I was given yesterday evening a PowerBook 5300ce, a box of Mac magazines, Civ II, SimCity 2000, and 3 unopened PhoneNet boxes.
The 5300ce is a real gem. I checked the packing list and it appears that I have everything which is listed there, right down to registration card, eWorld flyer, and battery cover.
This 5300ce is a monster and I can tell that it was the top-of-the-line PowerBook of its day! 8-o I booted it with the included Disk Tools disk (yes, even that was on the packing list and included) and revealed that it has the maximum 64 MB of RAM. Combine that with the 117 MHz clock speed, ability to run OS 9, and I might just get a wireless PCMCIA card to use this as a portable Mac around town. It also has a 3rd-party video/ethernet card in it, so I can hook up an external monitor, and do Ethernet! Very nice. The original Apple card was in the static bag, and I've got the box and docs for this newer card too.
Anyway, two downsides:
1.) The HD is gone. I opened the PowerBook to reveal this, as I was wondering why it wasn't showing up.
2.) The battery is, quite understandably, dead. There's even some corrosion on the connectors.
I checked MacTracker and it revealed that the 5300ce not only cost $6,800 when new, but also had an ATA bus. I was wondering if this is true. If so, it should make it easier to get an HD for this laptop. The technical booklet included with the 5300ce declined to note the HD bus, giving only its size, 2.5", and a list of configurations (up to 1.1 GB, which is what I assume originally came in this PowerBook).
Second thing most interesting was the stack of magazines. These are mostly MacAddicts from 1998-2002, and there's also some MacFormats, Macworlds, a MacHome, and a few Linux magazines. Also of interest is that the CDs were saved, so I have just about every CD which came with these magazines.
Very nice!
The 5300ce is a real gem. I checked the packing list and it appears that I have everything which is listed there, right down to registration card, eWorld flyer, and battery cover.
This 5300ce is a monster and I can tell that it was the top-of-the-line PowerBook of its day! 8-o I booted it with the included Disk Tools disk (yes, even that was on the packing list and included) and revealed that it has the maximum 64 MB of RAM. Combine that with the 117 MHz clock speed, ability to run OS 9, and I might just get a wireless PCMCIA card to use this as a portable Mac around town. It also has a 3rd-party video/ethernet card in it, so I can hook up an external monitor, and do Ethernet! Very nice. The original Apple card was in the static bag, and I've got the box and docs for this newer card too.
Anyway, two downsides:
1.) The HD is gone. I opened the PowerBook to reveal this, as I was wondering why it wasn't showing up.
2.) The battery is, quite understandably, dead. There's even some corrosion on the connectors.
I checked MacTracker and it revealed that the 5300ce not only cost $6,800 when new, but also had an ATA bus. I was wondering if this is true. If so, it should make it easier to get an HD for this laptop. The technical booklet included with the 5300ce declined to note the HD bus, giving only its size, 2.5", and a list of configurations (up to 1.1 GB, which is what I assume originally came in this PowerBook).
Second thing most interesting was the stack of magazines. These are mostly MacAddicts from 1998-2002, and there's also some MacFormats, Macworlds, a MacHome, and a few Linux magazines. Also of interest is that the CDs were saved, so I have just about every CD which came with these magazines.
Very nice!


