Powerbook 3400c Ebay find (finally)

[Rick Dangerous]

I like the 3400 better; just seems like a sturdier machine all around.  The 3400's all have the active matrix screen, and the processor and ram ceilings are higher.  Built in Ethernet is really nice as well. 

A few things I will say for the 1400 though:

-Keyboard is way better.  If i had to go write the great American novel; i'd take the 1400 as a pure writing machine over the 3400 just because of the keyboard.

-Slimmer profile; would likely travel better. 

-ADB and Audio In/Out on the back is better than on the left side like the 3400; i also like having the 3.5/CD bay in the front on the 1400

 

[Rick Dangerous]

So the second powerbook I got; the 240mhz model; the sound doesn't work.  It's very strange, i opened it back up and checked the ribbon cable.  When it starts up; you hear the chime, but then during the "starting up" screen there are a few crackles and pops from the speakers.  The Volume and Brightness switches work.   

I updated it to run 9.2.2 via OS9 Helper; wondering if I have the wrong extensions turned off? Or a missing driver somewhere?  I play a CD, Play a game, mess with the alert noises, nothing.

Going in and turning all extensions on and seeing what i can get working.  Don't think it's a hardware problem.  Anyone encountered this? 

 

[Daniël]

So the second powerbook I got; the 240mhz model; the sound doesn't work.  It's very strange, i opened it back up and checked the ribbon cable.  When it starts up; you hear the chime, but then during the "starting up" screen there are a few crackles and pops from the speakers.  The Volume and Brightness switches work.   

That indicates to me at least that hardware wise the sound is working. The brief pops/crackles when OS 9 is loading extensions is normal, every Mac will do that (my iMac G3 Flower Power does it too, even out of external speakers). I believe that's the OS initializing the sound system.

 

[Byrd]

I'd start with a fresh install of OS 9.1 to rule out sound issues

 

[Rick Dangerous]

Getting up to 9.2.2 was just an experiment, I think this machine was happiest with 8.6.

What's the best way to format the hard drive and do a full fresh install?  My only concern is the machine doesn't like to boot from CD when you hold C so I'd hate to brick it by not being able to load the new OS.

 

[just.in.time]

Do a minimal install on your CF card, and make sure you have the cd rom extension. Then you can boot from that, single click the hard drive icon on the desktop, special -> erase as Mac OS Extended and then install again from the CD.

 

[Rick Dangerous]

Trying to install on my CF Card, but as soon as it gets started it says "The Application "Drive Setup" could not be opened" 

EDIT:  9.0.4 is cooperating so guess i'll use that to install that on the CF HD  

Thanks guys!

 

[Rick Dangerous]

Formatted the HD and did a nice full fresh install of 9.0.4.  I think that is going to be this machine's happy place.  Sound works perfectly.  

 

[just.in.time]

That’s awesome, glad it all worked out. Mine currently has 9.1. With adequate RAM, the 3400 series definitely makes for a decent OS 9 machine for most tasks, main limiter being low graphics performance for things such as 3D gaming. Otherwise a solid machine  

 

[Rick Dangerous]

Thanks!  Fully sorted as of today; and everything works great.  After years of upgrades and mucking about; a fresh install really is the way to go.  Much more room on the HDD now and it's running faster all around. Now the long wait for the 128MB ram upgrade begins.....luckily i have a 64MB card in there, so i'm working with 80MB total.

Any tips on where to find such an upgrade, beside ebay?  I've emailed a few old school apple sellers in hopes they might have one collecting dust on a shelf somewhere; but they are all long out of stock. Oh well...going to have to keep an eye on those system profiler pictures on ebay when people actually bother to post them!  

One other thing i'll say for the 3400....both the main batteries still hold a decent charge and keep the time if it's plugged in or even not for a while. Both my 1400 batteries are dead dead...like beyond worthless.  Not sure much can be done about that since no one is rebuilding them.   Surprised no entrepreneurial spirit with the capability has offered this service for the old laptops/etc. of the world, seems there would be only growing demand given all the things that have started using rechargeable batteries from 1990-present. 

 

[ChrisKT71]

So the second powerbook I got; the 240mhz model; the sound doesn't work. It's very strange, i opened it back up and checked the ribbon cable. When it starts up; you hear the chime, but then during the "starting up" screen there are a few crackles and pops from the speakers. The Volume and Brightness switches work.

I updated it to run 9.2.2 via OS9 Helper; wondering if I have the wrong extensions turned off? Or a missing driver somewhere? I play a CD, Play a game, mess with the alert noises, nothing.

Going in and turning all extensions on and seeing what i can get working. Don't think it's a hardware problem. Anyone encountered this?

Agreed 9.2.2 on 3400c is not it's "happy place." The sound for the 3400c / Kanga G3 works fine on 9.2.2 with a replaced Apple Audio Extension from Mac OS 9.1 install. Also, you may need the PowerBook 3400/G3 Modem extension as Mac OS 9.2.2 install may remove it, potentially causing ethernet issues.

See Mac OS 9 Helper Compatibility Matrix to Download the Extensions needed to fix audio and ethernet/modem on 3400/G3 Kanga - https://web.archive.org/web/20120204045426/http://www.os9forever.com/Compatibility.html

 

[ChrisKT71]

Thanks! Fully sorted as of today; and everything works great. After years of upgrades and mucking about; a fresh install really is the way to go. Much more room on the HDD now and it's running faster all around. Now the long wait for the 128MB ram upgrade begins.....luckily i have a 64MB card in there, so i'm working with 80MB total.

