Clean, Nice PB180

[jwmcfarlin]

Received a PB180 today in exchange for $25. I was impressed by how nice it was. Hardly any apparent use at all from the look of the keys. No plastic degradation or anything. When I was opening the package in the garage I had my normal array of clorox wipes and my compressor fired up, but when I pulled it out I was like, "Oh. Guess that was un-necessary."

Upsides: Larger 120MB Hard Drive instead of the 80MB Drive. It had never been reformatted since 1993. RAM Doubler. Battery is no great shakes but there's enough life in it to move it from one room to another at least. PRAM battery keeps time.

Downsides: Only 8MB of RAM, which with 7.1 is still plenty. Someone selected an ugly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Icon for the HD. I'll figure out how to fix that.

Sinister Side: Uh, people ought to delete their personal files from their hard drives when they lose control of a computer. I'm a big fan of taking a hammer to mine--nothing spells success like nuking the site from orbit. I had a complete CV of the original user complete with full biographical data, SSN, budget, tax info from 1995, credit card statements, and so on to include a bunch of family data. I dutifully trashed and emptied, but it was surprising to me how far we've come in terms of personal data security. The 180 was orginally owned by a financial management company, so I guess they could afford nice laptops for their people.

Anywho, that's my brag for the day.

Best,

John

 

[Paralel]

Clorox wipes? Won't that damage or discolor just about any plastic?

I've seen clorox wipes damage lower grades of stainless steel.

 

[jwmcfarlin]

No, of course you're right. Windex wipes is what I meant. Less harsh.

Best,

John

 

[jwmcfarlin]

A second 180 arrived today. This one was in similar shape to the first one, minus that the back door was missing and it looks like it broke off sometime in its lifetime because one of the small receivers for the door pin is broken.

12MB of RAM in this one, with the 240MB hard drive.

This one was a another computer with some personal data. When I saw what it was, I was glad to dispose of the information. There are some 90-era IT heads that really didn't know what they were doing. But on the upside, the user had treated it pretty nicely. The trackball doesn't seem to respond correctly--it sticks in one axis intermittently, even after the normal sort of cleaning--but a regular mouse bypasses that small fault.

Best,

John

 

[Bunsen]

Someone selected an ugly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Icon for the HD. I'll figure out how to fix that.

• Find an icon you prefer. Perhaps plug in an external drive and see what pops up.
• Apple-I to bring up the Information window for that drive
• Click to select the icon in the Information window
• Copy *
  
• Close the Information window
• Apple-I the drive you want to re-iconize
• Click to select the icon in the Information window
• Paste

If you find a classic Mac icon collection online, or on an old magazine CD, each icon is usually attached to an empty folder. Proceed as above.

* NB: it occurs to me that hitting Cut here might be just as effective. You may get a generic drive icon. If you get no icon, then Paste and start over.

 

[jwmcfarlin]

The Apple-X command works, a generic hard drive icon pops up. Thanks much!

In additional news, I am testing the batteries on these right now, and they're pretty good. The OEM battery is good for emergency power only, say moving it from one room to another, but the two aftermarket batteries have 60-minute plus endurance. I am pretty sure that these are the batteries that someone else is asking about in another thread here.

Best,

John

 

[jwmcfarlin]

It turns out that they aren't--when I made the post they were in the PBs in an endurance test. They're BTI-brand. Sorry.

Best,

John