straightforward.

The WRT54G-series, released in 2002, *should* be 10-baseT compatible, but who knows the vagaries of old networking?

 

[sos_nz]

The good news! I got the CD-ROM working with the tweaks outlined on this page: http://home.comcast.net/~gionpeters/hhhh/pb1400.htm

On my unit I had to turn the adjustment screw clockwise a quarter turn, as opposed to the guy in the article, who had to go three quarters counter clockwise.

The bad news: no OS 8.6 for me - only 16MB RAM.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Wonderful! You can still do a lot with 7.6 ... just ask the System7Today guys.

Just to give you an idea of what's possible with the 1400, mine has a G3/466 CPU, 64MB of RAM, Ethernet, modem, 4GB hard disk and 8-bit video out. I have an ORiNOCO wireless card for it too. With RAMDoubler 9, it runs OS 9.1 and Classilla very serviceably. I also rehabilitated the battery. About the only thing left to do is try to install a CD burner or something.

Really, the only upgrade I really want and lack is the solar panel cover. I know someone out here has this and is willing to sell it ... :approve:

 

[sos_nz]

Ahhhh. I've got a nice new install of 7.6.1 done. The previous owner was Japanese, its now an English 7.6.1

Have yet to retry the farallon ethernet again.

I am interested in kitting this laptop out a bit more, so will keep an eye out for the (rare) G3 sonnet and some more ram.

Of course, that said, buying a G3 or G4 iBook would be cheaper if I really wanted to run OS 8 or 9, but where's the fun in that?

 

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

I should have the Farallon ethernet driver disk somewhere. I still have it to use with my Newtons....

If you need it, let me know, and I'll dig around in my disk collection...

 

[sos_nz]

Despite my efforts, the CD drive is too touchy to reliably read CDR's, so I've ordered a new Teac CD-224E from ebay, much as it was fun to repeatedly pull the CD drive and tweak the screw

I can't get the Farallon to work with my router, which *should* be capable of 10Base-T. I tried the Farallon 2.2 installer disc, reinstalling the drivers, and updated OpenTransport to 1.1.2, but still no dice. The card could be dead, I guess, or the cable, although the green light is on.

Anyway, rather than persist with it, I've got a Dell Orinoco Gold Truemobile 1150 wireless card on the way. Will update you all when it arrives, but from what I've read, it should work fine under OS 7.6.1, albeit only using WEP 128.

 

[sos_nz]

*sigh*. The new TEAC 224E turned up today. I pulled it apart to try to get the original 1400c CD-bezel on it, but sadly the bezel is integral on the 224E, so a swap wasn't readily acheivable.

Oh well, no problem. So I put the drive back together and into the shell and.... nothing. Still won't boot from a known good CD-ROM (the original 1400cs CD containing OS 7.6) and won't detect discs. Just that infernal blinking, blinking, blinking then nada.

So, either:

a) In my (minor) fiddling to get the new drive bezel changed, I've rogered the new drive.

B) The new drive was DOA anyway

c) There's some other hardware / firmware problem with my 1400cs

 

[Macdrone]

Dead hard drive maybe? All the laptops i have, whenever the hard drive is dead the unit can't seem to read anything.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

At this point I would try connecting an external SCSI CD-ROM. The fact it worked before makes me think it's probably not the mainboard.

 

[sos_nz]

Thanks for the input.

In desperation I fiddled with the adjustment/focus screw of the original 12x TEAC drive and got it reading again, although it's touchy with CDR's (could well be the quality of my burns though, since a fresh burn seems to be running just fine right now).

It could also be a poor contact between the IDE CD-ROM adapter plate. I don't have a lot of other legacy hardware to swap and match to narrow down the problem (SCSI CD-ROM, other laptop to plug the other CD drives into etc), so I'll keep plodding along with the working 12x and let you all know if there are any revelations or breakthroughs. Cheers.

 

[sos_nz]

/me slaps forehead.

I remember reading about master/slave configurations when assessing replacement drive options. The new CD-224E *does* work (and works very nicely!), but it needs to be set as master (or slave - I forget which).

In the absence of a drive jumper, this needs to be done by shorting pins 45 and 47 on the powerbook's adapter interface PCB as per these instructions: http://home.comcast.net/~macdan/PB_99_2K_EBM_sled.html

I hope this helps someone else with a similar conundrum! Can mark the CD-Drive as [solved]... now to get the wifi working ...

 

[sos_nz]

The following Dell Truemobile 1150 card *doesn't* want to work in my 1400cs.

I've tried installing the 6.00.4 WaveLAN drivers and using these instructions (http://www.penmachine.com/techie/airport1400.html) under OS 7.6.1 and OS 8.1. I can't try OS 8.6 and therefore the 6.3 and newer drivers due to only 16MB of RAM (anyone wanna sell me a stick of 24 or 48MB?

The card appears on the desktop, but neither the status nor activity LEDs light up, and an error message pops up "The correct software you need to use the PC card in the "Upper PC Card slot" is not installed. Do you want to eject the card now?".

If I select "cancel", the card is correctly displayed on the desktop as 'TrueMobile 1150 Series', but no LED or, obviously, interwebs. I've tried fresh OS installs, disabling Apple built-in E-net extension, installing the 68k driver instead etc. but still no dice.

Anyway, here are the pics. I suspect it's a newer, non-supported (in OS 7.6 or 8.1) revision of the card:

 

[sos_nz]

Thought I'd give an update on the above.

Thanks to another board member I obtained a further 16MB of memory (=32MB total) and so managed to install OS 8.6 and 9.04 on separate partitions. The orinoco 7.2 drivers meant the Dell 1150 card was correctly detected and was able to connect to my WRT54G router, running tomato, in wireless 'b' mode. I had to manually set the IP4 settings - DHCP wouldn't work for some reason. Still couldn't get to net browsing working though - so that's a work on.

I did finally manage to get the 3com etherlink III card (3C589D-Combo 10BaseT-Coax) working. Again, DHCP wouldn't connect, but using manual settings, finally got the ol' girl online!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It sounds like your cs has the 16MB factory module on board, if so, that's a huge plus. It puts your foot in the door for the full 64MB loadout.

 

[sos_nz]

Yeah - it had 16MB without any cards in the user slot - although there was one card in the other 'apple' slot, which I believe is 8MB, but there are no larger modules made which fit this slot. In other words, the built-in 16MB of RAM consists of 8MB soldered on the board and 8MB in the Apple slot.

In terms of maxing the load out - I'd love to - but 1400c/cs memory is *rare*m and I've never seen 24MB modules available new or second hand since I've been looking (the last 6 months). It makes gold hen's teeth look common!