Any tips on where to find such an upgrade, beside ebay? I've emailed a few old school apple sellers in hopes they might have one collecting dust on a shelf somewhere; but they are all long out of stock. Oh well...going to have to keep an eye on those system profiler pictures on ebay when people actually bother to post them!

One other thing i'll say for the 3400....both the main batteries still hold a decent charge and keep the time if it's plugged in or even not for a while. Both my 1400 batteries are dead dead...like beyond worthless. Not sure much can be done about that since no one is rebuilding them. Surprised no entrepreneurial spirit with the capability has offered this service for the old laptops/etc. of the world, seems there would be only growing demand given all the things that have started using rechargeable batteries from 1990-present.

So it's been a year since your last post Rick D. Hope you found your 128MB memory chip.

You may considering running one of those 3400's on 8.6 again. Fewer system resources consumed by the OS, "snappier" UI feel. 8.6 can run latest AppleShare 3.9.4 Client for accessing networked fileshares with passwords; and CarbonLib 1.6.1, which allows you to run almost all apps that required OS 9. 8.6 on 3400c can run the last AirPort 2.0.4 for Mac OS Classic; you simply have to extract the files from the Tome and put in the right places, stick in a WaveLAN Silver or Gold PC card, and connect 128-bit WEP to your 802.11b WiFi. Mac OS 9.1 can do the same as 8.6, but Finder and other operations are noticeably slower.

For the benefit of anyone out there reading this stuff, I've attached a screen shot of the file structure for AirPort to manually install, and a disk image which has all the files organized to help make it easier. I expanded on Rob's post about installing AirPort 1.2 on Mac OS 8.6, found here: https://web.archive.org/web/2019102...lla.edu:80/~frohro/Airport/Airport12OS86.html

Tested on PB3400c/200MHz/144MB & PBG3"3500"/250MHz/96MB; both on Internal IDE to CF HDD's

 

[System6+Vista]

Ten years ago I scored a 3400cs on eBay for just $30. It was considered very un-cool at the time. The passive TFT display was pretty lame as people say, but it was my first laptop or color display vintage Mac. I really enjoyed using that machine for typing lyrics. I was even able to play mp3 files! I had some System 8 variant, never bothered to do a clean install but I definitley wouldv'e preffered to stay to the lowest decent version for my needs as that machine was slow AF booting given all the stuff the previous user had installed. Unfortunatley mine stopped starting recently. Someone told me that brand new batteries for those were selling on Jet.com in recent years - I don't get why that would be true but cool if it is.

 

[SilverStreaks]

@Rick Dangerous I bought my SD to PCMCIA adapter way back in like 2003 from BestBuy when I needed to get photos from a 1.3 megapixel HP camera to a PowerBook 5300cs I owned a long time ago. So I don’t have a link for it.

That said, I’m looking at it right now and can describe it. It’s branded as “Dazzle” and is a 4 in 1 adapter for SD, MMC, SmartMedia and Sony Memory Sticks.

I’ve never used the other 3 card types with it, but for SD cards it’s very important to make sure they are truly SD and not SDHC or SDXC cards.

IIRC, anything below 2GB will almost always be true SD. At 2GB it may be SD or SDHC. Above 2GB it’s much more likely to be SDHC/SDXC.

In my case, I have a 64MB Lexar Media and a 2GB SandDisk SD card that work great with it. Even bootable (great for installing OS/software). At one point I tried a 4GB card and it wasn’t even recognized as it was SDHC.

It looks like you have a 2GB card. Perhaps it’s SDHC in disguise. If in doubt, try to find an old 512mb or 1gb card. Odds are much higher those will be true SD.

Do you know if this would work in a 3400c on 7.6?

I found a listing on eBay but I’m not sure if it’s the same one that you have: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3859400691...bjprlr_quy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

 

[SilverStreaks]

Do you know if this would work in a 3400c on 7.6?

I found a listing on eBay but I’m not sure if it’s the same one that you have: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3859400691...bjprlr_quy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Update in case anyone was wondering: It does work!

 

[MacUp72]

I got my 3400c this week, have changed the hdd to a sd-ide solution, it works, but ethernet wasnt recognized after correctly..
Maybe because I just copied the old systems from the CF card, reinstalled 8.6 and 9.1 then it was ok
am not sure yet if that relates somehow to IDE, have to check that more.

 

[croissantking]

Ten years ago I scored a 3400cs on eBay for just $30. It was considered very un-cool at the time. The passive TFT display was pretty lame as people say, but it was my first laptop or color display vintage Mac. I really enjoyed using that machine for typing lyrics. I was even able to play mp3 files! I had some System 8 variant, never bothered to do a clean install but I definitley wouldv'e preffered to stay to the lowest decent version for my needs as that machine was slow AF booting given all the stuff the previous user had installed. Unfortunatley mine stopped starting recently. Someone told me that brand new batteries for those were selling on Jet.com in recent years - I don't get why that would be true but cool if it is.

There never was a 3400cs, all the 3400 series machines came with an active matrix TFT as standard. Maybe you had a 1400cs?