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

[3lectr1cPPC]

Recap SUCCESS! Just got the chime and blinking question mark after replacing every last electrolytic in the entire system. I’ll have a full writeup and reference info up on a separate thread soon.

Edit: there is a strange display problem now that wasn’t there before.

That weird smudge looking thing definitely wasn’t there before. It’s not where the caps were so it definitely isn’t damage from the soldering iron. I also don’t see how it could be an internal fingerprint on the backlight diffuser as I didn’t take it apart far enough to cause that.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Phew, good news. The smudge seems to be going away on its own for whatever reason. I can only see it extremely faintly when the display is off now, and it is pretty much invisible when on. I was really worried about that so I'm really pleased that it has seemingly solved itself.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Everything is all done now, and the laptop still works!

Look at all of that free space!
I‘ve chosen to do an absolutely ridiculous quad-boot of Mac OS 7.6.1, 8.1, 8.5, and 9.1. Each OS is put on a separate 3GB partition, with the remainder being put into one huge data partition for all of my software. It’s running great like this! The recapping went fine, which I’m really happy about, and I was able to mend the one standoff that broke during disassembly with the plastic weld stuff. I also applied it around the hinge standoffs, I don’t know if that will actually strengthen them or not but it can’t hurt them.

The only issues are as follows:
1. The smudge isn‘t fully gone. You can’t see it head on (which is good), but it does partially appear at extreme viewing angles. My only guess is that I somehow caused a bit of pressure damage, although I’ve got no idea how.
2. The speakers sometime crackle a bit during startup. Occasionally, the boot chime will sound distorted, and I will hear a bit of crackling now and then during the boot. After that sound works 100% fine with no distortion. Strangely, this seems to happen the most when I boot 7.6.1. My only guess is that it’s something to do with what caps I used as replacements, but I’m also not sure whether it’s the main speakers, the display woofers, or both. It doesn’t affect use though, and again, sound works fine after that. I also haven’t tested to see if this happens from the headphone jack, mainly because it only happens every now and then, and not on every boot.

All in all, I’m glad I went through all of this work. It’s now going to be more reliable, faster, and hopefully the hinges will hold up better too. The best part is that I don’t have to wait for the hard drive to spin up after it has been idle for a few minutes, now it’s instant!

 

[KLund1]

3lectr1cPPC​

I have a 3400c I'm looking to upgrade to SD card HD.
It is not clear through this thread what SD card and Adapter you used for you upgrade.
I know it has been a while but could you possibly post what parts you used.
Thanks

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

No problem!
SD card adapter was one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Card-Adapter...id=1679194852&sprefix=sd+to+ide,aps,91&sr=8-4

SD Card doesn't really matter, think mine was something like this: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultr...&qid=1679194906&sprefix=64gb+s,aps,107&sr=8-4
There are faster ones available, but I don't think they'd change much due to the slow IDE bus.

 

[KLund1]

Many thanks,
If I may, I'm very new to vintage Mac's, how do I migrate the HD OS to the SD card?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

There isn't a great way to do this - you'd need to make and restore a disk image between the drives. I'm not well versed in this, so I'd suggest you make a dedicated thread on the topic in the lounge. I usually start fresh with a clean install.

 

[KLund1]

Understood. Again many thanks!

 

[MacUp72]

great success.. display looks good...even bigger than from the 1400.
I wonder, are there actually parts that are swapable between the 5300 and the 3400?
RAM extension card is similar but not really I guess..but keyboard, video or LAN card?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

The keyboard, trackpad/palmrest and certain expansion bay modules are swappable, nothing else to my knowledge. Maybe the drive cage? Not sure. Display on mine has a really bright and good condition CCFL tube, no yellowing, it’s great. The 5300 has no built in networking.

 

[Paralel]

...The 5300 has no built in networking.

One of the reasons people saw it as a step backwards from the Blackbird.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Yeah, 5300 isn't a super great system. I believe the thinking was that leaving it out was meant to allow more versatility via leaving it up to the user with PCMCIA. I can see the argument, it kept the costs lower (theoretically) and saves internal space. I've got a handful of PCMCIA Ethernet cards so it isn't a very big issue for me. Having it built in to the 3400 is convenient though.

 

[MacUp72]

I was reseaching for PCMCIA ethernet cards but only could find this info on the Etherlink cards..
apart from the rare and expensive Farallon/Sonnet(?) card..

the route I went for most builds now is just use PCMCIA to CF card adapters and use 4 GB CF cards together with an USB card reader.. almost as easy as USB sticks.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I also use a PCMCIA to CF adapter for file transfer. I'll send you some photos of my cards later - I haven't needed to use them yet so I haven't looked into drivers yet. Maybe that's a job for tonight.