PowerBook 1400: which one to keep, which one to sell?

[superpantoufle]

Hi all,

I am a kind of a 1400-freak. This is without a doubt my favorite classic PowerBook, and one of my favorite classic Mac ever.

I do have two 1400c/166. One is my main classic machine (on which I'm writing this post). It has 64 MB of Ram, a G3/233 upgrade and an ethrnet card, and runs 8.6 smoothly from an 8 GB CF card. Over the years it has been restored using parts from various donors, and today it's basically my dream classic PowerBook come true.

The other one is pure stock. I bought it basically new in box a couple of years ago. I have no info about its previous life, but it certainly hadn't been used more than very few times. It's in its original box, with all manuals, CD's and stuff. It has both black and transparent lid covers. The black one is on, and the transparent one still has its protective plastic. All the original lid images are there, too! So I have no plan to actually use this one. I'd rather keep it untouched and in its box for the collection.

Now, I have two more 1400s I bought a few weeks ago as "for parts" for next to nothing, without power adapters and not in great shape. It turns out that both run fine once connected to a power outlet, but one has a dead HD. Both have the stock 12 MB of Ram. One came with the floppy module, the other with the CD drive. One is a 1400cs/133, the other a 1400c/117.

I actually have no use for them, and I plan to keep one around for parts, and to sell the other one. Which one to keep, which one to sell? What makes more sense? Thanks for your advice!

 

[J English Smith]

I'd keep the 133. Does not run any different, really, than the 166. The 117 does not have the secondary cache, I believe.

I have seven 1400s - I really should sell some one of these days, but I like them too. But since I got into Pismos, I am not using them much.

 

[Byrd]

If you're really "stripping down", I tend to keep a working motherboard, good case plastics, some spare RAM - for those times if something on your good unit fails. The "c" screen is so nice, the cs screen definately is not - not worth keeping that is you need the space.

JB

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I love the 1400. Why not put the c screen on the 133? It's not super easy to do, but I've done that transplant (on my original 1400).

 

[superpantoufle]

Thanks all!

I'll have to meditate a little bit. I'm not in a hurry.

 

[Bunsen]

This site is full of interesting 1400 tidbits:

http://home.comcast.net/~gionpeters/hhhh/pb1400.htm

I just went there to check on something that I thought might be relevant:

older PB1400s (ones that started life as 117 or 133 MHz machines) cannot use the Apple 166 MHz CPU. I, and others think this is due to a ROM block of some sort. /However, it is possible to modify the 166 MHz CPU to run on older machines ...