Prototype PowerBook 550 advice

[MacUp72]

well done..nice! the display brightness and contrast also look quite good..
nice to see one of those rare 550 birds in working condition. the slightly bigger screen of the 550c is nice.

the brighter grey plastics color scheme, yes it looks more like the 520/540..if the original state isnt the most important thing you could consider respraying it black.



pic reference:

Rare Macs: The PowerBook 550c. Description, specifications, and picture gallery | MacPrices.net

One of the rarest Apple Macintosh computers is the PowerBook 550c. Introduced in May 1995 a year after the PowerBook 540c, the 550c was sold only in Japan. It's case was black, rather than the gray color seen on other PowerBook 5xx models and featured an active matrix, 640x480, 10.4" color...

www.macprices.net

when I look at your pic above, I`m not sure if that is corrosion on the aluminium foil, when yes it coud be an indicator that one of the caps slightly exploded and outgased, you could see/smell that on the board when you disassembled it..

 

[croissantking]

if the original state isnt the most important thing you could consider respraying it black.

It would be a shame to do that, imho. I feel it’s very appealing in its present state, as a one of a kind prototype.

 

[joshc]

It would be a shame to do that, imho. I feel it’s very appealing in its present state, as a one of a kind prototype.

This. Painting would only devalue it

 

[Durosity]

Yeah I’m not gonna paint it.. it’s a pretty unique machine.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 550 with a grey case. Certainly haven’t seen one pictured anywhere I searched for it. Besides hopefully soon I’ll have a retail 550c in black and with PCMCIA cage!

I’ve actually spent today dismantling and refurbishing the lower section of the machine. It’s just a stock 500 series model, not even a hint of it being used as a prototype. The battery terminals were horribly corroded so I swapped in a board from a very damaged machine I had, and I also swapped the keyboards so it has the original Japanese layout it would have had originally. Other than that it’s in perfect working condition, even the floppy worked without issue!

 

[croissantking]

Yeah I’m not gonna paint it.. it’s a pretty unique machine.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 550 with a grey case. Certainly haven’t seen one pictured anywhere I searched for it. Besides hopefully soon I’ll have a retail 550c in black and with PCMCIA cage!

I’ve actually spent today dismantling and refurbishing the lower section of the machine. It’s just a stock 500 series model, not even a hint of it being used as a prototype. The battery terminals were horribly corroded so I swapped in a board from a very damaged machine I had, and I also swapped the keyboards so it has the original Japanese layout it would have had originally. Other than that it’s in perfect working condition, even the floppy worked without issue!

What’s it like with its PowerPC upgrade? I think I saw that it has a 166MHz 603e. I take it that it’s not one of the ones with an L2 cache - only the 183MHz card has that iirc? Still, it must perform appreciably faster than a low end PB5300 or 1400, for example? Plus you can run PPC apps.