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PowerBook 3400c upgrades & Preventative Maintenance - A question or two.

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Over the past couple of weeks I've been enjoying my recent pickup of a PowerBook 3400c a lot! I own 4 working batteries for it, and have been taking full advantage and using it on the go. It's fast, it looks super cool, and it's absolutely one of my favorite old laptops. So much so that I'm planning on giving it a full tuneup, addressing hopefully every one of its faults, and giving it an SSD upgrade while I'm at it. Here's a list of my plans, as well as one question I have on the whole process.

1. Hinge tightening. The display hinges have a bit of play in them right now, which concerns me with how this can add extra stress on the fragile plastic. I'm *really* hoping that this is just a loose screw problem, and not wear on the metal hinges themselves. The hinge itself doesn't feel at all floppy, so I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I guess I'll see.

2. Speaking of the fragile plastic, I'll be applying some superglue to all the hinge standoffs to hopefully strengthen then and avoid failure.

3. I will be swapping out the 20GB hard drive I installed with an IDE to SD card adapter to vastly improve speed, and hopefully also boost my battery life! I'm planning on using a 32GB card for the time being, as 64GB might be a bit much for it to handle. I've heard about the 8GB boot partition limit on old world Macs, but the 20GB drive I have in there is already over that with no issues. Why could this be? My other question is about what type of card to buy. Will any quality SD card work, or is it like CF cards, where only "industrial" type cards that don't identify as removable media work? Maybe @LaPorta can answer this.

4. Finally, with it apart for all of this, I might as well replace the 3 or so capacitors on the logic and DC power boards. There's no point in not doing it now seeing as waiting would only increase the chance of me breaking plastic having to take it apart yet again. Does anyone have capacitor reference for this model? It's a little new, and I doubt many people have given it a go yet, but I'd like to just as preventative maintenance, which is the whole point of all of this anyway really.

That's all I've got for now, I'll update as I go about doing these fixes and upgrades. I'll also be taking plenty of photos, as I plan to at the same time write a full disassembly and service guide, iFixit-style for my website, macdat.net!

3lectr1c
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Hi,

some comments

1) As the 3400c LCD is such a heavy device, don't expect the hinges to be as tight as lightweight LCDs. If it is currently supporting the LCD and not dropping down I'd leave it as is, don't overtighten screws as the plastic lugs can break easily.

2) Superglue/CA can get messy real quick on plastics, metal it is worthless - in other words, no! It's not designed for long term holding

3) Solid state is great, however earlier ATA standards used in PowerBooks of this era can have compatibility issues using 2.5" --> SD/MSATA adapters. As a rule the most reliable will be a 2.5" IDE to CF, but CF cards are crazy expensive, so I'd try your luck with the cheaper options first.

4) I've not replaced the DC capacitors on my 3400 and Kanga, if they look suspect or if you are having issues, go for it. One other 3400 (parts unit) has a broken chime and static on startup, I wouldn't be surprised it's caps.

JB
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Thanks for the reply!

1. I’ll make sure not to over-tighten anything, I’m only looking for if any screws are obviously loose, as that’s what it feels like right now.

2. I‘ve used superglue before on these standoffs (already intact ones), but I haven’t done any strength testing and I wouldnt be surprised if it doesn’t end up working well. What should I use then, since I definitely want to strengthen them with something.

3. mSata is definitely out on anything pre-g3 (pre-wallstreet really) for that exact reason. I know people have gotten SD cards working great in even older than this (5300, 1400, etc) so I’m sure it will work, just wondering about that card requirements, if there are any. And yes, CF cards are way too expensive!

4. No issues yet, but I’d like to prevent them before they happen in this case. I’ve read that caps did prevent someone’s 3400
power board from working, so it’s definitely happened before, and I’m planning on using this laptop a lot.
 

AndyO

Well-known member
3. I will be swapping out the 20GB hard drive I installed with an IDE to SD card adapter to vastly improve speed, and hopefully also boost my battery life! I'm planning on using a 32GB card for the time being, as 64GB might be a bit much for it to handle. I've heard about the 8GB boot partition limit on old world Macs, but the 20GB drive I have in there is already over that with no issues. Why could this be? My other question is about what type of card to buy. Will any quality SD card work, or is it like CF cards, where only "industrial" type cards that don't identify as removable media work? Maybe @LaPorta can answer this.

