Recent content by PB170

Curious..! Intermittent or random problems are really the worst. How do you go about probing the underside of the daughterboards (or the part of the motherboard below) when the computers are running? That seems to be a particular obstacle to troubleshooting.

Oh, not at all! Any ideas could prove to be valuable. I suppose you missed the part where I mentioned that in my post (#7) above? 🙂 Unfortunately, it doesn't respond when I try to connect to it… It would be an interesting challenge to attempt, as I feel I may finally have enough basic...

I do intend to swap parts (for some of the chips that’s the only option, as far as I’m aware), I just don’t want to swap out the entire board (I already have a small collection of 68k PowerBooks that were included or given to me as I was looking for replacement power supplies and hard drives...

Yeah, the power supply section on the motherboard is what I always assumed would fail first. However, I've been using the computer with the PB140 daughterboard daily for almost three weeks now without any issues, so I assume the motherboard is working fine. Or do you think it could still be...

I doubt it's a memory problem since the RAM is among the last things that are tested by the ROM (happens after a successful initial hardware check and after the startup tone plays, I believe), which then most likely would give a Sad Mac screen and a related error code. Also, I've had RAM...

Thanks! I'll definitely begin by checking all caps, once I know that it's safe to poke around with the multimeter I have. In a way, it feels like the caps on the motherboard would have failed first since that's where the power regulation happens. But like you said, considering how much use the...

Thank you all for your input! I definitely want to try to fix the board. (If I'd manage to repair it and it would keep failing, I'd probably try to get a replacement board. But at the same time, as these computers continue to age, just getting a replacement board feels less and less like a...

Some additional details of the gradual failure (that I thought was drive related), which may or may not give some clues: December 23 Sudden Sad Mac screen at startup (0000000F/00000003). Then goes away. December 23 – January 9 No issues (daily use, 2–4 hours/day) January 9 Occasional...

The day that I've dreaded has come – my PowerBook 170 has started to give up… 😢 Since I got it back in 2001, I've experienced more or less all common failures over the years, but this far I've managed to resolve all of them (internal connector issues, ground faults, failed hard drives, broken...

As a (highly irrelevant) aside, and to properly answer your first question ;):) — during the past weeks, in anticipation for a possible solution, I've taken screenshots of the windows I've resized, and overlapped the outlines to find the golden average :) Turns out that my very personal...

Oh, I didn't see your update before I posed my reply. Wonderful! :D I considered maybe giving it a try myself, so I'll definitely give it thorough read. Thanks for sharing the process!

Oh, wow! I'm not sure how you accomplished this, but this is far more than I had imagined or wished for! I'm using the Swedish version of SimpleText (just used the default version above for clarity), but I copied over CODE resource #1 ("Main") along with the TMPL and WSzT resources, and it...

Oh that's wonderful 🙌✨ Thanks a lot for having a look at it! 🙂 Have you been able to identify the routine that gets called when a TEXT document is opened? TEXT should be different from all the others in that it doesn't have a predefined size (and it's the only one I'm interested in changing)...

Haha, sorry to hear that! 😂 Glad to know I'm not the only one who notices it though 🙂

By the way, Mac OS 8/9 could also benefit from a slight adjustment: (Although the total lack of spacing doesn't stick out all that much among all the other things that broke visually post-System 7… 🤪)