Mighty Jabba's Conquests

[Realitystorm]

Does anyone know of a boot floppy that will work with this generation of PowerBook? I’d kind of like to see it boot fully at least. Also are there options for booting off an external disk of some sort? I don’t really know a lot about these early portables. 

I think you're referring to your PowerBook 165c?  If so my OS 7.5.0 disk image should work.

Disk image: http://www.savagetaylor.com/2017/12/28/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-using-a-floppy-drive/

Systems and supported OS versions http://www.savagetaylor.com/2015/11/17/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-selecting-your-system-software/

 

[Mighty Jabba]

Thanks, that did the trick. But the computer does seem to have some issues that make me reluctant to put any more time or money into it. The screen seems to have some odd interference (that is separate from the general crappy nature of passive matrix displays) and pressing the top trackpad button will reboot the computer!

 

[CC_333]

The LCD panel probably needs to be recapped.

As for the upper trackpad button rebooting the computer, no clue.

c

 

[olePigeon]

@Mighty Jabba Is that a real Space Cadet, or is it just custom keycaps?

 

[Mighty Jabba]

@Mighty Jabba Is that a real Space Cadet, or is it just custom keycaps?

It's a Tada68 keyboard with SA Pulse keycaps. It's not really that similar to a Space Cadet, although they did make custom caps based on that as well.

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I picked up a dual 450mhz PowerMac G4 (I guess this would be a Sawtooth) for about $60 shipped. It cleaned up quite well and seems to be working fine, with the exception of one bad USB port. The only thing is that I can't get it to work with my 23" ADC Cinema Display. It works fine with the 17" version and with a VGA monitor, but when I connect the 23" monitor, I only get a power light on the monitor but no image. Pushing the power button on the monitor works as expected, but that's it. Any ideas about this?

 

[jessenator]

There's a recent post about it—Dont have the link handy (mobile), but I believe that the sawtooth, specifically, couldnt drive the higher power draw screens of the era, regardless of the graphics card.

Edit:

 

[Mighty Jabba]

There's a recent post about it—Dont have the link handy (mobile), but I believe that the sawtooth, specifically, couldnt drive the higher power draw screens of the era, regardless of the graphics card.

Well that's interesting to know. I'm just glad it's not a defect with the machine. I can certainly just use it with the smaller screen.

 

[MJ313]

The dual 450Mhz processor originally came in the Gigabit Ethernet PowerMac G4 (which is what I would guess you really have).

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/index-powermac-g4.html

It was the first to support ADC which explains why your 17 incher works. The GigE came stock with an ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16MB of SDRAM. The 23" Cinema Display you have requires 32MB. So seems you just need to upgrade your video card to something like an ATI Radeon 7500 or whatever and should be good to go.

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I've got enough Macs and monitors that I probably won't worry about trying to make the Sawtooth work with the 23" but I'll keep it in mind.

Going back to the PowerBook 165 I mentioned above, I managed to find another very cheap one that turned on with a chime and displayed a blank white screen. I was sort of hoping that the seller just didn't know how to adjust the brightness and contrast and it was actually okay. I did ask them if it had been opened, hoping that it might have a usable hard disk in it. Once it arrived, I found that it didn't do anything but display the white screen, and while there was a hard disk inside, there was no sign of activity from it. It does boot from the boot floppy I made, but there is nothing on the screen.

I tried swapping various parts around between my two machines, but was never able to get the screen on the new one to do anything, so I'm guessing it's something wrong with the screen (I tried swapping everything including the board that controls brightness and contrast, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I did apparently solve the issue of the machine restarting when touching the top trackpad button (which I assume was just are result of something shorting somewhere). But no luck with the screen or hard disk, so I'm not much farther along than when I started, although I can pick and choose the components that are the in best shape and make one unit out of them. I do have a new appreciation for how modular these computers were. It's really quite impressive how easy it is to take them apart and swap components.

By the way, my old 165 had a modem card in it and the new one didn't. I didn't realize that was optional.

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I finally got a PowerMac G4 MDD to "complete" my collection of the major tower designs from the 9600 to the G5 (and cheese grater Mac Pro). It was "untested" so it was a bit of a gamble, but it turned out pretty well. Initially it wouldn't turn on because (I discovered) someone had removed the hard disk and RAM from it. But I borrowed a stick of RAM from my G5, plugged in a Firewire drive and it booted right up. It was listed as a single 1Ghz processor with 2GB of RAM, but turned out to be a dual 1Ghz with 0GB of RAM, so I guess I came out ahead? It also has an Airport Card. I think I have an extra hard drive that I can put in this, but is there any problem just using the 1GB RAM stick I took out of my G5?

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I ordered an Apple Monochrome Monitor to go with my new Apple IIe and it arrived completely destroyed. I got a full refund but it was disappointing to be sure. 
 

 

[bibilit]

Probably still working fine i guess ?

free item anyway, if it was mine, i will repair it as best as i can using ABS cement and look for a better casing (even with a smashed screen)

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I don't intend to try and repair it, but I suppose I will keep it around for possible spare parts.

 

[Mighty Jabba]

I found a "Mac Bottom" on eBay recently for a fairly reasonable price. I don't have an external SCSI hard disk, so I thought I would take a chance on it, even though the seller didn't really seem to know whether or not it worked. When it arrived, the fan inside had broken free of its moorings and was rattling around, and there were no signs of life when I plugged it in. I did test the fuse and it seems fine. I took the drive out of the enclosure and put it in an SE and it booted right up, so worst case scenario I now have another working SCSI hard disk, but I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas about getting the enclosure to work. Could the capacitors cause the problem?

 

[olePigeon]

Do you have a multi-meter?  Check the voltage.  Check continuity.  Looks like the caps (C17, CR7, etc.) are leaking all over the place.  You can see it.  So those will likely need to be replaced.

 

[Crutch]

FIrst of all, that’s a nice unit!  Good find.

Yeah that’s just a big old power supply in there.  Sure, the caps could be the problem.  You could recap it.  You could also just throw a brand new PSU in there (I think it needs both +5 and +12V?), wire it into the mains plug at the top and solder together a quick harness for that Rodime with some heat shrink and never have to worry about it again until the HD dies.  That would very likely eliminate the need for the fan, too.