Powerbook 180c issues

[ryan55]

I didn't use the word problems in the title because i mostly have small issues with it. I'll list 'em here...

The battery is dead and will not hold any charge. This i'm gonna live with.

It is from France and thus... a) has a French wall plug, but i got an adaptor. B) has an AZERTY keyboard c) the OS is in french

The hard drive sticks a bit and sometimes takes a few tries to boot. Is there any way to fix this?

I plan on using this to take notes in school, but i'm wondering if i can easily reinstall OS 7. Will i have any problems with stuff like the toolbar thing on the bottom? Will an English install be able to use the AZERTY keyboard? (and if not is it easy to rearange the keys to QWERTY?) Also i haven't used a mac in several years (since probably 2000 or so), if i wanted to keep a few of the programs, how would i go abouts backing them up?

***New problem i noted*** When i enabeled the time bar it won't hold a time. It kinda jumps around, if i just click on the time to change it it jumps ahead 1-2 hours. On the menu, there is a little symbol of a battery that is entirely black. Does the clock use a different battery on the motherboard like a desktop or does it use the power battery. If it uses the power battery, then thats why...

***edit*** I'll just set the keyboard to US and either remember where the keys are or put stickers, so the keyboard is a non issue.

 

[JRL]

I'm thinking you will be able to use the AZERTY keyboard normally in English fine, as it's just a different keyboard layout, not something that uses different software.

Also, the PowerBook 180c uses a separate battery for the time, so this means the battery might be going flat. However, I did find a guide to replacing the battery a while ago (I'll give you the link).

About the hard drive, if you have the appropriate Torx T-8 and T-10 drivers, you can open the PowerBook 180c up, take the hard drive out, and give it a good smack on the top, which often will loosen up the stiction in the drive (which has probably developed from lack of use)

Also, about the programs, you can reformat standard 1.44 MB PC floppies to work with your PowerBook 180c and use the floppy drive on the right side to back up the programs.

Have fun with your new PowerBook! I'm actually pretty jealous, to be honest. Did you check the specs?

 

[ryan55]

I would check the specs, but i forgot how to do so, especially in french , can you remind me how to do so? It has 4megs of ram i beleive. The sticking drive is not too bad, on bootup i just got to "knock" on it and it seems to work. I'd really appreciate the link for the clock battery replacement. Thanks for the help so far too.

 

[JRL]

http://www.academ.com/info/macintosh/pbook.shtml is the link. (the info is at "The Rest Of The PowerBook 100 Series")

To check, just click on the Apple logo on the top-left and click the first button that is seperated from the rest of the menu items. Enjoy!

 

[ryan55]

You mean "à propos de cet ordinateur", missed it on my way to control pannel like 5 times... there is 2 lines for memory, integrated memory is 8192kb, total is 16384kb. Is that including virtual? Seems high to me, or maybe i should just be happy .

***Edit*** Virtual seems to be turned off. IS it even possible to have 16 megs on a 180c?

 

[JRL]

Well, I think the 16 MB is from software (i.e. RAM Doubler). So it has a 4 MB chip installed, along with the onboard RAM.

 

[equill]

The necessity for the system battery to approach its full 7.5V (NOTE: not full charge) before a depleted backup battery will recharge you will find many references to in these forums. The ceiling for physical RAM in PB1xx (excepting the PB100) is 14MB of physical RAM. However, the PB180c requires a 'cousin card' to provide from 2 to 10MB extra, and these are not common, but you will find the gen for that also in these forums. Given a working floppy drive, an external SCSI CD-ROM or the means for a netbooted installation, you can replace the current software with something more familiar, and just live with AZERTY rather than QWERTY. Or you could replace the keyboard. Working on the inside of a PB1xx is straightforward, so you could also replace the HDD, albeit that either 17mm (thick) or 9mm drives are scarce, nowadays.

de

 

[LCGuy]

You mean "à propos de cet ordinateur", missed it on my way to control pannel like 5 times... there is 2 lines for memory, integrated memory is 8192kb, total is 16384kb. Is that including virtual? Seems high to me, or maybe i should just be happy .
***Edit*** Virtual seems to be turned off. IS it even possible to have 16 megs on a 180c?

Integrated/Built in memory = the amount you have installed on the logic board, Total memory = the total amount of RAM, including any kind of Virtual RAM (whether it be from RAM doubler, MAXIMA or Apple's Virtual Memory). So you have 8MB of real RAM. As equill said, the PowerBook 180c cannot have any more than 14MB of RAM, and even if it could, no higher capacity cards that fit it were made, for the obvious reason.

