Lucky 500 series

[just.in.time]

Saw an ad locally on Craigslist for a PowerBook 500 series with grainy photos.  The only description was "needs power cable," with a price of $20.  I already have a 520c with 12mb of RAM, but the price was so low I couldn't resist.

Met the lady selling it.  I opened it up and low and behold it was a 540c, with a display that didn't appear cracked or damaged.  At the very least I figured I could do a display swap with my 520c.  Also, plastics and hinges are in great shape, and it had two batteries loaded into it.

Got home, powered it up, find out it even has the RAM maxed at 36mb  The 320mb hard drive was making some questionable sounds, but seems to operate okay, and booted right up to System 7.5.  The display is bright and even, guessing it was stored indoors and not out in a hot Phoenix garage.  Last file dates appear to be from the middle of 2001.  Both batteries are of course long dead, but I will probably try to rebuild them.

Now the question is, 7.6.1 or 8.1 for it? Annnnnddddd go!

 

[Carboy7]

That sounds almost exactly like how my 520c was acquired. It had both batteries, plastics are great, and it booted Sys7.5.

Nice conquest! b:

 

[jsarchibald]

Nah, System 7 FTW!

 

[EvieSigma]

I like 7.6.1 a lot now that I've started using it. Gonna upgrade the 6116CD to 7.6.1 when I get some more RAM for it, it only has 24MB right now.

 

[CC_333]

7.6.1 should be OK with 24 MB, but it would run best with at least 32 MB or more (especially if you plan to run 8.1 or later on it).

c

 

[just.in.time]

While 7.6.1 was where I got my introduction to the Macintosh OS and I have plenty of nostalgia for it, I'm leaning towards 8.1 since it has HFS Extended support.  I'm thinking the 36Mb of RAM should handle decently well

 

[jimjimx]

Why not a dual, or even, triple boot?

--jim

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I ran 8.1 on a 520c with max RAM and it was fine.

 

[Cory5412]

No particularly good use doing HFS+ on a 320-meg drive. My 1400 has a 10-gig HFS partition and it's fine.

Very nice find! I've long liked the idea of the 500 series, but a few I got back in the day were just horribly aged and broken, and I haven't bothered looking again.

 

[jimjimx]

WOW!!! 10 GB!!!!  why not quad boot, or penta boot….

You don't need HFS+ until 8.1

--jim

 

[CC_333]

And even then, HFS+ was optional up to Mac OS X (Mac OS 8.x and 9.x, if I recall, could install and boot from an HFS Standard disk just fine).

I wouldn't recommend it for large disks (>10 GB) though.

c

 

[just.in.time]

Thanks for all the input. I'm thinking I might roll 8.1 on it for the support of accessing large external disks that are already formatted with HFS+.