Two PB190s

[Pinstripes]

Got a call from work asking if I wanted some PowerBook 190s. They came with AC adapters (one's dead.) One 190 works fine, the other has a dead display? Nothing shows up, but it chimes and disk seems to work fine.

They gave me one a year ago so that makes three [] ]'> What to do with them?

 

[MacMan]

Great! It is always good to get a pair of machines since the one that doesn't work can be used as a spares machine. It sounds like you now have plenty to play around with!

 

[coius]

pitch them!!! horrible machines. I went through 3 of them before realizing how much they sucked. I wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole!

 

[alk]

Digital Picture Frame!

http://www.alksoft.com/5300_stuff/5300_picture_frame.php

Peace,

Drew

 

[beachycove]

You can pop the active matrix screen from a PB5300c on one and make a plain-Jane 190 into a rather nice colour 68k powerbook. I am pretty sure that the 190 cannot take advantage of the very high end and immensely expensive 800x600 screen from the 5300ce, but it can certainly take a 640x480 active matrix from one of the higher end 5300s: I did this transplant with my daughter's 190, and it is now a rather good machine to use. The 190 will take up to 40MB ram (which is not that hard to find, as ram is mostly interchangeable with the 5300 series - note the "mostly" there), it has an IDE drive, and it will accept pcmcia cards for ethernet, flash ram disks, etc. That sort of facility is almost impossible to achieve on the 5xx series, as the pcmcia module is so hard to find - and also, obviously, on all the other 68k powerbooks. The 190 powerbooks were also the very last of the 68k Macs to be manufactured, so it is a landmark model even if it is far from being a favourite.

If handled carelessly, alas, the screen has a tendency to fall apart on these machines. To guard against this, it's not a bad idea to run a piece of strong tape along the seam near the hinges as reinforcement. The keyboard is also not the greatest - but it's not the worst found on old powerbooks, either. The same kb is found on the 190, the 5300, the 3400 and the TAM.

Stock, it's not a great piece of hardware because of the poor screens. With a little tinkering, however, it can do rather nicely. The best upgrade is an active matrix screen from a 5300, then ram. It's a 33MHz 68LC040 that it has in there, after all.

 

[tomlee59]

Beachycove's screen transplant suggestion is a wonderful idea. There are (or used to be) stacks of 5300s with bad logic boards but good screens, so finding a source of organ donors shouldn't be too bad.

Once you've done the transplant, you've actually got a machine capable of playing movies (in Cinepak). A discussion on another thread got me interested in trying this out, and being able to play Galaxy Quest and Star Wars IV on a 68k PB is definitely a surprise and a pleasure.

 

[The Macster]

pitch them!!! horrible machines. I went through 3 of them before realizing how much they sucked. I wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole!

Oi, I wouldn't mind one at all! Maybe you'd appreciate them a bit more if you had as much trouble finding decent PowerBooks as I seem to

 

[nahuelmarisi]

I have a powerbook 190cs which is actually my main 68k machine. I have a good ethernet pcmcia card so I can connect it to my network and copy files there. I also use it as a localtalk bridge between my wifi network and my old localtalk network (mainly used by pluses, classics, SEs) It's running system 7.5.3 so it's quite speedy (can run up to 8.1). My battery even works perfectly fine (replaced by prefvious owner about year or so ago) and it holds about 2h+ of charge. The screen is acceptable, it's not so bad (unless you play lots of games). The worse part I would say is the keyboard.

 

[tmtomh]

Wow, I never thought of making a "540c Plus" by combining a 190 with a 5300's color LCD screen. That's a great idea for a 68k machine, and unlike the 540 it has a lot of modern conveniences, like IDE HDs, and PC card slots without having to find a 500-series card cage.

Cool!

M

 

[beachycove]

I might add to my earlier post that the hitch is that you need to find the right 5300 screen. Most 5300s were passive matrix/ dual scan models, and (with the exception of the 5300ce with its 800x600 screen), the screen you want is scattered around among relatively few of the others (the 5300c, and the 5300cs). The LCD in question was also sold in the 90s as an official Apple upgrade for the 5300, so there may conceivably be new screens still in boxes somewhere.

The upshot is that a little digging through specs is necessary, though my advice is to be thorough, and especially to go to and through the archived Apple documents, as some of the usual sources (e.g., LEM) are simply inaccurate.

There was, in short, a 640x480 active matrix screen available on the pb5300, and it is that one that you want, that you really really want, if you're going to launch yourself into this particular 68k powerbook hack. I gather that the higher resolution, 800x600 screen will not work properly as a transplant (mind you, I have not tried it) because there is not enough vram on the logic board of the pb190. VRAM had been doubled on the 5300ce logic board to support the higher resolution screen.

Dual scan displays from the 5300 series will also work, but they are the poor cousins - and they are already on the 190cs anyway.

 

[alk]

I did not know that Apple sold active matrix screens as upgrades for the PowerBook 5300 or 5300cs. Do you have any sources for that information? Such an upgrade program would be pretty unusual for Apple to offer.

Anyway, all PowerBook 5300c LCD assemblies (entire screen and housing) should be compatible with the 190. Just buy a 5300c on the cheap (not nearly as rare as implied by beachycove) and swap the entire lid. Be sure to move the labels, though, as you don't want your 190 moonlighting as a PowerBook 5300c.

PowerBook 190/PowerBook 5300 - Dual scan greyscale display (640x480x4)

PowerBook 190cs/PowerBook 5300cs - Dual scan color display (640x480x8)

PowerBook 5300c w/ 512 kB VRAM - Active matrix color display (640x480x8)

PowerBook 5300c w/ 1 MB VRAM - Active matrix color display (640x480x16)

PowerBook 5300ce - Active matrix color display (800x600x16)

If you can manage to put a ce display on a model with 512 kB of VRAM and get the display into 8-bit mode, it should work fine. All the motherboard connectors are the same across the 190/5300 line, but the LCDs themselves are not. You cannot simply swap LCDs because each manufacturer used a unique connector. You also need to swap LCD cables. And so it is much much easier to just swap the entire lid (and that way you don't risk weakening or cracking any of the plastics which are quite delicate and prone to fracture).

Peace,

Drew

 

[beachycove]

I did not know that Apple sold active matrix screens as upgrades for the PowerBook 5300 or 5300cs. Do you have any sources for that information? Such an upgrade program would be pretty unusual for Apple to offer.

I thought that I could document this, but now that I look in my usual sources, I cannot. The fellow I bought the screen from told me the story that I reported, and I thought that I had subsequently read the same afterwards somewhere or other, but sorry - it's not to be found just at present.

So that may have been an overstatement; maybe the guy bought the screen as a new part, and did the upgrade unofficially, as it were. But he did say specifically that it had been available as an upgrade, and as I recall, he knew the Apple lore pretty well. But I'll just "withdraw" that little slip for the moment, if I may.

 

[Pinstripes]

Thanks for all the replies. For now they're sitting around until I can decide what to do with them.

I guess I'll dig out my old ethernet card and use it for SSH or something ...