Got a Macintosh Portable today.

[snuci]

This is my first post here and my vintage Mac collection is growing. Today I received a Macintosh M5120 non-backlit Portable and GCC Technologies WriteMove portable printer all stuffed in the matching Mac Portable bag. At $75, I didn't expect it to work and it was not advertised as working so I have some work to do. I have been eyeing one of these for a while now and patience paid off.

I have done much research on the Portable but I must say that it was tricky getting it apart. While it looked to be in great shape (except for the space bar that has yellowed a bit) I still took it apart to inspect the motherboard. It has a single Superdrive, 40mb hard drive and a memory card with absolutely no markings on it. There is no modem (but I won't really miss it). In all that I've read, I didn't know the inside of the bottom of the case was signed by the design team (that was a pleasant surprise) but more importantly, the mother board looked spotless. There not a trace of capacitor leakage so it should be good enough for me to try to start up.

Sadly, the battery is dead and the power supply output much voltage (never came across anyone with that issue) so I bought a PowerBook 100 2A power adapter on eBay and ordered three new Cyclon X Cell batteries from Amazon to repack the dead battery. Now it sits here absolutely spotless and waiting for some power to bring it back to life.

Another interesting part of this transaction was the printer that came with it. Normally I'll forego a printer to save weight on shipping but this WriteMove printer is tiny! It's as wide as a sheet of paper (it needs to be, right?) but 6.5" wide and less than 2" tall. It's even white in colour to match the Macintosh Portable. When the seller told me what make it was, the research stopped there. It seems that the Internet forgot about this printer. The WriteMove II (that matches the PowerBook line) has plenty of pictures and write ups about it and there's a couple for sale on eBay but it's older brother was the printer that "time forgot", I guess.

Anyway, this has now been added to my small but growing Apple collection. After reading many other's posts here, I thought I would finally put up a post. I'm very happy to have a new addition.

P.S If anyone knows how to take apart the M5136 power adapter that came with the Portable so I can take a look, I'm all ears.

 

[Macdrone]

First the power supply is only made to charge the battery.

It can come apart but I'd check voltage with a multimeter rather than taking it apart.

None of the memory cards I e seen are marked, probably as they only fit in these machines, which is weird because the back lit model takes a different type of ram than the non backlit.

Even tho the caps show no sign of leakage if you check the threads under portables you will see you should replace the , and secondly don't use a 2.0 amp charger to run the machine. It was a portable Mac to run on 6 volt power not a wall charger.

Gratz on your find I love mine. They are cool.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

First and foremost: DON'T USE THAT 2A A/C POWER ADAPTER!

Second: Macintosh Portable Charger, 1500ma (MAX) Aftermarket Options

Third: welcome aboard and 'grats on that very nice Luggable conquest.

 

[snuci]

Thanks for the replies. I thought I'd use the PB 100 adapter just to see if it worked. When I first turned it on, I did get a faint beep and the hard drive tried to start but it died with 2 seconds. This, I believe, is a good sign.

Several pages on the net go back and forth on if a PB 100 power adapter can be used without the battery but that pile of Portable boards tells me to be patient. Yesterday I checked the voltage of the Portable adapter that came with it and it was putting out less than one volt. In double checking just now before posting, it now produced 7.57 volts! Whoo hoo! Yesterday I thought it was broken but I had ordered replacement batteries anyway so I'm not trying to run it without batteries (and go against Apple's philosophy for the device).

Since I'm getting the batteries and my existing adapter now works, I'll need to get a Powerbook to match the adapter I don't have one of those but I'm not trying to collect laptops. The Mac Portable is unique and goes good with my IBM 5140 Convertible.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[uniserver]

Maybe next you can grab your self a Powerbook 100, just to see what it looks like after apple paid sony to miniaturize the portable for them. Would make good use of that PB Adaptor.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Attach a pic of the spec. plate on that adapter if you would, snuci.

@ uni: he said it's 2A, I wouldn't use it on a PB100 unless I could be absolutely certain it was for the 100. It's probably for the 100 series excluding the PowerBook 100.

 

[uniserver]

True. The powerbook 170 at-least had a nice active matrix screen just like the portable.

68030 + fpu too! We know the 2a charger is good with the powerbook 140/170.

 

[snuci]

The PB adapter I bought is a M5651. According to the chart at the link below, it might work on PB 100..

https://support.apple.com/kb/TA32393

While the section on the M5651 doesn't name the PB 100, the section for the APS-17adp states: "Warning: Using an AC adapter that produces more than 19 W with a PowerBook 100 or 150 computer will damage the computer's logic board." The M5651 is 19 W so it technically should work?

 

[uniserver]

Yes that seems to be so, its 19watt, should work.

 

[snuci]

Today I repacked my battery with three fresh Cyclon batteries and fired it up. All is well, including the hard drive except near the bottom of the screen I have a row of pixels that don't work. The non working pixels are about 80% of one line. All else is fine except I have no audio. It may be the caps or I may have forgotten to plug in the speaker back in when I took it apart. Does anyone know if these screens are fixable? If not, I'm fine the way it is. It's a beautiful machine. The original adapter works great for charging the battery. It has some weird customization with a corporate splash screen and it was definitely used for business.

With 2MB of memory and the original 40MB hard drive working, I'm a happy camper even with a couple of minor imperfections.

 

[aplmak]

I've got a question for those portable guys out there... Why does the Connor hard drive leak an oil like substance.. This is the first hard drive that I have ever seen this happen to.. What the hell is it?? From reading on here and other areas as I understand it when this happens and you notice it that means it's life is over.. Even if the heads are working and it still runs and cycles.. I wasn't sure where to post this.. I didn't want to make a new thread just for this..

Matt

 

[dorkbert]

I've got a question for those portable guys out there... Why does the Connor hard drive leak an oil like substance.. This is the first hard drive that I have ever seen this happen to.. What the hell is it?? From reading on here and other areas as I understand it when this happens and you notice it that means it's life is over.. Even if the heads are working and it still runs and cycles.. I wasn't sure where to post this.. I didn't want to make a new thread just for this..
Matt

that's not oil. it's the rubber conner used as gasket to seal the drive. over time the stabilizing agent evaporated and the rubber reverted to its natural state...

 

[techknight]

Silicone/rtv time. Very carefully of course

 

[Macdrone]

No audio if the speaker is plugged in is probably bad caps on the motherboard.

Screen is not repairable, the contact points to the screen are basically glued on. You could try the Nintendo game boy fix, but will most likely make it worse (soldering iron across the film to restock it)

 

[CelGen]

There's a schematic out there somewhere so you can use a regular SCSI drive with the portable.

Once the gasket has failed I wouldn't use it. Storing the drive standing up could cause the sludge to contaminate the platters and ruin it completely.

 

[haplain]

Just get some better gasket material from McMaster-Carr and cut your own. You can get some quality material that won't break down. A razor blade, a still hand, and some time should be able to fix that.

 

[uniserver]

My guess is the substance is the lubrication for the bearings of the spindle/motor.

It leaks out from the degraded seal of the HD, or the substance degrades the seal then it leaks out.

and i think it leaks out purely from the portable being sat upright in a closet for years etc.

When they are laying flat as in a classic or LC,

Seems like they do not leak.