Powerbook 170 -- It's Working!!!

[macinbot]

Scored a Powerbook 170 and couple other PBs as mentioned in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16943

The bezel is a little loose on the hinge and one side. Byrd and Trash80toHP_Mini gave me some good tips for securing it. Before I was going to set to work on that, I decided that I was going to wait until I could source a power supply and make sure it actually booted.

Well, I was moving one of my external HDs and decided to look at the power supply. 12v / 2A. Powerbook 170 take 7.5v / 2A. Polarity was correct, so I thought I'd give it a quick try. Plugged it in, pressed the power button and "BONG"! It started. Screen showed a bunch of garbled graphics and went into an endless reboot cycle. I was a bit disappointed, but decided to give it another go, but with the laptop battery pulled. Bong, followed by garbled graphics, followed by HAPPY MAC! Welcome To Macintosh came shortly after and then the extension parade and finally the desktop.

Not too much exciting on it. It's maxed out at 8mb ram, 60mb HD and running 7.5.5. I think the system software is a bit rich for it. I'll try and figure a way to get 7.1 on there. I opened a shareware program up and it said that I had been using the software unregistered for 15999 days. Thought that was amusing.

Things I need:

Does it take a special version of System 7.1 (or at least an extension)?

Will running it with a 12v instead of 7.5 harm the Mac or power supply?

Anyone have a take-apart guide for the PB 170?

 

[macinbot]

Well that was short lived. Won't boot from the hard drive now. I get the infamous flashing question mark. > It will boot from floppy, but I don't have any 7.1+ systems to get it to boot from. I had a couple boots that froze after the extension parade (never made it to the desktop), but now it can't find the drive at all. When it was making it part way through, it would sometimes drop into screen with a bunch of numbers on the side and a place for typing in the bottom of the screen. :?:

What's the story with compact flash and this machine (or any of the 1xx line of Powerbooks)?

 

[bigmessowires]

it would sometimes drop into screen with a bunch of numbers on the side and a place for typing in the bottom of the screen.

Was it dropping into the debugger? Does the PB 170 have a debug switch?

 

[macinbot]

it would sometimes drop into screen with a bunch of numbers on the side and a place for typing in the bottom of the screen.

Was it dropping into the debugger? Does the PB 170 have a debug switch?

Yes, it does. It has a reset and the debug switch holes. pressing the debug switch gets me:

0000000F

0000000D

But this isn't the same as the screen I was referring to. It's been a long while since I've seen it, but the other screen reminded me of the Macbugs utility thing.

 

[macinbot]

I forgot to mention that debug also show a Sad Mac above the codes. xx(

 

[macinbot]

I should also add that the hard drive doesn't spin up anymore. It (obviously) did when it was booting into the system.

 

[bigmessowires]

If you push the debug switch after the Mac has partly or completely booted, it will bring you to the debugger (either MacsBug, or the built-in debugger). I think it's only at the disk question-mark screen where the debug switch will cause a Sad Mac 0F 00 00 0D. So maybe the debug switch was accidentally pressed midway through the boot sequence, or maybe some kind of hardware problem is causing it to act like the debug switch is pressed?

Rereading from the top: using a 12V supply instead of 7.5V might be bad news, and may have damaged something.

 

[macinbot]

If you push the debug switch after the Mac has partly or completely booted, it will bring you to the debugger (either MacsBug, or the built-in debugger). I think it's only at the disk question-mark screen where the debug switch will cause a Sad Mac 0F 00 00 0D. So maybe the debug switch was accidentally pressed midway through the boot sequence, or maybe some kind of hardware problem is causing it to act like the debug switch is pressed?
Rereading from the top: using a 12V supply instead of 7.5V might be bad news, and may have damaged something.

The first time I saw it was after I had been exploring the hard drive. I got up to get something and came back after a couple minutes to find what I think is the Macbugs screen. If I pressed escape, I could get back to the desktop, but it was frozen. When I did a hard reboot, it started to go through the boot process, and then dropped into the same Macbugs screen. Pressing escape brought me back to the boot process, but it was frozen, requiring a hard reboot. After a few rounds of this, it just stopped spinning up the hard drive.

The error code from the programmers switch is when I press it right after powering up.

It was my understanding that in most electronics you can run a little over voltage and it wouldn't do harm, at least not to the device. I thought at worst it might put too much pressure on the power supply, making it run hot. I've only been running it for short amounts of time, but I'll hold off until I can get a more definitive answer or a real power supply.

 

[techknight]

Yea, but this isnt "electronics" as in the norm. This is digital electronics. when tolerances are very small. Any over/undershoot will ruin your day.

 

[macinbot]

Yea, but this isnt "electronics" as in the norm. This is digital electronics. when tolerances are very small. Any over/undershoot will ruin your day.

Hopefully I didn't find out the hard way. Fingers crossed that the HD was on its way out already.

 

[techknight]

ya, only thing you can do is replace it and hope for the best..... Oh wait, kinda stuck on the replace it part. Trying to find one....