Scored 2 PowerBooks and a G4 Cube via random email!

[krye]

A guy from Florida who found my Apple site sent me an email to tell me he was cleaning out his closet and found a bunch of Macs that he wanted to get rid of. He couldn't bare the thought of just trashing them. He'd rather they go to a good home. So he offered them to me for the cost of shipping!

He sent me a:

- PowerBook 100

- PowerBook 170

- Bunch of misc SCSI cables, keyboards and carrying cases.

- G4 Cube w/1000 MHz PPC upgrade /1G RAM, 400G HDD and a 17" monitor. (I'm not entirely sure if the monitor is coming too; only if he could find a box to fit it.)

All are in great shape and in working order!

He took them to the FedEx store to have them packed. I thought $60 would be enough but it turned out to be two pretty beefy sized boxes. So I PayPal'd him a $100. Still a very sweet deal for a beefed up G4 Cube and 2 working PowerBooks!

I was going to hold off on posting until they arrived in the mail, not being one to count my chickens before they hatch, but I'm just so excited about this!

I should have them in 2 days. I'll report back with pics when I get them. Woo hoo!

 

[Tmargo101]

Thats awesome, especially the G4 Cube, I have been wanting one for years. Also the powerbook 100 and 170, nice. Overall great score!

 

[olePigeon]

Wow! G4 Cube with CPU upgrade for $60? That's nuts.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Nice! I glad to see a Cube going to a good home. I hate the sight of seeing one being thrown away. Any idea if it was originally a 500MHz?

 

[LCGuy]

Very, very, very nice. The G4 Cube alone is worth much more than that. :O Is the monitor a Studio Display?

 

[jongleur]

Fortuna has truly smiled upon you!

I hope the void under the Cube base has been packed in, as mishandling in transit can result in the core being ripped/broken from the upper section. Not a pretty site.

 

[Macdrone]

Congratz!!! Even without the cpu upgrade thats a great deal IMHO. Good to see people passing there gear on. Seems to be happening quite a bit lately.

 

[TheIanMan85]

Excellent score!

I'm not sure if I'm more jealous of the PB 100 or the SuperCube (that's what I nominate as a name for your upgraded Cube...or Gigacube). The PB 170 is a nice one too...a PB 180 was my first 100 series PB, and either my second or third PB. 5300cs was my first PB (bought 1997 or early 1998 as an Apple Refurb), and I can't remember if the 180 or the 230 and Dock came next once I started getting into older Macs.

Extra SCSI cables are always good to have around too. I know I have many more SCSI devices than I do cables and terminators!

Do we get to see some pics?

 

[krye]

Don't know if it was originally a 450 or 500 MHz.

It's a 17" Studio Display.

It's on schedule for delivery tomorrow. I can't wait!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Congrats, gotta love it. :b&w:

CRT or LCD StudioDisplay? Both are very cool.

 

[krye]

LCD, I think? I guess I'll find out tomorrow. I assumed it was LCD.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I've got both so, of course, I prefer the CRT, but I'm old school for some reason or other.

It's such a sweet deal, I really think you should name it SugarCube.

 

[LCGuy]

To be honest, I love the 17" ASD CRT...if anything i think it looks much cooler than the LCD. But they're huge and heavy, and difficult to ship, and they take up a ton of space.

These days I live in a place in Sydney thats about the size of a shoebox, therefore the few displays I have are LCDs. While LCDs are technically better, I miss the "warmth" that the image from a CRT has. I always love it when I have to power up an analog DVR at work, since it means digging out one of the old CRTs. I guess its kinda like the old guys who prefer tube amps over solid state amps, for that very reason.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Since when did LCDs become "technically superior?" :?:

 

[krye]

I got the Cube in. Still waiting on the PowerBooks.

It turns out the Studio Display is a 15" monitor, not 17". I guess that's OK. I already have a 17" on my other Cube. I'd rather have a 17" and a 15". That way I have "one of each" instead of "1 extra"!

This Cube is a screamer! The proc has been upgraded to 1GHz. It has a 32MB Nvidia 2 card as well as a SuperDrive, AirPort, 400G HDD, and 1G of RAM. It's running 10.5.8.

Everything in it is better than the one I paid twice the price for. The one catch was that one of the USB ports was mangled. I swapped the logicboards and brought the RAM up to 1.5GBs. Now it's in good shape and it's pretty fast.

One thing that's bothering me is that it turns on my itself. Has anyone seen that? I thought maybe the power button on the display was faulty, so I disabled it in Sys Prefs. It still turns on by itself. If I shut it down, anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes later, it just "bongs" and boots up on its own. Is this the power button, or the power management board?

I headed over to the cubeowner forums and found that in many cases, it's the gasket around the power switch that is the culprit. Many times, it can be fixed by simply taping a small piece of antistatic bag over it. Sometimes any old piece of paper does the trick. It's funny, because when I took the Cube apart, there was a small piece of antistatic bag taped over the switch. I thought the previous owner put it there to dim the LED a bit. I guess I'll have to put it back when I get home and hope that fixes it.

 

[krye]

As I suspected, it's the gasket. I taped a small piece of antistatic bag over the power switch proximity sensor and it works like a charm. When I shut the Cube off, it stays off.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Can you post pictures? I'm glad the static bag trick worked!

 

[krye]

I'm in the middle of writing up an extensive blog post on my site. I'll post a link to it when it finished uploading, but here's a pic:



PowerLogix 1GHz G4

1.5GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce 2MX 32MB

400G Seagate

SuperDrive

Airport

OS X 10.5.8

17" Studio Display

 

[krye]

Here's a link to the writeup on my blog for my first Cube with a 17" monitor.

The new Cube with 15" monitor.

And the rebuild combining the best of both Cubes.