 

[equill]

8MB 0f physical RAM is not a bad complement, and implies that you have a 4MB daughter-card in place already. There is built-in VRAM enough to support mirroring on a CRT (two distinct groups of VRAM chips) if you wish. You can already support System 7.5, perhaps a little breathlessly under some applications. My greyscale PB180 handles 7.6.1 quite comfortably with a full 14MB of RAM, so you will get the idea.

If your machine shows 16MB of RAM space with VM off, but only 8MB of physical memory, it is probable that, as LCGuy writes, there is a third-party app. active. This could suffice for many of your needs if speed is not a consideration.

de

 

[ryan55]

As assumed earlier up, it has Ramdoubler. Is it any good, should i hold onto it when i reinstall? Its running 7.6 now and feels pretty good, but i might try 7.1 first, because i found a link for it online and i have enough floppies for it (although i'm going to borrow my dads box of floppies soon from the old days, then there will be no problem.) Oh and i figured out why the battery doesn't hold a charge, there is no battery... my friend i got it from said it was completely dead and only served to make the thing heavier. Another question, i am using a cable from the printer port of the laptop to my 7300's printer port. Is that any slower than the other port next to it? Also it it usual for the laptop and the newer desktop not to play nice (when trying to connect to the laptop as a server, the desktop frezes. The laptop can connect to the desktop, but the laptop usualy freezes after moving a few files.) Finally what OS do you recommend for the powerbook and is there any special things i got to do for installing an os to a laptop?

Thanks all, you've been a huge help !

Ryan

***Wait a sec, how did this guy get 7.6 on it, would it havehad to been an external cd?***

 

[LCGuy]

1. In my experience, if you have to use it RAM Doubler is certainly a lot better than Apple Virtual Memory, but at the end of the day, there's no substitute for real RAM.

2. As far as the printer and modem ports go, there's really no difference between them as far as performance is concerned, they're both serial ports. As for the 7300 and PowerBook not playing nicely, you might want to consider trashing the File Sharing Prefs file or the AppleTalk Prefs file on both machines and having it generate a new one - one of them could be corrupted. Just be aware that doing this you'll lose all your AppleTalk network settings on that machine, such as what port you currently have LocalTalk set to use, computer name, owner name, password, etc.

3. You've got 8MB of RAM, personally I'd recommend System 7.1, its by far the most lightweight OS that will run on that machine, and if you do need a feature from System 7.5, most of the features from 7.5 can be retrofitted to 7.1 by installing the appropriate extensions or control panels. I have System 7.5.5 on my PB180c, which also has 8MB of RAM, and while it is very usable, it would probably be much faster under 7.1.

As for the previous owner installing 7.6 on it, it would've been via an external CD-ROM drive, or via a floppy disk install involving roughly 30 or 40 floppy disks from memory.

 

[ryan55]

via a floppy disk install involving roughly 30 or 40 floppy disks from memory.

8-o :O xx( :lol: :?: 8-o :'( :O LOL Thanks for the tips, i'll try out 7.1 then. Any special precautions for a Powerbook oposed to a desktop? Oh and any off hand links to a guide to installling os7? I've been searching and found nothing good.

 

[LCGuy]

As far as installing System 7.1 goes, its just like any other Mac, however be aware that you'll need to ensure that if you're running the installer from System 7.1, that the boot disk you're using has System Enabler 131, and you'll also need to ensure that a copy of System Enabler 131 goes into the System Folder before you try booting from it, otherwise it won't work.

 

[ryan55]

Last question for now (maybe ) To back up something like ramdoubler do i just got to take the 80kb file in the extentions folder, or is there more of it hiding somewhere?

 

[JRL]

I can verify that once you take RAM Doubler out of the system folder, restart and try to copy it again, it won't work. RAM Doubler requires an installer disk to work, unfortunately. However, there are RAM Doubler installer disk images around the Web.

 

[ryan55]

Hurray, more 15 year old software to look for xx( .

 

[JRL]

Here is a link to RAM Doubler.

 

[ryan55]

So heres the update, i can't initialise the drive using Apples hd sc program. It says the device is still mounted or that i file is in use, even after i drag the hard drive to trash and all the stuff to do with it disapears. I even tried booting with disabled extentions no luck. Could it be due to the drive's damage (ie sticking)? I ran the test in hd sc and it passed. Also it is on scsi id 0, is that normal/possible? I'm using a 7.1 pro disk tools floppy.

***Update*** I ran the erase disk from the menu bar at the top on the hard drive. It is empty, but still won't run hd sc and bombs on the installer.

 

[equill]

System 7.1 will run well in 8MB of physical RAM, but System 7.1.3 will run even better. It takes a little work, since you have to 'construct' it for yourself, but it allows many retrofits from System 7.5. Even better, it enables use of Open Transport 1.1.1 and 1.1.2, which will make networking much easier. Trawling these Forums for System 7.1.3 will fill you in about a few tricks in the installation.

de