I've been messing with SD cards in my G3 PBs, and was successful using SanDisk class 4 32Gb cards. Alternatively, generic 'Extreme Speed' (class 10) SDs have proven less cooperative. This in IDE-to-SD adapters. I have two Lombards happily running with this type of adapter and the SanDisk cards.

Having struggled to get a similar solution running on my Wallstreet and PDQs, I switched to IDE-to-mSATA enclosures, such as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GRMUQRG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details and Zheino mSATA cards https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GRMUQRG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

I used 120Gb cards, but they go down to 32Gb, which I think would be plenty large enough for this era of PowerBook. Doing it this way, I have what seem to be very reliable drives in all three of them now, and they have the advantage of being 2.5-inch form factor to fit in place of the original, including normal mounting points.

The 8Gb boot partition limit is something I also read about. I haven't partitioned any of these solutions, and with 5 G3 PBs running 32Gb or greater partitions and booting reliably, have not experienced any issues so far. It seemed to have been mentioned in relation to OS X on these systems, or dual booting at least, but I may have read that wrong!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
I’ve used one of those mSata adapters in my iBook G4 with no issues. It’s silent and fast! The G3s had a much better implementation of IDE that allows this to work though, the earlier ones have issues with newer drives, and I’ve had all sorts of issues getting even newer IDE hard drives to work. In my experience, anything newer than about 2002 won’t work. One example of this was a 40GB Seagate drive circa 2004 that I bought for my 1400c. It wasn’t recognized at all, and didn’t seek past the initial seek test. It ended up in my Wallstreet instead where it worked perfectly. I believe I also tried a 40GB Fujitsu drive with similar results. All the drives that I have had work have been IBM Travelstars and Toshiba drives from around 2002 and earlier.

I’ll try to find the link that LaPorta posted in another thread for an SD adapter that worked in their 1400. Class 4 seems a bit slow though…
Edit: Found it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGNYXQ...colid=WGHZY1H9XZYH&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I’d like to use a card like this if possible: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-UHS-I-Memory-SDSDUN4-032G-GN6IN/dp/B08GYG6T12/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1TKUOB0X7LEIV&keywords=32GB+SD+card&qid=1658244269&s=electronics&sprefix=32gb+sd+card,electronics,90&sr=1-4
Class 10 for decent speeds.
 
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AndyO

Well-known member
I’ve used one of those mSata adapters in my iBook G4 with no issues. It’s silent and fast! The G3s had a much better implementation of IDE that allows this to work though, the earlier ones have issues with newer drives, and I’ve had all sorts of issues getting even newer IDE hard drives to work. In my experience, anything newer than about 2002 won’t work. One example of this was a 40GB Seagate drive circa 2004 that I bought for my 1400c. It wasn’t recognized at all, and didn’t seek past the initial seek test. It ended up in my Wallstreet instead where it worked perfectly. I believe I also tried a 40GB Fujitsu drive with similar results. All the drives that I have had work have been IBM Travelstars and Toshiba drives from around 2002 and earlier.

I’ll try to find the link that LaPorta posted in another thread for an SD adapter that worked in their 1400. Class 4 seems a bit slow though…
Edit: Found it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGNYXQ...colid=WGHZY1H9XZYH&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I’d like to use a card like this if possible: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-UHS-I-Memory-SDSDUN4-032G-GN6IN/dp/B08GYG6T12/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1TKUOB0X7LEIV&keywords=32GB+SD+card&qid=1658244269&s=electronics&sprefix=32gb+sd+card,electronics,90&sr=1-4
Class 10 for decent speeds.
That SD adapter is the same as the one(s) I used in my Lombards. I didn't expect it to work because it's such an inexpensive solution, but for the Lombards at least, it did.

The class 4 SD cards were the only ones I had laying around when I started messing with the adapters, and I rather thought that despite them being slow, they're probably still faster than the IDE bus anyway. Formatting them was straightforward, where the class 10 cards weren't even recognized. However, the class 10 cards are generic ones, and I read in many places how some SD cards can be very troublesome.

