Powerbook 160 revival !

[Wawavoun]

Hi All,

I am working on a revival project of a Powerbook 160.

I have recapped the screen and the inverter so I am at a point I have some results but also some problems...

Using an external Bluescsi and without psram extension module and internal hard disk the system boot into 7.5.5.
He complain about to low memory for extensions but boot and everything look working.

Now the remaining problems :
- As soon as I try to install the psram extension module I got the death 8 tones sound and nothing on the screen.
- The Quantum hard disk dampers are like glue. One is near the head magnets and easy to change but the second is below the plates.
Because the disk has 3 plates there is no chance to remove the plates, change this damper and remount the drive. He is definitively lost.

The question :
Can I confidently change the psram module (or may be the chips on the board I will see) or is it possible that the problem is on the daughter board and not on the psram module itself ?
Is there possible to use any scsi 2.5" hard drive ? Or should it be Apple branded ?

Thanks for advices.
Regards.
Philippe

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Good work on what you’ve done so far! At this point any SCSI drive is going to be unreliable, not to mention how slow and low capacity they are. Out of the drives that Apple used, IBM branded ones seem to be the most reliable (much more so than conners and quantums), but I’d recommend a solid state replacement like the BlueSCSI, SCSI2SD or similar as a much more reliable replacement.

Any 2.5” SCSI drive with the right connector should work, but if it isn’t Apple branded you’ll have to use a 3rd party formatting tool.

 

[Wawavoun]

Thanks for the reply.

About the memory problem I do more test this morning.

First I cross the 2 mb module with another one in a Powerbook 100. This computer then continue to boot well so the module is ok.

I just noticed that the memory chip located on the cpu board are xxxx-85 so 85 ns speed and that the chips on the expansion module are labelled xxxx-10 so I assume 100 ns speed.

Could this be the problem ?

The computer has start one time with the expansion memory but soon after I got a bus error and I have to remove it to get the computer booting again.

With the only 2 mb on the cpu board the computer is more or unusable under 7.5.5...

Regards.
Philippe

 

[Wawavoun]

Hello,

More information : Reading the Powerbook service manual I just realized that the cpu board has 4 mb ram welded (8 chips of 512k x 8 bits).

Mine show only a total of 2 mb when the system is running.

So for sure this cpu board has a serious problem !

I will buy another hoping the price is not to high and that this solve the problem !

Regards.
Philippe