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As far as I have found, wire connected Fast Ethernet upgrades for the PowerBook 1400 are recommended rarely. Some years ago I have got a cheap 10/100 Fast Ethernet PC card from a PC store, just to see if I could make it work in my PB 1400 (Fiberline FL-FE1600, Fiberline Technology Corp., part #00E098921DE1, FCC ID MQ4FE1KD1). It was no plug and play. I hunted for several different Mac drivers available for any Mac compatible PC card and found only one to be working halfways (for an ethernet and modem combo card). It took some effort to figure out how to use the card without crashing the Mac by mistake.
For PB 1400 owners the following information might be of interest:
Even if some dislike to use Mac OS 9 on the PB 1400 because of a RAM size restriction, several benefits can be found in running especially 9.2.2 on the machine. A few days ago I did some troubleshooting after testing "new" old software on a PB1400 and found that Mac OS 9.2.2 (updated with OS9helper software) comes with an inbuilt driver which recognises the Fiberline card correctly. If you have a 16 Bit PCMCIA card available it might be a good idea to check wether your updated Powerbook likes it
Another benefit I found in 9.2.2 was an improved performance of the Sonnet ViewPowr graphics output. In some application programmes the screen redraw did not work properly and any move of the mouse pointer left strange traces on the screen. With the update to 9.2.2 this behaviour vanished and the mouse response is fine.
For PB 1400 owners the following information might be of interest:
Even if some dislike to use Mac OS 9 on the PB 1400 because of a RAM size restriction, several benefits can be found in running especially 9.2.2 on the machine. A few days ago I did some troubleshooting after testing "new" old software on a PB1400 and found that Mac OS 9.2.2 (updated with OS9helper software) comes with an inbuilt driver which recognises the Fiberline card correctly. If you have a 16 Bit PCMCIA card available it might be a good idea to check wether your updated Powerbook likes it
Another benefit I found in 9.2.2 was an improved performance of the Sonnet ViewPowr graphics output. In some application programmes the screen redraw did not work properly and any move of the mouse pointer left strange traces on the screen. With the update to 9.2.2 this behaviour vanished and the mouse response is fine.