I have one of these same adapters still, and an 8Gb SD card which I eventually want to use in my 1400 - though I just bought a PB 190 which might get experimented on first!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Thank you for the input on what cards you've used. I unfortunately don't have any spare cards on hand at the moment, and I don't want to buy ones that won't work. I know @LaPorta has one running on their 1400, so I think I'll wait for his input before making any orders.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Thanks for including me. I have had nothing but a good experience with that little adapter. I, too, did not expect it to work well with how cheap it was, but I was wrong. Totally plug and play. I haven’t had any issues at all. If I’m not mistaken I think it’s a class 10 card in there, but don’t quote me. I can always run some benchmarks if you wanted, but the fact that it worked and loaded the OS and programs noticeably faster than the original HD was good enough for me.
 

AndyO

Well-known member
Thank you for the input on what cards you've used. I unfortunately don't have any spare cards on hand at the moment, and I don't want to buy ones that won't work. I know @LaPorta has one running on their 1400, so I think I'll wait for his input before making any orders.

I wouldn't take my word for it either, so no problem - I'm just experimenting anyway. I'm really interested in how it works out however. I don't have a 3400c, but the more we can pool what we know about replacing these IDE drives in the early Macs which used them, the better it is for everyone.

Personally, I really like the IDE/SD adapters for their simplicity, and they worked pretty much perfectly in the Lombards. No idea why not in either Wallstreet or the PDQs though. At present, I'd blame generic SD cards. Or incompetence!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
I’ve got the whole system torn down now, and I’m making some capacitor reference photos and a write up for it. What value would this one be? It’s on the subwoofer/display inverter board and it’s got markings that look like 2 * 2 or something. (the smaller one)
75ED6E88-84C9-461D-A2B9-9438382D999A.jpeg
the number above it is 23.
Any ideas?
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Thank you, I’ll bet that’s it. I’ll prepare the reference images now but I’ll go ahead and verify it’s correct by replacing them on mine first before I post it.
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Capacitors, SD card and adapter are ordered now! I’ve just got to sort out exactly what glue to use on the standoffs to reinforce them and then the project can begin! I’m also considering installing a new PRAM battery, only because I have working batteries and it would allow me to swap them on the go without having to jumpstart from the charger. The only issue is that the new packs I’ve found are 20mAh as opposed to the 60mAh of the original pack. Does this just mean less battery life between charges, or would this cause it not to work?
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
The SD card and adapter showed up, and I went ahead and tested it in the PB 1400, and it worked! I also tried it on my 5300, but it gave either a bus error or error type 10 when trying to boot off of it. This happens as long as it’s plugged in, even if I’m booting from my PCMCIA CF card drive. It booted from that drive just fine when the SD card adapter was unplugged. Strange!
 

Byrd

Well-known member
@3lectr1cPPC I'm waiting on some IDE SD card adapters and expect to find the same oddities, but just got to try and see like you. I know a 2.5" IDE to CF to SD adapter was not good in a 3400c, using different old and new SD cards (2GB to 128GB). Hopefully we'll find a good solution as CF cards won't drop in price ever.
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
I think the 5300 has just decided that it hates 7.6.1 all of a sudden. It did the same thing with a 6GB IDE drive (that was blank) and it was only happy when I booted it from my OS 8 PCMCIA CF card. It’s also worth noting that I chanced it and went with a “massive” 64GB SD card because it was just $1 more expensive then the 32GB card I planned on purchasing.

Also, the 1400 booted like a champ from the full 64GB partition, 8GB old-world boot limit be darned!
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Yep, weird. I put the same 2.5" IDE to CF to SD adapter with brand new 128GB Sandisk card in my TAM (similar era as 3400c, based off a 5500/6500 Mac) and it appeared to be great - until copying files and it just died hard - couldn't even format it in the end. The card itself works fine in other devices.
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
It’s always something, isn’t it? Every system behaves a little different and it always manages to cause some trouble!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Today I finally got around to ordering some plastruct stuff that was recommended to me in another thread, along with some flux. These are the last things I should need to complete the project! The flux especially has been a long time coming as I've so far just avoided buying some because I could do everything without it, but my solder joints looked horrible, and this should make soldering much easier!

My biggest worry is the 2 capacitors on the LCD itself. There is absolutely no clearance for installing new ones of the same size due to a piece of plastic in the way that can't be easily removed. I'm hoping to get around this by going with ceramic capacitors for the replacements, which in my experience are absolutely microscopic at those low values. The pro of going this route is that it should give me enough space to solder the new caps in, the cons are that soldering will be tricky and they're very easy to lose.

Wish me luck!
 
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